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| PRESTON
FRONT |
- Written by Tim Firth
- Series 1
- Directed by Brian Farnham
- Produced by Chris Griffin
- Executive Producers Barry
Hanson and Chris Parr
- Series 2 & 3
- Directed by Chris Bernard
and Rick Stroud
- Produced by Bernard Krichefski
- Executive Producer Julian
Murphy
-
 Best
Comedy Drama, Comedy awards
- RTS
Award for Best Series
- Best
Series Award at the San Francisco Television Festival
- Nominated
for BAFTA Award for Best Series
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- Writer's
Guild of Great Britain Best Original Drama Series Award
- RTS
Midlands Best Drama Series
- Nominated
for British Comedy Awards
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- Starring:
- Series 1
- Colin Buchanan, Paul Haigh,
Stephen Tompkinson, David MacCreedy, Lucy Akhurst, Adrian Hood,
Kate Gartside, Kieran Flynn, Tony Marshall, Caroline Catz, Sam
Graham, Mark Fletcher, Darren Brown, Susan Wooldridge, Holiday
Grainger
- Series 2
- Colin Buchanan, Paul Haigh,
Caroline Catz, Lucy Akhurst, Alistair McGowan, Adrian Hood, Kate
Gartside, Tony Marshall, David MacCreedy, Susan Wooldridge, Holly
Grainger, Kieran Flynn, Sam Graham, Ozzie Yue, Nicky Henson
- Series 3
- Colin Buchanan, Paul Haigh,
Corolyn Pickles, Oliver Cotton, Alistair McGowan, Caroline Catz,
Kate Gartside, Tony Marshall, Adrian Hood, David MacCreedy, Angela
Lonsdale, Keiran Flynn, Holly Grainger
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| THE
STORY |
Many years ago .................
in the Lancashire town of Roker Bridge .............. two boys
called Hodge and Eric began a lifelong friendship.
Right from the first year infants
- when Hodge threw Eric's Thunderbird Two into the nettles and
then got seriously stung trying to get it back - thes good-looking
lad and his loser of a mate have pulled each other through life's
ups and downs.
Sixteen years later, with Eric
unemployed and Hodge selling grass seed and decoy ducks in a
garden centre, Eric talked Hodge into joining the Territorial
Army.
Thus the odd couple discovered
a whole new set of mates - Spock, the specky history teacher
who used to dodge rugby at school and avoid the showers; Lloydy
the man-mountain with the unhappy knack of messing up just about
everything; Ally, the soliciter's wife desperately searching
for her real self; Dawn, the gorgeous college student who hates
students and Diesel, the human dynamo with big ambitions. |
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| ... THE
CAST |
Lloydy & Spock (above),
Mel & Hodge (below), Hodge & Kirsty camping out and (right) Jeanetta, Hodges former lover with her new man,
with Kirsty and Hodge. |
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| Tim Writes... taken from a BBC Press Release |
"I live in a town like
Roker Bridge and I'm surrounded by people just like the characters
in Preston Front."
"My old history teacher
was in the Territorial Army, but so  were some fantastic looking girls.
I just thought it was a great way to put these people together.
The teacher became Spock and the girls became Dawn and Ally."
As one of a dwindling breed
of writers who are responsible for writing a whole series alone,
Tim is very protective of his creations: "There are elements
of me in all the characters. I always hoped I was like Hodge
(the handsome one played by Colin Buchanan), but if I'm
honest I have to admit I'm more like Spock, the pendantic teacher
or Eric the loveable loser."
"I've written every episode
of all three series - thta's 19 episodes in total. It would have
been much easier to have a team of writers, bit I feel that you
lose the original flavour of the writing. The down-side is that
it takes along time - I was asked to do a third series two years
ago, but I've been so busy I haven't been able to do it until
now."
And producer Bernard Krichefski
is full of praise for Tim's talent: "Much television drama
today is written to a formula dictated by script exedutives,
producers and even network controllers. It's not difficult to
spot the exceptions. Lloydy and Spock, Hodge, eric and Dawn and
the rest of the Roker Bridge crowd could not have been dreampt
up by a team of executives sitting in an office."
"They were conceived and
nurtured in the vivid imagination of Tim Firth. Presto Front
is the product of a single brilliant, creative writing talent.
I can only pray that they'll always be a bit of room in the schedules
for such originality." |
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| | Extract from the 1st series... |
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| | Trivia |
- Series 3 featured guest appearances
by the page3 model, Samantha Fox and racing driver Stirling Moss
as themselves
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ALL QUIET ON THE PRESTON FRONT - 
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