Skip to content
CHANNEL 4 continues its run of outstanding television with brand new period drama The Mill, a powerful series set in Quarry Bank Mill in Cheshire during the industrial revolution. Acorn Media is delighted to announce its release on DVD.
This exceptional drama is Channel 4’s first factually-inspired period drama and is written by BAFTA award-winning John Fay (Clocking Off, Torchwood, Coronation Street). It will screen on Channel 4 in the summer followed by its release on DVD on 19 August 2013 from Acorn Media.
Set in rural-industrial England in the turbulent year of 1833, it draws on the historical archive of Quarry Bank Mill in Cheshire depicting Britain at a time when the industrial revolution is at its height. A third of the workforce at Quarry Bank are apprentices – youngsters sold by local workhouses to the Gregs, the mill owners. These unpaid apprentices have no right to leave the mill until adulthood, and young Esther Price believes her time has come.
Kerrie Hayes (Black Mirror, Good Cop, Kicks) stars as the real life Esther Price, a feisty Liverpudlian who risks her own position to stand up for justice. The arrival of Daniel Bate (Matthew McNulty – Misfits, The Syndicate) a progressive young engineer with a troubled past – proves a catalyst, and the political firebrand John Doherty (Aidan McArdle – The Duchess, Garrow’s Law), seems to offer the workers the possibility of a new and better future.
The adults who rule these teenagers’ lives with an iron rod include Apprentice House Manager Mr Timperley (Kevin McNally –– Pirates of the Caribbean, Downton Abbey), and his wife Claire Rushbrook (Secrets and Lies, My Mad Fat Diary) and Craig Parkinson as Charlie Crout, an abusive overseer. Donald Sumpter (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Game of Thrones) is founder of Quarry Bank, Samuel Greg and Jamie Draven (Billy Elliott) stars as his ambitious son Robert, while Barbara Marten (Casualty, Waking the Dead) is wife and mother Hannah Greg.
This bold new drama is filmed in and around the National Trust Quarry Bank Mill and is a must-see period piece.
Special features: 30 min. behind-the-scenes feature
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.