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