THE SCRAPBOOK

Do you have anything I could add to the scrapbook?
I don't have any reviews of the first series and I'd particularly
like to add some American reviews - can you help?

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Where possible I have quoted the source of the clipping.
Unfortunately I didn't keep a note of most of them!!
All clips, unless otherwise stated, are from UK sources and are from the 1976/77 period.

TV Times

 

TV Times

  

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RETURN OF THE LITTLE LADIES -  LONDON viewers can catch up with the rest of the country in remembering what Rock Follies of '77 (10.30 ITV-Thames) were all about. This is a two hour edit of the first three episodes that went out earlier in the year. The run was interrupted by a strike, and by the time that was settled, the slots had been filled. With harmony once again prevailing at Thames, the series resumes tomorrow at 9.00 with the forth episode.

Those who don't want to sit through the whole of tonight's recap might like to be reminded that the three heroines of last year's most original piece of television were taken up by an American agent, played by Beth Porter in a caricature of a dominant woman, and as the serial bit the dust, Anna (Charlotte Cornwell) had discovered that her voice had been re-recorded behind her back by Dee (The dynamic Julie Covington). Dee had also been briefly joined by a Welsh singer, Rox (Sue

 
impromptu concert.
The way the action develops tomorrow is almost uncomfortably like real life. Julie Covington all but blotted out the other two girls in both talent and the impact she made. So now scriptwriter Howard Schuman has had the character she plays do the same. This, not un-naturally, gives the other two a sense of paranoia, and the forth episode is mostly concerned with the ramifications of that. Re-enter Rox, making the Little Ladies a quartet.

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     Television                Daily Telegraph

Verve and daring in Rock Follies Show
BY SEAN DAY-LEWIS

VERSATILITY is a useful asset in popular music and the actor Sam Dale has it in plenty. Materialising on consecutive evenings as half an Irish song-writing team in Stewart Parker's "Catchpenny Twist," the BBC-1 "Play for Today," and a

Welsh groupie with Thames's Little Ladies.
  In other ways Howard Schuman's Rock Follies (ITV), concluded last night, has proved refreshingly different from the surrounding  television landscape.
     It may be argued that the narrative method was derived too obviously from the Hollywood backstage romance, modified only by Schuman's fragmentary style, and that the visual excitements have done no more than reflect an out-dated pop culture.
    Yet, even more than the first series about the Little Ladies, these six hours have provided a mixture of verve and daring, showing that television can contribute entertainment that is unquestioningly its own thing,and, paradoxically has appeared to explode the restrictive frame of the small screen.
      The high point, I think, was episode four. Since then the disintegration of the group has led to some flagging of energy and invention: Dee (Julie Covington), and Rox (Sue Jones-Davies), could provide musical sustenance but Q (Rula Lenska), and Anna (Charlotte Cornwell), were dramatically essential.
        The final episode, "The Real Life." gave a verbal introduction to Ruby Slippers, a Californian manifestation of "gay rock with bi-sexual appeal," discovered in a sauna bath, but they were kept out of sight just as the music and production largely repeated what had been seen and heard before.
           Even the splendidly outrageous Kitty Schreiber (Beth Porter) - "I may be a rat, but I am a rat who says 'Yes' to life" - looked to be comparatively less "KrayZee" than usual.
It is right that the Little Ladies, really not a good rock group by any standards, should now disappear. It would nevertheless be a pity if Thames lost all sight of the production team. Bill Hayes,the director, has a notable talent which should be cultivated and Andy Mackay's music has become far more fitting with practice.

Daily Telegraph

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ROCK FOLLIES (ITV, (p.m.): The little ladies find their sugar mountain -- and the final fade out.
  A stunning series, as exciting visually as it often was musically, but sadly there will be no more. On screen as off screen the little ladies have gone their separate ways. Dee and Rox the two who can actually sing, making for the big time while the others are forced to come to terms with what author Howard Schuman calls 'the real life'.

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The little ladies split up in last night's instalment of Rock Follies of 77 (ITV) a Thames Television series which this time has lacked the zest and wit that once cleverly concealed the familiar routines of the back stage musical.
   It diffuses its interest between too many competing personalities but Howard Schuman can still score several hits with a single line. "I might work with a Right-wing Fascist," said Q, dismissing a Greek singer auditioned as a possible replacement, "but not with someone who wants to win the Eurovision Song Contest."

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The Covington Charisma

WITH THE climax of Rock Follies of 77 (9.0 ITV), this superior serial can now be seen as nothing less - or more - than the old Hollywood back-stage show-biz musical brought up to date. Peppy little girl makes good, learning that you gotta be tough sometimes, even at the cost of being nice. "Come on , Dee; after all you've done to me, don't expect me to love you," Charlotte Cornwell says to Julie Covington at the end of this week's Part Two.
     The updating is what has made the serial so important. I don't mean the pot and the gays, but the acidity of the lyrics (what a shame that the strike that delayed this episode makes "Not a penny for the Jubilee" so untopical now); the sense of ensemble playing (if that doesn't go as far as A Chorus Line, still packing them in at Drury Lane, blame Julie Covington's star charisma); and, above all, the daring use of production numbers to expand and comment upon the naturalistic action.
Praise must naturally go to writer Howard Schuman, producer Andrew Brown and composer Andy Mackay, but it belongs also to the normally unsung backroom workers. Thames has recognised this by giving an unusually long list of them a final credit; keep watching at this point, and not how large a "ground staff" is needed to make a programme fly. Despite the plot's being apparently left ajar for a Rock Follies of '78, I am assured by department-mother Verity Lambert that this really is The End.

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