Century Falls
Encyclopedia
Century Falls is a British
cross-genre
series
broadcast in six twenty-five minute episodes on BBC One
in early 1993. Written by Russell T Davies, it tells the story of teenager Tess Hunter and her mother, who move to the seemingly idyllic rural village of Century Falls, only to find that it hides many powerful secrets.
for the weekday afternoon Children's BBC
strand in 1991. The following year, he had left the BBC to work for Granada Television
, where he was producing and writing for their children's medical drama Children's Ward
.
The director of Dark Season, Colin Cant
, had been assigned to direct another children's series for BBC One
, but had little enthusiasm for the script. Instead, he wrote to Davies asking if he could provide something else. Davies quickly wrote the first episode of Century Falls for Cant to take to his superiors, who then fully commissioned the programme.
The production was shot entirely on location around Richmond
, Muker
and locations around the northern Yorkshire Dales
.
The series was broadcast as part of CBBC
on BBC One
on Wednesday afternoons at 5.10pm from 17 February to 24 March 1993. Each episode was repeated on BBC Two
the Sunday morning after transmission.
Century Falls was released on DVD
by 2|entertain Ltd on 24 July 2006. Upon release, it received a British Board of Film Classification
rating of PG.
ceremony forty years previously.
Tess befriends the only other children in the village, brother and sister Ben and Carey Naismith, and finds that Ben has strange powers which he draws from the waterfall that gives the village its name.
The Naismiths' uncle Richard is working with his aged father, Dr Josiah Naismith, to complete the unfinished ceremony using Ben's powers, hoping to raise the spirit of a mysterious God-like being, Century. They are eventually stopped by Tess' actions, aided by the local Harkness sisters, who knew the original tragedy of the 1950s events.
. He later went on to forge a career as one of Britain's top writers of television drama, although he did not write again for the BBC until he penned an episode of Linda Green
, transmitted on BBC One
in 2001. Davies became the chief writer of the revival of Doctor Who
in 2005, for which he won several awards, including a BAFTA for Best Drama.
Colin Cant
had, for many years, been the Producer of the BBC's long-running school drama Grange Hill, and had directed several well-received children's series before Century Falls, such as Moondial (1990) and Dark Season.
Of the cast, the three teenage leads were unknown: Catherine Sanderson as Tess, Simon Fenton
as Ben, and Emma Jane Lavin as Carey. Simon Fenton has since gone on to appear in several well-known television dramas, such as ITV
's police soap opera The Bill
(in 2002) and Steven Spielberg
's Band of Brothers (2001).
Many of the adult cast were already well-known character actors from a range of British television dramas. Bernard Kay
(Richard Naismith) had appeared in episodes of many long-running British television dramas, such as Doctor Who
, Crossroads, Dixon of Dock Green
and Z-Cars
, as well as films such as Carry On Sergeant
(1958) and Doctor Zhivago
(1965). Mary Wimbush
(Esme Harkness) appeared in the BBC's famous adaptation of Poldark
(1975) and several episodes of ITV
's Jeeves and Wooster
(1990-92). She was probably best known, however, as the voice of Julia Pargetter in BBC Radio 4
's long-running rural soap opera The Archers
.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
cross-genre
Cross-genre
A cross-genre is a genre in fiction that blends themes and elements from two or more different genres.-Examples:*Action comedy *Comedy-drama or dramedy *Comedy-horror...
series
Television program
A television program , also called television show, is a segment of content which is intended to be broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series...
broadcast in six twenty-five minute episodes on BBC One
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
in early 1993. Written by Russell T Davies, it tells the story of teenager Tess Hunter and her mother, who move to the seemingly idyllic rural village of Century Falls, only to find that it hides many powerful secrets.
