Cookson on film 25 years ago

FILMING was well under way 25 years ago for the latest televised Catherine Cookson mini-series.

It was November 14, 1994, and cast and crew were busy shooting scenes in Newcastle for The Gambling Man.

Tyne Tees’ adaptations of Cookson’s gritty novels, depicting life in 19th and early 20th century Tyneside, provided some of the best television produced in our region.

Stars such as Sean Bean, Catherine Zeta Jones, Billie Whitelaw, James Fox and Nigel Havers were among those who appeared.

Starting with The Fifteen Streets in 1989 and ending with A Dinner of Herbs in 2001, there were 18 miniseries. The films were set and filmed in the North East and watched by huge TV audiences of up to 15 million.

The Gambling Man starred Robson Green and Bernard Hill (of Boys From The Black Stuff’s Yosser Hughes fame). Sammy Johnson, who’d appeared alongside Jimmy Nail in the hit TV cop drama, Spender, was also one of the leading players.

A typical Cookson yarn, The Gambling Man tells of the trials and tribulations of a rent collector making his way in the often harsh environment of Victorian Tyneside.

The three episodes would be broadcast on ITV in 1995, and were well-received.

Simon King, now famous as one half of TV’s The Hairy Bikers, was locations manager for many of the adaptations.

The production team knocked on the back door of many North East country houses, but there were more mundane locations too. The collapsed mine in Tilly Trotter was built in a warehouse in Gateshead; the Christmas market in The Fifteen Streets was shot at Beamish; and the World War I scenes from The Cinder Path was filmed on a farmer’s field in Tow Law.

Years later, the series producer Ray Marshall recalled: “I agreed with Catherine Cookson very early on that we would film in the North East. There was no logic shooting anywhere else. The North East had everything we needed.”