Channel 4 have produced another excellent period piece.

Episode 1.

‘The Mill’ story lines are drawn from events from mills across the area and time. Set in 1830 the early Victorian era.

The unlucky Quarry Bank Mill slaves, staff, workers (based real people’s lives) in the throws of the industrial revolution and the change that is too come.

The first episode shows the appalling conditions the children had to work under. It’s interesting considering the current ‘zero hour contracts’ have taken away many of rights that so many reformers worked so hard to gain.

We see how little control they have over their own lives, how open to both physical and sexual abuse they are and how at odds the mill owner and his wife are. He business man, she pious Christian.

In the mill be find out the children as young as nine work 12-hour shifts for a new class of mill-owning families they stop at nothing to make more and more money.

But these ‘white slaves of England’ are about to kick back and are led by feisty apprentices are led by Esther Price, and with the arrival of Daniel Bate, young engineer and an agitator proves a catalyst for change.

This is very, well written and researched.

You can catch it here.