''Sorted'' is a six-part

BBC television drama BBC television dramas have been produced and broadcast since even before the public service company had an officially established television broadcasting network in the United Kingdom. As with any major broadcast network, drama forms an importan ...

series that follows the personal and professional lives of several postmen. It was first broadcast in 2006 on

BBC One BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's Flagship (broadcasting), flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News ...

and

BBC HD BBC HD was a 24-hour high-definition television channel provided by the BBC. The service was initially run as a trial from 15 May 2006 until becoming a full service on 1 December 2007 before its discontinuation on 26 March 2013. It broadcast ...

. The series was created by Danny Brocklehurst, whose previous credits including ''

Clocking Off ''Clocking Off'' is a British television drama series which was broadcast on BBC One for four series from 2000 to 2003. It was produced for the BBC by the independent Red Production Company, and created by Paul Abbott. It was effectively an ...

'', '' The Stretford Wives'' and '' Shameless''. The series, set in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of City of Salford, Salford to ...

but filmed in Stockport, and stars

Neil Dudgeon Neil is a masculine name of Gaelic and Irish origin. The name is an anglicisation of the Irish '' Niall'' which is of disputed derivation. The Irish name may be derived from words meaning "cloud", "passionate", "victory", "honour" or "champion".. ...

, Will Mellor,

Hugo Speer Hugo Alexander Speer (born 17 March 1968) is an English actor and director. Early life and education Hugo Speer was born in Harrogate in the then West Riding of Yorkshire and educated at Harrogate Grammar School. He studied acting at the Arts E ...

, Cal MacAninch and Dean Lennox Kelly. The series achieved an average of four million viewers throughout its run, and was the only BBC drama series that year that achieved stronger ratings for its final episode than its first. Despite this – and the largely good critical response – the BBC announced in October 2006 that it would not recommission the programme. The name of the series has a double meaning – postal workers 'sort' mail for delivery and "sorted" is a common British

slang Slang is vocabulary (words, phrases, and usage (language), linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in spoken conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of p ...

word for accomplishment or good order.

Production

Producer Steve Lightfoot said of the series; "The warmth, wit and camaraderie of these very ordinary blokes ensures they can see each other through whatever life throws at them. It's very real, with powerful, emotional storylines which will hook viewers in to their world. The sorting office is where the boys come together at the start of every day. They're a tight knit group, but with their shift finishing in the afternoon, there's plenty of time to see what they get up to away from the Post Office. There are storylines which run through the series but each episode focuses in on one of the six." Writer Danny Brocklehurst noted; "What this was supposed to be was very much in that ''

'' or '' The Lakes'' kind of vein of telling stories about people who actually – other than in soaps – don't make it onto television that often. It's about ordinary, working-class lives. I wanted to tell stories with dignity and humanity and truth about ordinary people, and even though the stories are not always life and death, they are really important to those characters. I think that there's not enough of that type of telly on these days. People want to sit down at the end of the day and watch something that they see a bit of themselves in." "It's been really refreshing

o write a series starring predominantly male characters O, or o, is the fifteenth letter and the fourth vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''o'' (pronounced ), plu ...

because you can tap into that side of you that you understand – because obviously I am a man! I've never really written blokey blokes before in this kind of way. There are thousands of postmen in the UK – they're part of everyone's lives. I interviewed a lot of postmen just to try and get a flavour of the world and to try and really understand it and how it all works. I knew nothing about this before, even though I have an uncle who's a postman, but I got told some funny little stories about things that happened; one of which made it into the show – the battle of the radios in the first episode. That's from real life."

Cast

– Charlie King *

– Harry Goodwin * Cal MacAninch – Radge * Dean Lennox Kelly – Dex * Will Mellor – Barmpot * Mark Womack – Jack * Eva Pope – Kathy * Nina Sosanya – Nancy * Tracy-Ann Oberman – Amy * Maria Doyle Kennedy – Roisin * Josephine Butler – Abigail * Mark Fountain – Aiden * Julian Walsh – Hancock * Katie Ross – Jess

Episodes

External links

* *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sorted (Tv Series) 2000s British drama television series 2006 British television series debuts 2006 British television series endings BBC high definition shows BBC television dramas Television shows set in Manchester 2000s British television miniseries English-language television shows Television series by BBC Studios