South Riding (2011) - Cast and characters

Anna Maxwell Martin and David Morrissey

star in adaptation of Winifred Holtby's novel South Riding
Sunday February 20, 2011 on BBC One
(And on PBS Masterpiece in May 2011)

More articles on South Riding, the series:
Telegraph: South Riding: romance and social change in the BBC's new costume drama
Kate Harwood /BBC: South Riding and one of the greatest literary heroines

~ Characters of South Riding ~

Sarah Burton (Anna Maxwell Martin)
Sarah Burton is an ambitious and modern career woman, a headmistress who is determined to show her girls that the future is theirs for the taking. She has returned from London to her place of birth, the South Riding, determined to make a difference and implement change. However, beneath the self-confidence is a flawed and vulnerable heroine, whose ideals will be heavily tested when they come up against the messy reality of life.

Robert Carne (David Morrissey)
Robert Carne is a brooding, troubled gentleman farmer. On the surface, he may appear snobbish, obstructive and backward-looking but he is actually just trying to protect the way of life in the countryside that he so believes in and loves. He is equally protective of his delicate young daughter, Midge, who reminds him constantly of her mother, his beloved wife now lost to him. Carne is a man trapped in the past but the world of the thirties is a rapidly changing place...

Robert & Midge Carne (Katherine McGolpin)
Midge Carne is fourteen and has never been to school. She has been privately educated by a string of governesses who have struggled to control this highly-strung girl. With money tight and Midge clearly in need of company, Robert Carne decides to send his daughter to the local school. It's a serious shock for Midge, being told what to do and forced to socialise with local grocers' daughters! But despite her initial snobbery and fear, Midge forms a deep affection for Miss Burton and increasingly finds school a much needed refuge from her troubled home life.

Alderwoman Beddows (Penelope Wilton)
Mrs Beddows is a strong woman ahead of her times: she is the district's first alderwoman and a formidable and vocal presence on the County Council. Beneath that surface, however, she is as hopelessly romantic as a young girl, privately battling against the disappointments of life.

Lydia Holly (Charlie May-Clark)
Lydia Holly is a teenage girl with huge academic potential but very limiting social circumstances. She lives in a railway carriage in a shanty town known locally as The Shacks with her parents and five siblings. Until now, Lydia's had to stay at home and help her mother raise the children but at last she can take up her scholarship at Kiplington High School. Sarah Burton recognises a gift in Lydia. She knows that education could entirely transform this girl's life but will Lydia ever be able to escape the cycle of poverty that has trapped her family for generations?

Councillor Joe Astell (Douglas Henshall)
Joe Astell is, like Carne, a veteran of the Great War. Unlike Carne it has left him with a deep distaste for its memory and a determination that matches Sarah's to make the world a better place in its aftermath. Born in Glasgow he forged his politics in the shipyards of the Clyde and came to Yorkshire during the Depression to work with the trawlermen of the South Riding. Sarah Burton is exactly the kind of woman he has hoped to meet - passionate, political, free thinking - and Joe can't help but wonder if she might be part of his future.

Councillor Snaith (Peter Firth)
Anthony Snaith is the ultimate politician. Motivated by the desire to do good and to set his mark on Yorkshire, he moves his pieces like an expert tactician, sweeping poverty and ruin off the face of the Riding and bringing order where once chaos reigned. So what if he makes a bit of money into the bargain that enables him to live the life he dreamed off as a boy growing up in the Kingsport slums? Where's the harm? It's not as if it's corrupt, is it now? Snaith will always be sure to keep his hands clean...

Alfred Huggins (John Henshaw)

Alfred Huggins is a man tormented both by earthly desires and by the desire to do good. He is a man of the cloth, whose heart genuinely bleeds for the poor of the South Riding, whose eye will always be caught by a pretty girl, and whose soul will be in torment after. In agonies of lust for young Bessy Warbuckle he exposes himself to blackmail and in a bid to get hold of enough money to pay her off, becomes embroiled in a piece of political corruption that may lead to his ruin...

Mr. Holly (Shaun Dooley)

Mr Holly is a labourer with a love for simple pleasures; a warm curd tart or a warm cuddle from his wife will send him to bed with a smile. Even if he has to share that bed with his wife and most of his six children! He lives in a railway carriage in the local shanty town, The Shacks, but he's happy and reckons they've got the best sea views in the whole of South Riding. Mr Holly's own education was curtailed as a boy because he had to work to support his family. Now he dreams his daughter Lydia will fulfil her potential in a way he never could, but when tragedy strikes, everything they both hoped for is threatened.

