The Hardacres, Channel 5 review - a fishy tale of upward mobility

Set in Yorkshire in the 1890s, and based on the novels by CL Skelton, The Hardacres is the story of the titular family who, it seems, were pioneers of takeaway fish, although not accompanied by chips. It’s their stall selling fried herring fresh from the ocean which makes the Hardacres an unexpected fortune.

Hitherto, the family have been working as dockers and fish-gutters and struggling to make ends meet, and events take a turn for the worse when patriarch Sam (Liam McMahon) damages his hand in an accident. When his wife Mary (Claire Cooper) appeals to their employer, the charmless Mr Shaw (David Pearse), to advance them some wages to help them survive, he responds by suggesting that he might be able to accommodate her request if she’d sleep with him. She explains, while extricating herself from his grotesque gropings, that she considers this deal to be sub-optimal. The upshot is that the Hardacres are no longer employed by Shaw’s Fish Merchants.

New jobs are thin on the ground, but the Hardacres is a family ripe with entrepreneurial talent. Mary’s mother, known only as Ma (Julie Graham, pictured right), enlists granddaughter Liza (Shannon Lavelle) in her old trade of smuggling contraband booze, but it’s Mary’s fishy brainwave that saves the day. They scrape together the money to buy a barrel of herring, set up their pioneering fried fish stall, and soon the family fortunes are up-ticking nicely. A trial run at a local horse-racing meeting brings punters flocking around them, and despite having some of their takings nicked by a couple of local likely lads (who were soon taught the error of their ways) the business goes ballistic.

Indeed, the Hardacres timescale is accelerated to the point of absurdity. In a single episode, the family speed from penury to unimaginable wealth (£250,000 in 1890s money), find themselves a banker who invests some of their profits on the stock market, and strike it rich with shares in a South African goldmine. You couldn’t make it up.

Rapidly getting the hang of capitalism, the family are transported to a grand country estate which previously belonged to Sir William Cavendish. The scene is set for a rags-to-riches comedy of manners as they adjust to their vastly transformed circumstances (pictured left, Zak Ford-Williams as Harry Hardcastle). They will get to know the convivial Lord Fitzherbert and his clan, try to cope with a snobby, sneery Mrs Danvers-style housekeeper called Mrs Dryden, and have to work out which silver and crockery they’re supposed to use. Would you believe it, they don’t even know that you’re supposed to start dinner with the soup and fish courses.

The Hardacres comes from the Playground production company which also makes Channel 5’s hit version of All Creatures Great and Small. It doesn’t have the latter’s magic touch, but it’s aiming for a similar audience with its variety of broad-brush characters, some to-die-for scenery and stories where the tears and laughter are doled out in carefully-calibrated portions. The production values look cheap and shaky and the characters are scarcely Shakespearean, though peripheral echoes of Downton Abbey (or even the Beverly Hillbillies) won’t do it any harm at all. It’s feel-good telly, and 5 might well have another hit on their hands.

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