ON THIS DAY: 1996: Yorkshire mining movie Brassed Off hits cinemas for first time

Stephen Tompkinson and Pete Postlethwaite in Brassed Off.

placeholder image — Stephen Tompkinson and Pete Postlethwaite in Brassed Off.

It was a movie that combined tragedy and comedy, politics and music - and brought the plight of South Yorkshire miners on to cinema screens world-wide.

Exactly twenty years ago today, on November 1, 1996, Brassed Off was released and, excuse the pun, it arrived with little fanfare.

Written and directed by Mark Herman and starring Pete Postlethwaite, Tara Fitzgerald and Ewan McGregor, it told the troubles faced by a colliery brass band following the closure of their pit and was loosely based on the story of the Grimethorpe Colliery Band and their own struggles against the closure programme.

Gradually, word spread about the movie and it became a box office smash and has gone on to become one of the most highly-regarded British movies of recent years, managing to weave a plot featuring not only some comic touches but also a host of harrowing scenes that helped spell out the misery of Margaret Thatcher’s decimation of the region’s mining industry.

The film is set in Grimley’ in the mid-1990s and the film was largely shot in Grimethorpe although several scenes were shot in Doncaster town centre including a scene shot outside Doncaster Minster.