Take the High Road

In 1979, the ITV network decided that its daytime schedule would be improved by the inclusion of a soap opera set in Scotland.[1] At the time the only soap opera being made by any of the three Scottish regional companies was Scottish Television's Garnock Way, set in a Central Belt mining community not far from Glasgow. It had been running in Scotland for three years and was very popular there, but the network rejected it because they wanted, in their words, "lots of Scotch Lochs and Hills".[2] It was decided that a new programme would be made which had its central core in a rural, lochside setting where the community were all part of an estate, comprising a village and several farms. As Michael Elder puts it, the series would have a romantic background against which a practical story of everyday events would be set.[3]

The original name for the fictitious estate and village was Glendhu and the proposed title for the programme was The Glendhu Factor. The network did not like this, because viewers in other ITV regions may have had difficulty with both the placename and the role of factor. As a result, the village was renamed Glendarroch. In Scotland, a factor is a person responsible for managing an estate, but the word has other connotations elsewhere.[2]

Location filming for a pilot had been done in and around the village of Luss on the western shore of Loch Lomond, overlooked by Ben Lomond. The popular song "The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond" contains the line, "O ye'll tak' the high road, and I'll tak' the low road" and so the title High Road, Low Road was suggested, but this was also dropped after someone pointed out that, said quickly, "it sounds like a Chinese takeaway".[2] After some debate it was decided that the series would be called Take the High Road.[2]

In late 1979, partly because of an ITV strike at the time, Garnock Way was axed, and production began on the new programme.[4][2]

Take the High Road was introduced as a replacement for Garnock Way, which contained very similar characters and actors to the original characters of Take the High Road. Some viewers were rather displeased about Garnock Way being axed; to help defuse some of the anger, Todd the garage mechanic, played by Bill Henderson, would suffer a nervous breakdown, and would move north to set up business on his own to help resolve his alcohol problems.[2]

Because of shortage of time and the wish to keep most of the existing actors, it did not follow this plan. The appointed producer Clarke Tait decided to have a scenario where Henderson's character, Todd, had his name changed to Ken Calder who happened to be a garage mechanic with a drink problem.[2]

The main writer was series creator Don Houghton. Many of the early scripts were written by Michael Elder, who also played Dr Wallace in the show. Books by the same name as the show were also produced by him. Until 1986, the series only broadcast 40 weeks of the year, with a break usually from January to the spring.

During the course of its existence, Take the High Road went through some major changes and face lifts. Perhaps the most noticeable was the renovation of Blair's store: at first, everything was kept behind the counter as was once common practice; in series two, soon after Brian Blair was released from prison, it was transformed into a walk-around store. A few themes in Take the High Road were broadly in line with Scottish culture – for example, the relationships between crofters like Dougal Lachlan, villagers like storekeeper Isabel Blair, the "lady laird" Elizabeth Cunningham and the estate factor, originally Alan McIntyre. The Protestant religion was a recurring traditional theme and the series highlighted the remoteness of the village and estate. Several storylines focused on the difficulties of access faced by agencies such as the health service and the police, as when an RAF helicopter had to be summoned to Ardvain for Grace Lachlan following her near-fatal heart attack.

Elizabeth's family had historically (but no longer) owned the estate, the village and the neighbouring crofts and farms. Though still resident in the "Big House", Elizabeth protected the interests of her people but lack of revenue had forced her to sell the estate to Max Langemann's multinational business consortium. As the series began, Elizabeth was battling to resist Langemann's ruthless plan to convert Glendarroch into a leisure resort for his rich clientele. In 2005, this scenario was echoed in real life when American businessman Donald Trump bought an Aberdeenshire estate to build a controversial golf resort.[5]

Despite her resistance to Langemann, Elizabeth understood that modernity was coming and was willing to accept it on terms favourable to the estate and its people. Her traditional mindset, however, contrasted sharply with those of her successors. In the first series, realising the need for new ideas to raise revenue, Elizabeth encouraged her daughter Fiona to join forces with Isabel's son Jimmy in launching a water-skiing enterprise on the loch.

In March 1990, the series was revamped in a bid to attract a younger audience, which resulted in some outcry about the changes and a belief that new sets had taken away the authenticity of a Scottish village.[6] However, within six months, the changes were hailed as a success and enabled stronger story lines, and the introduction of five new male characters.

During its run, Take the High Road was always one of the highest-rated television programmes in Scotland, and had an extremely loyal following throughout the rest of the UK. Indeed, when the series was cancelled by the ITV Network, so many protests were received from viewers in England that some ITV regions reinstated the programme. Starting from 22 July 1994, the series' name was changed to just High Road, until it was cancelled in April 2003.

Take the High Road was the only soap for the ITV network which was not made by one of the "Big Five" companies.[lower-alpha 1] This helped to give Scotland a place on the network and also provide sufficient revenue to help STV to produce more programmes for ITV and Channel 4.

