[5] Our Friends in the North helped to establish the careers of its four lead actors, Daniel Craig, Christopher Eccleston, Gina McKee and Mark Strong.

Several years passed before it was adapted from a play, performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company, to a television drama, owing in part to the BBC's fear of legal action.

In February 2022, it was announced that Flannery had rewritten Our Friends in the North for BBC Radio 4 and that it would feature a new, tenth episode written by Adam Usden that was set in Newcastle in 2020.

It features James Baxter, Norah Lopez Holden, Philip Correia and Luke MacGregor in the respective roles of Nicky, Mary, Tosker and Geordie, and began 17 March 2022.

Nicky is impressed by Austin's apparent passion for change and he drops out of university to accept the job, to the dismay of his working-class father, Felix (Peter Vaughan).

Now living in London, Geordie accepts a job offer from sleazy crime boss Benny Barratt (Malcolm McDowell) and begins working as his assistant in the Soho sex industry.

While lying low in Newcastle he is confronted by his parents and family friend, Eddie Wells (David Bradley), after his mother, Florrie (Freda Dowie), finds a submachinegun in his room.

However, despite running in a safe Labour constituency and receiving an endorsement from Eddie, he manages to lose the seat to the Conservatives after a smear campaign depicts him as an IRA sympathiser.

In London the situation gets progressively more difficult for Benny's businesses as continued pressure from the Metropolitan Police (Met) Commissioner Colin Blamire (Peter Jeffrey) forces the heavily corrupt vice ("dirty") squad to reluctantly act.

Meanwhile, tired of being repeatedly blackmailed by the dirty squad, one of Benny's men takes evidence of Met corruption to the Sunday papers and the resulting scandal forces the government to hold an independent inquiry.

Roy Johnson (Tony Haygarth) is brought in from Newcastle as an outsider to run the investigation but is obstructed at every turn by Blamire, dirty squad Commander Harold Chapple (Donald Sumpter) and his henchman John Salway (David Schofield).

[9] The original three-hour long theatre version of Our Friends in the North, directed by John Caird and featuring Jim Broadbent and Roger Allam among the cast, was produced by the RSC in 1982.

It initially ran for a week at The Other Place in Stratford before touring to the city in which it was set, Newcastle upon Tyne, and then playing at The Pit, a studio theatre in the Barbican Centre in London.

[11] The play also contained a significant number of scenes set in Rhodesia, chronicling UDI, the oil embargo and the emergence of armed resistance to white supremacy.

[17] Wearing initially approached Flannery to adapt his play into a four-part television serial for BBC2, with each episode being 50 minutes long and the Rhodesian strand dropped for practical reasons.

[37] Director Pedr James, who had recently directed an adaptation of Martin Chuzzlewit for Michael Wearing's department, was hired to shoot the remainder of what were to have been Urban's episodes.

[7][6] Mark Strong worked on the Geordie accent by studying episodes of the 1980s comedy series Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, which featured lead characters from Newcastle.

[7][41] Daniel Craig's performance would first bring him to the attention of producer Barbara Broccoli, who later cast him in the role of secret agent James Bond in the long-running film series.

[3][43][44][45] After Stuart Urban left the production and the decision had been made to re-shoot some of the material that he had completed with Pedr James directing, producer Charles Pattinson suggested to Peter Flannery that the first episode should not simply be remade, but also rewritten.

[39] Gina McKee was initially very concerned about having her character's early life story changed when she had already based elements of her later performance on the previously established version.

[48] A particular piece of synchronicity occurred in the final episode, 1995, which Cellan Jones had decided to close with the song "Don't Look Back in Anger" by Oasis from the album (What's the Story) Morning Glory?.

Reviewing the first episode in The Observer newspaper, Ian Bell wrote: "Flannery's script is faultless; funny, chilling, evocative, spare, linguistically precise.

"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 ...

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.

[58] Both Christopher Eccleston and Peter Vaughan (who played Nicky's father, Felix) were nominated for the Best Actor award for their performances in Our Friends in the North, but they lost to Nigel Hawthorne for his role in The Fragile Heart.

[62] In the United States, Our Friends in the North was awarded a Certificate of Merit in the Television Drama Miniseries category at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1997.

"[2] The serial was also included in an alphabetical list of the 40 greatest TV shows published by the Radio Times magazine in August 2003, chosen by their television editor Alison Graham.

[78] In February 2022, it was announced that Peter Flannery had revived and rewritten Our Friends in the North for BBC Radio 4, with a tenth episode, written by Adam Usden, set in Newcastle in 2020.

[8] Produced and directed by Melanie Harris, and with lead sound design by Eloise Whitmore, it features James Baxter, Norah Lopez Holden, Philip Correia and Luke MacGregor as, respectively, Nicky, Mary, Tosker and Geordie, Bryony Corrigan as Amy and with Tracey Wilkinson and Trevor Fox reappearing from the TV series but in new roles.