Bill Brand (TV series)

Bill Brand is a British television drama series produced by Thames Television for the ITV network which was shown in the summer of 1976.

Written by Trevor Griffiths, the series charts the political progress of the eponymous Brand, who becomes a Labour Party member of parliament for Layleigh, an industrial Lancashire constituency near Manchester, after retaining the seat for Labour at a by-election with a small majority. A former Liberal Studies lecturer at a local Technical college, Brand finds the demands placed on him by Labour Party whips and bureaucrats, and their links with employer boards and bankers, to be completely at odds with his left-wing socialist convictions.

Produced as one series of eleven episodes, Bill Brand stars Jack Shepherd in the title role. Arthur Lowe appeared as the Prime Minister, Arthur Watson (a character loosely based on Harold Wilson). Alan Badel played a left-wing Cabinet minister, David Last (a character based on Michael Foot), connected with The Journal, a thinly disguised Tribune newspaper. The decline of the textile industry, a major employer in Brand's constituency, is a secondary theme of the series. Geoffrey Palmer and Nigel Hawthorne were cast as moderate Trade ministers on the Labour right; the latter meets a delegation including Brand because his superior is engaged at a "City junket". Cherie Lunghi played Alex, a young woman with whom Brand has been having an extra-marital affair. The main cast also included Lynn Farleigh, as Brand's estranged wife Miriam, Rosemary Martin, as an MP who shares the same London house with Brand and other Labour MPs, and Colin Jeavons as a local constituency activist.