Brass(1983)

Brass is a British comedy-drama series that satirises working-class period dramas and American supersoaps like Dallas and Dynasty. Set in Utterley, a fictional Lancashire mining town during the 1930s, the show centres on two feuding families: the wealthy Hardacres and the poor Fairchilds, who rent a modest terraced house from the Hardacre empire. Created by John Stevenson and Julian Roach for Granada Television, Brass stands out for its complete absence of a laugh track and deliberately dry humour built on convoluted wordplay and sharp cultural commentary. The series eschews the broad comedy typical of ITV at the time, instead delivering subtle, intelligent satire that deconstructs both period drama conventions and the excess of transatlantic soap operas.