Trivia / Who Pays the Ferryman?

• Actor-Shared Background: Haldane is a former soldier who fought with the Greek resistance during World War II. His actor, Jack Hedley, was a commando in the Royal Marines before becoming an actor (although as he was born in 1929, he was too young to serve in the war but he did see active service in Malaya and Korea). Hedley also never knew who his actual father was, and here he plays a man who finds out that he unknowingly fathered a child.
• Cast the Expert: Something of a downplayed example as this refers to the many locally-recruited extras, who definitely enhance the authentically Cretan feel of the show. Especially when some of them play traditional instruments so that others can show off their dancing skills. You know it's a good party when the main characters join in. And yes, the party scenes do involve plate-smashing, as per the common stereotype of partying Greeks.
• The Danza: A couple of examples — Nikos is played by Nikos Verlekis, Alexis by Alexis Sergis.
• Fake Australian: Tony Viglis, an Aussie of Greek ancestry, is played by a Welshman, Gareth Thomas.
• Fake Nationality: Averted with most of the Greek characters being played by Greek actors, the two big exceptions being Babis and Katerina who are played by British actors (respectively, Neil McCarthy and Patience Collier). In a similar vein, the Major is a Greek character played by Stefan Gryff, who was Polish-Australian but tended to specialise in playing Mediterranean types.
• Tourist Bump: Greece was starting to open up to foreign tourism in the mid-to-late 1970s following the collapse of the military junta. This show led visitors to Crete in general and Elounda in particular — it is now a major resort town. This is even discussed in-universe, as much of the initial tension between Elena and Nikos is over the redevelopment of Elounda to deal with the increased influx of tourists — and a few of the English one-shot characters are there on holiday.