Dates are for Scottish Television, which on some occasions was ahead of the ITV network daytime showing.

• Series 1: 19 February 1980 – 28 May 1980: episodes 1–30[7]
• Series 2: 14 October 1980 – 7 January 1981: episodes 31–56[8]
• Series 3: 7 April 1981 – 2 July 1981: episodes 57–82[9][8][10]
• Series 4: 6 October 1981 – 18 March 1982: episodes 83–126[11][10]
• Series 5: 24 August 1982 – 23 December 1982: episodes 127–162[12]
• Series 6: 5 July 1983 – 20 March 1984: episodes 163–234[13]
• Series 7: 4 September 1984 – 7 February 1985: episodes 235–276[14]
• Series 8: 14 May 1985 – 28 November 1985: episodes 277–334[15]
• Series 9: 18 March 1986 – 18 December 1986 to episodes 335–415
• 3 March 1987 – 27 April 2003: episodes 416–1517.

From February 1987 onward, the series was broadcast all year round twice a week. In May 1993 the series become weekly. Later during the run, however, there were several gaps during which the series was not shown, although the storylines continued uninterrupted each time the series resumed. First major gap was from 12 September to 22 October 2000; from 16 April to 12 May 2001; from June to August 2001; from 24 September to 27 October 2001; from 18 February to 6 April 2002; from June to September 2002; and in February 2003.

Take the High Road was broadcast by all ITV companies when it started in 1980. Nearly all regions broadcast Take the High Road during the daytime, except for Scottish Television who broadcast the soap in the early evenings around 7.00pm, instead of Emmerdale. From 1984 Border Television moved the series to a peak-time slot. Grampian Television did the same too in September 1987.[16]

During 1993, the new ITV network centre was reviewing all long-standing series made by ITV companies, the issues of the series being dropped becoming even more apparent as the regions south of the border were months behind in their transmissions in Scotland.[17] On 2 June 1993, Marcus Plantin, ITV's network director, announced the termination of Take The High Road from September 1993, as 'ITV's statisticians believed English audiences have had enough'.[18] This resulted in public protest, as many believed that without ITV companies south of the border, the series had no chance.[19] The issue was raised in parliament under early day motions, and the Daily Record newspaper held a protest as well.[20]

By the end of June, Scottish Television decided to continue producing the series mainly for the Scottish market, on a weekly basis.[21] Shortly afterwards nearly all the ITV companies decided to keep the series going except for Carlton, Central, Tyne Tees and Yorkshire, who all dropped the series from 7 September 1993.[22] Carlton reinstated the series from 16 October 1993,[23] and Central did the same on 5 November 1993 after viewers complained about the show being dropped in the first place. Only two companies refused to reinstate the series: Tyne Tees Television and Yorkshire Television,[24] although both finally brought the series back in early 1996, starting from where they left off.

From 1995 onwards the number of ITV areas broadcasting the soap gradually reduced, however some did complete the series:

• Anglia Television and Meridian television until Christmas 1995
• Yorkshire, Tyne Tess, HTV and Granada Television until Christmas 1997.
• Carlton Television until Christmas 1998
• Central and Westcountry until Friday 24 May 2002.
• Border Television completed the series in 2003.
• UTV completed the series in 2004.

Take the High Road was broadcast in a number of countries around the world, including, Canada, United States, New Zealand. In Australia, it was broadcast on ABC1, In Ireland, the series was broadcast during the daytime five days a week from the beginning on RTÉ One. As episodes caught up with the UK transmissions, the number of episodes broadcast per week was reduced.

Take the High Road was repeated on Sky Soap; the episodes shown in early 1997 were from the beginning, and 1989 episodes were being shown when the channel ended in April 1999. Early episodes from about 1994–95 were shown on Sky Scottish in 1997/98. It was repeated briefly on Life One from February 2008. This channel began with episode 1000 from 1992 but it ceased broadcasting after only six weeks having shown only four episodes.

In the autumn of 2010, nearly every episode (except for 23) were added to YouTube by Scottish Television, making the series accessible to viewers across the world. The series was removed from YouTube when it began repeating on STV new local channel called STV Glasgow from 3 June 2014 broadcasting one episode each weekday, with omnibus at the weekends, The series was also shown on STV Edinburgh from its launch in January 2015. When STV Glasgow & STV Edinburgh were renamed STV2, the series was moved to a Saturday morning between 9am and 11am until June 2018, when the STV2 channel closed down. STV continued to make the series available online via the STV Player, from the same point where STV2 left off. Five episodes were uploaded every week from 8 July 2018 on Sundays. From 14 September 2019 this increased to five episodes each Saturday and five episodes each Sunday. This run ended after the final episodes were uploaded on 18 April 2020.