The BEST episodes of South Riding
Every episode of South Riding ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of South Riding!
The lives and loves of a 1930s Yorkshire town explored in a passionate tale of politics in small places, written by Andrew Davies, starring David Morrissey and Anna Maxwell Martin. South Riding charts the story of Sarah Burton's homecoming to Yorkshire in 1934 after twenty years teaching in London and the Empire. After a fiery interview with a conservative interview panel, outspoken Sarah takes up her first headmistress-ship at Kiplington High School for Girls, determined to demonstrate to her new pupils that the future is theirs for the taking.
#1 - Episode 1
Season 1 - Episode 1 - Aired 2/20/2011
South Riding charts the story of Sarah Burton's homecoming to Yorkshire in 1934 after twenty years teaching in London and the Empire. After a fiery interview with a conservative interview panel, outspoken Sarah takes up her first headmistress-ship at Kiplington High School for Girls, determined to demonstrate to her new pupils that the future is theirs for the taking. Change is on her agenda straight away - of the curriculum, of teaching methods, of the rundown buildings. Her hurry to transform the South Riding brings her into immediate conflict with landowner Robert Carne, a man tragically trapped in his past, and wins her the friendship of Joe Astell, a reforming socialist councillor bent on improving the lives of the Yorkshire poor by means of a spanking new housing estate to replace the rural slum known as The Shacks. As term begins, Shacks girl Lydia Holly arrives at the High School, with talent to burn and domestic circumstances that make it almost impossible for her to realise her dreams. Meanwhile, Sarah is brought closer to Carne through his highly-strung and delicate daughter, Midge.
#2 - Episode 3
Season 1 - Episode 3 - Aired 3/6/2011
After a highly charged encounter in a Manchester hotel, Sarah and Carne return to the South Riding more at odds with each other than ever, as Andrew Davies's adaptation of Winifred Holtby's rich and panoramic portrait of a Yorkshire community in the Thirties concludes. Sarah, humiliated that Carne is avoiding her, distracts herself with work, her priority being to find a way to get Lydia Holly back to school and away from a future of domestic drudgery looking after her father and younger siblings.
#3 - Episode 2
Season 1 - Episode 2 - Aired 2/27/2011
Sarah’s ambitions for her school find their focus in Lydia Holly, the gifted oldest child of a labourer and his wife who live with six children in the nearby shanty town.