The Books of My Life: Our Friends in the North

Playwright and screenwriter Michael Eaton explores the origins, making of, and impact of BBC 2's and Peter Flannery's critically acclaimed 1996 TV series Our Friends in the North in his BFI monograph Our Friends in the North (London: BFI, BFI TV Classics series, 2005). Our Friends, which began life as a play in 1982, is the saga of four young Tynesiders--Nicky, Mary, Tosker, and Geordie--as they make their ways through the countercultural and swinging, yet corrupt sixties, to the corrupt and seemingly hopeless Thatcher seventies, eighties, and nineties.

In his monograph Eaton eschews the dominant academic approach to television and film in favour of a more historical and aesthetic approach. Eaton, in particular, does an excellent job of putting Our Friends in the North in its fascinating yet ultimately depressing historical contexts. Our Friends was, as Eaton notes, grounded in the broader political, particularly housing and political party, and police corruption contexts of the 1960s through 1990s, the same era the show covers.

Interesting book on a superb television show. I recommend it to anyone interested in the intersection of the personal, the historical, and the political in television land. If you haven't, by the way, seen Our Friends in the North, see it.