A penniless middle-aged spinster scrapes by giving piano lessons in the Dublin of the 1950s. She makes a sad last bid for love with a fellow resident of her rundown boarding house, who imagines she has the money to bankroll the business he hopes to open.
In 1965, at the age of 25, Alan Ackland is sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a business associate. In 1971, Sylvia Barker, lonely and depressed after a failed marriage and with two young children to bring up alone, seeks a new direction in her life and applies to become a voluntary prison visitor. Several years later their paths cross.
Born Patrizio Schaurek in Trieste, Italy to a Czech father, Frantisek Schaurek, and an Irish mother Eileen (sister of James) Joyce, Paddy Joyce was an Irish actor of British stage, film and television. Returning to Dublin at the age of five following his father's death, Joyce studied at Belvedere College, the alma mater of his famous uncle. After school, Paddy turned his attention to singing. Initially, he formed a close harmony quartet with three other gentlemen named Four Dots and a Dash, subsequently renamed The Four Ramblers. In 1949, he was part of a trio with two ladies named The Humoresques, which toured Canada with the popular English comedian and actor George Formby. Turning to actor, Joyce took his mother's maiden name because Schaurek limited him to Eastern European roles. He made his cinematic debut in The Cruel Sea and performed in Lionel Bart and Joan Littlewood's Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’be in the early 60s, before later working regularly with Ken Loach, appearing in The Big Flame, written by Jim Allen, and Poor Cow. He also starred in Allen's play The Lump. Joyce was a regular in two of the UK's biggest soaps. Between 1968 and 1974, he had a recurring role as the rag and bone man Tommy Deakin in Coronation Street, and between 1990 and 1993 he played John Royle, the father of Queen Vic owner Eddie Royle (Michael Melia) in EastEnders. Joyce lived in Muswell Hill, London, with his Canadian wife, Dorothy, and two children. He died of a stroke in London in the year 2000, aged 77.
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