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15 Minute Drama

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Classic and contemporary original drama and book dramatisations

15 Minute Drama: Feminine Forever

Lesley Manville

Ron Cook

Alex Tregear

Stephen Hogan

Marc Beeby

Caroline Stafford

David Stafford

15 Minute Drama: Feminine Forever: Episode 1

Feminine Forever

Episode 1

BBC Radio 4 - 15 Minute Drama, Feminine Forever, Episode 1

The 70s - with feminism women can embrace HRT and the joys of growing old disgracefully.

4 Extra Debut. The 70s - with feminism women can embrace HRT and the joys of growing old disgracefully. Stars Lesley Manville. From September 2012.

by Caroline & David Stafford. 

Set in the 1970s, against a background of increasingly politicised feminism, a new comedy series about women, HRT and the joys of growing old disgracefully.

1 of 5

Directed by Marc Beeby

The series is loosely based on some of the ideas and attitudes contained in a book, published in 1966 and powerfully influential at the time. The book, Feminine Forever by Robert A. Wilson MD, advanced the notion that the menopause is a disease - much like diabetes - for which modern science luckily has the cure: Hormone Replacement Therapy. Recent discoveries in the field of menopausal therapy, says Dr Robert, may serve to prolong for many women - and for the men who love and admire them - that wonderfully happy aura of love and adoration that full femininity inspires. Only 15% of women are able to grow old gracefully. The rest are suffering from a serious, painful and often crippling disease - the menopause. 
Although this series is a gentle comedy - much in the manner of 2010's highly successful The Year They Invented Sex by the same authors - it explores and explodes the prevailing attitudes that underlay these views of women, their sexuality, and the roles ascribed to them (particularly in relation to age) - views that may not be quite as 'historical' as we might like to imagine.

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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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By Caroline and David Stafford. Series about HRT and the joys of growing old disgracefully

By Caroline and David Stafford. Comedy set in the 1970s about women, HRT and the joys of growing old disgracefully

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