Rock Follies

Rock Follies, and its sequel, Rock Follies of '77, was a comedy musical drama shown on British television in the mid 1970s. The storyline, over 12 episodes and two series, followed the ups and downs of a fictional female rock band called the "Little Ladies" as they struggled for recognition and success. The series starred Rula Lenska, Charlotte Cornwell and Julie Covington as the Little Ladies, with support from Emlyn Price, Beth Porter, Sue Jones-Davies, Stephen Moore and Little Nell among others. The series was made with a very low budget for Thames Television, with a style inspired by fringe theatre.

The fictional band was made up on screen of talented session musicians as well as the three lead actresses who proved they could sing, and the spin-off album of music from the series entered the UK charts at number one - the first album since The Beatles to do so (a common occurrence now, but exceptionally rare at that time). The songs were written by Andy Mackay, who was a founding member of Roxy Music. Lyrics and screenplay were written by Howard Schuman.

The show won a BAFTA award in 1976. The second series, Rock Follies of '77, was a continuation of the first, but industrial action during May of that year at ITV, the commercial channel that aired the show, caused the last few episodes to be postponed until November. The second series pushed the style further in an experimental direction: where the first series had a lot of dialogue and "off stage" scenes, the second focused more on the music and fantasy sequences, with additional songs and musical interludes used to move the plot forward rather than relying on dialogue as the first had done. More sophisticated video effects were also used.

The show was a pioneer in that it was the first musical drama in seriale form, and in addition featured all original songs and music. It laid the groundwork for the later series Pennies From Heaven by Dennis Potter, which followed a similar overall format but did not feature original songs. It was also unusual in portraying strong female central characters, and having an overtly feminist message. Some commentators have also pointed out that its format very much anticipates the age of the music video and MTV, being made at a time when the music video itself was in its extreme infancy.

The series first appeared in the United States in late 1976 when several episodes from series one were shown on New York City’s WOR-TV Channel 9 as part of a "Thames on 9" programming week. Soon after, the first series was shown in the United States on public television, and rapidly became something of a cult, especially in large metropolitan centres like New York and San Francisco. However the second series was felt to be too "raunchy" for the sensibilities of a public television audience, especially as the first had received a lot of complaints from the public in areas outside the larger cities for its frank portrayal of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. As a result the second series did not get shown on US television until 12 years later.

Two albums of songs from the series were released; Rock Follies (1976) was released on Island Records in the UK, and on Atlantic Records in the US. The second, Rock Follies of '77, was released on Polydor Records in both countries. Both albums were re-released on Virgin records in 2002. The TV series is also available as a 2-disk DVD set.

Also, there were three singles released: Island 6293 - "Glen Miller Is Missing"/"Talking Pictures" and Island 6310 - "Sugar Mountain"/"War Brides" (both in 1976); and Polydor 714 - "O.K."/"B-Side" (in 1977).