The Glorious Naffness Of HOWARD’S WAY

If you were around in Britain in the mid-1980s, when owning a cordless phone like the people in this show meant you were basically Richard Branson, you might remember Howard’s Way. If you weren’t, then congratulations: you’ve avoided one of the most gloriously earnest, unintentionally hilarious, and aggressively hairsprayed slices of television ever committed to tape.

This was the BBC’s attempt to bottle the same lightning that powered glossy American juggernauts like Dallas and Dynasty. Except this was Britain, so instead of oil barons and shoulder-padded vixens slapping each other into infinity pools, you got… boatyards. In Hampshire. With people arguing over fibreglass.

And yet, in its own deeply British, slightly damp way, Howard’s Way is a fascinating time capsule. A monument to Thatcher-era aspiration, ambition, and absolute nonsense.

So why the hell am I writing about this gloriously naff slice of 80s Britishness? Well, because I have a confession to make. I have a sickness.

The show turned up on some obscure satellite TV channel on demand recently, so I revisited a couple of episodes purely to point and laugh at all this naffness… and I found myself absolutely hooked! I can’t stop watching it. It’s hilarious, but also at the same time strangely, hypnotically brilliant.

I think I need help.

Yuppies Ahoy!

To understand Howard’s Way, you have to understand the moment it emerged from. This was Thatcher’s Britain, clawing its way out of the industrial malaise of the 1970s. The strikes, the blackouts, the general sense that everything was held together with duct tape and mild despair. This was all being replaced by something new.

Money. Or at least the idea of money.

If you lived in a de-industrialised northern town, you were still sitting there wondering why Arthur Scargill’s attempted revolution via the miners’ strike meant you couldn’t get a job in the same coal mine that three generations of your family had worked in.

However, if you lived south of the Watford Gap and owned a suit, then things were rather different.

This was the age of yuppies, of “loadsamoney,” of suddenly everyone wanting to be seen as upwardly mobile, even if “upwardly mobile” meant owning a slightly nicer Ford Sierra and drinking wine that didn’t come in a box. Howard’s Way was the BBC’s answer to that cultural shift. Britain’s answer to American excess. A show about ambition, wealth, betrayal, and power.

Only, instead of Texas oil fields, it was the Solent. Instead of billion-dollar deals, it was… mildly contentious boat-building contracts. And instead of Alexis Carrington, you got people passive-aggressively sipping gin in a conservatory.

This was about infidelity, business, and fiberglass vs. wooden Boats, the war nobody asked for. At the centre of it all is Tom Howard (Maurice Colborn – Coker in Day Of The Triffids), an aircraft designer who gets made redundant. Already, we’re off to a very British start: dreams dashed, career gone, tea probably required.

But Tom isn’t one to mope. He takes his generous redundancy payout and decides to invest in a struggling boatyard. Because obviously, when you lose your job, the logical next step is to become a yacht builder.

This puts him in direct conflict with Jack Rolfe, the traditionalist owner of the yard. Jack believes in wooden boats, craftsmanship, and doing things “properly.” Tom, meanwhile, is all about the future of fibreglass, efficiency, and modernity. Thus begins one of television’s least expected ideological battles.

It’s capitalism vs. tradition, innovation vs. stubbornness, fibreglass vs. oak. It’s Thatcherism vs. everyone else, distilled into maritime form, and it’s treated with the gravity of a Shakespearean feud, and everyone’s wearing deck shoes.

The Theme, Oh God, The Theme!

You can’t talk about Howard’s Way without talking about the music. The Howard’s Way theme is one of those tunes that somehow burned itself into the national consciousness. It even charted in the UK Top 40, which tells you everything you need to know about the 1980s. A nation so starved of entertainment that it bought a theme tune about boats.

But the real magic isn’t just the theme. It’s how the show uses it.

Every. Single. Emotion. Is conveyed through variations of that one tune. Sad scene? Slow, mournful version of the theme. Exciting sailing sequence? Pumped-up, jazzy version of the theme. Suspicious character lurking? Here comes the slightly sinister version of the theme.

You never have to guess what’s happening because the music is basically shouting at you: “THIS IS WHAT YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO FEEL HERE!”

And then, as if this wasn’t enough, from season two onwards they reworked it into a bizarre quasi-operatic closing theme. It’s as if someone thought, “What this jaunty sailing drama really needs… is a bit of budget Puccini.” It is, to put it mildly, awful.

One of the great joys of watching Howard’s Way now is its depiction of wealth. Or rather, what the mid-80s BBC thought wealth looked like. There’s Charles Freyer, the big business mogul, whose yacht is treated as if it’s the QE2. In reality, it looks like something you’d now see moored next to a slightly better dinghy in a marina.

Then there’s his Bentley, which is clearly meant to scream “old money luxury” but instead whispers, “borrowed from a BBC props department with a tight budget.”

Symbols of opulence are everywhere, but to modern eyes they’re hilariously quaint. A slightly large house. A car with leather seats and electric windows. A cordless phone – oh, now that’s wealth! A phone without a cord! Will a normal man ever be able to afford such opulence?

And the drinks cabinet. Every single home, every office, every room seems to contain one. Characters don’t so much live as orbit these cabinets, constantly pouring themselves scotch at 2pm, gin at lunchtime, and something vaguely amber before delivering devastating news.

If Howard’s Way now proves anything, it’s that the 1980s were a war crime against good taste. The hair alone deserves its own spin-off series.

Women’s hairstyles are so heavily lacquered with hairspray that they don’t move. Not in the wind. Not during emotional breakdowns. Not even when standing on a yacht in what appears to be gale-force conditions. Their hair remains perfectly sculpted, like aerodynamic helmets of pure vanity. Shoulder pads are everywhere. Everywhere. It’s as if the entire cast is preparing for a rugby match at any given moment.

