Â鶹Éç

Peter Flannery once famously said of Our Friends in the North, "... it's just a posh soap opera - but it's a posh soap opera with something to say."

And now he has rewritten his multi-award winning and highly acclaimed television series as an audio drama for Â鶹Éç Radio 4. Ambitious in scale and scope, the drama chronicles the lives of four friends over three decades beginning in the 1964. The series tackles corporate, political and police corruption in the 1960s, the rise and fall of the Soho porn empires in the 1970s, the Miners’ Strike of the 1980s and the rise of New Labour in the 1990s. Some of the stories are directly based on the real-life controversies involving T. Dan Smith and John Poulson in Newcastle during the 60s and 70s. The adapted series now ends with a new, tenth episode by writer Adam Usden, bringing the story up to the present day.

The third episode opens in 1967. Nicky has turned his back on the Labour Party and is now looking to the anarchists for solutions, Mary and Tosker’s new high-rise flat in Newcastle is almost uninhabitable and, in London, Geordie has fallen in love with his boss’s mistress Jools - a dangerous game. The government are desperate to clean up Soho - Scotland Yard’s Dirty Squad, together with porn baron Benny Barratt, come up with a solution.

Cast
Geordie: Luke MacGregor
DI Salway / Tosker: Philip Correia
DS Conrad: Andrew Byron
Julia / Mary: Norah Lopez-Holden
Benny Barratt / Eddie Wells: Tony Hirst
Commander Harold Chapple: James Gaddas
Austin Donohue / Claud Seabrook: Tom Goodman-Hill
John Edwards: Maanuv Thiara
Sandra: Tracey Wilkinson
Helen: Eve Shotton

Writer: Peter Flannery
Studio Engineer: Paul Clark
Sound Design: Jon Nicholls
Producer: Melanie Harris
Executive Producer: Jeremy Mortimer

A Sparklab production for Â鶹Éç Radio 4