Howards' Way

Howards' Way
Main title caption
Created by	Gerard Glaister Allan Prior
Starring	Maurice Colbourne Jan Harvey Glyn Owen Dulcie Gray Stephen Yardley Tony Anholt Susan Gilmore Nigel Davenport Lana Morris Ivor Danvers Kate O'Mara Edward Highmore Cindy Shelley Patricia Shakesby Tracey Childs Sarah-Jane Varley Jeff Harding Sian Webber
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of series	6
No. of episodes	78
Production
Running time	50 minutes
Release
Original network	BBC1
Original release	1 September 1985 (1985-09-01) – 25 November 1990 (1990-11-25)

Howards' Way is a television drama series produced by BBC Birmingham and transmitted on BBC1 between 1 September 1985 and 25 November 1990. The series deals with the personal and professional lives of the wealthy yachting and business communities in the fictional town of Tarrant on the South Coast of England, and was filmed on the River Hamble and the Solent. Most of the location filming for the series was carried out in Bursledon, Hamble, Swanwick, Warsash, Hill Head, Lee-on-the-Solent, Southampton and Fareham—all in Hampshire.

Howards' Way was created and produced by Gerard Glaister and Allan Prior with lead writer, Raymond Thompson as story and script consultant—at a point in the BBC's history, when the organisation was making a concerted populist strike against ITV in its approach to programming. Howards' Way debuted on BBC1 in 1985, the same year that the BBC launched their first ongoing soap opera EastEnders as a challenge to the ratings supremacy of ITV's Coronation Street. Although Howards' Way is commonly cited as an attempt to provide a British alternative to glossy American sagas such as Dallas and Dynasty, it also acts as a continuation of plot themes explored in a previous Gerard Glaister series, The Brothers, which involved a family's personal and professional crises running a road haulage firm and embraced several soap opera touches in its characterisations and storylines.