Our Friends In The North

The complete BAFTA-winning drama Christopher Eccleston, Mark Strong, Gina McKee and Daniel Craig star in one of the BBC s finest contemporary dramas, an epic nine part series following the lives of four friends from Newcastle across four decades from 1963 to 1995. Newcastle,1963. Nicky (Christopher Eccleston) returns from America where he has been involved in the Civil Rights movement. His political dreams and ambitions threaten to part him from Mary (Gina McKee), the woman he loves. Nicky s devotion to the Labour cause drives Mary into the arms of their friend Tosker (Mark Strong), while a fourth friend, Geordie (Daniel Craig), gets his girlfriend pregnant and heads down to London. Throughout the decades, against the background of an ever-changing Britain, the lives of these four very different friends will become progressively more entangled. The forces shapingthe nation are also changing and shaping them, devastating lives, tearing couples apart and challenging the boundries of even the firmest friendships… Winner of many awards, including BAFTAs for Best Drama Serial and Best Actress (Gina McKee), Our Friends In The North is a powerful and unforgettable drama and one of the great television milestones of the 1990s. SCREENED/AWARDED AT: BAFTA Awards,
An epic saga stretching from 1964 to 1995, Our Friends in the North follows the lives of four young people in North-East England. Nicky Hutchinson (Christopher Eccleston) is initially courting Mary Soulsby (Gina McKee) but the relationship cools when it takes second place to his campaigning for Harold Wilson’s Labour Party. She weds Tory Tosker Cox instead, but their marriage is a miserable one, living in a rot-infested high rise block built following a dubious new housing scheme. Meanwhile, “Geordie” Peacock, finally tiring of his drunken, abusive father, headbutts him and hitches down to London, where he ends up working for a surrogate “family” led by Malcolm McDowell’s flash Soho sex club baron.
Over the years, the paths of these characters intertwine, diverge then cross again, albeit occasionally stretching the bounds of plausible coincidence. The drama takes place against the backdrop of local authority and police corruption in the 60s, the radical far-left militancy of the early 70s, Thatcher’s election, the 1984 miner’s strike and the subsequent “murder” of Northern communities. What’s brilliant about Our Friends is its melding of the personal and the political, with the soap opera of family estrangement played out against a backdrop of social decline. Peter Vaughn, playing Nicky’s Dad as a former Jarrow marcher stricken by Alzheimer’s, is especially poignant. If you didn’t see this the first time, do so now.