Lilies (BBC TV Series) - Production

Production

Heidi Thomas first developed the idea for Lilies from listening to her grandmother's stories about growing up in post-World War I Liverpool. The Moss sisters are loosely based on her grandmother and her three sisters. Some aspects of the series, such as the grave fund that the girls save for, are taken directly from their lives. Thomas wrote the first complete draft of the script in 1996, but it was almost ten years before it was optioned by the BBC. During that time she lost the script, and had to recreate it from an old copy she found in her attic. Thomas elected to insert certain elements into the script to give the series a sense of realism, such as the slaughter of animals in the Moss home. Largely unknown actors were cast in Lilies, including native Liverpudlian Kerrie Hayes in her acting debut.

During location scouting, the production team was unable to find an area of Liverpool with terraced houses that had been sufficiently preserved so they decided to reconstruct a whole neighborhood on a backlot in Aintree. In order to give a sense of space to the production, large painted billboards mimicking distant buildings were erected on the edges of the set. Other scenes were filmed on location at the Woolton Picture House, the Walker Art Gallery and Croxteth Hall.