Our Friends in The North - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

Both during and after its original transmission on BBC Two, the serial was generally praised by the critics. Reviewing the first episode in The Observer, Ian Bell wrote that: "Flannery's script is faultless; funny, chilling, evocative, spare, linguistically precise. The four young friends about to share 31 hellish years in the life of modern Britain are excellently played."

The conclusion of the serial in March brought similar praise. "Our Friends in the North confounded the gloomier predictions about its content and proved that there was an audience for political material, provided that it found its way to the screen through lives imagined in emotional detail... It will be remembered for an intimate sense of character, powerful enough to make you forgive its faults and stay loyal to the end," was the verdict of The Independent on the final episode. Writing in the same newspaper the following day, Jeffrey Richards added that "Monday night's final episode of Our Friends in the North has left many people bereft. The serial captivated much of the country, sketching a panoramic view of life in Britain from the Sixties to the Nineties... At once sweeping and intimate, both moving and angry, simultaneously historical and contemporary, it has followed in the distinguished footsteps of BBC series such as Boys from the Blackstuff."

However, the response was not exclusively positive. In The Independent on Sunday, columnist Lucy Ellmann criticised both what she saw as the unchanging nature of the characters and Flannery's concentration on friendship rather than family. "What's in the water there anyway? These are the youngest grandparents ever seen! Nothing has changed about them since 1964 except a few grey hairs... It's quite impressive that anything emotional could be salvaged from this nine-part hop, skip and jump through the years. In fact we still hardly know these people – zooming from one decade to the next has a distancing effect," she wrote of the former point. And of the latter, "Peter Flannery seems to want to suggest that friendships are the only cure for a life blighted by deficient parents. But all that links this ill-matched foursome in the end is history and sentimentality. The emotional centre of the writing is still in family ties."

Despite such criticisms, the high regard in which the serial was generally held saw it win several major awards in the year following its transmission. The British Academy Television Awards, the most prestigious in the British television industry, saw the serial win Best Actress (Gina McKee) and Best Drama Serial; at the Royal Television Society Awards it won for Best Actor (Christopher Eccleston), Best Actress (McKee), Best Drama Serial and Best Writer; the Broadcasting Press Guild Awards for Best Actor (Eccleston) and Best Actress (McKee), and a Certificate of Merit in the Television Drama Miniseries category at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

The years since its broadcast have also seen the serial maintain its reputation as one of the most successful British television drama serials ever to have been screened. In 2000, the British Film Institute conducted a poll of industry professionals to find the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes of the 20th century, with Our Friends in the North finishing in twenty-fifth position, eighth position out of the dramas featured on the list. The commentary for the Our Friends in the North entry on the BFI website described it as a "Powerful and evocative drama series... The series impressed with its ambition, humanity and willingness to see the ambiguities beyond the rhetoric." The serial was also included in an alphabetical list of the forty greatest TV shows published by the Radio Times magazine in August 2003, chosen by their television editor Alison Graham.