History
Howards' Way was created and produced by Gerard Glaister and Allan Prior with lead writer, Raymond Thompson as story and script consultant - at a point in the BBC's history, when the organisation was making a concerted populist strike against ITV in its approach to programming. Howards' Way debuted on BBC One in 1985, the same year that the BBC launched their first ongoing soap opera EastEnders as a challenge to the ratings supremacy of ITV's Coronation Street. Although Howards' Way is commonly cited as an attempt to provide a British alternative to glossy American sagas such as Dallas and Dynasty, it also acts as a continuation of plot themes explored in a previous Gerard Glaister series, The Brothers, which involved a family's personal and professional crises running a road haulage firm and embraced several soap opera touches in its characterisations and storylines.
The original working title for the series was "The Boatbuilders", which was ultimately rejected when it was felt that it sounded like a documentary series and wouldn't grab viewers’ attention.
The theme music was composed by Simon May and performed by his orchestra. Marti Webb reached number 13 with "Always There", the lyrical version of the theme tune, in 1986.
Inspired by a storyline in Howards' Way, producer Gerard Glaister went on to create Trainer (1991–1992) set in the world of horse-racing, and also featured several of the same cast members.
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“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)