Background
Russell T Davies had worked in the BBC Children's Department for many years, writing the science-fiction series Dark SeasonDark Season
Dark Season is a British science-fiction television serial for adolescents, screened on BBC1 in late 1991. Comprising six twenty-five minute episodes, the two linked three-part stories tell the adventures of three teenagers and their battle to save their school and their classmates from the actions...
for the weekday afternoon Children's BBC
CBBC
CBBC is one of two brand names used for the BBC's children's television strands. Between 1985 and 2002, CBBC was the name given to all the BBC's programmes on TV for children aged under 14...
strand in 1991. The following year, he had left the BBC to work for Granada Television
Granada Television
Granada Television is the ITV contractor for North West England. Based in Manchester since its inception, it is the only surviving original ITA franchisee from 1954 and is ITV's most successful....
, where he was producing and writing for their children's medical drama Children's Ward
Children's Ward
Children's Ward is a British children's television drama series produced by Granada Television and broadcast on the ITV network as part of its Children's ITV strand on weekday afternoons...
.
The director of Dark Season, Colin Cant
Colin Cant
Colin Cant is a British television producer and director, best known for his work in the children's department of BBC Television. Within that department, he was for many years involved as both a director and producer of the long-running children's drama series Grange Hill, and also directed...
, had been assigned to direct another children's series for BBC One
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
, but had little enthusiasm for the script. Instead, he wrote to Davies asking if he could provide something else. Davies quickly wrote the first episode of Century Falls for Cant to take to his superiors, who then fully commissioned the programme.
The production was shot entirely on location around Richmond
Richmond, North Yorkshire
Richmond is a market town and civil parish on the River Swale in North Yorkshire, England and is the administrative centre of the district of Richmondshire. It is situated on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, and serves as the Park's main tourist centre...
, Muker
Muker
Muker is a village and civil parish in the Richmondshire district of North Yorkshire, England. Situated in Swaledale, one of the Yorkshire Dales, its name...
and locations around the northern Yorkshire Dales
Yorkshire Dales
The Yorkshire Dales is the name given to an upland area in Northern England.The area lies within the historic county boundaries of Yorkshire, though it spans the ceremonial counties of North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and Cumbria...
.
The series was broadcast as part of CBBC
CBBC
CBBC is one of two brand names used for the BBC's children's television strands. Between 1985 and 2002, CBBC was the name given to all the BBC's programmes on TV for children aged under 14...
on BBC One
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
on Wednesday afternoons at 5.10pm from 17 February to 24 March 1993. Each episode was repeated on BBC Two
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
the Sunday morning after transmission.
Century Falls was released on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
by 2|entertain Ltd on 24 July 2006. Upon release, it received a British Board of Film Classification
British Board of Film Classification
The British Board of Film Classification , originally British Board of Film Censors, is a non-governmental organisation, funded by the film industry and responsible for the national classification of films within the United Kingdom...
rating of PG.
Plot
When Tess Hunter and her mother arrive in Century Falls, they gradually find it to be a strange village, haunted by a disaster which befell it during the performance of an occultOccult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
ceremony forty years previously.
Tess befriends the only other children in the village, brother and sister Ben and Carey Naismith, and finds that Ben has strange powers which he draws from the waterfall that gives the village its name.
The Naismiths' uncle Richard is working with his aged father, Dr Josiah Naismith, to complete the unfinished ceremony using Ben's powers, hoping to raise the spirit of a mysterious God-like being, Century. They are eventually stopped by Tess' actions, aided by the local Harkness sisters, who knew the original tragedy of the 1950s events.
Cast and crew
Russell T Davies had already gained a good reputation from his work on Dark Season and Children's WardChildren's Ward
Children's Ward is a British children's television drama series produced by Granada Television and broadcast on the ITV network as part of its Children's ITV strand on weekday afternoons...
. He later went on to forge a career as one of Britain's top writers of television drama, although he did not write again for the BBC until he penned an episode of Linda Green
Linda Green
Linda Green is a British television comedy-drama series that lasted for two series, screened in 2001 and 2002. The twenty half-hour episodes were broadcast on BBC One and produced for the BBC by the independent Red Production Company....
