Paradise Postponed Paradise Postponed Paradise Postponed (1986) is a British 11-episode TV serial based on a novel by writer John Mortimer. He had adapted "Brideshead Revisited" as a film and wrote "Rumpole of the Bailey." The series covered a span of 30 years of postwar British history, set in a small village. The series explores the mystery of why Reverend Simeon Simcox, a "wealthy Socialist rector", bequeathed the millions of the Simcox brewery estate to Leslie Titmuss, a city developer and Conservative cabinet minister. Simeon's sons Fred, a jazz-drumming country doctor and Henry, once Britain's brightest and angriest writer who now works
Rumpole of the Bailey interest in nineteenth-century anarchists, especially the Russian Peter Kropotkin from whom the title of the play was drawn. The character's name was later changed to Horace Rumpole when it was discovered that there was a real barrister called Horace Rumbold. The title of the play was briefly changed to "Jolly Old Jean Jacques Rousseau" before settling on the less esoteric "Rumpole of the Bailey". Mortimer was keen on Michael Hordern for the role of Rumpole. When Hordern proved unavailable, the part went to Australian-born actor Leo McKern. Mortimer was initially unenthusiastic about McKern's casting but changed his opinion upon seeing