For the Love of Ada
television series
For the Love of Ada is an ITV sitcom that ran for 27 episodes across four series between April 1970 and December 1971. It centres on a gentle romance between two pensioners, a theme uncommon in British sitcoms of the time.
Created by Vince Powell and Harry Driver, the sitcom starred Irene Handl as the widowed Ada Cresswell and Wilfred Pickles as Walter Bingley, a gentle, working-class cemetery gravedigger with whom she gradually falls in love. Ada shares a home with her sharp-tongued daughter Ruth Pollitt (Barbara Mitchell) and her well-meaning but often flustered son-in-law Leslie (Jack Smethurst). Much of the humour in the early episodes derives from Ruth’s disapproval and Leslie’s awkwardness as they attempt to adjust to Ada’s blossoming late-life romance. The series gently explores themes of companionship, ageing, and the generational divide, while maintaining a light, character-driven style.
The series, produced by Ronnie Baxter for Thames Television, was filmed in colour using a multi-camera studio setup, with episodes running 25 to 30 minutes. It notably dispensed with traditional title sequences, opting instead for opening credits superimposed over live scenes.
Outline
For the Love of Ada stars Irene Handl as Ada Cresswell, a Cockney pensioner widow fond of malapropisms. She lives with her daughter Ruth Pollitt (Barbara Mitchell) and son‑in‑law Leslie Pollitt (Jack Smethurst).
“For the Love of Ada” enters the record as television series. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Love, television and series can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5467077. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1970 and 1971.
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This entry incorporates text from “For the Love of Ada” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.