Shine on Harvey Moon

Name: Shine on Harvey Moon
Genre: Drama
Rating: 7.6
Cast: Nigel Planer, Linda Robson, Maggie Steed, Elizabeth Spriggs, Lee Whitlock

1982

★★★★☆ 7.6/10

📺 5 Seasons

🎬 41 Episodes

📅 Ended

🌐 EN

⏱️ 30 min/episode

Drama

Shine on Harvey Moon! is a British comedy-drama series made by Central Television for ITV from 8 January 1982 to 23 August 1985 and briefly revived in 1995 by Meridian. This generally light-hearted series was created by comedy writers Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran. The series is set in the East End of London shortly after the Second World War. Upon being demobbed RAF serviceman Harvey Moon, played by Kenneth Cranham, returns home and finds his family involved in various troubles. His wife Rita, played by Maggie Steed, is not interested in resuming their relationship, and works in a seedy nightclub frequented by American servicemen. He becomes involved with the Labour Party and the union movement. The name of the series is a wordplay on the title of the popular 1908 song 'Shine On, Harvest Moon'. The first series was commissioned and recorded by ATV at their Elstree studios with the remaining series filmed at newly constructed facilities in Nottingham.

Seasons

Season 1

1982 • 6 Episodes

In November 1945 corporals Harvey Moon and Lou Lewis return to London from Bombay, where they sat out the war as stores clerks. Harvey's house has been destroyed - not by a bomb but his wife; Rita's incompetence with the gas cooker; and his family have moved to a pre-fab. Since he was reported missing, Rita believed him dead and would have married a Yank, had he not already had a wife. Unlike his young daughter Maggie and ten-year-old son Stanley,Rita is not welcoming and Harvey and Lou move in with Harvey's mother.

Season 2

1982 • 6 Episodes

Whilst Lou's black market activities flourish Harvey is stuck in a dull job in a wireless factory working for the tight-fisted Hartley. He and Rita have to masquerade as a happy, united couple at an interview to get Stanley into the grammar school for which Harriet has recommended him. A combination of misunderstandings and Stanley's tall stories about his father's war exploits ensures entry but Maggie feels her father is neglecting her to spend time with Stanley.

Season 3

1984 • 9 Episodes

Harriet has moved to Holland to take up a teaching job. With the tenement blown up, Harvey and Lou end up in a doss-house but Harvey gets himself and Nan a flat in a house owned by Jewish refugees the Gottliebs. Lou contracts tuberculosis and Maggie blames Harvey for leaving him behind. Rita, working behind the bar in a hotel, is romanced by a charming ex-RAF type who turns out to be murderer Neville Heath.

Season 4

1985 • 8 Episodes

The Moons get a scare when Stanley is rushed to hospital with suspected polio,though it proves to be a false alarm. The path of true love does not run smoothly for Nan when Geoff's objectionable son Albert makes it clear that he opposes their courtship. Harvey, however, is not only appointed as a magistrate, thanks to Dick, but gets to organize a dance to celebrate the marriage of Princess Elizabeth and to which Frieda accompanies him,having broken a date with Adrian Horowitz to do so.

Season 5

1995 • 12 Episodes