Trivia / Our Friends in the North

• Acting for Two: The stage version required actors to play multiple parts.
• Actor-Shared Background: Gina McKee was the only one of the four leads who was from North East England, and she was from Sunderland, rather than from Newcastle. Filming the miner's strike was difficult for her, as she grew up near where it happened.
• Adaptation Sequence: It was a stage play, then a television miniseries, then a radio series.
• Breakaway Pop Hit: The final shot notably uses "Don't Look Back in Anger" by Oasis. While the serial was in production, it was just another track from (What's the Story) Morning Glory?. However, during transmission, it was released as a single, and it was at the top of the UK Singles Chart in the week of the final episode's transmission.
• California Doubling:
  • Due to budget constraints, remounted scenes in the first episode were actually filmed in and around Watford rather than Newcastle. Beach-set scenes were shot at Folkestone rather than Whitley Bay, which was obvious to locals on screen due to the presence of pebbles on the beach, which are not present at Whitley. This led to some critics mockingly referring to the production as Our Friends in the South.
  • Whitley Bay also doubled for Dorset in the fourth episode.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Christopher Eccleston was originally offered the role of Geordie. He felt the role of Nicky was more interesting.
• Creative Differences: Stuart Urban was initially hired as director, but left after completing the first two episodes. Peter Flannery was concerned that Urban's directorial style was not suited to the material that he had written, while Christopher Eccleston's viewpoint is that Urban was "only interested in painting pretty pictures."
• Darkhorse Casting: Of the four main actors, Christopher Eccleston was the only established name. While Daniel Craig and Mark Strong had television credits, they weren't big names.
• Dawson Casting/Underage Casting: The four main actors start playing their roles in their twenties and finish in their fifties when they were in their thirties at the time.
• Friendship on the Set: Daniel Craig and Mark Strong became close friends while making the series, while Christopher Eccleston befriended Peter Vaughan.
• Hostility on the Set: Christopher Eccleston revealed in his memoir I Love the Bones of You that he didn't quite gel with his castmates:
  • Eccleston described Gina McKee as a very private person who didn't socialise, to the extent that he got to know her character rather than her real self.
  • Mark Strong revealed that for some reason, Eccleston took an immediate dislike to him and when they weren't filming, the two didn't speak to each other throughout the whole year of shooting. Eccleston for his part stated that they mutually disliked each other, as their characters did and suspected that Strong was jealous of him.
  • Strong became close friends with Daniel Craig, which affected Eccleston's relationship with the latter. While they did interact, Eccleston suggested that Craig disliked him.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Although there's been multiple VHS and DVD releases, until the original broadcast version of the series was published on the BBC iPlayer in 2022 there was no version available with the original soundtrack as many of the songs used were not licensed for home media.
• Method Acting: Averted by Daniel Craig:
  I didn't hang out with homeless people, though - it would have been patronising. Destitution is not a big step to make from the depressions we've all suffered. I don't like going to people and saying "I'm an actor, can I hang out with you?" If it were me, I'd be say fuck off.
• Reality Subtext: Nicky's struggle to gain his father's approval mirrors Christopher Eccleston's relationship with his own father, who also developed Alzheimer's Disease.
• Saved from Development Hell: It took a decade to get made, partially due to legal reasons due to at least two characters being based on real people. By the time it did hit the screens, it had to be expanded to include events leading up to the (then) present, as the original play ended with Margaret Thatcher being elected Prime Minister.
• Shrug of God: In response to Geordie's ambiguous fate, Daniel Craig said, "Don't worry, he's fine".
• Star-Making Role: For all four of the leads. Gina McKee, Mark Strong and Daniel Craig were all relatively unknown when they were cast. McKee went on to work with Chris Morris on Brass Eye and Armando Iannucci on In the Loop, and also appeared in films including Atonement and Notting Hill. Strong went onto to become one of Guy Ritchie and Matthew Vaughn's favourite villains, while Craig is now best known for playing a certain British secret agent. Only Christopher Eccleston had received any significant TV and film exposure prior to the series, and even he ended up starring in the reboot of Doctor Who.
• Troubled Production: As if spending a decade languishing in Development Hell wasn't enough, the first episode had to be completely reshot and rewritten after the original director left. In addition, Malcolm McDowell's scenes had to be shot in one continuous block due to his limited availability, not to mention the fact that he lived in America and rarely did television. Budget problems meant that Peter Flannery had to rewrite the final episode, which was to have featured large-scale civil disturbance and Newcastle ablaze.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Danny Boyle was originally set to direct. He backed out in order to focus on his film career.
  • Following the success of the miniseries, Peter Flannery proposed a "kind of prequel" to the serial under the title of Our Friends in the South. This would have told the story of the Jarrow March. Although The BBC initially took up the project, it did not progress to script stage and was eventually abandoned.
• Write What You Know: Peter Flannery was heavily influenced not only by his own political viewpoints and life experiences, but by the real-life history of his home city of Newcastle during the 1960s and 1970s.

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