From the makers of All Creatures Great and Small, The Hardacres is back with more Yorkshire family drama

“I know it's a bit of a cliche, but we do all adore each other,” says Julie Graham, who plays lovable trouble-maker Ma. “We did kind of leave the first series really feeling like a wonderful, messy, funny, dysfunctional family, and then when we came back, it felt like we'd only been away for a few weeks, and everybody fell into their places in the family. The whole experience was enjoyable from beginning to end.”

Made by Playground, which also makes All Creatures Great and Small, season two of The Hardacres was filmed over 10 weeks in Ireland.

It finds the Hardacre family in 1895, becoming slightly more accustomed to life amid the splendour of Hardacre Hall following their rapid rise in season one from working as fish gutties in the grimy docks of East Yorkshire.

The opening scene finds patriarch Sam Hardacre, played by Liam McMahon, embracing the modern world with characteristic hard-grafting gusto.

“It's very metaphorical that he's got his expensive shirt rolled up and his hands are oil deep in a generator in an outbuilding of Hardacre Hall,” says Liam.

“He's constantly trying to get back to the working class man that he is, although I was very conscious that, with the costume, we see him kind of embracing the new wealth. But he's got that fear whereby, as easy as it came, it can disappear again.”

Claire Cooper plays Mary Hardacre, who is Ma’s daughter and Sam’s wife, and mother to the three Hardacre children, Joe, Liza and Harry, played by Adam Little, Shannon Lavelle and Zak Ford Williams.

We find Mary, says Claire, in an interesting place. “She's content but she's not complacent, she's still very curious, she's growing but she's doing everything on her own terms now. There's a real lightness and confidence about her, which is fun to play.”

Whereas Ma never changes, says Julie. “She's happy to be clothed and housed and fed. She's ditched the lover and she's taken over his job, which is quite a feminist act, which I quite liked, so she's running the grounds of the big house, but I think it's probably just an excuse to get outside and away from the family, to do her own thing. Probably a bit of secret drinking.

“She's made a really nice bond with George, Lord Fitzherbert. He really needs to get out of the house because he needs to get away from the Kraken Lady Em.

“I just love working with Owen, he's just such a hoot. And I think it's just quite an unusual relationship to see on telly, especially, these kind of two older characters who just come from completely different backgrounds, but they're kind of bonded with a mutual annoyance of their families.

“I got a load of menopausal women getting in touch with me going, ‘I wanna be more Ma’. It’s so refreshing to see an older woman in a part that is just such a renegade and a rebel. So I had a lot of great reaction from women, especially older women.”

Michele Dotrice - unforgettable as Betty in Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em, and more recently starring in the much-loved TV movie A very Yorkshire Christmas, filmed in Knaresborough - joins the cast, in a key role as Lady Imelda Hansen, mother of Lady Emma Fitzherbert, and quite the force to be reckoned with.

“Lady Em is played by the wonderful Cathy Belton, who is ironically the nicest woman on the planet,” says Julie. “It's just a testament to her great acting that you think she's a bit of a monster. But then you meet the mother. And she's not what they expect at all.

“She's this twinkly, mischievous, actually playful, warm character. But, of course, she's hiding. She causes a lot of trouble. Ma and her forge this very strange friendship, but there's definitely an ulterior motive.

“Michele Dotrice was just the most perfect addition to the Hardacres because, as an actress and as a person, she slotted right in. She's gorgeous, she's warm, she's funny, she's hugely talented. I mean, she's a legend.”

The TV series is inspired by The Hardacre Saga novels by Clement Lister (CL) Skelton, who was born in Northumberland in 1919, and was a contemporary of James Herriot (Alf Wight was born in 1916 in Sunderland). Lister wrote the two Hardacre novels in the late 1970s, and died in 1979.

Although set in Yorkshire (Grimsby, Bridlington and Whitby are all mentioned in the books), The Hardacres was filmed in Dublin and Wicklow. Cabinteely House, on the outskirts of Dublin, was used for Hardacre Hall.

“The crews in Ireland are fantastic and that basically makes our job very very easy,” says Liam, who is from Northern Ireland.

Wakefield-born Claire is married to actor Emmett J Scanlan, recently seen striding about Broughton Hall near Skipton as wicked Squire Fairley in Channel 4’s A Woman of Substance.

“For me, going back to Ireland, it's home from home because my husband's Irish so I got to see the in-laws, the stepdaughter and the sister-in-law,” she says.

Glasgow-born Julie says: “The way they work reminds me a lot of work working in Scotland. It's a kind of similar Celtic sensibility - everybody pulls together but also everyone's there for the craic and nobody will tolerate any kind of diva behaviour or nonsense. Especially from Liam.”

Claire jokes: “He's a nightmare, Liam.”

