The Liver Birds sequence for series one also exists but in poor quality. The first series was stopped after four episodes because Polly James' hectic schedule—working every evening on "Anne of Green Gables" in the West End, then rehearsing all day for the TV show—was proving too much. By the time James was available again, Pauline Collins had moved to LWT's "Upstairs, Downstairs". The producer Sydney Lotterby remembered having worked with Nerys Hughes on "The Likely Lads" and, wrongly believing the Welsh actress was from Liverpool, asked her to read for a part in "The Liver Birds". (Neither actress really had a Liverpool
All the Birds in the Sky "All the Birds in the Sky" a "relationship story". Anders cited Cory Doctorow's "Little Brother" (2008) and Jo Walton's "Among Others" (2011) as inspiration for the Patricia and Laurence coming of age sections of the novel. In a review in "SF Signal", science fiction critic James Wallace Harris described "All the Birds in the Sky" as "three weddings: a marriage of science fiction and fantasy, ... YA and adult, and ... genre and literary." He said Anders manages this "with a light touch, producing a novel that is a joy to read, yet is as deep as you're willing to