Bill Brand (TV series)

Overview

Trevor Griffiths wrote the eleven-episode series, which tracks the political journey of its title character, Bill Brand. Brand becomes the Labour Party MP for Layleigh, an industrial Lancashire constituency near Manchester, after holding the seat in a by-election with a slim majority. He previously worked as a Liberal Studies lecturer at a local technical college. Brand finds the expectations from Labour Party whips and bureaucrats, along with their ties to employer boards and bankers, deeply at odds with his left-wing socialist beliefs. Jack Shepherd stars as Brand. Arthur Lowe plays Prime Minister Arthur Watson, a character loosely modeled on Harold Wilson. Alan Badel portrays left-wing Cabinet minister David Last, based on Michael Foot and connected to The Journal, a thinly disguised version of the Tribune newspaper. A secondary theme involves the decline of the textile industry, a key employer in Brand’s constituency. Geoffrey Palmer and Nigel Hawthorne appear as moderate Trade ministers on the Labour right; Hawthorne’s character meets a delegation including Brand because his superior is attending a “City junket.” Cherie Lunghi plays Alex, a young woman with whom Brand has an extramarital affair. The main cast also includes Lynn Farleigh as Brand’s estranged wife Miriam, Rosemary Martin as an MP who shares a London house with Brand and other Labour MPs, and Colin Jeavons as a local constituency activist.