I hope to someday see this...
"The Mill," Starts 7/28, Sundays at 8 pm, on Channel 4.

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/quar...work/the-mill/

Chgo: that looks so good. I too hope I can see it someday. Thanks for posting.

I'm guessing you've read the Dickens and Gaskell novels set in the industrial past. North and South television series is available for rent and streaming. Hard Times is too, I think.

I hope Dutch TV take the show too.

My FIL worked as a mule operator, in a cotton mill in Oldham, all his working life. He ended up deaf and with byssinosis.

I'm guessing there will be trouble at t'mill.

Chgo girl, thank you for that info about the Quarry Bank Mill presentation. I am very interested in that period of the Industrial Revolution in Britain and the US. I live north of Boston near the now somewhat downtrodden cities of Lawrence and Lowell, the first mill cities on this side of the Atlantic based on the mills of Manchester.

Also just returned from Wales where we viewed the National Slate Museum in Llanberis, North Wales – the same proud, sad story.

Another great old film on a similar subject is HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY (Academy Award winner 1941) set in the coal mining area of Wales.

@hetismij: Thanks for posting. I'm so sorry for your father-in-law. At first, I was envisioning an actual mule (as in a little stumpy horse) until I thought a bit on that a while and got off my lazy fingers and googled it. A new term for me. As is byssinosis.

@tuscan: Oh yes. I own that 'North and South' DVD. Richard Armitage is just too pretty in starched linen.

@lateday: So loved reading your trip report! The Bank of England museum and Ben Franklin's house are on my (ever-growing) list! Fortunately for me, I have a visit to the Quarry Bank Mill on my last day in England on my upcoming trip. I'm going to imagine Richard Armitage, in a swirl of cotton fluff, as he surveys the mules and, of course, broods handsomely. I will try not to think of the byssinosis at that moment.

@Patrick: I know! There's going to be loads of trouble. Explosions, fires, severed limbs, grime-covered children, unscrupulous "masters" and heroic mule operators with oddly-tan and sinewy forearms. And I won't get to watch any of it!

>>There's going to be loads of trouble. Explosions, fires, severed limbs, grime-covered children, unscrupulous "masters" and heroic mule operators with oddly-tan and sinewy forearms. And I won't get to watch any of it!<<

In the meantime, try some clips from "Brass":
http://www.youtube.com/user/darthbomberjon/videos

Oh, thank you, Patrick! Love this. What a great cast. Now I think I'm developing that so-called FOMO Syndrome (fear of missing out). The only British comedy they showed on AFRTS TV when I was a kid was The Benny Hill Show. Oh, the things I haven't seen!

Thanks for the tip-off - I will be watching this (hopefully it will be an intelligent, serious drama and not a silly soap opera like Downton Abbey). I've visited Quarry Bank a couple of times and it's well worth a visit if you are in the Manchester / Cheshire area.

<<<Channel 4>>>

which is what network?

Oh, sorry, I just realized that was UK. Not playing in the US?

@Gordon_R: Good to hear Quarry Bank is worth a visit. I re-arranged my itinerary for September so that I might visit. Certainly looks interesting, so glad to get the endorsement.

@sf7307: Not seen this listed on PBS. Perhaps it will eventually air here, but I've not seen a listing. Be sure to share if you DO see it somewhere.

"hopefully it will be an intelligent, serious drama and not a silly soap opera like Downton Abbey"

According to the silly, soap opera for Labour sympathisers, synopsis on the Channel 4 website, not a chance.

"The 19th century was all about the heroic struggle of the downtrodden masses in the urbanised North" is no less absurd than "the 19th century was all about glamorous country gentry in the faux-rural South". Just less likely to attract huge foreign audiences.