Trivia / It's Awfully Bad for Your Eyes, Darling...

• Creator Backlash:
  • Writer Jilly Cooper wasn't happy with how her scripts were mucked about with and didn't even care that a second series wasn't commissioned after everything she had gone through.
  • David Croft (who had been asked to help rewrite the episodes) thought the series was an unfunny, conventional Sitcom, and didn't approve of how the girls were so open with their sleeping around.
• Creator Couple: Joanna Lumley was recently divorced from Jeremy Lloyd, when he played her onscreen boyfriend, Bobby.
• Executive Meddling: The series' director was changed after the Pilot, and the new man found the series to be too silly and set about changing everything.
• Hostility on the Set:
  • Writer Jilly Cooper recalls how her scripts constantly being picked apart and redone led to many rows which often left her crying.
  • The script doctor, Christopher Bond, clashed with David Croft over his rewrites, so Croft and Jeremy Lloyd withdrew from their writing duties after three episodes.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The only surviving episode, "A New Lease", was never released on any home media, but can be viewed on YouTube here, albeit in black and white rather than in colour.
• Missing Episode: The Pilot and episodes 2-6 have been wiped since their initial airings in 1971. Also, the only surviving episode, "A New Lease", only survives in black and white despite being produced in colour.
• The Other Darrin: Virginia was played by Anna Palk in the Pilot and Jennifer Croxton in the series proper.
• Uncredited Role: The actor playing Kenneth in "A New Lease" goes uncredited, possibly because Kenneth spends the whole episode passed out drunk.
• What Could Have Been: The original scripts were considered so bad that David Croft was brought in for rewrites so that the Studio Audience would actually laugh. Jeremy Lloyd helped him, but the script editor didn't like their work so they only did the first three episodes.
• Write What You Know: Jilly Cooper loosely based the girls' misadventures on her own experiences living with two girls in a flat.
• Written by Cast Member: Jeremy Lloyd helped David Croft rewrite the first three episodes to be funnier.

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