The first programme looks at the cinematic birth of a new working-class hero in the north of England. John Schlesinger, Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, Alan Sillitoe, Richard Harris, and Tom Courtenay revisit the locations of their early films, while Rita Tushingham and Julie Christie talk about the new kind of girl who came on to the scene.

The ebullience of "swinging" London gave way as the 60s progressed to a mood of questioning, and uneasy portents of revolution could be seen in the films of a new generation of directors, who saw the certainties of post-war Britain collapsing about them. Lindsay Anderson talks about his landmark film If.... in which a public school collapses into anarchy and murder. Dirk Bogarde talks about his roles in Victim, the first British feature film to address the oppression of gay men, and in The Servant, the Pinter-scripted account of subversion among the upper classes. Also featured are Sylvia Syms, James Fox, Tom Courtenay, and Stephen Frears.