, transmitted on BBC One
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
in 2001. Davies became the chief writer of the revival of Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
in 2005, for which he won several awards, including a BAFTA for Best Drama.
Colin Cant
Colin Cant
Colin Cant is a British television producer and director, best known for his work in the children's department of BBC Television. Within that department, he was for many years involved as both a director and producer of the long-running children's drama series Grange Hill, and also directed...
had, for many years, been the Producer of the BBC's long-running school drama Grange Hill, and had directed several well-received children's series before Century Falls, such as Moondial (1990) and Dark Season.
Of the cast, the three teenage leads were unknown: Catherine Sanderson as Tess, Simon Fenton
Simon Fenton
Simon Fenton is a British actor who has appeared in several different television roles.One of his earliest roles was in Tom's Midnight Garden, and he also appeared in the ITV children's series T-Bag and the Sunstones of Montezuma, Through The Dragon's Eye, and the Russell T Davies series Century...
as Ben, and Emma Jane Lavin as Carey. Simon Fenton has since gone on to appear in several well-known television dramas, such as ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
's police soap opera The Bill
The Bill
The Bill is a police procedural television series that ran from October 1984 to August 2010. It focused on the lives and work of one shift of police officers, rather than on any particular aspect of police work...
(in 2002) and Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
's Band of Brothers (2001).
Many of the adult cast were already well-known character actors from a range of British television dramas. Bernard Kay
Bernard Kay
Bernard Kay is a British actor with an extensive theatre, television and film repertoire.Kay began his working life as a reporter on Bolton Evening News, and a stringer for The Manchester Guardian. He was conscripted in 1946 and started acting in the army...
(Richard Naismith) had appeared in episodes of many long-running British television dramas, such as Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
, Crossroads, Dixon of Dock Green
Dixon of Dock Green
Dixon of Dock Green was a popular BBC television series that ran from 1955 to 1976, and later a radio series. Despite being a drama series, it was initially produced by the BBC's light entertainment department.-Overview:...
and Z-Cars
Z-Cars
Z-Cars is a British television drama series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby in the outskirts of Liverpool in Merseyside. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978.-Origins:The series was developed by...
, as well as films such as Carry On Sergeant
Carry On Sergeant
Carry On Sergeant is the first Carry On film. Its first public screening was on 1 August 1958 at Screen One, London. Actors in this film who went on to be part of the regular team in the series were Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, Hattie Jacques, Kenneth Connor and Terry Scott...
(1958) and Doctor Zhivago
Doctor Zhivago (1965 film)
Doctor Zhivago is a 1965 epic drama-romance-war film directed by David Lean and loosely based on the famous novel of the same name by Boris Pasternak...
(1965). Mary Wimbush
Mary Wimbush
Mary Wimbush was an English actress, whose career spanned sixty years from the 1940s to the 2000s...
(Esme Harkness) appeared in the BBC's famous adaptation of Poldark
Poldark
Poldark is a BBC television series based on the novels written by Winston Graham which was first transmitted in the UK between 1975 and 1977.-Outline:...
(1975) and several episodes of ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
's Jeeves and Wooster
Jeeves and Wooster
-External links:*—An episode guide to the series, including information about which episodes were adapted from which Wodehouse stories.*—Episode guides, screenshots and quotes from the four series....
(1990-92). She was probably best known, however, as the voice of Julia Pargetter in BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
's long-running rural soap opera The Archers
The Archers
The Archers is a long-running British soap opera broadcast on the BBC's main spoken-word channel, Radio 4. It was originally billed as "an everyday story of country folk", but is now described on its Radio 4 web site as "contemporary drama in a rural setting"...
.
External links
- Century Falls at bbc.co.ukBbc.co.ukBBC Online is the brand name and home for the BBC's UK online service. It is a large network of websites including such high profile sites as BBC News and Sport, the on-demand video and radio services co-branded BBC iPlayer, the pre-school site Cbeebies, and learning services such as Bitesize...