大象传媒

This is the opening episode of Season Five of Home Front. The Graham household mark the day, a year on, when they lost their only son.

Written by Sebastian Baczkiewicz
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole
Sound: Martha Littlehailes

NOTES
Season Five of Home Front, story-led by Sarah Daniels, has at its heart a focus on Spiritualism*.

Unsurprisingly, the tide of grief and bereavement that visited Britain during the First World War brought with it a great flowering of spiritualism. Relatives wanted to be close to their loved ones in a way conventional religion was struggling to provide. For this reason many decided to extend their faith 'over the church wall', testing the waters of Spiritualism and psychical contact with the dead.

The Church was officially hostile, with the Bishop of London one of many who warned against the movement. Often the concern was less one of fraudulence - Spiritualism was compatible with Christianity - but rather that the mediums were meddling with dangerous forces and could easily be led astray. Accusations of charlatanism, pseudo-science and exploiting the bereaved were rife. It hardly helped that Spiritualism came in so many different guises. There was spiritualism as an industry, where palm-readers and mediums sold their services for profit; there was Spiritualism as a belief and philosophy; and there was the 'scientific' pursuit of psychical research, supported by leading thinkers like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who referred to it as "a call of hope and of guidance to the human race at the time of its deepest affliction"

*Earlier seasons have focused on the Outbreak of War, Recruitment, Industry and Profiteering. All previous seasons are available to download from bbc.co.uk/homefront.