Julie adds: “We filmed a lot in Dublin but we also filmed in beautiful Wicklow and there's something really magical about it.”

Ireland it may be, but the cast and producers do manage to make the drama feel rooted in Yorkshire.

“That's our job to bring it to life,” Claire says. “We're bringing some extraordinary talent. We've got Irish actors doing incredible Yorkshire accents, and we make the world very real.”

Julie says: “It's a beautiful landscape and I think that's what they've got in common.”

For Liam, the affinity between Ireland and Yorkshire is family. “From my experience, the North of England is very much family. That is the number one thing,” he says.

“And telling it like it is,” chips in Julie. “And grafters,” adds Claire. “The women would always muck in in Yorkshire, as would the women in Ireland.”

Themes of struggle and recession ensure that The Hardacres resonates with a modern audience.

“It does have a contemporary feel about it,” Claire says. “Women and men then, like now, are still juggling family identity and their own well-being, which I think is really current now. We're all juggling that, aren't we? And I think Mary realises the only real barriers in life are the society that they create, and we're all kind of battling through that and figuring life.”

Julie says: “There's still a big ‘them and us' situation going on. The wealth gap is becoming wider. And right now, it probably resonates with a lot of people that a lot of people have everything and most people have nothing.

“I love Sam because he's a real socialist character, and it's great to see that. And Mary, she's very much ahead of her time. She's a feminist and she's forging her own path. It's just before the suffragettes.

“In terms of the way it resonates now, the kind of rags to riches, I mean, that's why so many people play the lottery every week.”

Sam Hardacre is not a man to forget his humble beginnings. Liam says: “He's very much true to himself in terms of his working class roots and his tenacity to share the wealth with the community, make lives better for the community.”

Mary is as keen as her husband to help better the lives of the lower classes, and decides to set up reading classes. The 1890s were, as Julie points out, an interesting period of time.

“There was still that huge divide between rich and poor and educated and non-educated, and the fact that a lot of the staff in the house can't read and write,” she says.

“They weren't encouraged to be educated because they were workhorses, and it suited the upper classes and the middle classes for them not to be educated. What Mary does is quite radical.”

For series two, as the Hardacres become more confident with their new wealth, costume designer Kathy Strachan has pulled together a cleverly sumptuous wardrobe of looks for the whole cast.

“I learned I loved the fashion of the 1800s more,” says Liam. “I had really nice fitted suits.”

Claire says: “But you didn't have a corset on, Liam.”

Julie adds: “If we do season three, we're going to make you get into a corset 12 hours a day.”

As Mary, Claire gets to wear a series of striking outfits (look out for the lovely cycling gear in the first episode).

“They're gorgeous, they're wonderful, they're vibrant,” she says. “Kathy's got a real eye. She's known as the colour queen. She just knows how to put so much together.

“They've reinvented the characters a little bit. We've moved them on in time, which I think every show should do

“The hair's bigger, it's messier and it feels a little bit Wuthering Heights-y.

“They've found this liberation and a new voice, so I think the costumes reflect that as well.

“And of course, the hair. Wow. Sandra (Kelly - hair designer) was a wizard, honestly. She does it with her hands. She just creates masterpieces within seconds.”

Julie adds: “Ma, she's stuck in her ways, so she's not going to stray far from black or grey. But Kathy, she's so clever as a costume designer, she has added little nuances and touches to Ma - she's got these great gardening coats

“But it was such a joy, whenever Claire walked on to set in the morning, I just couldn't wait to see what she was going to be wearing next. And also Liza's moved on in terms of her costumes as well, and Adela - and all the men always looked absolutely gorgeous. The suits and the beautiful tweed materials that would have been woven in Yorkshire, absolutely gorgeous, and the colour palette against the backdrop of the house and outdoors. It's a visual feast.”

Liam says: “It was important to me that the costume changed to show that he was actually letting himself be taken with the money, and with the improvement in his situation It was visualised with the costume and with the hair, giving me more groomed facial hair.

“But underneath he's still the same working class man, so there was a fine line. The costume and the hair and make-up were essential tools for me to use.”

The Hardacre children have their share of twists in this series, as eldest son Joe struggles to prove himself, Liza’s head is turned by a handsome stranger, and Harry’s ambitions are transformed by an inspiring new tutor.

Claire says: “All these different characters are coming in, which I always feel helps elevate us and takes us to the next level.”

Liam says: “Everybody seems to go off on their own individual paths, exploring their own thing, but any time anything happens, like a crisis, they come back to the family as a unit.”

Julie says: “I think the thing that resonates most with audiences is that it's about family. Everyone's got a family in some form or another and all the kind of messiness and machinations that go on within that.”

The Hardacres returns to 5 on Thursday, May 14, at 9pm.