Churchill's People

Churchill's People is a series of 26 historical dramas produced by the BBC, based on Winston Churchill's A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. They were first broadcast on BBC1 in 1974 and 1975. It was produced to mark the centenary of Churchill's birth.

Churchill's People
Genre	Historical Drama
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of episodes	26
Production
Producer	Gerald Savory
Running time	50 min
Original release
Network	BBC1
Release	30 December 1974 (1974-12-30) – 23 June 1975 (1975-06-23)

The series was considered misconceived for multiple reasons, such as the studio-bound production which offered little in the way of realism and the lack of available funding. Each episode dealt with a particular period in British history, and the quality was consequently variable. Much of the acting was criticised, despite the involvement of Richard Johnson, Robert Hardy, Alan Howard, Colin Blakely, Anna Massey, Gemma Jones, and Edward Fox, amongst others. The series was reviewed at some length in the programme TV Hell, which revealed that viewing figures had plummeted from 2 million at the series' launch to less than half a million by the fifth episode. The programme was swiftly buried in a later time-slot for the remainder of its run.

Nancy Banks-Smith in The Guardian described it as having "little to offer us but blood, horsehair and history. Though a hell of a lot of each."

Episodes

#	Title	Original air date
1	Pritan	30 Dec 1974
2	The Lost Island	6 Jan 1975
3	The Coming of the Cross	13 Jan 1975
4	King Alfred	20 Jan 1975
5	The Saxon Dusk	27 Jan 1975
6	The Conquerors	3 Feb 1975
7	A Sprig of Broom	10 Feb 1975
8	Silver Giant, Wooden Dwarf	17 Feb 1975
9	On the Anvil	24 Feb 1975
10	The Wallace	3 Mar 1975
11	Shouts and Murmurs	10 Mar 1975
12	A Wilderness of Roses	17 Mar 1975
13	The Whip of Heaven	24 Mar 1975
14	A Rich and Beautiful Empire	31 Mar 1975
15	America! America!	7 Apr 1975
16	March On, Boys!	14 Apr 1975
17	The Agreement of the People	21 Apr 1975
18	A Bill of Mortality	28 Apr 1975
19	The Derry Boys	5 May 1975
20	The Fine Art of Bubble-Blowing	12 May 1975
21	O Canada	19 May 1975
22	Liberty Tree	26 May 1975
23	Mother India	2 Jun 1975
24	Mutiny	9 Jun 1975
25	True Patriots All	16 Jun 1975
26	Death of Liberty	23 Jun 1975

External links

• Churchill's People at IMDb
• TV Cream on Churchill's People