Oil Strike North is a BBC television drama

BBC television drama

BBC television dramas have been produced and broadcast since even before the public service company had an officially established television broadcasting network in the United Kingdom...

 series produced in 1975.

The series was created and produced by Gerard Glaister

Gerard Glaister

John Leslie "Gerard" Glaister DFC, was a British television producer and director best known for his work with the BBC. Amongst his most notable successes as a TV producer were Colditz, The Brothers, Secret Army and Howards' Way.After studying at RADA, Glaister made his West End debut in 1939...

 and dealt with life on Nelson One, a North Sea

North Sea

In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean. In the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively...

 oil rig owned by the fictional company Triumph Oil. Eschewing the corporate power struggles of Mogul / The Troubleshooters and concentrating on more personal storylines, Oil Strike North was essentially a character study of how workers faced life on the rig and the impact it had on the lives of their families and loved ones.

The scenario was later revived by the BBC for the mid-1990s drama Roughnecks

Roughnecks (TV series)

Roughnecks was a BBC television series that ran over two series between 1994 and 1995 on BBC One. The show centred on the working and personal lives of those who worked on oil rigs in the North Sea....

.

Oil Strike North lasted for one series of thirteen episodes. The leading cast members included Nigel Davenport

Nigel Davenport

Nigel Davenport is an English stage, television and film actor.- Early life :Davenport was born Arthur Nigel Davenport, however he goes by the first name of Nigel. Davenport was born in Shelford, Cambridgeshire, the son of Katherine Lucy and Arthur Henry Davenport. Davenport's father was a bursar...

, Glyn Owen

Glyn Owen

Glyn Griffith Owen was a British stage, television and film actor, probably best known to British TV viewers for two roles: that of Dr...

, Barbara Shelley

Barbara Shelley

Barbara Shelley is an English film and television actress.She is now retired, but was at her busiest in the late 1950s and 1960s when she became Hammer Horror's number one female star, with The Gorgon , Dracula, Prince of Darkness , Rasputin, the Mad Monk , andQuatermass and the Pit among her...

, Angela Douglas

Angela Douglas

Angela Douglas , born Angela McDonagh, is an English actress.-Early life:She was born in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire...

, Andrew Robertson, Richard Hurndall

Richard Hurndall

Richard Gibbon Hurndall was an English actor.-BBC radio:Hurndall was born in Darlington and he attended Claremont Preparatory School, Darlington and Scarborough College, before training as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. He then appeared in several plays at Stratford-upon-Avon...

, Sean Caffrey

Sean Caffrey

Sean Caffrey is an actor.He is best remembered for his performances on television. Credits include: Coronation Street, Z-Cars, Sutherland's Law, Oil Strike North, Survivors, Doctor Who , The Professionals, Minder, Bergerac and Edge of Darkness...

 and Maurice Roëves

Maurice Roëves

Maurice Roëves is a British actor, born in Sunderland, County Durham on 19 March 1937.His television roles include Danger UXB , The Nightmare Man , the 1984 Doctor Who serial The Caves of Androzani, Days of our Lives , Tutti Frutti , Rab C...

.

Gerard Glaister later moved onto to produce the Second World War resistance drama Secret Army, the air freight series Buccaneer

Buccaneer (TV series)

Buccaneer is a short-lived television series, made by the BBC in 1979-80, and broadcast over 13 weeks in April-July 1980.The series, dealing with a developing air freight business, starred Bryan Marshall, Pamela Salem and Clifford Rose, and was produced by Gerard Glaister.The 13 episodes were: ...

and then onto the boating soap serial Howards' Way

Howards' Way

Howards' Way is a television drama series produced by BBC Birmingham and transmitted on BBC One between 1 September 1985 and 25 November 1990. The series deals with the personal and professional lives of the yachting and business communities in the fictional town of Tarrant on the South Coast of...

. Two of the leading actors in Oil Strike North, Nigel Davenport and Glyn Owen, also later appeared in Howards' Way.