Lemon (TV Series)

A very sharp, acidic citrus fruit; A derogatory term for lesbian.

 

When fifty-year-old Rhona Campbell returns home to Scotland for a school reunion, the experience of the night – the people, the music, the place – drive her headlong into the past, rebooting the feelings of 1979, the year that changed everything. And that’s where we find her …

 

The curtain rises in Musselburgh close to Edinburgh. It’s Hogmanay and the beginning of another year of struggle for Rhona Campbell as she desperately tries to define herself whilst losing her beloved father.

 

Growing-up in Scotland in the late 1970’s, 13 year old Rhona doesn’t know whether she wants to marry a boy. Or be one. But it’s the end of the decade and the era of Thatcher has begun. For Britain and the Campbell family, life will will never be the same again.

 

Moving between past and present, Lemon explores this pivotal time in Rhona’s life, tracing the emotional and psychological fault lines running from her teens to middle age. These tensions have exploded with the publication of Rhona’s intimate memoir of the period. A book everyone at the school reunion has read with dramatic consequences for all involved.

 

A tragicomic 8-parter exploring non-binary and lesbian experience in the UK, written by ground-breaking writer and stand-up Rhona Cameron (1979, The Naked Drinking Club, Rhona Cameron Live), executive produced by Paul Welsh (Edge City Films) and Jimmy Mulville (Hat Trick Productions).

  • Written by

    Rhona Cameron

  • Produced by

    Paul Welsh, Jimmy Mulville

  • Co-producers

    Edge City Films (Glasgow)

    Hat Trick Productions (London)

  • Financed by

    Screen Scotland

    Hat Trick Productions

    Edge City Films

  • Based on Rhona Cameron’s memoir 1979: A Big Year in A Small Town (Ebury Press / Random House 2003).

     

    "Funny, painful, sad and true, this wistful teenage testimony isn't just a memoir of a particular time and place, it's also a universal elegy about how it really feels to be a young outsider of any and every sort." The Guardian

     

    "A candid, open-hearted memoir...startling" The Observer

     

    "Eccentric, feisty and very funny" Jenny Eclair

     

    "Wickedly amusing" The Times

     

    "Utterly absorbing" The Mirror