Our Friends in the North
BBC Radio 4

It’s a mark of the impact the original BBC television series Our Friends in the North had on me back in 1996 that I still possess the VHS tapes and can recite whole paragraphs of the salty Tyneside dialogue. In showbiz terms, the project is remembered for making stars of its four lead actors – Christopher Eccleston as Nicky, Gina McKee as Mary, Daniel Craig as Geordie and Mark Strong as Tosker – but creatively it performed the prodigious feat of welding 30 years or so of north-eastern history to the broader structures of Wilson-to-Thatcher-era Britain.