GRAHAM Reid’s Billy plays, screened in the 1980s, offered, for the first time, a glimpse into working-class Ulster Portestant life.
Here was the eponymous and rebellious Billy, played by a fresh-faced and bouffant-haired Kenneth Branagh, just out of drama school and still far from the bright lights of Hollywood; his bullying and belligerent, father Norman - a spirited Jimmy Ellis; long-suffering sister Lorna (Brid Brennan) and younger sisters Anne and Maureen (played by Tracey Lynch and Aine Gorman).
This was drama made and produced in Northern Ireland and therefore novel for its time, offering a peek into a household amidst the upheaval of political conflict, but more focused on a family struggling to make ends meet and the heady mix of domestic tensions - father and son finding it particularly difficult to tolerate each other under the same roof and so on.
To celebrate 30 years since the first episode was screened, BBC Northern Ireland will show a documentary allowing audiences to hear from cast and crew - Kenneth Branagh and writer Graham Reid included - on the trials and tribulations of bringing the Martin family into living rooms across the UK, and on what made the drama an important one for its time. Certainly this was a significant television moment for Belfast, here the location of worthwhile screen action rather than another ugly set of headlines.
“I think it was Sean O’Casey who said – you must write about what you know. I wrote about what I know,” says Reid.
As he describes in the forthcoming documentary, the Billy plays were “basically about the street I grew up in, the people I knew.
“There is no single character you could pick out and say, that was so and so. [It was] just my desire to write about the life I had known, the people I grew up with, how those families operated in those small houses.
“The very first draft of the very first Billy play was much more about the Troubles and I realised when I came to redraft it that that was not where my heart was.
“My heart was with the Martin family who represent not my family directly but the sort of people I grew up with.”
Kenneth Branagh recalls that the plays “struck a chord in a way that was remarkable”. And his role as Billy is one that sticks: “When I’m stopped and someone says, ‘Are you Kenneth Branagh?’ they don’t say. ‘oh I saw you in that Harry Potter film’ or they don’t say’ I saw some of your Shakespeare films’, they say, ‘You were Billy, weren’t you?”
Following the documentary the Billy plays will be screened anew: Too Late to Talk to Billy, A Matter of Choice for Billy and A Coming to Terms for Billy.
Tracey Lynch, from north Belfast, was just 10 in 1982 when she took the part of Anne, one of the younger sisters: “People in Belfast felt that it was a programme that held up a mirror to their lives. These were characters people living in working-class areas could relate to. It wasn’t about the Troubles so much as being about family relationships.
“I loved being a part of it - it was time off school for me back then. Kenneth was lovely. We had him tortured and used to tease him and jump on him. We thought it was hilarious if he had to do a love scene or whatever and now he’s this big international star.”
n Talking To Billy, February 05, BBC Two NI at 9pm followed by Too Late to Talk to Billy at 9.30pm.
A Matter Of Choice For Billy, February 12, BBC Two NI at 9pm and A Coming To Terms For Billy, February 19, BBC Two NI at 9pm.