A Time To Dance

In 1991, Dervla starred in Melvyn Bragg's notorious three part drama A Time To Dance. The story concerned a respectable Bank Manager, Andrew Powell played by Ronald Pickup who falls in love with an eighteen year old schoolgirl, Bernadette Kennedy, the youngest daughter of the most notorious family of layabouts in Cumbria.

Bernadette is an intelligent girl and Andrew, an aspiring writer, takes great delight in introducing her to the finer things in life, finding her an attentive pupil. Bit by bit, Andrew finds his reputation in the village slipping away from him as he loses control of his emotions. However, he is brought back to earth when his wife of many years dies from cancer.

Bernadette moves away and, discovering she is pregnant with Andrew's child, has an abortion, thinking it is what he would want her to do. When she arrives back at the village, Andrew confronts her, blaming her for killing his child and so destroying their relationship.

The notoriety of this series stemmed from the fairly explicit scenes (although it has to be said that there is much, much worse on television now)which caused outrage and, to Dervla's relief, resulted in the BBC banning the series from being repeated. Dervla has said that she does not regret her role, but feels that she was exploited and offered no support. She stresses that this was the fault of the producers of the show and not Bragg himself.

Unfortunately, the furore surrounding the programme has detracted from the production itself which, when watched in the spirit that was intended, was and is a fine and moving piece of drama containing some harowing scenes sensitively portrayed by Dervla and co-star Ronald Pickup.