Credo / Mark Oliver

Our Friends in the North

"There is a play here of Shakespearean proportions" T Dan Smith told writer Peter Flannery when he went to see him.

The character of Austin Donohughe - who is based on controversial Newcastle politician Smith - and the real-life scandal of a dodgy building firm in cahoots with city councilors was Flannery's genesis for the play and later landmark television drama Our Friends in the North.

The drama was shown on BBC In 1996, charting the lives of four friends from Newcastle over almost 50 years.

Annoyingly, I missed it when it was first broadcast, to great crtical acclaim, and had wanted to watch it for years. Finally I got hold of a boxed set of the whole series, and was not dissppointed. It is first rate television drama. The performances are fantastic. For a long time I thought Christopher Eccleston was the best thing in it but slowly GIna Mackay's emerges as the greatest performance. Mark Strong is also very good as Tosker, especially as he grows older and becomes a successful businessman.

Daniel Craig's Geordie is also well played - though watching it you would be pretty canny to guess Craig would become James Bond. His character - who becomes lost in the Soho clubland - has one of the best lines of dialogue about a love interest. He normally felt like he was in a snowstorm, but it stopped when she was around, he says.

The use of events from certain yeas sometimes feels a little heavy of touch but then this is TV drama with big ambitions. The joy riding subplot, for example, feels a little grafted on.

It is quite prophetic about how the Labour party changes in the 1990s as it moves into the centre and is sometimes dismissed as being a "bunch of Tories".

The series has inspired me to find out more about the 20th Century history of Newcastle and Smith - who died in 1993 - in particular.

There were something like 1000 extras and the creators say nothing like it could probably made today in the current TV drama climate, which rings true, and is a shame.

'Land of Hope and Glory'

  Rule Britannia 
  Originally uploaded by fled is that music.

I went home to Durham this weekend and joined my parents at a classics in the park event. My dad loves the patriotism and enjoyed goading my tender Guardianista sensibilities.

It was held at  Gibside Hall, which is close to where my grandma used to live and only about 20 mins drive from my parents house in Lanchester.

I enjoyed it and particularly liked the people who brought candlelabras for their picnic tables. I liked Intermezzo and Nimrod.

I was, though, a little perturbed by the fact that it felt a little bit like a Klu Klux Klan rally. I was told there was one black person there, but I never saw anyone who was not white (to be fair the local demographic is pretty white).

I did make the point that a lot of the songs early on were Italian or other hues of Johnny Foreigner before it swung into Last Night of the Proms mode. The fireworks were pretty good.