First Born is a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 serial produced by the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 in 1988.

Charles Dance

Charles Dance

Walter Charles Dance, OBE is an English actor, screenwriter and director. Dance typically plays assertive bureaucrats or villains. His most famous roles are Guy Perron in The Jewel in the Crown , Dr Clemens, the doctor of penitentiary Fury 161, who becomes Ellen Ripley's confidante in Alien 3 ,...

 starred as genetic researcher Edward Forester, whose work leads him to create a man-gorilla

Gorilla

Gorillas are the largest extant species of primates. They are ground-dwelling, predominantly herbivorous apes that inhabit the forests of central Africa. Gorillas are divided into two species and either four or five subspecies...

 hybrid, using his own sperm

Spermatozoon

A spermatozoon is a motile sperm cell, or moving form of the haploid cell that is the male gamete. A spermatozoon joins an ovum to form a zygote...

 and cells taken from a female gorilla. He then raises the baby as his own son, only to find that there are horrifying consequences for playing God.

Jamie Foster played the adolescent hybrid, Gor, in episode 3. Other notable cast members included Julie Peasgood

Julie Peasgood

Julie May Peasgood is an English actress, television presenter, author and voice over artist known for her distinctive voice. She attended Grimsby's Wintringham School as a student. She is best known for her role as Fran Pearson in the television soap Brookside...

, Gabrielle Anwar

Gabrielle Anwar

Gabrielle Anwar is an English actress. She is known for her role as Margaret Tudor on The Tudors, for dancing the tango with Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman and for her current role as Fiona Glenanne on USA's Burn Notice.- Early life :...

, Philip Madoc

Philip Madoc

Philip Madoc is a Welsh actor who has had many television and film roles.One prominent role was the title character in the BBC Wales drama The Life and Times of David Lloyd George...

, Sharon Duce

Sharon Duce

Sharon Duce is a British actress, .Her biggest role was alongside Ray Brooks in the BBC comedy drama Big Deal .She has also appeared in:*Wycliffe,*The Royle Family*London's Burning,...

 & Roshan Seth.

A portion of filming took place in and around the North Wiltshire area, with the Foresters family home scenes having been filmed on location in Calne. Woodland scenes from Episode 2 were primarily filmed on location at Savernake Forest near Marlborough, but were subsequently mixed with footage filmed on location in Switzerland. Longleat Safari Park was also used in filming as the setting for the kidnap scenes at the end of Episode 2.

The three-part serial was written by Ted Whitehead (adapted from the novel Gor Saga by Maureen Duffy

Maureen Duffy

Maureen Patricia Duffy is a contemporary British poet, playwright and novelist. She has also published a literary biography of Aphra Behn, and The Erotic World of Faery a book-length study of eroticism in faery fantasy literature.-Life and work:After a tough childhood, Duffy took her degree in...

), produced by Sally Head and directed by Philip Saville

Philip Saville

Philip Saville is a British television direction and screenwriting from the late 1950s...

.

2entertain Ltd released the serial on Region 2 DVD in the UK on 17 July 2006.