Add The Northumbria Mysteries to your watchlist
Tireless hipster that I am, last weekend I curled up with an episode of 80s ITV sitcom Keep It in the Family. Among the gentle domestic delights of cartoonist Dudley Rush and co, one scene jumped out at me: a rain-soaked Dudley dashing into the local Chinese restaurant I always visited in real life as a child.
It’s not the first time this has happened, and possibly to be expected growing up an OB truck’s throw away from Thames Television’s studios. Nevertheless, it’s always a thrill, a burst of unexpected validation, a sense of connection to our shared culture.
For any Northumbrians enjoying the same warm glow of recognition, chances are they have Robson Green to thank. The actor has, for decades, been beating the drum for his native backyard, often hiking, fishing and chatting through bucolic documentaries, and now starring in new BBC One daytime drama The Northumbria Mysteries as ex-con crime-solver Joe Ruby. Green tells me of “the fundamental relief you get when you go back to your roots”, but the benefits of such a commission are manifold both off the screen and on.
Green’s championing of local talent has contributed to a production ecosystem some 300 miles away from Soho’s offices, while the county offers a distinct context for the storytelling. Thus, when Ruby volunteers at a priory, it’s the 12th-century Brinkburn Priory near Rothbury. When a local hood dangles Joe over the ramparts of a ruin, it’s at the stunning Dunstanburgh Castle on the coast. Let’s face it, with the departure of Vera from our screens, Green is running a one-man tourism board for the area. If the whole cast doesn’t end up running across the causeway to Lindisfarne for the series finale, they’re missing a trick.
Michael Sheen is proving equally tireless in his cultural advocacy for his native Wales, founding and funding the Welsh National Theatre. He also recently fronted the BBC Two documentary Buried, investigating decades’-old toxic waste dumps across the country, and he remains committed to community philanthropy. He may be questioning the merits of having a titular “Prince of Wales”, but there’s no doubt he is one.
Then there’s Steven Knight. As an aspiring writer, he made his first fortune as a co-creator of the globally reachable Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and followed this with scripts for films, from Dirty Pretty Things to the recent Oasis documentary. But his defining moment? The sound of hooves on cobbles when we first met Tommy Shelby, complex leader of the Peaky Blinders and our window onto a world of post-First World War stories Knight first heard at the knee of his local elders.
It was to his native Birmingham he turned for inspiration, and it’s to Birmingham he returned to repay the debt, building a studio that now trains local techies and creatives in a space the size of three football pitches. He said recently, “Shooting the Peaky movie in Birmingham was very emotional for me… I’m trying to make that space available to the world. I’m hoping to ban the word ‘local’.”
For native Brummies, this is their history painted large while, for the rest of us, it’s a reminder that there is life beyond our respective shires. For Knight, like Sheen and Green, it’s a return to sip at the creative well. All are products of their places and all feel called back to offer something in return. As Green says, “The rest is emptying the bottle, and then you go and fill it back up.”