1 9 7 3 – 1 9 7 6 (UK)
39 x 60 minute episodes
John Finch’s 39-part saga for Granada told the story of Sam Wilson – a boy growing to manhood in the grim and impoverished Yorkshire mining village of Skellerton in the 1930s.
The series charted Sam’s escape to the sea and marriage to Sarah, and eventually to reflective middle age as an engineering manager in the Hillman Minx 1950s.
Hundreds of Yorkshire schoolboys were interviewed before 14-year-old Kevin Moreton from Pontefract was chosen to play the lead in the first 13 episodes as the young Sam.
Written and acted with conviction, it made glum viewing, especially when the action shifted from the adult Sam – played by Mark McManus (later to become Taggart), and Barbara Ewing and Ray Smith as his parents – to the grim-faced stoical grandfather played by Michael Goodliffe.
This was certainly trooble-at-t’mill territory . . .
Sam Wilson
Kevin Moreton (1)
Mark McManus (2)
Toby Wilson
Frank Mills
Jack Barraclough
Michael Goodliffe
Polly Barraclough
Maggie Jones
George Barraclough
Ray Smith
Ethel Barraclough
Alethea Charlton
Frank Barraclough
James Hazeldine
Dora Wilson
Barbara Ewing
Sarah Wilson (nee Corby)
Jennifer Hilary
Alan Dakin
John Price
