Runtime: | approx. 60 mins |
Creator: | Ashley Pharoah |
Starring: | Warren Clarke Pauline Quirke Ellie Beaven Toby Ross-Bryant Alexandra Stone Angela Griffin Ian Kelsey Inga Brooksby Thomas Byrne Charlotte Redpath Ricky Tomlinson Denise Welch Zara Dawson Shelley Conn Elizabeth Bennett Ram John Holder Finn Atkins Robert James-Collier Marc Ryan-Jordan |
Country: | United Kingdom |
Language: | English |
Network: | BBC One |
Num Series: | 5 |
Num Episodes: | 40 |
Down to Earth was a BBC One television drama series first broadcast in 2000 about a couple who start a new life on a Devon farm. The early episodes of the series were based on a series of books written by Faith Addis about their real-life move from London to Devon.
The music in the series was composed by Sheridan Tongue and Tony Hadley, and had the song "After All this Time" as its opening and closing credits in series 2 and 3.
The first series starred Pauline Quirke as Faith Addis, a teacher, and Warren Clarke as her long-suffering husband, Brian, as they encountered various misfortunes and difficulties in adjusting to their new rural lifestyle, which was not helped by their uncooperative children's attitude to moving to a new location. The series was generally light in tone, although took a tragic turn following Brian's death in a road accident in series three.
In 2003, the Addis family left the farm for good. They were replaced by the Brewer family. Matt Brewer (Ian Kelsey) was Brian's cousin. He left the big city with his young new wife, Frankie (Angela Griffin), and his three children from his first marriage to move to Devon to take over the farm.
Two years later the Brewer family moved back to the city and were replaced by Jackie (Denise Welch), Tony Murphy (Ricky Tomlinson) and their wayward daughter, Emma (Zara Dawson), who owned the local pub. The fifth and final series was broadcast from 2 January 2005 to 6 March 2005.
Series | Timeslot | No. of episodes | First aired | Last aired | Rank | Avg. viewers (millions) | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Date | Viewers (millions) | Date | Viewers (millions) | |||||
1 | Monday 9:00 pm Sunday 8:10 pm • 8:30 pm • 8:00 pm | 6 | 28 August 2000 | 9.98 | 1 October 2000 | 7.93 | 9 | 8.02 |
2 | Sunday 8:00 pm | 8 | 2 September 2001 | 7.18 | 21 October 2001 | 7.15 | 12 | 7.55 |
3 | 8 | 2 February 2003 | 8.04 | 23 March 2003 | 6.34 | 13 | 7.33 | |
4 | 8 | 4 January 2004 | 7.48 | 22 February 2004 | 6.75 | 11 | 7.10 | |
5 | 10 | 2 January 2005 | 5.59 | 6 March 2005 | 5.35 | 18 | 5.43 |
Down to Earth: Series One was released on DVD via Acorn Media on 1 June 2009.[1] No further series have been made available.