Comedy about rich and poor

Press, 5 September 1983, Page 15

Comedy about rich and poor

Brass, an anyone from the North of England will scornfully tell you, is money — and, therefore, power. The 13-part series, “Brass,” which will begin on One at 9.30 tonight is about these things, but most of all it is about them and us — an often funny look at the rich and poor, the bosses and the workers, in the North Country of the 19305.

The stories intertwine especially the families of Bradley Hardacre, ruthless master of the town he can virtually call his own, and George Fairchild, who lives at the bottom of the hill and is totally dominated by the class structure of the times. Yet the younger members of the two families mingle. Mill-owner, mine-owner, munitions factory-owner, Bradley Hardacre has two beautiful daughters, two fine sons, and a wife descended from the aristocracy. He is on the verge of perfecting his greatest discovery — an explosive which devastates without noise.

Yet now he is threatened from all sides. Will the elder of his surviving sons wrest the reins of the Hardacre empire from his father’s reluctant grasp? Will the younger, drag the family name into decadence? Will the passions of his daughters — the untamed, tempestuous Isobel or the naive Charlotte — betray his trust?

Or will the menace attack from outside — a belated revolt by his down-trodden workers, fanned by his old love and implacable enemy, Agnes Fairchild? Or will there be a passionate misalliance between a Fairchild son and a Hardacre daughter — or son? “Brass” is mainly a comedy, played delightfully deadpan, says TVNZ. “It looks at all the serious social things that have been

written and filmed about life in the North in the thirties,” says the producer, Bill Podmore, “but if you look closely at all the stuff that has been recorded of that era of mill-owners and the workers you can see that it is riddled with comedy.

“‘Brass’ is black comedy at times, but essentially it’s full of unconscious humour. For instance, there are the kinds of lines where a foreman will say, ‘Ee, I can’t stand around here talking all day — I’ve got men to lay off?’ ”

The producer of “Brass” has, for the past six years, steered the fortunes of “Coronation Street.”