Pedr James’s strongest claim on our attention is the patient ensemble drama of Our Friends in the North. We rate that work highly, while keeping its shared directing credit firmly in view.
Fi1m perspective
In Our Friends in the North (1996), an exchange is allowed to settle, and a difficult silence becomes something worth watching. That patience is what we value in Pedr James’s contribution, though the direction is shared with Simon Cellan Jones and Stuart Urban. We were moved by the domestic scenes because the performances make the characters’ disappointment painfully personal. Peter Flannery’s handling of public history can feel rushed, but there is enough warmth and interest in these people to keep us watching.
His route to that serial ran through Brookside (1982) and six episodes of Coronation Street in 1986–1987. He went on to direct all six episodes of the Dickens adaptation Martin Chuzzlewit (1994). We are wary of treating the move from soaps to literary adaptation as a promotion: the attention paid to ordinary domestic exchanges is what we prize in the later work. Our Friends in the North gives us the clearest evidence of his ability to handle a large cast across a story spanning 31 years.
The actors benefit from some unobtrusive work around them. Rob Hinds’s production design gives the rooms an everyday familiarity, while James Keast’s costumes mark the passing years without making each change of appearance a distraction. Both keep our attention on the performances, which suits the direction’s willingness to let an exchange settle. Colin Towns’s music is less consistently helpful: its emotional emphasis adds little to faces already telling us enough, although the quieter passages work well.
James directed four of the nine episodes of Our Friends in the North, taking over after earlier directors had departed. That makes the series an important measure of his work, but it does not entitle us to assign every successful scene to him. We rate his contribution highly without needing to invent a private signature for a programme whose pleasures are so clearly shared. Start there, provided a little haste in the public history will not spoil the long, patient business of getting to know these people.
Biography
Pedr James is a British television director. He began working in the industry in the 1970s and directed episodes of the Channel 4 soap Brookside in the 1980s. He also directed six episodes of the ITV soap Coronation Street between 1986 and 1987.
In the 1990s James directed episodes of the BBC adaptation of Martin Chuzzlewit (1994) and four episodes of the award-winning drama serial Our Friends in the North (1996). He subsequently became Head of Drama at BBC Wales, a role he held from 1997 to 2000.
