Triangle (1981 TV series)

Triangle
Main title caption for the series
Genre	Soap opera
Created by	Bill Sellars
Directed by	Marc Miller John Bird Andrew Morgan Darrol Blake Terence Dudley[1]
Starring	Kate O'Mara Larry Lamb Michael Craig Paul Jerricho
Opening theme	Johnny Pearson
Composer	Johnny Pearson
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of series	3
No. of episodes	78
Production
Producer	Bill Sellars
Production location	MS Tor Scandinavia
Running time	25 minutes
Original release
Network	BBC1
Release	5 January 1981 (1981-01-05) – 6 July 1983 (1983-07-06)
Infobox instructions (only shown in preview)

Triangle is a BBC Television soap opera broadcast in the early 1980s, set aboard a North Sea ferry that sailed from Felixstowe to Gothenburg and Gothenburg to Amsterdam. A third imaginary leg existed between Amsterdam and Felixstowe to justify the programme's title, but this was not operated by the ferry company. The show ran for three series before being cancelled, but is still generally remembered as "some of the most mockable British television ever produced". The scripts involved clichéd relationships and stilted dialogue, making the show the butt of several jokes—particularly on Terry Wogan's morning Radio 2 programme—which caused some embarrassment to the BBC.^[2] (BBC Classic sitcom Are You Being Served? in Season 8, Episode 1 "Is It Catching?", hinted at the show being nausea-inducing for more reasons than just its setting. Even the anarchic BBC sitcom The Young Ones poked fun at the series, when one character says, "Even Triangle has better furniture than this!")

In 1992, the BBC screened TV Hell, an evening of programming devoted to the worst television had to offer, and the first episode of Triangle was broadcast as part of the line-up.

The ferry used in the first series was the Tor Line's MS Tor Scandinavia. This was replaced in the second and third series by the DFDS vessel Dana Anglia (DFDS having acquired Tor Line by this time), probably because she had a less intensive schedule, and the longer time she spent in port made on-board filming easier.^[1]