In Episode 2 of The River, David Essex lets Davey Jackson’s quieter charm come through as romance begins to hide beneath the comedy
For anyone who remembers David Essex primarily as the striking young star of the 1970s, his appearance in the BBC series The River offers a wonderfully different memory. First broadcast in October 1988, the six-part series placed Essex in the role of Davey Jackson, a Cockney former convict who has settled into life as a canal lock-keeper near the fictional village of Chumley-on-the-Water. Episode 2, broadcast on 27 October 1988, moves the story away from the initial clash between Davey and Scottish barge owner Sarah MacDonald, played by Katy Murphy, and begins to reveal the peculiar chemistry that would drive the rest of the series. The official episode description centers on a local cricket match, with Davey charged with putting together a team to face neighboring Bunbury, while Sarah finds herself challenged to be nicer to the people around her.
The cricket match is more than simply a comic subplot. It gives David Essex an opportunity to show Davey as a man who belongs to this strange little community. He is not the glamorous pop star audiences had watched singing “Rock On” or “Hold Me Close”. Here, the leather jackets and stage lights have been replaced by the ordinary world of canals, boats, eccentric villagers and village sport. Davey has a job, a home and a place within the community, but he also carries his past with him. That contrast is part of what makes the character interesting. The series describes him as a lovable Cockney ex-convict whose peaceful life has been disrupted by Sarah’s arrival, and the comedy gradually becomes a way of showing two very different personalities learning how to occupy the same world.
Sarah, meanwhile, is hardly the easy companion Davey might have wished for. In Episode 2 she is painting from her barge and irritating passing boats with both her behavior and her attitude. Davey responds by challenging her to be nice to somebody, only to choose a person Sarah is particularly unlikely to tolerate. That small setup captures the central relationship beautifully. They are already spending much of their time irritating one another, yet the irritation has begun to carry a different energy. The official synopsis describes the cricket match as the ultimate test for both of them, while the episode listing adds the detail that Sarah’s attempt to behave better is immediately complicated by Davey’s choice of whom she should be nice to.
What makes the episode especially nostalgic now is seeing David Essex in a completely different chapter of his career. By 1988, the extraordinary rush of his early fame was well behind him. The young man who had conquered the charts with “Rock On” and “Gonna Make You a Star” was now moving increasingly between music, theatre, film and television. The River gave audiences the chance to see another side of his personality, one built around timing, understatement and character rather than the magnetic pop-star image that had once filled record sleeves and bedroom walls. The series was written by Michael Aitkens and directed by Susan Belbin, with Essex joined by Katy Murphy, Shaun Scott, Vilma Hollingbery and David Ryall.
There is also something wonderfully British about the world of The River. Chumley-on-the-Water was fictional, but the series was filmed around Wootton Rivers on the Kennet and Avon Canal in Wiltshire, giving the programme an authentic canal-country atmosphere. The waterways, narrowboats and village setting create a much quieter backdrop for Essex than the concert stages associated with his earlier career. The series was ultimately only six episodes, running from 20 October to 24 November 1988, and it never became the long-running success its creators might have hoped for. Susan Belbin later described the original intention as more of a romantic comedy centered on Davey and Sarah, while the finished programme leaned more heavily toward sitcom. Essex himself later reflected that the series had never quite decided what it wanted to be.
That uncertainty is part of the charm when watching Episode 2 today. It feels like a little time capsule from a moment when David Essex was still exploring what else he could become beyond the image that had made him famous. Davey Jackson is rough around the edges, occasionally cheeky and clearly carrying a complicated past, but there is warmth beneath him. Sarah sees plenty of reasons to be annoyed with him, yet the story is already quietly moving them toward one another. The cricket match, the canal and the eccentric villagers provide the comedy, but underneath all of it is the beginning of a relationship that will become increasingly difficult for either character to ignore. For fans of David Essex, that makes The River more than an obscure television credit. It is a rare glimpse of the familiar 1970s star settling into a completely different role, and finding another way to hold the screen.