Our Friends In The North [DVD] [1996]

Product Information

a b c Wearing, Michael (2002). Retrospective: An Interview with the Creators of the Series (DVD). BMG. BMG DVD 74321. Both during and after its original transmission on BBC2, the serial was generally praised by the critics. Reviewing the first episode in The Observer newspaper, Ian Bell wrote: "Flannery's script is faultless; funny, chilling, evocative, spare, linguistically precise. The four young friends about to share 31 hellish years in the life of modern Britain are excellently played." [53] a b c d Raphael, Amy (18 September 2010). "Our Friends in the North made a star of Daniel Craig but almost wasn't made". The Guardian . Retrieved 1 September 2013.

Our Friends in the North (TV Mini Series 1996) - IMDb Our Friends in the North (TV Mini Series 1996) - IMDb

A few weeks ago, I found myself comparing BBC Two’s Industry to a show that came before it. Not Succession. Or This Life (actually, I compared it to that, too). Instead, I compared it to Our Friends in the North. Loved it just as I had when it had been broadcast. My husband, who had never seen it also loved it Loved it just as I had when it had been broadcast. My husband, who had never seen it also loved it Awards Archive February 2011" (PDF). Royal Television Society. February 2011 . Retrieved 2 September 2013.

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] 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] a b "Peter Flannery on..." Broadcast. 3 November 2008 . Retrieved 2 September 2013. I wanted to do Our Friends in the South [about the Jarrow march], which the BBC took up. Its commitment was so lukewarm, there was really no point in continuing. Our Friends in the North, broadcast on BBC2 in 1996, was hailed as a landmark show that combined gritty politics with personal relationships. “I’ve always said it’s just a posh soap opera – but it’s a posh soap opera with something to say,” Flannery, who was born in Jarrow, south Tyneside, once said.

Our Friends in the North: Complete Series [Region 2] Our Friends in the North: Complete Series [Region 2]

Williams, Zoe (27 March 2009). "Your next box set: Our Friends in the North" . Retrieved 1 September 2013. a b c "The top 50 TV dramas of all time: 2–10". The Guardian. 12 January 2010 . Retrieved 2 September 2013.

Our Friends in the North has been invoked on several occasions as a comparison when similar drama programmes have been screened on British television. The year following Our Friends in the North 's broadcast, Tony Marchant's drama serial Holding On was promoted by the BBC as being an " Our Friends in the South," after Marchant made the comparison when discussing it with executives. [73] The 2001 BBC Two drama serial In a Land of Plenty was previewed by The Observer newspaper as being "the most ambitious television drama since Our Friends in the North." [74] The writer Paula Milne drew inspiration from Our Friends in the North for her own White Heat (2012); she felt that Our Friends in the North had been too centred on white, male, heterosexual characters and she deliberately wanted to counter that focus. [75] The original stage version of Our Friends in the North was revived in Newcastle by Northern Stage in 2007, with 14 cast members playing 40 characters. [76] [77] In August 2016, Flannery was interviewed for an event, part of the Whitley Bay Film Festival, that celebrated the 20th anniversary of the series being broadcast. [78] Radio [ edit ]

Our Friends in the North - Wikipedia Our Friends in the North - Wikipedia

In the United States, Our Friends in the North was awarded a Certificate of Merit in the Television Drama Miniseries category at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1997. [5] 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] 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] 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. Walker, Lynne (27 September 2007). "Tyne and again". The Independent. Archived from the original on 24 May 2022 . Retrieved 2 September 2013.Our Friends in the North was originally written by the playwright Peter Flannery for the theatre, while he was a writer in residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). [9] The idea came to Flannery while he was watching the rehearsals for the company's production of Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2 at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1980; the scale of the plays inspired him to come up with his own historical epic. [9] The original three-hour long theatre version of Our Friends in the North, directed by John Caird and featuring Jim Broadbent and Roger Allam among the cast, was produced by the RSC in 1982. It initially ran for a week at The Other Place in Stratford before touring to the city in which it was set, Newcastle upon Tyne, and then playing at The Pit, a studio theatre in the Barbican Centre in London. [10] The serial is commonly regarded as one of the most successful BBC television dramas of the 1990s, described by The Daily Telegraph as "a production where all... worked to serve a writer's vision. We are not likely to look upon its like again". [1] It has been named by the British Film Institute as one of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes of the 20th century, by The Guardian as the third greatest television drama of all time and by Radio Times as one of the 40 greatest television programmes. [2] [3] [4] It was awarded three British Academy Television Awards (BAFTAs), two Royal Television Society Awards, four Broadcasting Press Guild Awards, and a Certificate of Merit from the San Francisco International Film Festival. [5] 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] The show’s creator, Peter Flannery, once described Our Friends in the North as “a very, very posh soap opera”. While the comparison holds up – there are plenty of affairs, violence and disbelief-pushing narrative coincidences to be found here – its beauty lies in its ability to elevate the mundane. This is, after all, a series about relatively normal people being flung about by the cultural and social upheavals of normal life. However, the point of view rarely dips below epic. a b "Peter Flannery revives Our Friends in the North for Radio 4". BBC Media Centre. 24 February 2022 . Retrieved 24 February 2022.