Read more on SOUTH RIDING

Character profiles: BBC One

Photos: BBC/Todd Antony

South Riding (2011) - trailer

Anna Maxwell Martin, David Morrissey, Penelope Wilton, and Douglas Henshall are among the cast of SOUTH RIDING, a 3-part series adapted by Andrew Davies from Winifred Holtby's novel.

BBC ONE - February 20 (Part 1 of 3)
PBS - May 1, 8, 15, 2011

"Drama charting the story of Sarah Burton's homecoming to Yorkshire in 1934 after twenty years teaching in London and the Empire. After a fiery interview with a conservative interview panel, outspoken Sarah takes up her first headmistress-ship at Kiplington High School for Girls, determined to demonstrate to her new pupils that the future is theirs for the taking. However, her determination to transform the South Riding brings her into conflict with a local landowner."

There's also a video that features the costumes of South Riding
(offers a preview however the audio and video don't match)

More on SOUTH RIDING

South Riding - Interviews with Anna Maxwell Martin & David Morrissey

New interviews for upcoming South Riding,

Novel by Winifred Holtby, screenplay by Andrew Davies
BBCOne - week of February 19-25th?
PBS May 1,8 and 15, 2011

Anna Maxwell Martin plays Sarah Burton, a modern career woman who returns home to take up the headmistress-ship of a struggling Yorkshire high school for girls.

Full of ambition, passion and fire to take her life into her own hands, Sarah falls for the man least likely to have won her heart, in Andrew Davies's new three-part drama serial South Riding for BBC One.

"Sarah Burton is a teacher who was born and brought up in South Riding, which is technically East Yorkshire," says Anna Maxwell Martin. "She left to go to work in London and she returns to be a Headmistress of a local girls' school.

"She is a very opinionated woman. I suppose she is verging on being a feminist, quite left-wing and very progressive and she has big plans for the girls of the South Riding.

"When Sarah returns to the South Riding and is offered the post of Headmistress, she sort of goes in guns blazing, a bit too much perhaps, and rubs a lot of people up the wrong way in an attempt to encourage young girls to think for themselves, and to hope for more than just being a wife and mother and make their own choices about life!"

Sarah's costume, hair and make-up also make an audacious statement which flies in the face of the more traditional attire worn by the local women.

"Sarah's got bright red hair; wears a red dress and little waistcoats," continues Anna. "She's supposed to be this kind of bold presence amongst these people who are quite conservative and set in their ways. I think that translates in terms of the costumes which are quite bright and out there."

The two-time BAFTA award-winning actress, who won critical acclaim for her performances in the theatre production His Dark Materials and television dramas Bleak House and Poppy Shakespeare, reveals why playing a teacher was a scary experience.

"It was terrifying," laughs Anna. "I had to do lots of scenes with young girls playing my pupils and it's quite frightening trying to be inspirational – but they were all very sweet thankfully. I would never dare be a teacher, I would be far too scared."

The Beverley-born star of BBC dramas Freefall, White Girl and On Expenses also had the opportunity to return home to Yorkshire like her character Sarah Burton, when filming relocated to the sea front in Bridlington, just a few miles away from where she grew up.

"I used to come here as child with my family," recalls Anna affectionately.

The LAMDA-trained actress who studied history at Liverpool University explains why her relationship with Robert Carne (played by David Morrissey) is hostile when they first meet – although that soon changes – and is further complicated by Joe Astell (Douglas Henshall), a rival for Sarah's affections.

"Sarah's relationship with Robert Carne is quite tricky on every level," continues Anna. "He served in the First World War and she's smashing all over that in her quest to encourage young girls to think for themselves.

"Naturally they have an attraction to one another, she's very open sexually to him and it doesn't necessarily end happily ever after. With Douglas Henshall, who plays Joe Astell, they are great comrades and are much more politically like-minded, he is the person she should go for, but as is the way, women never go for men that they are supposed to! So that's sort of fraught as well."

South Riding is Anna's second collaboration with prolific writer Andrew Davies, following her critically acclaimed role as Esther in BBC drama Bleak House in 2005.

"Working with Andrew again was very interesting because obviously I last worked with him on Bleak House which was quite a few years ago. I felt like a baby when I did Bleak House. I suppose I feel like a different person and a bit more mature and more experienced now."

David Morrissey plays landowner Robert Carne, a man on the brink of financial disaster and with love far from his mind when Sarah Burton returns to Yorkshire in Andrew Davies' new three-part drama serial South Riding for BBC One.

