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,
Polly and the Pirates former crew of the famous Pirate Queen Meg Malloy. The setting is an alternate-history version of San Francisco in the second half of the 19th century. Polly's boarding school is a house boat that looks like a huge Victorian-style home. The Golden Age of Piracy is now over, but Claudio, the son of the pirate king, is trying to follow in his father's footsteps. The series was followed up by a graphic novel, illustrated by Robbi Rodriguez: Polly and the Pirates Polly and the Pirates is an independent comic book series written and illustrated by Ted Naifeh (with volume 2