Revisiting anything 15 years after you fell in love with it, having not been reacquainted with it since, is not something to be taken lightly. So much time has passed, so much has changed, that all that remains is your sketchy memory of it. Which meant I returned to Our Friends in the North with a certain amount of trepidation. Would the intervening time have been kind to it? Would the radical shift in television's terrain have robbed it of its magic? Would the extra years of experience change my reading of the whole affair?
The opening three episodes – there are nine, all set in a specific year beginning in 1964 and ending in 1995 – quelled any reservations. This was the Our Friends I remembered. The naturalistic, witty and incisive dialogue; the unobtrusive yet elegant camera work; the facility between the actors; the effortless blending of the social, personal and political. A series that charted the demise of the old Labour movement without sentimentality, but with an underlying rage at the times.
Continue reading...