Land Girls is a British television period drama series, first broadcast on BBC One on 7 September 2009. Land Girls was created by Roland Moore and commissioned by the BBC to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War. The programme was BBC Daytime's first commission of a period drama. Land Girls was filmed in and around the city of Birmingham. The first series features Summer Strallen, Christine Bottomley, Jo Woodcock and Becci Gemmell as four girls doing their bit for Britain in the Women's Land Army during the war.
Land Girls won the "Best Daytime Programme" at the 2010 Broadcast Awards and in that same year the BBC announced that it had commissioned a second series, comprising five episodes. Woodcock and Gemmell reprised their roles as Bea and Joyce and Seline Hizli made her debut as new girl, Connie Carter. The second series began airing from 17 January 2011 and two months later BBC Daytime Controller, Liam Keelan, renewed Land Girls for a third series. It began airing from 7 November 2011.
Plot
The titular Land Girls are Nancy Morrell (Summer Strallen), Joyce Fisher (Becci Gemmell), Bea Holloway (Jo Woodcock) and Annie Barratt (Christine Bottomley), who have arrived at the Hoxley Estate to begin their new working lives at the Pasture Farm—owned by Frederick Finch (Mark Benton)—and the opulent manor occupied by Lord and Lady Hoxley (Nathaniel Parker and Sophie Ward). The women have joined the Women's Land Army for different reasons but share the same goal – to help win the war. Nancy is forced into joining the Women's Land Army when female conscription begins. Joyce wants to serve her country like her husband. Annie signs up herself and her younger sister Bea so they can escape their abusive father. As the girls adapt to their new surroundings and begin the hard work, their lives begin to change. About a year later, Bea is married to Billy (Liam Boyle) and Joyce is still working at the farm. The brash Connie Carter (Seline Hizli) arrives to do her duty, and American industrialist Jack Gillespie (Clive Wood) comes to the Hoxley Estate on business. The third series once again focuses on the lives of the land girls at the Hoxley estate. After the local military hospital is bombed, the patients and staff relocate to Hoxley Manor. Connie is engaged to Reverend Henry Jameson (Liam Garrigan; Gwilym Lee) and Iris Dawson (Lou Broadbent) arrives at the farm.
Conception and development
Land Girls was conceived by Roland Moore, who wanted to cover the subject matter of the Women's Land Army in an ensemble drama. Once he had the idea, Moore set about creating the characters of Nancy, Joyce, Annie and Bea and devising story ideas from them. He told a reporter from the Writers' Guild of Great Britain, "In the 1940s, class was obviously much more of an issue than it is now, so it made sense to capitalise on this factor by ensuring that the girls came from a mix of working and middle classes. During development of the series, Will Trotter (executive producer) suggested adding some upper class characters; so Lord and Lady Hoxley were added. This fleshed out the class element of the series and enabled us to devise stories that threw a spotlight onto the great social leveller that was World War Two."
Moore named the four main characters after his grandmother and great-aunts, which made the names authentic for the time period. He also read accounts from real life land girls to make sure his stories were believable. The writer decided to set each forty-five-minute episode three months apart to give the series "a unique format". He also wanted the series to be fast-paced. As well as focusing on the land girls, Moore decided to "shed light on other less well-known aspects of the home front", including segregation of black and white American troops, the hunt for Nazi sympathisers and the use of prisoners of war as labourers.