The programme lined up a nostalgic parade of programmes from Granada’s programming history: the television milestone Coronation Street –obviously – as well as pioneering factual series running the gamut from World in Action to This Morning. My husband and I were stationed at Lakenheath when this series premiered and I scheduled my viewing time accordingly. Throughout the 1970s, Granada earned a reputation for doom-laden dramas like Samand The Stars Look Down, but it all began with John Finch’s A Family At War, a saga which suggested that happiness was something to be swept under the carpet – if you were lucky enough to have a carpet.

While reading the book, one thing that struck me was the “tourism” that followed the war, as people flocked to the battlefields to witness the scene of all the action. Additionally I believed I was able to achieve a better understanding of what life was really like during the war, rationing, air raids, time spent in shelters, agony of traveling by train and the overall mood of the country. As the series creator John Finch later observed: ‘I have often had to try to shrug off descriptions of my work as “dour” or “glum” – inevitable I suppose since most of my writing has been about poverty or war. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. What I saw of course was something entirely different, not only in that it largely covered the home front rather than the battles themselves, but also because it involved a middle class family, and demonstrated to me just how the war differed for the classes in Britain, as I’d long heard stories of the war from my parents and the deprivation they faced as a working class family in a poor area.This was a two-edged sword: the cost of resources could erode the money available for what was actually seen on the screen but the producer could sometimes juggle one area of cost against another. So we would progress slowly through it, scene by scene, until everyone knew what they had to do when the time for recording arrived on the following day.

By series two, you can see how they were working the schedule to film so much so quickly by using different production units. The producer, the series planner and the designer needed all this knowledge in advance to organise their work. Mostly though, it was the presence of the war which made itself felt throughout, despite rarely being depicted directly. The programme opening titles show a scene of a beach with a child's sand castle, with Union Flag flying, slowly being approached by the encroaching tide, symbolic of a beleaguered Britain standing alone in 1940–1941.

This was to do with the direction that the series went for involving the family and character dramas, especially in the period setting of the Second World War. Perhaps it was the mindset used in many modern Shakesperean productions: use the accent you’re most comfortable with, but choose a vaguely Northern one.