Garnock Way

*Garnock Way*
Garnock Way
	Opening titles
Genre	Soap opera
Written by	Jack Gerson
Theme music composer	Arthur Blake
Country of origin	Scotland
Original language	English
No. of episodes	173
Production
Executive producer	Bryan Izzard
Running time	30 minutes; (including adverts)
Production companies	STV Productions; (Scottish Television)
Original release
Network	ITV
Release	1 April 1976 –; 12 July 1979
Related
	Take the High Road

Garnock Way was a short-lived Scottish soap opera, produced by Scottish Television for the ITV network, running from 1976 to 1979.

History

Garnock Way was set in a mining community in a town halfway between Glasgow and Edinburgh. It was deemed to be too gritty for network consumption, which resulted in only certain stations broadcasting the series.

In the summer of 1979 Garnock Way was axed and replaced by Take the High Road,^[1] which was a bigger budget affair and more in keeping with the 'tartan' perception of Scotland as it was deliberately set in a more beautiful part of Scotland.^[2]

In 2010 it was announced that Garnock Way would be one of the STV archive programmes soon to be available on YouTube. The STV Player channel on the video-sharing website launched on 20 August 2010.^[3] However, just four episodes of the series are known to exist, and these are available on the STV Player.

Transmissions

Only a few ITV stations broadcast the series:

Southern Television from June 1976 until September 1977
HTV throughout 1977
Border Television From late 1976 until Summer 1979
UTV From March 1977 until Summer 1979

Characters

Jean Ross - Eileen McCallum
Alex Ross - Gerard Slevin
Tod Baxter - Bill Henderson
Mary Baxter - Terry Cavers
Louise Baxter - Harriet Buchan
Willie Mclean - William Armour
Hughie Ross - Alan Watters
Sandra Cully - Dorothy Paul
Cully - Jackie Farrell
Cliff Hewitt - George Howell
Effie Murdoch - Ginni Barlow
Harry Murdoch - Bill McCabe
Det Sgt Golspie - Michael Elder
PC Scoular - John Stahl
Georgina Munro - Jan Wilson

The outside scenes when you see the houses the characters lived in were filmed in Torbothie, Shotts. The houses are in Charles Street, and are still there today. However the still picture at the start of the programme, where you see the street with the monument isn't from Shotts. That picture is of the Mercat Cross in Airth.

References

^ http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/features/tv-the-history-of-scottish-soaps.18982398
^ Historical detail Archived 2 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine: from an interview with Haldane Duncan, ex-director of Take the High Road. Retrieved on 16 March 2008.
^ [1]

External links

Garnock Way show on YouTube (STV Player)
The Glasgow Herald - 30 Mar 1976 P7 - https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=GGgVawPscysC

This article relating to television in Scotland is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

[1] ttp://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/features/tv-the-history-of-scottish-soaps.18982398

[2] Historical detail Archived 2 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine: from an interview with Haldane Duncan, ex-director of Take the High Road. Retrieved on 16 March 2008.

[3] [1]

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