Playground, which makes Channel 5’s All Creatures Great and Small, has announced the cast of The Hardacres, a sweeping rags-to-riches TV drama saga that follows the fortunes of the working-class Hardacre family as they move from a grimy fish dock to a vast country estate in 1890s Yorkshire.

The six 60-minute episodes, which are sadly not being filmed in Yorkshire but instead in Dublin and Wicklow, Ireland, are based on CL Skelton’s best-selling series of novels The Hardacre Saga.