Living on the Edge

Docmentary about deep sea fishing community in North West England. This place was run very much as if it was in Victorian England. It was a one company town – all fishing – and if anybody stepped out of line they were chopped, they were sacked. As a result the working conditions, the money etc. were appalling and nobody dare say anything because if they spoke out: no job; and they weren’t given any explanation.

A large family in London's East End is celebrating a birthday party. Children and grandchildren from this extensive family have come to the party from all over England. At the party the family members talk about hope and dreams for their children. The past and present lives of various relatives are compared with each other, while fragments from radio-programmes from the fourties and the fifties draw an emotional and historical line. Set against this archive material are fierce images of modern day family life in urban England in the year 1993. This makes the film a collage of dreams, memories and images of present-day life.

World in Action was Granada Television’s flagship ITV current affairs series, running from 7 Jan 1963 to 7 Dec 1998, and built a reputation for film-led investigative reporting and a forceful editorial stance. Its journalism produced major public and political repercussions—including investigations associated with miscarriages of justice such as the Birmingham Six—and it also served as a platform for landmark documentary projects, including the first broadcast of “Seven Up!” as part of the strand in 1964.

The working day of enginemen at Newton Heath locomotive sheds, Manchester. They discuss the impact of dieselisation on their jobs.

Impressions of a typical weekend in Blackburn in the early 1960s.

It happens in almost everyone's life. There is a special day - a day of unusual significance. A turning point in life, perhaps in career, romance or fortune; a day to remember. This anthology of plays, each as individual as the people and events portrayed, looks at seven such Red Letter Days.

They're young, unemployed and on the march - from Glasgow, Liverpool and Swansea to London.

When teacher Tony Scannell decides he wants to be ordained as a Catholic Priest his decision has wide ranging effects on his family and loved ones.

In North East England men make a living collecting coal washed-up on beaches from underground seams.