''The Orchid House'' is a four-part television serial that first aired on British television's
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is state-owned enterprise, publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded en ...
Diana Quick
Diana Marilyn Quick (born 23 November 1946) is an English actress.
Early life and family background
Quick was born on 23 November 1946 in London, England. She grew up in Dartford, Kent, the third of four children. Her father was Leonard Quic ...
Nigel Terry
Peter Nigel Terry (15 August 1945 – 30 April 2015) was an English stage, film, and television actor, typically in historical and period roles. He played Prince John in Anthony Harvey's film '' The Lion in Winter'' (1968) and King Arthur in ...
,
Elizabeth Hurley
Elizabeth Jane Hurley (born 10 June 1965) is an English actress and model. Her best-known film roles are Vanessa Kensington in '' Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery'' (1997) and as the Devil in '' Bedazzled'' (2000).Kate Buffery and
Phyllis Shand Allfrey
Phyllis Byam Shand Allfrey (24 October 1908 – 4 February 1986) was a West Indian writer, socialist activist, newspaper editor and politician of the island of Dominica in the Caribbean. She is best known for her first novel, '' The Orchid Hous ...
's only novel of the same name (first published in 1953).
The film was shot in its entirety in Allfrey's homeland, the island of
Dominica
Dominica, officially the Commonwealth of Dominica, is an island country in the Caribbean. It is part of the Windward Islands chain in the Lesser Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean Sea. The capital, Roseau, is located on the western side of t ...
, over a period of 10 weeks.
Onyekachi Wambu
Onyekachi Wambu (born 1960) is a Nigerian–British journalist and writer. He has directed television documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4 and PBS.
Life
Onyekachi Wambu was born in Nigeria in 1960. In 1970, after the Nigerian Civil War, he and h ...
writes about ''The Orchid House'': "Its focus on the declining power of the white plantocracy on the island of Dominica between the war years, handled through the prism of an intimate family drama, has great depth while remaining accessible."