Episode: A Way of Life. Uploaded all 39 episodes. No episode synopsis available. Thirty years in the life of a working-class British family, during times of great change. The first series opened in 1934 when Sam was a 10-year-old fatherless schoolboy in the poor Yorkshire village and traced his inevitable descent to the pit in 1938, at the age of 14. The second series ranged from 1947 to 1952 with Sam now in his 20s (now played by Mark McManus), rebelling against the mines and escaping to the sea – and then returning to inherit property, sow his wild oats and go to work in an engineering factory. The third series began in 1960, with Sam aged 36 and now married to the middle-class Sarah Corby (Jennifer Hilary), acquiring a 12-year-old son from her previous marriage and fathering two children of his own.