Oil Strike North is a BBC television drama series produced in 1975.
The series was created and produced by Gerard Glaister and dealt with life on Nelson One, a North Sea oil rig owned by the fictional company Triumph Oil. Eschewing the corporate power struggles of Mogul / The Troubleshooters and concentrating on more personal storylines, Oil Strike North was essentially a character study of how workers faced life on the rig and the impact it had on the lives of their families and loved ones.
The scenario was later revived by the BBC for the mid-1990s drama Roughnecks.
Oil Strike North lasted for one series of thirteen episodes. The leading cast members included Nigel Davenport, Glyn Owen, Barbara Shelley, Angela Douglas, Andrew Robertson, Richard Hurndall, Sean Caffrey and Maurice Roëves.
Gerard Glaister later moved onto to produce the Second World War resistance drama Secret Army, the air freight series Buccaneer and then onto the boating soap serial Howards' Way. Two of the leading actors in Oil Strike North, Nigel Davenport and Glyn Owen, also later appeared in Howards' Way.
Famous quotes containing the words oil, strike and/or north:
“Eat what you can get.
Where’s the salt
in this dump of a village?
And, Lucky Man,
what’s the use
of a salty thing
if there’s no oil in it?”
—Hla Stavhana (c. 50 A.D.)
“... strike the words “white male” from all your constitutions, and then, with fair sailing, let us sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish together.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“Ah, how shall you know the dreary sorrow at the North Gate,
With Li Po’s name forgotten,
And we guardsmen fed to the tigers.”
—Li Po (701–762)