Great television doesn't age gracefully; it just gets uncomfortably accurate. That is the haunting reality of Peter Flannery’s masterwork, Our Friends in the North. When the BBC broadcast the nine-part drama back in 1996, it charted three decades of British life from 1964 to 1995 through the lives of four friends from Newcastle.
Decades later, watching characters like Geordie Peacock—played brilliantly by a young Daniel Craig—slide into poverty and homelessness feels less like a historical period piece and more like a mirror held up to modern Britain. The show wasn't just a nostalgic look back at local politics, dodgy property developers based on the real-life scandals of T. Dan Smith and John Poulson, or shifting loyalties in the North East. It was a warning.
Writer Peter Flannery has pointed out that very little has actually improved. We still grapple with systemic institutional corruption, precarious housing that puts vulnerable tenants at risk, and widening regional divides. If you want to understand why trust in public institutions is at an all-time low right now, you don't need a modern political podcast. You just need to sit down and watch how power corrupted the characters in Flannery’s classic script.
The Shifting Political Landscape and Broken Promises
One of the core triumphs of the original series was its refusal to treat politics as an abstract concept. For the working-class families of Newcastle, politics was daily survival. It dictated whether your council flat would stand or crumble, whether local industries would survive, and whether police forces served the community or protected their own rackets.
Back when the show was written, the North East was fiercely tribal. Labour held seats with ironclad certainty. But as the decades rolled on, that loyalty fractured. New Labour blurred ideological lines, paving the way for the dramatic political earthquakes we saw decades later.
Flannery captured the exact moment trust began to erode. When politicians promise the earth to working-class towns and deliver empty warehouses instead, people remember. The betrayal isn't forgotten; it just festers. That underlying resentment explains why regional political maps look completely unrecognizable compared to the 1960s. The disillusionment portrayed on screen decades ago anticipated the exact voter fatigue dominating elections today.
Institutional Decay That Refuses to Die
You can't talk about Our Friends in the North without looking at its unflinching take on policing and corruption. Long before public inquiries exposed deep-seated cultural rot within metropolitan forces, Flannery’s scripts exposed how easy it was for rogue officers to shield themselves behind institutional badges.
When characters encounter institutional cover-ups, the frustration felt by the audience is palpable because it mirrors real life. Headlines about compromised detectives, systemic misogyny, and failed oversight aren't relics of the 1970s Soho porn scene depicted in the show. They are recurring nightmares in contemporary headlines.
The brutal truth is accountability remains uneven. If you're powerful or wealthy, consequences are often negotiable. If you're at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, the full weight of the system comes down hard. That dynamic hasn't shifted an inch.
Why Modern TV Struggles to Match This Scale
Today’s streaming landscape loves a quick, punchy miniseries that wraps up neatly in six episodes. But television rarely attempts a state-of-the-nation epic that spans thirty years of social history anymore. Modern commissioners often shy away from overtly political storytelling, fearing it might alienate audiences or invite controversy.
Yet, Our Friends in the North proved that audiences crave depth. It blended personal tragedy—fading friendships, aging parents facing dementia, young love turning to bitterness—with massive national shifts. It treated its viewers like adults.
If you haven't seen it, or if it's been years since you last walked through those decades with Nicky, Tosker, Geordie, and Mary, go find it on BBC iPlayer. It won't make you feel warm and fuzzy about the past. It will make you angry. And right now, that kind of honest storytelling is rarer and more valuable than ever.
Don't wait for television executives to commission something brave. Dive into the archives, watch how we got here, and recognize the patterns before they repeat themselves again.
