When the Boat Comes In

1919: Jack Ford returns to Gallowshields on Tyneside after service in the Great War. He befriends the Seaton family—parents Bill and Bella, and their children: Jessie, attractive s...

Billy, Tom and old army buddy Matt try to involve Jack in the Labour movement but he seems disinterested. Bella takes in Harry, a young orphan. Father Keenley, the local priest, te...

Times are hard as the miners strike over a pay claim and Tom, now married with a son to keep as well as Mary, who has tuberculosis, borrows money from the seemingly flush Jack. Jac...

Jack visits Sir Horatio Manners, father of his late commanding officer, to gift him a sword. Manners knows this is a ploy for Jack to ingratiate himself but is regardless impressed...

As the strike continues, Bill approaches an old friend, regarding the location of a mine shut down fifty years earlier. Tom pursues two children who have stolen leeks from his allo...

The strike ends with no concessions won by the colliers. Jack triumphs at the factory and Manners suggests that he could do better than Jessie. Jessie goes on a date with the older...

Encouraged by French onion seller Pierre, Bella turns the front of the house into a shop, using some of Bill's compensation. Bill, still bound to a wheelchair, is initially hostile...

Mary dies. Jack is in a pub when he meets old army colleague Sid Hepburn, still a professional soldier who suggests that Jack reenlist as soldier's pay is very good. Paddy Boyle,...

Nurse Rosie Trotter returns to Gallowshields and is mutually attracted to Tom, though, out of respect for Mary, they agree to postpone their nuptials for a year. Meanwhile, Bella's...

Dolly is pregnant and Jack jobless so he agrees to a proposition from Manners, who wants to buy a house from Lord Calderbeck. Jack, posing as a parvenu car parts tycoon, will act a...

It is New Year's Eve and Glaswegian socialist lecturer Sandy Lewis joins Jack, whom he tells that the Labour party is in the ascendancy, at the George Hotel, where Billy is bartend...

To the annoyance of her husband, Jessie has been nominated for the Labour Party executive and Jack antagonizes Dolly – who senses an ulterior motive in backing her. Jessie's nomina...

Tom is caught and remanded. Jack becomes the deputy branch secretary of the Union, getting the miners on side to dissuade them from strike action. The widow Downey – who actually i...