"Robert Carne is a gentleman farmer; a middle-class landowner who is not averse to rolling up his sleeves and mucking in," says David Morrissey.

"Carne is under pressure; his world is slipping away from him because he is in great financial difficulty trying to bring up his daughter in a manner she is accustomed to.

"He married above his station, to Muriel, Lord Sedgmire's daughter. But he never felt comfortable in her world. Nevertheless, now he finds himself as a single parent he is trying to cling on to a sort of affectation of a life that he once had, but it's crumbling away in front of him."

The 46-year-old actor, producer and director, who featured in numerous television and film productions including The Deal, Five Days, Blackpool, State Of Play and Captain Corelli's Mandolin, explains why Carne's first meeting with Sarah Burton (played by Anna Maxwell Martin) gets off to a bad start.

"Carne is part of the local council and they decide to advertise the post of a new Headmistress for the local girls' school. He takes his council duties seriously, although the appointment of a new Headmistress he feels is not terribly important!

"Sarah Burton has very strong views about the education of women and how one should be educating the girls to be a different kind of woman in the future. As a traditionalist he is slightly against that, and she therefore rubs him up the wrong way!"

Sarah Burton may not have made a great first impression on Robert Carne, but Anna Maxwell Martin certainly did.

David continues: "Anna is someone I have been a fan of for such a long time. I thought Bleak House was a brilliant piece of work. I have been aware of her but our paths have never crossed, so when I knew Anna was doing South Riding and it was Andrew's [Davies] scripts, it was a no-brainer for me.

"I think Anna gives a wonderfully nuanced performance. She really has the drive, commitment and the ambition that character needs.

"Sarah Burton is somebody who is championing the cause of these girls, but when it comes to her personal life, there is this great confusion about who she is. I think Anna plays that brilliantly. I was in awe of her before, but watching her in this she is certainly one of my top actresses."

The RADA-trained actor explains why novelist Winifred Holtby, who wrote South Riding just before her death 75 years ago at the age of only 37, is such a great loss.

"To my shame I didn't know the novel before I was sent the scripts," admits David. "I thought it was a great story, which then led me to the novel. As a writer, Winifred Holtby was at the top of her game when she wrote South Riding. The tragedy is she died very soon afterwards so a great literary talent was lost to us. We can only speculate about what she might have gone on to write, but I think she may have been one of our great British novelists.

"Andrew has created the world brilliantly, he obviously had to concentrate on some characters more than others, and had to cut whole storylines; but what Andrew has done is succinctly, wittily and movingly paint the world Winifred Holtby had in the book; it's there for a television audience to enjoy.

"What's great about South Riding is it's not the world of chinking crystals and sparkling chandeliers. It's not a rarefied place to be. It's a very real place about people facing very real crises in their lives," says the Liverpool-born actor.

"What's relevant to a modern audience is that it is set in a time when there is great economic hardship. There are cuts hitting people left, right and centre. The banks are closing and calling in debts. The local council is trying to spend their way out of that by creating better conditions for working people by putting them into proper housing. Other people have ulterior motives for doing that, so what you see is the murky world of the dealings of local councils.

"People like Carne are resistant to any sort of change because they believe this is not a time to spend, it's a time to be hunkering down and getting through the next couple of years. I think those debates are very much front page news for us at the moment, particularly when it comes to education, it's about the best way to educate our children; it's about the haves and the have-nots.

"The Yorkshire landscapes and locations where the novel is set are the perfect surroundings for the three-part drama," explains the father of three whose directorial credits include Sweet Revenge and Passer By for the BBC and the feature film Don't Worry About Me.

"We found some great places like Sunk Island which is an amazing landscape. We also used some great public buildings like Morley Town Hall. If you look at the paintings and photographs on the Town Hall walls, the characters from the novel are right there, even their names!

"Morley Town Hall is steeped in the history of the world we were in," recalls David. "One location in the story is the shanty town that people live in called The Shacks. Diarmuid Lawrence [director] and the design team have realised this location brilliantly.

"It is a completely unsanitised, disgusting camp on the cliff tops at the mercy of the elements. It embodies the terrible conditions that many people in pre-war Britain had to live in. It is these conditions and the education of the working class, especially young girls, that is at the heart of Winifred Holtby's novel.

"South Riding is a rollicking great story about unrequited love and social conscience. I hope the drama reintroduces the novel to the public's consciousness because it is a great neglected work.

"What is wonderful for a viewer is that they won't know where the story is going; it's not a classic that we all know and love. It will be absolutely fresh to most people and that's the joy of it."

