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Amazon.co.uk Review
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.
On the DVD: Our Friends in the North has a bonus disc featuring a discussion with writer Peter Flannery and the producers and directors in which the making of the programme is revealed to have been as epic and protracted a saga as the drama itself. There are interviews also with stars Christopher Eccleston and Gina McKee. --David Stubbs
DVD Description
DVD Special Features:
The entire BAFTA winning series
Comprehensive pop-up 'filmographies' for cast members
Complete soundtrack listing with chart history
Exclusive interviews especially for DVD with Gina McKee & Christopher Eccleston
Retrospective from the makers of the series including writer Peter Flannery and executive producer Michael Wearing
Photo Gallery
Precis and colour stills from an unscreened episode
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
72 of 73 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
If you saw this went it originally came out, loved it and are wondering how much it has dated in the past decade before buying or renting the DVD - don't worry, its still brilliant! The series is made up of nine episodes (three set in the sixties, three in the seventies, two in the eighties and one in the nineties) and is essentially the story of four characters from Newcastle set to a backdrop of labour politics and rock'n'roll. If that sounds a bit boring it isn't, it's actually the one of the BBCs best and most memorable moments and packed full of A-list actors from today (although it has to be said no-one would have guessed Daniel Craig would ever have been Bond after seeing him as the lovely but tragic Geordie!). In the end "Our Friends" is about how people fade in and out of our lives, how we misunderstand those around us and the endemic sadness of lost ideals and distant friends. The series closes to Oasis "Don't Look Back in Anger" and was actually aired on the day that classic went to No.1 in the UK; at the time it seemed like a brilliant and moving moment in my life. Watching back all these years later it's still a special moment, but now I am that little bit older it's tinged with melancholy sadness. Worth watching every year.
35 of 37 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
One of the best dramas to appear in the 1990s, whether on TV or film. A hugely ambitious project to chart the life and loves of a group of friends from Newcastle in the 60's - the 90's, it manages to achieve it's aim by concentrating on a few specific times rather than skipping quickly from one event to the next; it makes to want to start the next episode just to you can work out not just what happens immediately after the end of the previous one but in the next few years.
Good casting, combining actors who are familiar with some who have since become more well known, with not a weak link among them.
If you're looking at building up a DVD collection or just a fan of very high quality drama, get it!
Good casting, combining actors who are familiar with some who have since become more well known, with not a weak link among them.
If you're looking at building up a DVD collection or just a fan of very high quality drama, get it!
130 of 140 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
When it was first screened in 1996, Our Friends in the North reflected back the social decay of the sixties and seventies, at a time when a further big change, the rise of New Labour and Tony Blair's seemingly inevitable journey to Downing Street was providing the pivot for mid-nineties, pre-millennial self-examination. Tracing the lives of 4 friends from Newcastle, bonded by often clumsy and socially awkward situations, the epic piece of drama that unfolds remains one of the standout recent works in it's genre.
It's an overtly political piece, but in a way that demonstrates how political changes inform social change. Nicky (Christopher Eccleston) is consumed by involvement in the grubby and incestuos world of sixties north-east Labour politics, dominated by the exotic Austen Donohue. As Donohue's corruption unfolds, and the hopes formed by the election of a Labour government at the end of the first instalment fade away, Nicky turns to radicalism and protest, spending the seventies as a political and social photo-journalist, eventually marrying his childhood companion, Mary - herself bruised by a violent and turbulent first marriage to their mutual friend Tosker, which decays with the passage of the seventies. Geordie meanwhile is drawn into the Soho strip-clubs, run by Malcolm McDowell's grimy, fragile Benny Barrett.
Throughout, their lives are underpinned by their 'friends in the north' - fixers like Eddie Wells, whose life of solid political service to Labour masters is blown away in the storms of 1987, as the political tide reaches the high watermark of Thatcherism. Geordie's escape from the vice dens of Soho is complicated by ongoing investigations into vice and corruption in the Met. Nicky and Mary's marriage collapses under the weight of Nicky's independence and Mary's prospective career as a Blairite new Labour MP. Tosker's business and home are sacrificed at the altar of free market capitalism that he previously worshipped. Returning to the Newcastle in the nineties for the funeral of Nicky's mother, they survey a landscape still scarred by the miner's strike, but hope and optimism about the future. Crossing the Tyne Bridge, they step into the next phase of their lives, as Newcastle itself prepares to cast off it's former image with ambitious social building programmes, and a Labour government prepares to take office in London. The symmetry of their lives is complete.
Taking such a broad sweep across political, social and economic landscapes whilst retaining a cohesive and compelling narrative is a challenge fraught with potential hazards. Our Friends in the North achieves all those aims. It is often icily uncomfortable, but it more than does justice to the themes and the times that it depicts. With some magnificent central performances, it remains both memorable, and essential viewing.
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Our Friends in the North DVD
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