Brass is a British comedy-drama series made by Granada Television for ITV and eventually Channel 4. Set mostly in Utterley, a fictional Lancashire mining town in the 1930s, Brass was a comedy satirising the working-class period dramas of the 1970s and the American supersoaps such as Dallas and Dynasty. Unusually for ITV comedies of the time, there was no laughter track and the humour deliberately kept extremely dry, using convoluted wordplay and subtle commentary on popular culture. Brass is northern English slang for "money" as well as for "effrontery". The series also gleefully parodied the 1977 Granada TV dramatisation of Dickens' Hard Times, which also starred Timothy West. The series, created by John Stevenson and Julian Roach, was set around two feuding families—the wealthy Hardacres and the poor, working-class Fairchilds, who lived in a small terraced house rented from the Hardacre empire. The Hardacre family was headed by the ruthless self-made businessman Bradley, who espoused Thatcherite rhetoric while coming up with various harebrained schemes to make his businesses more efficient so he could sack workers, and his alcoholic aristocratic wife Lady Patience. The head of the Fairchilds was the stern "Red" Agnes, who spread militant socialist rhetoric around the Hardacre mine, mill and munitions factory, and her doltish, forelock-tugging husband George, who is dominated by his wife and his boss. In a twist, Agnes was also Bradley Hardacre's mistress.
3.2 / 5
Episode 1
We meet the Hardacre and the Fairchild families in the town of Utterly. Bradley Hardarce has a monument unveiled to his father but, George Fairchild wished he hadn't.
Episode 2
Bradley builds a memorial bath house for the town, and Austin has ambitions to rule the entire Hardacre empire with the new explosive developed by Bradley in his hands.
Episode 3
Tragedy befalls the Memorial Bath House, and Isobel is having an affair with one of the miners. Hard times are all around and the miners are now on strike and Agnes is the leader. Bradley must find a way to stop the strike without costing him anything.
Episode 4
Isobel wants to marry Jack Fairchild, and Morris has his sights set on young Matthew Fairchild, but Charlotte want him too. Bradley settles the miners strike, then has the mine flooded to get rid of Jack Farchild.
Episode 5
Bradley floods the mine to kill Jack Fairchild so he can't marry Isobel. Jack and the other miners are saved by Charlotte. Austin must make sure Jack doesn't recover.
Episode 6
Jack is saved from the mine and falls in love with Charlotte. Isobel and Charlotte fight over Jack. Agnes tells Matthew why he can never marry Charlotte. Bradley Hardarce is Matthew's father.
Episode 7
Bradley tries to use SBD (Silent But Deadly) to blow up the cottage hospital. He tricks George Fairchild to be right under it, and gives him the explosive in sugar lumps. Meanwhile, Lady Patience is teaching young Matthew Fairchild all about the facts of life.
Episode 8
The SBD is under the Cottage Hospital, and Austin wants his cut of the action. Bradley refuses the offer, and Austin knocks Bradley out and has him taken to the Cottage Hospital to recover. Bradley wakes up just in time to panic.
Episode 9
Bradley panics when he finds himself in the Cottage Hospital, and begs to be released. Bradley is released and confronts Austin with his attempt to take over the family business. The Cottage Hospital does not blow up, and both Bradley and Austin seek answers from George Fairchild.
Episode 10
The SBD did not go off, because George put them in cold tea. Bradley and Austin must get those lumps out of George. Doctor McDuff finds an old stomach pump, and George has to cough up the sugar lumps.
Episode 11
Jack is discharged from the hospital a changed man, and now he is in love with Charlotte. Isobel does not take the news well, and neither does Jack's mother.
Episode 12
Bradley wants to be ennobled as a lord, and Jack sells his interest in Isobel to set up his own forge. George has another accident with the new Bouncing Bomb. Matthew tells Charlotte a lie to spare her feelings, and Bradley thinks Lord Mountfast would be the perfect husband for Isobel.
Episode 13
Doctor McDuff thinks he has cured Lady Patience now that she can walk. The King is on His way to lay a foundation stone at the Hardacre Memorial Privy, and Charlotte gets the idea to protest the new rent hikes, by riding through town naked on Brass Beauty. Isobel is determined to join the protest, but Big Tom, the huge chimney, is starting to wobble with Matthew and Jack sitting on top.
No media available
