"Our Friends in the North" has been invoked on several occasions as a comparison when similar drama programmes have been screened on British television. The year following "Our Friends in the North"s broadcast, Tony Marchant's drama serial "Holding On" was promoted by the BBC as being an ""Our Friends in the South"," after Marchant made the comparison when discussing it with executives. The 2001 BBC Two drama serial "In a Land of Plenty" was previewed by "The Observer" newspaper as being "the most ambitious television drama since "Our Friends in the North"." The writer Paula Milne drew inspiration from "Our Friends in the North" for her own "White Heat" (2012); she felt that "Our Friends in the North" had been too centred on white, male, heterosexual characters, and she deliberately wanted to counter that focus.