Bltiz Family Robinson

Blitz Family Robinson

Soap operas, the joy and pain of millions of U.S. radio listeners, have never sudsed up the English air. But for months now, though English ears cannot hear the program (it is short-waved away for all the fest of the world to hear), the august, government-controlled British Broadcasting Corp. has had a soap opera. Its title: Front-Line Family.

Throughout the world thousands have now become accustomed to tuning in Front-Line Family five days a week to check up on the Robinson family. They are Yorkshire-tongued Father Robinson, airplane parts maker; Scots-voiced Mother Robinson, United Services Clubwoman; Son Andy, fighter pilot; Son Dick, of the National Fire Service; Daughter Kay, of the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service).

Around the Robinsons perambulate some 60 other typically British characters. There is plenty of: "The blinkin' ack-ack's got 'im. The bandit's in the drink." There is plenty of "Coo, 'ere comes a blinkin' bomb." The tortoise-paced plot is full of information about England's home front.

Writer-Producer Alan Melville (now in the R.A.F.) and CBC's E. L. Bushnell conceived Front-Line Family early in 1941 under a table in a London restaurant during an air raid. Many an actor arrived at the studio in time to play a part he had just experienced. One player showed up in bandages--sole survivor of a high-explosive bomb which had smashed his flat. Sympathetic listeners dubbed the program The Blitz Family Robinson.

Now that the blitz is past, the plot has turned to the work of decontamination quads, convoy defense, firewatching, visits to the symphony and variety shows, etc. Worldwide listeners still send their favorite characters packets of tea and sugar, bundles of butter and chocolate. Like U.S. soap operas, however, this one has roused some dissenters. One weary British Tommy wrote of the Robinsons, in their own dialect, from the African desert. Said he: "They are proper stupid."

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