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    Nostalgia Central
    Home»Television»Shows by Decade»1950s Television
    1950s Television Drama Shows C 2 Mins Read

    Champion Road

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    1 9 5 8 (UK)
    8 x 30 minute episodes

    Debuting on 12 September 1958, this eight-part BBC series was adapted by Constance Cox from the best-selling North Country novel by Frank Tilsley. It had a Victorian background, Lancashire accents, and a saga concertinaing forty years of family life into eight half-hour episodes.

    The series spanned the years 1906 to 1946 and told the story of Jonathan Briggs, a newsboy who becomes a rich jerry-builder and Nellie Greenhalgh, who becomes his loyal and long-suffering wife. The story covers their childhood, courtship and marriage.

    Roy Hines was good as Jonathan as a boy, as was Irene French as the child version of Nellie (a most detestable character). Anna Turner as Nellie grown-up was also an utterly unsympathetic character. William Lucas played the grown-up Jonathan – arch-twister, inveterate liar and master womaniser.

    Other standout performances came from Jack Howarth as Mr Briggs and Fred Fairclough as Grandfather Briggs.

    The action is set in the Lancashire village of Tollerton Clough, which is gradually swallowed up by the neighbouring industrial town of Newton.  The search for Champion Road itself took a production crew over 500 miles while scouting locations before settling on a row of houses in Manor Road, Levenshulme, Manchester.

    Jonathan Briggs
    William Lucas
    Nellie Greenhalgh
    Anna Turner
    Alf Burton
    Joby Blanshard
    A.J. Clough
    John Paul
    Janet Pemberton
    Jennifer Wilson
    Steven Briggs
    Bryan Hulme
    Abe Duckworth
    George A. Cooper
    Raymond Kempshaw
    Peter Bryant
    Grandma Pilling
    Nan Marriott-Watson
    Mrs Briggs
    Violet Carson
    Grandfather Briggs
    Fred Fairclough
    Mr Briggs
    Jack Howarth
    Geraldine Forbes
    Jennifer Hales
    Betty Gray
    Prunella Scales
    Miss Doubleday
    Brenda Cowling
    Miss Fanshawe
    Jill Tilsley
    Fred Pennington
    Brian Rawlinson
    Jonathan Briggs as a boy
    Roy Hines
    Nellie Greenhalgh as a girl
    Irene French

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