Three Streets in the Country

A personal view of the suburbs by Michael Frayn. Millions of people live in them. Few people ever look at them. The suburbs, hundreds of square miles fringing our big cities are the butt of jokes and the settings for situation comedies. But, in their way, the suburbs are an astonishing piece of folk art, as extraordinary as Stonehenge or the great cathedrals. Michael Frayn, playwright, novelist and journalist, turns his attention to the sprawling acres of suburban London, and in particular the small south west suburb of Ewell, where he grew up. This film evokes the suburbs as they appeared through the eyes of childhood, and explores the appeal of those tiny developments, once just three streets in the country, which mushroomed into the great dense dormitories so many of us live in today.