Our Friends in the North (1996)

Highly Recommended

UK
Television Mini-Series
Directors: Simon Cellan Jones, Pedr James, Stuart Urban
Writer: Peter Flannery
Cinematographers: John Daly, John Kenway, Simon Kossoff
Composer: Colin Towns
Cast: Christopher Eccleston, Gina McKee, Mark Strong, Daniel Craig, Peter Vaughan, David Bradley, Freda Dowie, Alun Armstrong, Malcolm McDowell

Set over a period of 31 years, Peter Flannery’s masterful, almost unbearably moving mini-series charts the progress of four north-eastern friends from early adulthood until early middle age, taking in great chunks of mid-century British history along the way (countless elections, the three day week, the miners' strike, the stock market crash, Labour’s slow but decided journey to the right, etc.) as it depicts their various personal ups and downs. Iain.Stott