Courtesy of BBC Press Office

South Riding (2011)

Anna Maxwell Martin

David Morrissey

Anna Maxwell Martin and David Morrissey lead the cast in Andrew Davies' new three-part adaptation of South Riding, based on novel by Winifred Holtby, for BBC One. To be directed by Diarmuid Lawrence

BBC ONE (February 20, 2011)

PBS Masterpiece: May 1, 8, 15, 2011

Writer Andrew Davies says: "What appealed to me most about South Riding is how fresh and relevant it feels, even though it was written and set in the Thirties. It's a terrific love story but it's also a portrait of a whole community in turmoil, with the country in recession, and bitter struggles between the advocates of change, like our heroine Sarah the new forward-thinking headmistress, and the forces of conservatism embodied in Robert Carne.
"It's also full of rich comedy, with some wonderful minor characters, splendidly cast. I feel as if we've rediscovered a forgotten masterpiece."

MY REVIEW: If you're craving a new period drama to watch, it might be to your satisfaction but it's not what I would describe as "not-to-be-missed" by any means. I liked the first episode but it lost steam from there. Not enough time in three episodes to develop the plot sufficiently from such a lengthy novel. I've not read the book myself but have heard from many who have that the adaptation failed to capture the nuances adequately. So I've provided information for the series below but I'm unable to give it my recommendation.

Meet the Characters of South Riding

Links:
Trailer
Interviews with Anna Maxwell Martin and David Morrissey
Review of pre-screening of series
Read more about author Winifred Holtby
Telegraph: South Riding: romance and social change in the BBC's new costume drama
Kate Harwood /BBC: South Riding and one of the greatest literary heroines
BBC One: Official site
L.A. Times Review
NY Times Review
IMDb

Ben Stephenson, BBC Controller, says: "Following on from Small Island and A Passionate Woman we continue to reappraise the BBC's approach to period drama – there are no cosy clichés here – this little-known novel paints a raw and real portrait of a rural community bustling with humanity and humour."

In the long aftermath of the First World War, Sarah Burton (Anna Maxwell Martin), comes home from London to Yorkshire. Having lost her chance of marriage and motherhood with her fiancé's death in the trenches, Sarah has become a very modern career woman, one of the "surplus two million" identified by the Daily Mail in 1920 as women who were unlikely to marry since their generation of men had been wiped out by war.

Now in her thirties, Sarah has come home to take up the position of headmistress at a struggling Yorkshire high school for girls. She is the very image of a modern woman, much more recognisable to her sisters in 2010 than she would have been to her contemporaries in 1935, full of ambition, passion and fire to take her life into her own hands and live it to the very limit of her strength.

But love has not finished with Sarah Burton – before the end of the story she must choose between the career she has fought for and the man least likely to have won her heart.

As Britain emerges from the Great Depression, Robert Carne (David Morrissey) finds he is an unlikely victim of a financial disaster. His family has farmed the South Riding for hundreds of years and he ought to be able to ride out the agricultural depression, cushioned by generations of family wealth. But Carne is a man haunted by love, and he has spent most of the farm's income over the past 20 years trying to wipe out the guilt he still feels for the woman he believes he destroyed. Past and present collide when Sarah Burton returns to the South Riding and clashes with the handsome haunted gentleman farmer. Their story is only one strand of a rich skein which tells the story of a small town community instantly recognisable to any age and in any part of the country.

Full of humour, pathos and tragedy, South Riding also tells the story of Lydia Holly (Charlie Clark), a 14-year-old girl with a difficult home life whose education is in jeopardy when her mother dies and she slips through society's safety net.

Shaun Dooley is Lydia's feckless father, Mr Holly; Miss Sigglesthwaite (Brid Brennan) is the incompetent science mistress of the high school who struggles to instil order over her pupils; Midge Carne (Katherine McGolpin), is the delicate and troubled daughter of Robert and his ill-starred first wife; Councillor Huggins (John Henshaw), by turns noble and ludicrous, is a methodist preacher much troubled by lustful thoughts who becomes embroiled in a game of political corruption way beyond his understanding.

This 20th-century classic is a rich and panoramic portrait of a Yorkshire community in the Thirties that carries surprising and refreshing echoes of our own time.

Penelope Wilton

Alderman Mrs Beddows (Penelope Wilton), is the county's first woman Alderman whose sensible and competent demeanour belies a girlish heart that has inconveniently fallen in love with an unsuitable man; and Joe Astell (Douglas Henshall), is the Riding's only socialist councillor and rival to Carne for Sarah's affections.

