Watch Take Three Girls – Zoë’s BBC debut from 1971

28 November 2024 11:55

There’s a treasure waiting for Zoë Wanamaker fans on YouTube: you can now watch her BBC TV debut, which is also, as far as I know, her earliest surviving TV appearance. A very young Zoë plays Jackie, a shy, somewhat awkward secretary, in an episode from the second series of bold drama Take Three Girls, which originally aired in 1971.

Although the episode’s title, ‘Jenny: Kitsch, or Protocols in a Chinese Laundry’, is tricky to fathom, the storyline is compelling (some plot spoilers ahead). Jackie works for talented, up-and-coming newspaper journalist Jenny (Carolyn Seymour), who’s part of the trio of strong-minded young women at the heart of the show. Jenny finds herself being pursued – and, to some extent, manipulated – by a flash entrepreneur, Sidney Barnes (played by the legendary comedian Bob Monkhouse, no less).

Sidney suggests that he’s incredibly wealthy, showers Jenny with fancy gifts and more or less promises her a job with a top broadsheet. She allows herself to be taken in while he feeds her stories about his business ventures for publication and tries to milk her for information about rival companies known to her employer. Jenny initially dismisses Sidney as ‘a joke’, but to modern eyes his actions look very much like harassment.

In Zoë’s main scene (which begins just under 23 minutes into the episode), it becomes clear that Sidney has also manipulated Jackie, in order to exert his influence over Jenny’s personal life as well as her career. Jackie admits that Sidney turned up at the office when Jenny was out (‘Listen, Jenny, I haven’t been quite honest with you...’). He persuaded her to hand over Jenny’s home address and phone number. Jackie also reveals that phoney information from Sidney has got Jenny into trouble with her boss.

We’re extremely fortunate to be able to watch this programme; most of the other episodes of Take Three Girls were wiped from the TV archives, as so often happened back then. Although Zoë’s role is relatively small, it’s sensitively acted, especially when Jenny is drawing a confession out of the secretary. And, of course, it paved the way for numerous other TV roles.

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