Clock-in

A powerful new historical drama written by John Fay and set in rural-industrial 19th-century England. Based on the extensive historical archive of Quarry Bank Mill in Cheshire, the series depicts Britain at a time when the industrial revolution is changing the country beyond recognition. In the 1830s, children as young as nine work 12-hour shifts in the mills, and the new class of mill-owning families prosper. But the so-called 'white slaves of England' are about to take their lives into their own hands for the first time as outsiders with new ideas enter their world. A third of the workforce at Quarry Bank are apprentices: many are youngsters sold by workhouses to the Gregs, the mill owners. The apprentices have no right to leave the mill until adulthood; an arrangement that bears an uncomfortable similarity to the slaves who the Gregs own in the Caribbean. In this bold new drama, the apprentices are led by Kerrie Hayes as the real life Esther Price, a feisty Liverpudlian well documented in Quarry Bank's archives, who risks her own position to stand up for justice. The arrival of Daniel Bate - a progressive young engineer with a troubled past - proves a catalyst, and the political firebrand John Doherty seems to offer the workers the possibility of a new and better future. Just before dawn the bell wakes the young apprentices for another 12-hour shift at Quarry Bank Mill. Ruthless overseer Charlie Crout forces apprentice Miriam to leave the factory floor with him against her will. His absence leads to a serious accident, but can the apprentices risk sticking together to reveal Crout's negligence to the patriarchal mill owner, Samuel Greg? A few miles away in Manchester - ahead of his appearance before the Parliamentary Commission on factory legislation - Samuel's ambitious son Robert Greg visits a debtor's prison, where he recruits young mechanic Daniel Bate, who is talented but has been blacklisted for political activity...