And then there’s Ken Masters. Ken Masters is a walking, talking monument to 80s excess. A smooth operator with a wardrobe consisting entirely of pastel colours, open shirts, and enough gold jewellery to sink a small vessel. He is “new money” incarnate. Flashy, confident, and just a bit too eager to show it.

Naturally, this means he frequently gets outmanoeuvred by the more understated, quietly ruthless operators like Charles Freyer.

Ken is what happens when ambition meets a catalogue from 1984 and decides to buy everything.

The Business End Of The 1980s

Everyone in Howard’s Way talks endlessly about “business.” Deals are being made. Empires are rising and falling. Fortunes are at stake. And what does this look like on screen?

People sitting in offices. Signing papers. Putting files into folders. Occasionally, arguing over parcels of grim post-industrial land in Hampshire. That’s it. This is the BBC’s idea of high-stakes capitalism: stationery management with mild tension.

There is also another sign of the 1980s, the world’s smallest diversity quota. I am three seasons into my rewatch now, and so far the show features exactly one ethnic minority character, an Indian apprentice in the boatyard. Unless you count an American character as an ethnic minority. It was the 1980s, so they might well do.

Despite its polite exterior, Howard’s Way was actually quite racy for its time. There are collapsing marriages, serial infidelity, and even a controversial abortion storyline that caused quite a stir back in the day. Then there’s Gerald Urquhart, whose bisexuality is hinted at in the most roundabout, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it way imaginable. This being the 1980s, the show treats it like a state secret.

Honestly, it’s a miracle they didn’t give him a “slightly ambiguous” variation of the theme tune just to make sure everyone got the message.

Then there is Lynn Howard, the young adult daughter of the leading Howard family. For many teenage boys of the era, the reason to tune in, because the show seemed to find every possible excuse to get her into a bikini. Seriously, this show has a daughter in a bikini about as often as Landman. And in contrast to modern TV aesthetics, she actually looks like a real person. A “proper” 80s woman, not a modern-day stick insect. Which only adds to the show’s time-capsule charm.

Hovering over everything like a mildly judgmental guardian angel is Dulcie Gray’s character, the moral centre of the show. She is always right. Always. She dispenses wisdom, keeps everyone grounded, and somehow still finds time for a flutter on the horses. She’s the kind of character who exists purely to remind everyone else that they’re being idiots. Which, given the cast, is a full-time job.

Watching Howard’s Way today is like stepping into a museum of obsolete communication. Obviously, there are no cellphones, but there is a carphone or two. If someone needs to contact another character, they either call the landline and hope they’re in, or they write a letter. And those letters! So much drama hinges on them.

Characters spend an extraordinary amount of time opening post, and looking increasingly glum while doing so. Thankfully, that theme tune is there to guide us with the “this is the bad news letter” variation.

Aside from the location shots, which, to be fair, are rather lovely, the show is painfully studio-bound. Interiors have that unmistakable “BBC set” feel: slightly too neat, slightly too artificial, and acoustically suspicious. And then there’s the birdsong.

Any time a door or window is open, you get a looped track of cheerful birds chirping away like they’re being paid by the tweet. It’s so repetitive it becomes hilarious. You’re indoors. In a studio. But apparently surrounded by the most enthusiastic wildlife in southern England.

Juxtaposed against this are the sailing scenes, genuinely impressive for the time. They brought a sense of scale and authenticity that elevated the show beyond its studio-bound limitations. When the boats are out on the water, slicing through waves, you can almost believe you’re watching something grand.

Then it cuts back to someone filing paperwork in an obvious studio, and the illusion shatters.

One of the show’s most unintentionally funny quirks is its complete disregard for continuity. Season finales would end on dramatic cliffhangers with lives hanging in the balance, relationships in ruins, and then the next season would pick up immediately…

With everyone looking completely different. Haircuts change. Sets change. Even car colours change. It’s as if the entire cast went through a parallel universe between episodes.

Adding to the chaos, the actor playing Tom Howard died of a heart attack during the show’s run, forcing the writers to abruptly write him out. Which, while tragic, only adds to the show’s already chaotic narrative energy.

Despite, or perhaps because of, all this, Howard’s Way was a genuine hit. This was proper water-cooler television. People talked about it at work. They debated the cliffhangers, the betrayals, the shocking twists. In an era before streaming, before binge-watching, before spoilers were a thing, this was appointment viewing.

And for all its flaws, it worked.

A Perfect Time Capsule

Ultimately, Howard’s Way is less a TV show and more a perfectly preserved slice of 1980s Britain. It captures a moment when the country was rediscovering ambition, flirting with wealth, and doing it all with a peculiarly British mix of optimism and awkwardness.

It’s about aspiration, but modest aspiration. It’s about wealth, but slightly underwhelming wealth. It’s about drama, but with a distinctly British restraint. We don’t want to be too brash and showy, what do you think we are? American?

It is, in short, gloriously, unapologetically 80s and British. Howard’s Way isn’t good in any conventional sense. The acting is variable. Freddie Highmore’s father, Edward, as Leo Howard, is particularly… present. The pacing is odd, and the production values swing wildly between impressive and “did they film this in a shed?” But it is tremendously entertaining.

“You may recognise me from Space: 1999”

It’s funny, often unintentionally so. It’s charming in its limitations. And it offers a window into a Britain that feels both familiar and completely alien. A world of shoulder pads, fibreglass dreams, and aggressively reused theme music.

And honestly? Given the way Britain feels right now, as a 30-year experiment with Blairism comes crashing down around its ears, we’re probably poorer for having left it behind.

Want to see it but can’t find it or devote the time? Check out this excellent little BBC Four documentary on the show and its impact:

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