Our Friends In The North [DVD] [1996]

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The first episode of Our Friends in the North gained 5.1 million viewers on its original transmission. [51] In terms of viewing figures, the series was BBC2's most successful weekly drama until 2001. [52] Reception [ edit ] Critical response [ edit ] The floating nightclub Tuxedo Princess beneath the Tyne Bridge in Newcastle, pictured in 2005. Both of these locations feature prominently in Our Friends in the North. Our Friends in the North is a British television drama serial produced by the BBC. It was originally broadcast in nine episodes on BBC2 in early 1996. Written by Peter Flannery, it tells the story of four friends from Newcastle upon Tyne over a period of 31 years, from 1964 to 1995. The story makes reference to certain political and social events which occurred during the era portrayed, some specific to Newcastle and others which affected Britain as a whole. These include general elections, police and local government corruption, the UK miners' strike (1984–85), and the Great Storm of 1987.

Our Friends in the North: Complete Series | WHSmith Our Friends in the North: Complete Series | WHSmith

Armstrong, Simon (27 August 2016). "Our Friends in the North: What made it so special?". BBC News . Retrieved 27 August 2016.a b c d e Eccleston, Christopher (2002). Interview with Christopher Eccleston (DVD). BMG. BMG DVD 74321. a b "Peter Flannery revives Our Friends in the North for Radio 4". BBC Media Centre. 24 February 2022 . Retrieved 24 February 2022.

Our Friends in the North DVD review | Cine Outsider Our Friends in the North DVD review | Cine Outsider

The first director approached to helm the production by Michael Wearing was Danny Boyle. [34] Boyle was keen to direct all nine episodes, but Pattinson believed that one director taking charge of the entire serial would be too punishing a schedule for whoever was chosen. [35] Boyle had recently completed work on the feature film Shallow Grave and wanted to see how that film was received before committing to Our Friends in the North. [34] When Shallow Grave proved to be a critical success, Boyle was able to enter pre-production on Trainspotting. He withdrew from Our Friends in the North. [36] Sir Peter Hall was also briefly considered, but he too had other production commitments. [36] Television – Actor in 1997". British Academy of Film and Television Arts . Retrieved 2 September 2013.

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Alison Hindell, Radio 4 commissioning editor for drama and fiction, said the themes of Our Friends in the North “illuminated the continuing north-south divide today”. She hoped the adaptation would find a new audience as well as being welcomed by fans of the original show. The stage version of Our Friends in the North was seen by BBC television drama producer Michael Wearing in Newcastle in 1982, and he was immediately keen on producing a television adaptation. [16] At that time, Wearing was based at the BBC English Regions Drama Department at BBC Pebble Mill in Birmingham, which had a specific remit for making "regional drama". [17] Wearing initially approached Flannery to adapt his play into a four-part television serial for BBC2, with each episode being 50 minutes long and the Rhodesian strand dropped for practical reasons. [18] [19] A change of executives meant that the project was not produced, although Wearing persisted in trying to get it commissioned. Flannery extended the serial to six episodes, [18] one for each United Kingdom general election from 1964 to 1979. [20] However, by this point in the mid-1980s, Michael Grade was Director of Programmes for BBC Television, and he had no interest in the project. [21] a b Thompson, Ben (25 February 1996). "The Interview: Mark Strong talks to Ben Thompson". The Independent. Archived from the original on 24 May 2022 . Retrieved 1 September 2013. a b c Cellan Jones, Simon (2002). Retrospective: An Interview with the Creators of the Series (DVD). BMG. BMG DVD 74321. Our Friends in the North was given a repeat run on BBC2 the year following its original broadcast, running on Saturday evenings from 19 July to 13 September 1997. [66] [67] It received a second repeat run on the BBC ten years after its original broadcast, running on BBC Four from 8 February to 29 March 2006. [66] [67] In the early 2000s, the serial was also repeated on the UK Drama channel. [68]

