South Yorkshire TV star Dean Andrews swaps Emmerdale for real Yorkshire
Andrews has never hidden his affection for his home county
For years, television viewers knew Dean Andrews as the man making trouble in the Yorkshire Dales.
Now the Rotherham-born actor is back in the Yorkshire countryside – but this time there isn't a script, a fictional village or a soap storyline.
It is the real thing.
Andrews is the familiar voice of Channel 5's Our Great Yorkshire Life, which returned to our screens on Friday, for its fourth series celebrating the people, places and passions of the county.
It is a neat change of scenery for an actor who played Will Taylor in Emmerdale for half a decade.
Andrews made his Emmerdale debut in 2019 as Will, a former prisoner whose arrival in the Dales brought him into storylines involving Harriet Finch, Cain Dingle, Kim Tate and his daughter Dawn.
He remained with the soap until December 2024, when Will died after a heart attack.
But while Will Taylor's time in the fictional Yorkshire Dales ended, Andrews has continued to lend his voice to Yorkshire's real-life stories.
And that makes him an especially fitting narrator for Our Great Yorkshire Life.
Andrews has never hidden his affection for his home county. When the programme began in 2022, he summed up his feelings simply: “I love Yorkshire, I’ve been lucky enough to live and work here and I think people love the people and the beautiful scenery.”
It is precisely those two things – the community and the landscape – which have become the show's trademark.
The series travels around Yorkshire looking at the lives of the people who live and work here, from its countryside and villages to its towns, cities and coastline.
Andrews has been the programme's narrator from the beginning, giving the stories a voice that is unmistakably Yorkshire.
His affection for the county is not simply a professional one.
Dean still lives locally and has a particular love of the east coast, even keeping a caravan at Flamborough. He describes Yorkshire as “God's own country” and its 5.5 million inhabitants as people of “passion”, “pride” and “hard graft”.
That sense of pride runs through Our Great Yorkshire Life, which also features another former Emmerdale actor, Gaynor Faye, who attempted to overcome a childhood fear of horses.
Andrews's career began long before Emmerdale, with singing on the Rotherham club circuit and cruise ships before Ken Loach gave him his breakthrough acting role in The Navigators.
His subsequent career brought roles in Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes, Last Tango in Halifax and many other television dramas.
But for the actor, Yorkshire has always been more than a backdrop.
Andrews once lived in the Masons Arms on Wellgate in the town centre, where his parents worked as publicans, and he still lives in the area today.
So after around five years playing a character in the fictional Yorkshire Dales, there is something rather fitting about Andrews lending his voice to the people and places of the real thing.