TV favourite that stayed in nation’s heart

Long after it went off air, Heartbeat remains the most popular small-screen portrayal of Yorkshire. David Behrens recalls its heyday.

Derek Fowlds as Sgt Blaketon; Nick Berry as Pc Nick Rowan; Peter Benson (right) and Geoffrey Hughes; and William Simons as Pc Alf Ventress. The series was based on Country Constable novels, written by policeman Peter Walker under the pseudonym of Nicholas Rhea. PICTURES: ITV/SHUTTERSTOCK/PA

ENDURING IMAGE:The

WITH A worldwide audience and close to 400 episodes over 18 years – not to mention a spin-off series set in the local hospital

– it remains the most enduring TV image of Yorkshire. A decade after it went off the air, Heartbeat tourism is still alive and well in the North York Moors.

These pictures from the archive recall the heyday of a nostalgic drama that had its roots in the village of Oswaldkirk, where the Moors meet the Howardian Hills. It was there that Peter Walker was posted as a young police constable in 1964. He began writing down what he saw, and took the name of the Catholic church, St Aidan’s, for his fictional village of Aidensfield. By the time he made inspector and transferred to North Yorkshire Police’s public relations department, his series of Country Constable novels, written under the pseudonym of Nicholas Rhea, was already in reprints.

But it was the Yorkshire

TV adaptation, rebranded as Heartbeat, that was to make it an institution.

The station’s programme controller recalled in a book marking YTV’s half-century that the show had been conceived in a hotel jacuzzi in Los Angeles.

“We had the rights to Nicholas Rhea’s books but what stimulated us was the knowledge that we could get the slots in the weekend schedule,” said John Fairley, who negotiated the deal for Heartbeat on a US trip with Greg Dyke from London Weekend Television.

“So we made the Pc’s wife a doctor and threw everything in including the kitchen sink to make it as popular as possible.”

It was also his idea that the cameras “should see a little more” of the co-star, Niamh Cusack, he added.

The show nearly didn’t work at all – the first episodes were considered too slow and were ordered to be re-shot before the public saw them.

PICTURE: SHUTTERSTOCK. WEEKEND VIEWING: late Bill Maynard played Claude Jeremiah Greengrass in in 155 episodes of Hartbeat from 1992 to 2000. The actor left the show after suffering a stroke but returned to play the same character in the medical drama series The Royal after making a recovery.

PICTURES: PA STARS: Cast members included, top, D erek Fowlds, Mark Jordon and Tricia Penrose. An earlier picture of the Heartbeat cast taken in 1996, below, also includes Nick Berry, Bill Maynard (Greengrass) Juliette Gruber and Kazia Pelka.