ABSTRACT
Even those with a particular fondness for Catherine Cookson might have struggled with the schedule for the UK television channel, Yesterday, on Sunday, March 14, 2010. For on this day, the channel, which mostly broadcasts historical documentaries, devoted nearly all of its afternoon and evening output to repeats of small-screen adaptations of Cookson novels; in this instance, The Girl (1996), Colour Blind (1998), and The Moth (1997). The channel’s website pages gave prominence to its season of “Cookson Sundays,” proudly inviting viewers to tune into a “day of pure escapism and indulgence” in the “passionate, poignant world of Catherine Cookson.”1 The website’s subsection on Cookson-which hailed its assumed audience by “calling all ye old romantics”—also featured information on how the author’s own “rags-to-riches” story was reminiscent of one of her own plots, and a quiz on the writer’s life and work. The slightly arch tone of this promotional material reveals much about the reputation of the Cookson television cycle a full decade after it had come to a rather unceremonious halt. Between 1989 and 2000, a series of 18 adaptations of her novels were broadcast on ITV, the predominant British commercial channel.2 The information on the Yesterday website not only places emphasis upon their nostalgic, even kitsch appeal, but also reiterates common assumptions about their narrative and tonal similarities, and their address to a primarily female audience: a promise was made of “tyrannical fathers, beautiful daughters, conspiring servants and-of course-a rather delicious selection of period-garbed hunks.”
