Acting
Brass is a British comedy-drama series created by John Stevenson and Julian Roach, and produced by Granada Television for ITV and eventually Channel 4. Satirising the working-class period dramas of the 1970s and the American supersoaps such as Dallas and Dynasty, Brass was unusual for ITV comedies of the time, as there was no laugh track and the humour deliberately kept extremely dry, using convoluted wordplay and subtle commentary on popular culture. Set primarily in Utterley, a fictional Lancashire mining town in the 1930s, two feuding families—the wealthy Hardacres and the poor, working-class Fairchilds, who lived in a small terraced house rented from the Hardacre empire.
A chronicle of three working-class Manchester lads and their descendants spanning from 1877 to the onset of the Second World War. Hamer Shawcross' youthful socialist zeal soon converts to personal ambition, exploiting the Labour movement to become an MP, marrying well and eventually entering the House of Lords. Arnold Ryerson is the sensitive and courageous pioneer of Trade Union growth. Tom Hannaway is a perky opportunist who progresses from rag-and-bone man to tycoon and a knighthood following his own self-help philosophy.
Grinding, gruelling and unceasing, Dennis Barker's training sessions push his young swimmers to the limits of their endurance. Outstanding among them is 14-year-old Rachel Southern. Destined for stardom perhaps, but also destined to realise that winning doesn't always mean coming first.
Beautiful wealthy American businesswoman meets eccentric Irishman on an Italian train, who sets out to woo her. What ensues is something neither imagined happening.
