i loved the programme - i was a very sad teenager! i spent a lot of time off school ill in my teens so always tried to catch up with it.
i hated the blairs in the store but my favourites were mrs mack, inverdarroch (who married that evil bitch of a nurse!) and big morag.
it used to tickle me that they filmed the outside shots in luss and when they showed the sets the crofts were massive inside, and the shop!

OMG just reading these posts has certainly taken me back lol. I used to love that show. I think most Scottish actors have been in Take The High Road. I am certainly going to take a peek at YouTube

I loved Mrs Mack and her endless supply of hats, she was such an old busybody and a witch - but she did soften much later on in the series.

Loved Gary McDonald and Davie Sneddon as well.

I would really love to see the show rerun - even if some of the episodes are missing.

Surely, it is possible to find the missing episodes. What about Sky Soap? ABC Australia? ITV stations other than STV?

I remember the first scene when it was shown on Granada

Dougal had come back from his wifes funeral and was sat on the chair I think she died having his son.And Grace his mam was talking to him but he had his head bowed

Laineyt

Episode 5. Amy Lachlan appeared in the first two episodes. We learn of her death at the end of the second.

I've been watching the early episodes on STV player. The quality of the writing in the early episodes was so much higher than what it eventually became. Mrs Cunningham, Grace, Dougal and Isabel where all good characters as was the original Factor Alan MacKintyre. When it started there seemed to be so much more location filming than by the time they stopped making it. You definitely get the sense of the estate being a remote place out in the Highlands. The Lachlans, Big Morag and the MacNeil's all stay up in Ardvain which is meant to be wild and cut off but by the time it finished you never heard Ardvain mentioned I felt the shows location became less important to the story whereas before there had been much more focus on the struggles of life in a Highland estate or croft.
STV should never have axed but they seem to feel drama for Scotland is no longer viable. They said they would replace High Road at the time of the cancellation and gave us 12 episodes of High Times and that is it. Since then nothing. Shareholder profits come first I guess.

I agree that the writing was much better earlier on, or more that it was far weaker by the very late stages of the show. It's possible that the loss of networked status and, lack of money from central ITV and possibly holding onto some characters for too long killed the series. Ardvain disappeared from the series in 1992 when the main Lachlan family departed, although Grace remained in the series. Something else which is different in the earlier half of the series is the bigger focus on families. By the very late stages, the core cast was made up of individuals and couples. The introduction of Chic Cherry in 1995 did nothing to help the show, and I don't think he was too popular. Most soaps axe characters the audience dislike, but they kept him!

Agreed C hic Cherry really annoyed me, he was a character I couldnt take to.

I thought the actor was awful. Much like Jockie, Chic's family joined him a year after he had been in the show and his wife wanted to buy the cottage from PC Kirk. They did a moonlight flit when they realised the couldn't afford it. Hurrah, I thought. That's the end of Chic...but he returned. Grrr.

I didn't like Chic either. I didn't feel like he fitted into Glendarroch. I'm Glaswegian but I felt his type of Glaswegian humour wasn't for Take The High Road. His family weren't likeable either although I actually quite liked the wife, Senga I think she was called. The actress now plays Gina in River City. Jockie MacDonald I wasn't keen on either and I thought the character of Effie was stronger when she was chasing men. Once she married Jockie I felt she wasn't as funny. They wrote Sam Hagen out for being too 90's which I thought was daft. She was a good character and interesting as well. I remember being a kid and really disliking her when she first came into it and was having the affair with Greg Ryder behind Fiona's back but as time went you saw different sides to her which made her more interesting. One thing that is interesting to watch and compare from the early years to the latter years is the portrayal of Mrs Mack. In the early years she's much more of a witch and less of a parody. It's also good to see how the character of Fiona developed over the years. I just remember her when she was Fiona Ryder but watching the early years you see how she was so fragile.

And when Mrs Mack went away for a while and her sister Florence turned up. Same actress

She really was a lot nastier in the early episodes. I'd say the last really vicious thing she did was organise the petition against Carol and Tee Jay marrying in the church. Her way of speaking in her first two years in the show was quite different to what it became later on. Sounds a lot closer to Gwyneth Guthrie's own speaking voice and makes her sound harder.

I was really a fan of the early years of the show from what i remember of it!!
The storylining was very strong back then and was quite current for the time.
Loved the character of Fiona Cunningham but i cant recall how she left the series? Did she go missing? Then didnt greg sell the estate to sam hagen?
I remember when sam hagen arrived, she blazed through Glendaroch in a white sports car!
Didnt she go on to have an affair with davie sneddon?

I remember a young Alan Cummings playing a very dangerous guy who tried to kill poor Carol by sawing down a tree in front of her

I could talk for ages here about other stories!

Fiona took an overdose in the wake of her husband's affair with Sam Hagen. She recovered from it, but disappeared from Glendarroch with her son. She sold the estate to Lord Strath Morris, her previous mortal enemy. This horrified everyone, but it turned out that his son Iain would be the one to come to Glendarroch. The following year, LSM died, so Iain returned to his own estate and sold Glendarroch. The new owner turned out to be Sam, who had been absent from the proceedings for some months.

Not sure about the death of Jimmy but the death of the Lady Laird was an end of season cliffhanger as TtHR wasnt 52 weeks of the year at that time.

There was a four month or so gap between the car crash episode and the following episode.

Other instances of this include the vanishing of Ken the garage owner between seasons which was written as him reverting back to drinking and the infamous cast decimation of 1990.

The changes between series were so abrupt (the death of Sir John, characters moving intogether, characters being dropped totally like the newspaper editor (and indeed the entire newspaper) and Lorna. Which resulted in STV doing a 5 minute promo that aired in the week prior to High Roads return in which Mrs Mack explained all of the changes direct to the camera.

The actress who played Mrs Mack was in a spoof documentary with Rik Mayall 'Kevin Turvey-The Man Behind The Green Door' she played Kevin's mum

Hi Quincy,

What can you tell us about the cast decimination of the early 90s? I was young enough back then and remember some cast leaving but not all the details!

Thanks!

I'm assuming that episode 728 (the first to use the electric guitar theme) was the first 1990 produced episode. Bob and Alice Taylor seemed to disappear in the period leading to this episode, without an actual exit storyline. Hamish McNeil also made his final on screen appearance on this period. I suspect that in his case, the actor was unwilling to return, as they kept the rest of the McNeil family. Hamish continued to be referred to in dialogue and near the end of 1990, it was revealed he had taken to drink and was hitting Mairi. He left her soon after.


In 1992, STV broadcast a highlights programme called Take the Highlights. This was shown on the Wednesday of the week the 1000th episode aired. This actually contained Jimmy's death scene. STV have said that they cannot find this programme in their archive.

Can anyone give any information about the screening pattern on the various ITV regions? Eg days, times, when each region commenced/completed/dropped the series.

Who were the posh couple in the show i think they were the only ones who did not have a Scottish accent

What era are we talking about?

Eric and Joanna Ross-Gifford?

Please don't bump such old threads.