THERE MIGHT BE a whole ocean between Cambridge, Md., and Cambridge, Cambridgeshire—but on weekday afternoons, Maryland Public Television endeavors to make the distance seem not quite so far.
Afternoon Tea, MPT’s weekday schedule of British programming, features a rotating variety of comedies (“Keeping Up Appearances,” “Are You Being Served?”) and series (“Ballykissangel,” “All Creatures Great and Small”); all tied together with commentary from MPT’s Tea Lady, Heather Sanderson.
Sanderson’s relationship with public broadcasting in America began almost the moment she arrived. Having studied at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, she fell in love with the West Coast while vacationing with friends in Palo Alto, Calif.—and announced to her father that at the ripe old age of 22, she was moving to California.
With one suitcase, &doller;150 and a one-way ticket, Sanderson headed for San Francisco in the autumn of 1981. “Prince Charles had been taken that summer,” she quips, so there was little to lose. “I didn’t come back to England for five years.”
She waitressed at a teahouse called, originally enough, London Tea House, and did some acting in the San Francisco area. And “I watched PBS right from the get-go. KTEH in San Jose was the only station I watched.”
Her life changed—although not immediately—when she auditioned for a play in Sonora. “The artistic director didn’t cast me; I didn’t get the part,” she remembers. But he didn’t forget her—three years later he was heading up fundraising at KTEH, and when the station needed someone to host its evening of British-themed programming, he remembered the young British actress who had auditioned for him and mentioned her for the job. The station’s staff traced her through local theater groups, and she came in to audition (“I’m good at reading from a TelePromTer,” she says) and got the job.
Soon she was also writing her own scripts to fill in the time between shows. “I subscribed to British women’s magazines; I gave them all this gossip” about the actors and programs—and Britain. “It was very, very successful. Then when I went to England for the summer, I sent back video postcards.”
She continued hosting on British night until she gave birth to her first child—which was announced on the air. The dad? That director who passed on her for the play in Sonora, Sanderson’s husband Rick Lore.
Fundraising for PBS stations took the family to Ohio and New Hampshire before they landed in Alexandria, Va., where Lore was director of on-air fundraising for PBS. A friend who was involved with both WETA in Washington, D.C., and Maryland Public Broadcasting forged the connection between Sanderson and MPT’s Afternoon Tea.
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COURTESY OF THE BBC
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TAMELA BAKER
For years, both MPT and WETA have featured British programming on Saturday nights. At MPT, “they recognized it was their most popular programming block,” Sanderson says. So when the programmers wanted to do something different from the usual lineup of children’s programs and cooking shows in the afternoon, content chief Eric Eggleton decided to do a whole British theme—and Afternoon Tea was born.
As she did in California, Sanderson provides tidbits of background information on the programs. She has occasionally taken viewers on video field trips to places like the Folger Shakespeare Library, Gadsby’s Tavern Museum and a garden party at the British ambassador’s house to meet Queen Elizabeth II.
There’s a Tea Time Trivia contest every week with questions drawn from the programs, and Britcom fans can register free for an online newsletter, the Tea Times.
And there are lots of Britcom fanatics. Why? “I asked that very question when I met with an editor of comedy programming at BBC,” Sanderson reports. “He said, ‘it’s like taking a warm bath—they make you feel good.’
“It’s familiar; it’s real without being too real. The humor is intellectually stimulating; it’s good family programming. Viewers feel a deep connection with the characters. They feel like family.”
Sanderson said actress Patricia Routledge, who portrays persnickety Hyacinth Bucket on “Keeping Up Appearances,” addressed a PBS friendship tour Sanderson and her husband accompanied to London shortly after the September 11 attacks. One of their number told Routledge that Hyacinth “is just like my mother.”
“Everybody says that,” Routledge replied.
Though British television has won indisputable popularity in the States, “what’s really funny is when I go to England, the TV is not that good,” Sanderson observes. “What you’re getting here on PBS is the best of the best of British programming.’
So does she have a favorite? “I do love ‘Vicar of Dibley,’” Sanderson confesses. “I’m now on the vestry at my church and sometimes I have to laugh—I do see the humor in the vestry meetings.”
The Tea Lady and vestry member also is founder of StagePlay, a children’s theater group in Alexandria, Va., where she teaches kids about drama and introduces them to Shakespeare. StagePlay started several years ago, when friends asked Sanderson to help them fill their children’s summer afternoons.
“I taught them four lines of Shakespeare,” she says. “They wanted more— they wanted more drama and Shakespeare.”
This year marks eight StagePlay summer camps. The students have performed both in the Washington area and on two trips to England—including a “Bard Day’s Night” production in which they added 38 snippets of Beatles tunes to Twelfth Night, performed at Liverpool’s storied Cavern Club.
What’s next for the Tea Lady?
“I would like to act again,” Sanderson admits, but after years of doing Shakespeare for children, “I want to direct the ‘bawdy’ Shakespeare for adults.”
Just her cup of tea.
For information on Afternoon Tea or to read Tea Times, go to www.mpt.org/tea.
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