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Brass is a British comedy-drama television series produced by Granada Television for ITV and, later, Channel 4. Brass was a satire of working-class historical dramas of the 1970s and American supersoaps like Dallas and Dynasty, set largely in Utterley, a fictional Lancashire mining town in the 1930s. The humour was purposefully maintained dry, employing intricate wordplay and subtle criticism on popular culture, which was unusual for ITV comedies at the time. Brass is northern English slang for both "money" and "aggression." The programme also joyfully spoofed the 1977 Granada TV dramatisation of Dickens' Hard Times, which also starred Timothy West. The series, produced by John Stevenson and Julian Roach, revolved around two fighting families: the rich Hardacres and the poor, working-class Fairchilds, who resided in a modest terraced house rented from the Hardacre empire. The Hardacres were led by the cruel self-made billionaire Bradley, who championed Thatcherite rhetoric while devising many illogical plans to make his enterprises more efficient so he could sack workers, and his alcoholic aristocratic wife Lady Patience. The Fairchilds were led by the stern "Red" Agnes, who promoted militant socialist rhetoric throughout the Hardacre mine, mill, and munitions industry, and her doltish, forelock-tugging husband George, who is ruled by his wife and his boss. In an unexpected twist, Agnes was also Bradley Hardacre's mistress.