SOME EXTRACTS FROM PRESS & INDUSTRY REVIEWS AND QUOTES
Authentic and profound, A Family At War shows how Britain could lead the world in TV drama
BY SIMON HEFFER – Sunday Telegraph 12 JUNE 2017 ………more
CLIVE JAMES on SAM.
“It contains marvellous things and I urge you to make a date with it on Tuesday nights.”
DAILY EXPRESS (MARY DUFFY on SAM)
“This superb series”.
THE LISTENER (PETER BLACK on SAM)
“As good a drama serial as the form has yet produced…….In spite of the size of the undertaking the dialogue is fresh and vigorous. Finch has a faultless ear for speech that is set firmly in character, rings true at every point and is easy for actors to speak.”
NEW YORK TIMES on A FAMILY AT WAR
“ A lesson in quality for the US…..intelligent, informative and thoroughly engrossing.”
STAN BARSTOW on SAM
“It brings great dignity to the medium and spurs us all on to do better”.
GWYN THOMAS – Western Daily Mail.
“SAM comes as close as TV ever will to the writing of a significant novel. It inspects the less comfortable aspects of our society with an admirable concern. It is a vital gesture in education.”
NANCY BANKS SMITH in The Guardian
“It is a night when SAM is one of perhaps three programmes which give you something to chew on, something to taste.”
OBSERVER
“What more is there to say about this series whose excellence never falters from episode to episode.”
PHILIP PURSER in The Sunday Telegraph.
“You’re honest beyond the need,” could be Shakespeare. In fact it’s John Finch again in GRANADA’S SAM”.
SUNDAY TIMES
“If ever there was a television certainty, it’s SAM.”
MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS
“The drama project of the year”.
YORKSHIRE POST
“SAM really does have everything. I cannot remember having been so impressed by a first episode of anything before”.
GRANADA TELEVISION
“We all owe you a hugh debt. Apart from your magnificent pioneering of a new television form; apart from your Herculean single –handed feat of creating two hugh social panoramas, apart from the creation of a hugh gallery of characters, you have also magnificently proved that television doesn’t have to be rubbish”.
BERNARD HOLLOWOOD, PUNCH on Family at War
“ The little screen has provided nothing finer in the dramatic field”.
HANSARD, Joe Harper MP
“ Those in this house who need to know about the Poor Law should watch a television series called SAM”.
FINANCIAL TIMES, T.C.WORSLEY (Pronouncing FAMILY AT WAR the series of the year)
“It broke all the Lew Grade rules for success yet managed to be both good and popular”.
DAILY MAIL
“A strength of SAM is that most of the story’s people are interesting enough to sustain an episode on their own”.
SID CHAPLIN, former editor COAL.
“What a treat is SAM. A map of the heart that puts us all to shame…and a spur.”
AUGUST MAURITZEN, NRK OSLO
Twenty years on, at its third repeat, A Family at War was still voted best series ever on Norwegian television.”
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
“Family at War has taken over from Coronation Street as the top television programme of the year. Last year it held second place with Morecambe and Wise”.
SIR DENIS FORMAN
“A Family at War was the most cost effective television series ever made.”
JOHN PETER IN THE OBSERVER
“By contrast (with Dallas) a British series like Flesh and Blood smells real from the start. The Brassington family are all baggy humanity……the running battle of wits and wills is a feast to watch….”