14 October 1997 (1997-10-14) – 3 June 2007 (2007-06-03)
Dream Team is a British sports drama television series produced by Hewland International which aired on Sky One from 1997 to 2007; it chronicled the on-field and off-field affairs of the fictional Premier League football club Harchester United. Originally broadcast in a soap opera format with two twice-weekly episodes (typically Tuesday and Thursday evenings) broadcast in the half-hour format. This continued for the first three seasons and 200 episodes, from which the show was reformatted into a prime-time one-hour drama weekly on Sunday nights where it remained for its next seven seasons until its final 419th episode.
The show began in 1997 and centered on the Harchester United youth team. The next series, series 2 transmitted in 1998 concluding in 1999 focused on the first team for the first time and on Ian Coates, the manager, Jerry and Lynda Block, the owners of Harchester United and Luis Amor Rodriguez, star striker and soon-to-be lover of Lynda. The end of the series resulted in Harchester winning the FA Cup.
As the show developed, the storylines became more and more extravagant, with the character death toll rising significantly in later series. Some of the most outlandish storylines included a striker being shot by a sniper after winning the FA Cup, a fan being brought onto the pitch to play during a game, and later becoming a Premier League star, and a goalkeeper in gambling debt holding the entire team hostage before being killed by SWAT team.[1] With declining viewing figures and repetitive storylines, Sky decided not to renew the Dream Team contract, and in April 2006, the director of programmes at Sky One, Richard Woolfe, confirmed the show would not return after the tenth
series.[2][3]
The tenth series began on 29 October 2006, the final episode being broadcast on 3 June 2007, with viewers left unaware of which characters survived a massive fire that ripped through the Dragon's Lair during the final Premier League game of the season. However it is hinted that Harchester United win the Premier League thanks to a last minute goal from Jason Porter. The last ever song to be played on the programme was "Cast No Shadow" by Oasis.
The main storyline of series ten revolved around "Dragonslayer", a mysterious poster on the club's fansite revealing the innermost secrets of the club. It was ultimately this storyline that resulted in the arson attack that ended the series. Following the announcement of Dream Team being axed, many of the main cast members left the programme at the start of series ten. These included Alex Dempsey, Lynda Block and Ryan Naysmith.
Cast
Main cast
Cast members who featured most frequently during all ten seasons, this list may not include lead characters from certain seasons.
Harchester United was the fictional Premier League football club featured in the series, known by their nickname "The Dragons" and club motto 'Contende Ad Caelum' meaning Strive for the Skies and/or Be The Best. Its geographical location was north of Birmingham and Coventry, and two miles east of Tamworth, a Midlands setting chosen so as not to alienate football fans from either the North or South. Its filming locations however, started with Watford's Vicarage Road doubling as Addison Road for the show's first two seasons (1997–99) with a move to a new stadium, The Dragon's Lair seeing Milwall's The New Den becoming The Dragon's home for the next eight seasons.[4]
The shows's production overseen by Hewland International and aired on the Sky One channel between 1997 and 2007. It was one of the earliest examples of 'subscription' television drama, arriving at a time when Sky television was the leading source in the genre A unique identity to hold, Dream Team wasn't the first UK-made drama to crack this particular market, that accolade belonging to British Satellite Broadcasting's Galaxy Channel soap Jupiter Moon in 1990, a show only curtailed by the merger of its network BSB with Sky television. Seven years later, Dream Team began airing on Sky One in the soap opera format, with two twice-weekly episodes (typically Tuesday and Thursday evenings) broadcast in the half-hour format. This continued for the first three seasons and 200 episodes, from which the show was reformatted into a prime-time one-hour drama weekly on Sunday nights where it remained for its next seven seasons until its final 419th episode.[4]
The Dream Team series used a technique called rotoscoping to create the live action football sequences, that would put players from the clubs competing against real-life players and teams from the Premier League, EFL Championship, and internationally in the UEFA Cup, and Champions League.[5]
Harchester United team kits were created by real kit manufacturers and were also available to buy whilst the show was on the air. These kits were made by PONY for series one (1997–1998), Le Coq Sportif for series two to seven (1998–2003), and later Valsport for series eight to ten (2004–2007).
It has been theorised that the third kit worn by Everton players during the 2014–15 season were inspired by those donned by Harchester United.[6]
Episodes
419 episodes were made over ten series. For the first three series, the show aired in a half-hour format of Tuesday and Thursday nights, with an hour-long omnibus airing on Saturday/Sunday mornings. The final episodes for series two and three were both an hour in duration and after receiving strong ratings in both cases, starting in series four, the show switched to a single hour-long episode on Sunday evenings.
Footballers' Wives, British TV drama that focussed heavily on the lives of the players and their wives from fictional Premier League team Earls Park FC.
Mike Bassett: England Manager, 2001 British mockumentary comedy film about a coach who is hired from the lower leagues to manage the England team at the World Cup. The movie also used a small number of Dream Team actors as players.
Mike Bassett: Manager, British comedy series, follow-up to the film which sees an unsuccessful coach on a bad run of form taking over as the new manager of his late father's former team.
^Brown, Maggie (11 April 2006). "Final whistle for Dream Team". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 22 September 2014. Retrieved 12 April 2018. Jane Hewland, the programme's creator and executive producer, said today the 10th series of the Sunday night drama now in production would be the last.
