The Liver Birds and Series 1 starred Pauline Collins as Dawn and Polly James as Beryl Hennessey. In Series 2, Nerys Hughes debuted as Sandra Hutchinson, replacing Dawn for the rest of the programme's run. The Beryl-and-Sandra pairing is generally regarded as the programme's best period. Beryl was the more 'common' one, while Sandra was soft-spoken and more refined, due to the influence of her snobbish, overbearing mother (Mollie Sugden). Carla Lane drew on her own mother for the character – "Mrs Hutchinson, I think she was my mother. I'm sure she was my mother". Beryl's 'common' mother (the Hennesseys live in Bootle,
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