Brass (TV series) Brass (TV series) Brass was a British television comedy-drama, made by Granada Television for ITV and eventually Channel 4. "Brass" is northern English slang for "money" as well as for "effrontery". The series was set primarily in Utterley, a fictional Lancashire mining town in the 1930s, "Brass" satirized working-class period dramas of the 1970s, most significantly "When the Boat Comes In". Unusually for ITV comedies of the time, "Brass" eschewed a laugh track and utilized a dry sense of humour based in part on convoluted wordplay and subtle commentary on popular culture. The series also parodied the 1977 Granada TV
Treacle mining the joke. In Devon, on the eastern edge of Dartmoor, UK, the remains of mines that produced micaceous hematite, used as pounce to dust early ink to prevent smearing, are known locally as "treacle mines" since they show a glistening black residue that looks like treacle. The village of Sabden in Lancashire cultivated a considerable body of folklore about local treacle mining in the 1930s. The local newspaper helped foster the myth, publishing numerous stories about the fictional mines. The paper mills around Maidstone in Kent were known as "The Tovil Treacle Mines" by locals, after the area where one