Mark Strong

Few TV dramas deserve the epithet “Shakespearean” or “Tolstoyan” more than Peter Flannery’s Our Friends in the North, which turns 25 this year. 

The BBC Two series was epic in scale, using more than 160 actors and 3,000 extras to tell the story of post-war Britain, its people and its dirty politics. It is also the tale of four Newcastle friends, who grow up and grow old over three decades. And it is both moving and magnificent. 

Deep beneath the hustle and bustle on London’s Temple tube station, is hidden a dark secret: an illegal clinic set up in the abandoned network of underground tunnels.

Daniel (Strong) is a surgeon whose own trauma has led him to establish the clinic, making medicine available to any who need it. Assisted by grumbling Lee (Mays) and Anna (van Houten), the trio treat a variety of increasingly dangerous and desperate patients, testing Daniel’s morality to the limits.