Century Falls
A village hides dark secrets behind a tranquil facade.
In early 1993, BBC1 aired Century Falls, a six-part British miniseries blending multiple genres. Each episode ran twenty-five minutes. Created by Russell T Davies, the story follows teenager Tess Hunter and her mother relocating to the peaceful village of Century Falls, which conceals potent secrets beneath its calm surface.
Quick Facts
- Runtime
- 25 minutes
- Creator
- Russell T Davies
- Director
- Colin Cant
- Producer
- Richard Callanan
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Language
- English
- Network
- BBC1
- First aired
- 17 February 1993
Facts from the source article.
Background
Before he created the iconic series that would define his later career, Russell T Davies was a mainstay of the BBC Children's Department. In 1991, he wrote the sci-fi serial Dark Season for the weekday Children's BBC slot. The following year, he moved to Granada Television, where he worked on the children's medical drama Children's Ward as both producer and writer. Colin Cant, who had directed Dark Season, was originally assigned to direct another BBC1 children's series. Uninspired by that script, he contacted Davies and asked for an alternative. Davies responded by rapidly writing the first episode of Century Falls, which Cant then presented to his bosses. The programme was fully commissioned from there. Filming took place entirely on location in the northern Yorkshire Dales, including the towns of Richmond, Langthwaite, and Muker. The waterfall seen in the series was actually Gibson's Cave, located just north of Bowlees. Century Falls aired on BBC1 as part of Children's BBC on Wednesday afternoons at 5:10 pm, running from 17 February to 24 March 1993. Each episode was rebroadcast the following Sunday morning on BBC2. The series later came to DVD on 24 July 2006, released by 2|entertain Ltd, and received a PG rating from the British Board of Film Classification.
Plot
Tess Hunter and her mother move to Century Falls, a village that feels increasingly odd. A catastrophic occult ritual from forty years prior still haunts the place. Tess becomes friends with the only other local children, siblings Ben and Carey Naismith. She discovers Ben possesses strange abilities, which he draws from the waterfall that names the village. Ben’s uncle Richard and his father, the elderly Dr. Josiah Naismith, are trying to finish that old ceremony. They intend to use Ben’s power to summon a god-like entity called Century. Tess, with help from the Harkness sisters—who remember the original tragedy from the 1950s—manages to stop them.
Cast and crew
Before he became one of Britain's most celebrated television dramatists, Russell T Davies built a strong reputation with shows like Dark Season and Children's Ward. After that, he didn't write for the BBC again until he contributed an episode of Linda Green in 2001. Davies later took the lead as chief writer for the 2005 revival of Doctor Who, earning multiple awards including a BAFTA for Best Drama. The producer and director of Century Falls was Colin Cant, who had spent many years producing the long-running school drama Grange Hill. He had also directed other well-regarded children's series prior to this one, such as Moondial and Dark Season. The three teenage leads were newcomers at the time: Catherine Sanderson played Tess, Simon Fenton played Ben, and Emma Jane Lavin played Carey. Since then, Simon Fenton has appeared in notable television dramas, including an episode of ITV's The Bill in 2002 and Steven Spielberg's Band of Brothers in 2001. The adult cast, by contrast, consisted of experienced character actors familiar from British television. Bernard Kay, who portrayed Richard Naismith, had guest roles in many long-running series like Doctor Who, Crossroads, Dixon of Dock Green, and Z-Cars, as well as films such as Carry On Sergeant and Doctor Zhivago. Mary Wimbush, who played Esme Harkness, was seen in the BBC's adaptation of Poldark and several episodes of Jeeves and Wooster, but she was most widely recognised as the voice of Julia Pargetter on BBC Radio 4's rural soap opera The Archers.
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