YMMV / Our Friends in the North

• Awesome Music: The soundtrack. It really captures the mood of the settings.
  • Geordie is introduced watching the slums being demolished to "House of the Rising Sun" by The Animals.
  • Geordie walks down Soho with "Pretty Flamingo" by Manfred Mann.
  • The fantastic use of "Don't Look Back in Anger" by Oasis during the final scenes.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Nicky's father Felix later develops Alzheimer's Disease. In Real Life, Christopher Eccleston later lost his father to Alzheimer's and he has supported research into it.
  • Geordie ends up a homeless vagrant. Daniel Craig revealed that he slept on park benches when he was a struggling actor in London.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • At least one person has compared Nicky with current Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.
  • Geordie's stance on politics isn't that far off from Daniel Craig's real views.
  • The four main actors have now reached the age of the characters in the final scene and have aged a lot better than they have.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Benny Barrett is a Soho porn baron, yet is one of the most likeable characters due to his straightfoward nature and charisma. There are people in the series far worse than him like Geordie's drunken abusive father, the slimy toad Colin Butler and Christopher Collins, whose neglect of his own son leads to his death.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Colin Butler was already a slimy git, but his smear campaign against Nicky disgusts his fellow Tories enough to give him the sack.
  • Christopher Collins harshly driving his own son away and indirectly causing his death. And he most likely won't even care about that.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Nicky puts his own needs ahead of others, takes incriminating evidence exposing dodgy deals and does nothing with it, declines to help Mary and Tosker's housing problem and has an affair with a student.
• Values Resonance: Following the radio adaptation in 2022, Peter Flannery told The Guardian that the series is still "depressingly relevant".
• The Woobie: Geordie, Nicky and Mary. Also, Felix when he develops Alzheimer's Disease.

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