South Riding is a rich, compassionate and humane story of politics in small places and, in the end, the indestructibility of the human spirit.

Made by BBC Drama Production North for BBC One, South Riding is currently filming in Leeds for transmission later this year. Written by Andrew Davies (Bleak House, Sense And Sensibility, Little Dorrit).

The producer is Lisa Osborne (Little Dorrit), the director is Diarmuid Lawrence (Desperate Romantics, Little Dorrit, Emma) and the executive producers are Anne Pivcevic (Sense And Sensibility, Little Dorrit) and Hilary Martin.

A radio dramatization was previously done

with Sarah Lancashire and Philip Glenister

Kate Harwood, BBC Controller, Drama Series and Serials, says: "Published posthumously, South Riding is a rich and brilliant novel full of optimistic hope for the future and we are proud to be bringing Andrew Davies' wonderful adaptation to the screen with such a brilliant cast and team.
"Like all great period drama it shines a light on us and our society while introducing us to a world and characters that I believe the audience can take to their hearts."

This year marks 75 years since Winifred Holtby's death – Holtby died aged 38, in 1935.

Source: BBC Press Office

Brid Brennan

Shaun Dooley

Douglas Henshall

John Henshaw

Charlie Clark and Katherine McGolphin

Our Mutual Friend

A young man is on his way to receive his inheritance, which, according to his father's will, he can only claim if he marries Bella Wilfer, a beautiful, mercenary girl whom he has never met. However, before he can arrive, a body is found in the Thames and identified as him. The money passes on, instead, to the working-class Boffins, and the effects spread throughout various corners of London society.

Based on the last novel by Charles Dickens.

Starring:

Anna Friel as Bella Wilfer
Steven Mackintosh as John Harmon
Keeley Hawes as Lizzie Hexam
Paul McGann as Eugene Wrayburn

>>>>>>> link to masterpiece theatre

>>>>>>> link to wikipedia article

thanks to vintage sky for some screencaps

>>> view a great picspam by ingenu0us at live journal

David Morrissey as Bradley Headstone

Anna Friel as the willful Bella Wilfur

Paul Gann as Eugene Wrayburn

Sophronia Lammle, the "happy" bride

They each thought they were marrying someone of property
but were sadly disappointed.

Charlie and Lizzie Hexam (Keeley Hawes)

Jenny Wren, Lizzie's friend

Bella and Lizzie meet and become friends

Bella with Mr. and Mrs. Boffin

Favourite quotes:

John Harmon: She is so trivial. So capricious. So mercenary. And yet, she is so beautiful.

John Harmon: Since Miss Wilfer rejected me, I have never again urged my suit with a spoken syllable or look. But I have never changed in my devotion for her, except that it is deeper than it was and better founded.

and my favourite scene...(spoiler warning)
"I assure you, my dear," said Mr Boffin, "that on the celebrated day when I made what has since been agreed upon to be my grandest demonstration--I allude to Mew says the cat, Quack quack says the duck, and Bow-wow-wow says the dog--I assure you, my dear, that on that celebrated day, them flinty and unbeliving words hit my old lady so hard on my account, that I had to hold her, to prevent her running out after you, and defending me by saying I was playing a part."

"Old lady, old lady," said Mr Boffin, at length; "if you don't begin somebody else must."

"I'm a going to begin, Noddy, my dear," returned Mrs Boffin. "Only it isn't easy for a person to know where to begin, when a person is in this state of delight and happiness. Bella, my dear. Tell me, who's this?"

"Who is this?" repeated Bella. "My husband."

"Ah! But tell me his name, deary!" cried Mrs Boffin.

"Rokesmith."

"No, it ain't!" cried Mrs Boffin, clapping her hands, and shaking her head. "Not a bit of it."

"Handford then," suggested Bella.

"No, it ain't!" cried Mrs Boffin, again clapping her hands and shaking her head. "Not a bit of it."

"At least, his name is John, I suppose?" said Bella.

"Ah! I should think so, deary!" cried Mrs Boffin. "I should hope so! Many and many is the time I have called him by his name of John. But what's his other name, his true other name? Give a guess, my pretty!"

"I can't guess," said Bella, turning her pale face from one to another.

"I could," cried Mrs Boffin, "and what's more, I did! I found him out, all in a flash as I may say, one night. Didn't I, Noddy?"

"Ay! That the old lady did!" said Mr Boffin, with stout pride in the circumstance.