On the cover in... 1979
Long before Downton, adaptations of Catherine Cookson’s historical novels had viewers glued to their TV screens on Sunday nights and none more so than highly emotional family saga The Mallens.
It revolved around the brutal 19th-century Northumberland squire Thomas Mallen and his equally ruthless sons. All three men bore the Mallen mark of a white streak in their hair.
Future Heartbeat star John Duttine, who played the squire’s illegitimate son Donald, called the series ‘a Jacobean tragedy’.