Riding high

In just a few minutes, the BBC1 drama has showcased some of Yorkshire’s diverse landscapes, setting the scene for a rich, panoramic portrait of a small-town community between the wars.

Filmed entirely in the region last autumn, the three-part series breathes new life into Winifred Holtby’s 1935 novel, described as a 20th century classic. The cast includes Anna Maxwell Martin, Penelope Wilton, John Henshaw and Bradford actor Peter Firth.

Set in the fictional South Riding of Yorkshire – the inspiration is the East Riding rather than South Yorkshire – it starts with Sarah Burton taking up the post of headmistress of a girls’ school. Having lost her fiance in the trenches, Sarah is one of the “surplus two million” identified in 1920 as women unlikely to marry since their generation of men had been wiped out by the First World War.

Sarah has become a modern career woman, passionately ambitious and independent. But love hasn’t finished with her and she must choose between the career she has fought for and gentleman farmer Robert Carne (David Morrissey), an unlikely victim of the Great Depression.

Their relationship is one of several strands woven through a story full of humour, pathos and tragedy. Andrew Davies, whose TV credits include Bleak House and Sense and Sensibility, had to scale down the stories, and the scores of characters, which appear in the novel. “It’s a wonderful book which was due a re-visit. We have just three episodes, so I had to leave out some of the big characters,” said Andrew, attending a screening of South Riding at the National Media Museum in Bradford. “It was made into a television series in 1974, with 13 episodes, and if you watch it now it feels a bit slow. While I would have liked more than three episodes, it does feel like a tight, well-paced, powerful drama now.

“I like the fact that viewers have a week between episodes, they talk about them and build up anticipation.”

Andrew says South Riding has themes relevant to our own economically challenged age. “It felt frightfully modern,” he said. “What appealed to me most is how fresh and relevant it feels, even though it was written and set in the 1930s. It’s a terrific love story but it’s also a portrait of a community in turmoil, with the country in recession, and bitter struggles between the advocates of change, like Sarah the new forward-thinking headmistress, and the forces of conservatism embodied in Robert Carne.

“The political parallels give it relevance. While our government is cutting and cutting, and rewarding the bankers, South Riding Council was spending its way out of the slump. Local government seemed so powerful in the 1930s.”

Period drama this may be, but it pulls no punches in its depiction of poverty and class struggle – in one scene bright but impoverished scholarship girl Lydia Holly happily cycles home from school to the shack where she lives with her large family, only to find her mother trying to rid herself of an unwanted pregnancy. Ultimately, South Riding pays tribute to indestructibility of the human spirit.

“It’s about idealism, and there aren’t many idealistic shows on TV today,” said Andrew. “There’s no real villain; everyone is trying to do something for the good of the community, in their own way.”

In one of the most memorable scenes of the drama, Lydia recites a poem she has written to her class. David Morrissey fell in love with the script after reading the poem. “That scene encapsulates everything about South Riding. And it’s not in the novel – those are purely Andrew’s words,” he said. “I read Andrew’s screenplay then I read the book and thought it was a fantastic piece of work. It contains bigger stories than we can portray here, but if it had been made into a film we’d have had a lot less than three hours.

“Because it’s not so well known as a novel, people will be going to it fresh. The audience don’t know the characters and won’t be waiting for that one big scene that you get with more familiar pieces.”

Filming locations included Keighley and Morley town halls; the Connaught Rooms in Manningham, Bradford; period houses in Harrogate; Harewood House; Saltaire and Salts Mill; infant schools in Bradford and Morley; York University; Sunk Island on the East Coast; and clifftops and beaches in Hornsea and Bridlington.

It’s like a love letter to Yorkshire and, with a large chunk of the drama shot in Bradford, it does justice to the district’s UNESCO City of Film status. Regional film agency Screen Yorkshire provided crew and location support for the production.

“It’s a wonderful part of the world to work in,” said David, who was last in the region filming dark police drama Red Riding. His other TV credits include State of Play, Blackpool and Five Days. “It’s great here in terms of locations, the people and the way the film-making process is set up here. Not all regions have that.” Local talent features in the production too, with young Bradford actress Charlie Clark playing Lydia. As the eldest of a brood of children, Lydia is forced to give up school when her mother dies, and finds herself slipping through society’s safety net.

Charlie, 16, is halfway through a three-year performing arts course at Intake Arts College in Bramley. Having appeared in 2008 film Clubbed, she landed the South Riding role while attending an acting workshop at West Yorkshire Playhouse.

“I did three auditions, then my mum rang to say I’d got the part. I was so excited I couldn’t speak!” said Charlie. “It’s my first TV drama and I learned a lot about that period, and how women were becoming more independent. Lydia lives in a shack and has to really fight for her education.

“I was nervous at first, filming such a big show, but the cast made me really welcome and gave me lots of advice,” she added.