The Mill

1 August 2013

Episode 1/4, Sunday 28th July, 8pm, Channel 4

The Mill is a historical four-part drama written by John Fay set in rural-industrial England in the turbulent year of 1833. Based on the extensive historical archive of Quarry Bank Mill in Cheshire, this powerful new serial depicts Britain at a time when the industrial revolution is changing the country beyond recognition. In the 1830s, children as young as nine work 12-hour shifts in the mills, and the new class of mill-owning families prosper. But the so-called “white slaves of England” are about to take their lives into their own hands for the first time as outsiders with new ideas enter their world. At Quarry Bank Mill things are about to change.

A third of the workforce at Quarry Bank are apprentices – many are youngsters sold by local workhouses to the Gregs, the mill owners. These unpaid apprentices have no right to leave the mill until adulthood, bearing an uncomfortable similarity to the slaves who the Gregs also own in the Caribbean. In this bold new drama, the apprentices are led by Kerrie Hayes (Black Mirror, Good Cop, Kicks) as the real life Esther Price, a feisty Liverpudlian well documented in Quarry Bank's archives, who risks her own position to stand up for justice. The arrival of Daniel Bate, played by Matthew McNulty (Misfits, The Syndicate) – a progressive young engineer with a troubled past - proves a catalyst, and the political firebrand John Doherty, played by Aidan McArdle (The Duchess, Garrow’s Law), seems to offer the workers the possibility of a new and better future.

The adults who rule these teenagers’ lives with an iron rod include Kevin McNally (Pirates of the Caribbean, Downton Abbey) as Mr Timperley, Manager of the Apprentice House, and Claire Rushbrook (Secrets and Lies, My Mad Fat Diary) as his wife. Craig Parkinson plays Charlie Crout; an abusive overseer whose treatment of Miriam (Sacha Parkinson), a young apprentice, compels the outspoken Esther Price to speak out while Miriam’s more compliant sister, Susannah (Holly Lucas) tries to keep her head down.

Donald Sumpter (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Game of Thrones) and Jamie Draven (Billy Elliott) play Quarry Bank’s founder Samuel Greg and his ambitious son Robert, while Barbara Marten (Casualty, Waking the Dead) plays Hannah Greg, Robert's mother, who wants to improve the apprentices' lives while defending the family business.

The real Greg family was one of the leading industrial families of the period, with five mills employing thousands of workers. Liberal and politically active, they also helped found The Manchester Guardian and Britain's first stock exchange. They were a family full of contradictions: proud of their philanthropic reputation while owning a slave plantation in the West Indian island of Dominica, and holding on to the apprentice system far longer than other mill owners.

The Mill is based on the people and history of Quarry Bank Mill in Cheshire and much of the drama was filmed in and around this National Trust property. This is Channel 4’s first factually-inspired period drama and is written by BAFTA award-winning John Fay (Clocking Off, Torchwood, Coronation Street), directed by James Hawes (Enid, The Suspicions of Mr Whitcher, Mad Dogs) and produced by Caroline Levy (George Gently, Excluded, Apparitions, Cape Wrath and Rough Justice).

Commissioning editors: Julia Harrington (Factual) and Sophie Gardiner (Drama)

Production Company: DSP

Executive Producers at DSP: Julian Ware, Dominic Barlow

Creative Director at DSP: Emily Roe