job") and "I can do that!" became part of the popular consciousness of the 1980s, summing up the mood of many who sought desperately for work during the era. Hughes was played by Bernard Hill, who uses his Mancunian accent, with slight Scouse vocal mannerisms. The serial also helped to establish the career of Julie Walters, who played the most prominent female role as Angie, the wife of Chrissie, played by Michael Angelis. The serial was made by the English Regions Drama department based at BBC Birmingham and was shot on location in Liverpool. The producer was Michael Wearing, who was based at Birmingham with a specific remit to make "regional drama", and who would later be instrumental in bringing the BBC's drama serials Edge of Darkness (1985) and Our Friends in the North (1996) to the screens. The writer Alan Bleasdale went on to write the scripts for The Monocled Mutineer (BBC1, 1986) and G.B.H. (Channel 4, 1991). Reception The series was so successful upon its original broadcast that only nine weeks after it had finished transmission, it was re-shown on the higher-profile BBC1. It was also transmitted again on BBC2 as part of that station's twenty-fifth anniversary season in 1989. In 1983 it won the British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Serial, and in 2000 was placed seventh in a British Film Institute poll of industry professionals on the best television programmes of the 20th century. It was also named as one of the forty greatest television shows in a 2003 list compiled by the Radio Times magazine's chief television writer Alison Graham. In March 2007, Channel 4 broadcast a "Top 50 Dramas" programme, based on input from industry professionals rather than the public, which had Boys from the Blackstuff at number two. Episodes The Black Stuff The Black Stuff was the original television play directed by Jim Goddard and is the precursor to the 1982 Boys from the Blackstuff series. The main characters Yosser, Loggo, Chrissie, George, Dixie and his son, Kevin, were introduced in it. It follows the group as they set off from Liverpool to undertake a casual tarmac laying job on a new housing development in Middlesbrough. The episode was produced in 1978 but was not broadcast until 1980. Along the way at a motorway service station, the group encounter a female student (Janine Duvitski) who hitch-hikes a lift to Leeds. Part of