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I wasn't born or raised in the north, and until recently didn't have any friends who lived there. As a young socialist growing up in the south, this sometimes felt like a credibility millstone, in part because this is where Margaret Thatcher's greed bomb exploded, tarring everyone born in the southern counties with the same wretched pinstripe or barrow-boy brush. It's also fair to say that the north has repeatedly born the brunt of regressive Tory legislation, being far enough from the capital and the common concept of 'Middle England' – whatever the hell that really is – to be of seemingly little concern to those passing the legislation. What the Left of the north always had, something that was too often in short supply down our way, was a strong sense of solidarity and communal unity, in part because of the damage done to those very communities by legislation they were instrumental in opposing. And even today, the song remains the same. Although I live in the southern region that has been calculated to take the biggest hammering from David Cameron's ideologically motivated spending cuts, * it's once again the North East and the Midlands that are set to come off worst, with Middlesborough predicted to suffer the heaviest blow. In 1992, Wearing was able to persuade the controller of BBC Two, Alan Yentob, to commission Peter Flannery to write scripts for a new version of the project. [21] Yentob had no great enthusiasm for Our Friends in the North, as he remembered a meeting with Flannery in 1988, when the writer had left him unimpressed by stating that Our Friends in the North was about "post-war social housing policy". [21] [26] As Wearing was now a head of department at the BBC, he was too busy overseeing other projects to produce Our Friends in the North. [27] George Faber was briefly attached to the project as producer before he moved on to become Head of Single Drama at the BBC. [27] Faber was succeeded by a young producer with great enthusiasm for the project, Charles Pattinson. [28] Daniel Craig was auditioned late for the role of Geordie. At the audition he performed the Geordie accent very poorly but won the part, which came to be regarded as his breakthrough role. [7] [6] Mark Strong worked on the Geordie accent by studying episodes of the 1980s comedy series Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, which featured lead characters from Newcastle. [40] Strong later claimed that Christopher Eccleston took a dislike to him and outside of their scenes together the pair did not speak while the series was filming. [40] Awards Archive February 2011" (PDF). Royal Television Society. February 2011 . Retrieved 2 September 2013. In February 2022, it was announced that Peter Flannery had revived and rewritten Our Friends in the North for BBC Radio 4, with a tenth episode, written by Adam Usden, set in Newcastle in 2020. [8]a b c Wearing, Michael (2002). Retrospective: An Interview with the Creators of the Series (DVD). BMG. BMG DVD 74321. However, the response was not exclusively positive. In The Independent on Sunday, columnist Lucy Ellmann criticised both what she saw as the unchanging nature of the characters and Flannery's concentration on friendship rather than family. "What's in the water there anyway? These are the youngest grandparents ever seen! Nothing has changed about them since 1964 except a few grey hairs... It's quite impressive that anything emotional could be salvaged from this nine-part hop, skip and jump through the years. In fact we still hardly know these people – zooming from one decade to the next has a distancing effect," [55] she wrote of the former point. And of the latter, "Peter Flannery seems to want to suggest that friendships are the only cure for a life blighted by deficient parents. But all that links this ill-matched foursome in the end is history and sentimentality. The emotional centre of the writing is still in family ties." [55] Lane, Harriet (17 December 2000). "From famine to feast..." The Observer. p.9 . Retrieved 2 September 2013. Our Friends in the North was broadcast in nine episodes on BBC2 at 9pm on Monday nights, from 15 January to 11 March 1996. [49] The episode lengths varied, with 1966 being the shortest at 63 minutes, 48 seconds and 1987 the longest at 74 minutes, 40 seconds. [33] The total running time of the serial is 623 minutes. [50]

BBC Radio 4 - Our Friends in the North BBC Radio 4 - Our Friends in the North

a b c "The top 50 TV dramas of all time: 2–10". The Guardian. 12 January 2010 . Retrieved 2 September 2013. a b Pattinson, Charles (2002). Retrospective: An Interview with the Creators of the Series (DVD). BMG. BMG DVD 74321. Television – Drama Serial in 1997". British Academy of Film and Television Arts . Retrieved 2 September 2013.This, I should point out, is merely the skeleton on which the multi-stranded and densely plotted flesh of the series is built. Each of the four stories is littered with social, political and personal detail, and if Mary seems not to figure prominently in the above summary, it's because her tale is initially one of increasingly unhappy subjugation, from which she later emerges as perhaps the most forward-looking and level-headed of the four, though no less wrapped up in her own obsessions. Flannery, Peter (2002). Retrospective: An Interview with the Creators of the Series (DVD). BMG. BMG DVD 74321. Richards, Jeffrey (13 March 1996). "The BBC's voice of two nations". The Independent. p.15. Archived from the original on 24 May 2022 . Retrieved 2 September 2013.