The BBC is celebrating homegrown storytelling from Liverpool with more than 100 digital screens and billboards located across the city, as part of the nationwide Made Of Here campaign.
The wider campaign celebrates the BBC’s commitment to supporting homegrown storytelling, from Manchester to Cardiff, Shetland to West Yorkshire and the Home Counties to Blackpool. It features at its heart a new film, which the BBC describes as its “love letter to the home towns and cities across the UK that have inspired some of its most iconic TV shows and characters”:
On screens in Liverpool (and on iPlayer) viewers can look forward to nods to the likes of This City Is Ours, set and filmed in Liverpool, with additional filming in Spain and the story of Michael (James Nelson-Joyce), a man who for all of his adult life has been involved in organised crime, working for his friend and the gang leader Ronnie (Sean Bean). This City is Ours was created by Stephen Butchard, who serves as lead writer, with Robbie O’Neill writing further episodes. It will return to BBC iPlayer and BBC One for a second series.
Also flying the flag for Liverpool will be Paddy & Molly: Show No Mersey, following the lives and careers of Ultimate Fighting Championship’s Paddy ‘The Baddy’ Pimblett and ‘Meatball’ Molly McCann, as they enter the next phase of their professional and personal lives.
Jimmy McGovern’s latest Time is in the mix too, a visceral and high-stakes portrayal of life in the modern British penal system. It is a story of guilt and forgiveness, punishment and penitence and the impact that prison has on all those who pass through it. Time is emotional and thrilling, showcasing the performances of two of the North’s finest and best-loved actors, Sean Bean and Stephen Graham.
The Responder, ex-police officer Tony Schumacher’s first original series for television, holds a mirror up to the emotional extremes of life on the front line of British policing – sometimes darkly funny, sometimes painfully tragic, always challenging. The Responder follows Chris Carson (Martin Freeman), a crisis-stricken, morally compromised, unconventional urgent response officer on the beat in Liverpool.
Further recognition is promised for the likes of Unforgiveable, Ambulance: Series 5, Nail Bar Boys, a blast from the past with Bernard Hill Remembers…Boys from the Blackstuff, and tributes to Radio Merseyside and Goodison Park.
Kate Phillips, BBC chief content officer, said: “The BBC is incredibly proud of the leading role we play in bringing the best homegrown storytelling to our audiences, whether that’s in landmark dramas, laugh-out-loud comedies or memorable factual programmes. We know that our audiences value this type of content and that it can even positively affect how connected they feel to other people.
“The BBC is the largest producer of stories that are ‘made of’ the UK’s people, places and communities. We hope that the Made Of campaign will shine a light on our unique role in bringing the best of these programmes to our screens.”
