info@touchpapertv.com Home | About | People | Programmes | Contact us

Rocket Man Rocket Man is about family, about dreams and about coping with life as a single dad. It's also about men – men who no longer have jobs in the steelworks, mines and carriage works, but still have the vision, skills and strengths that made those industries so great. It's an upbeat, moving, funny series about one man who still dares to dream. George Stevenson's dream? He's going to build a rocket. Manned space flight is George's aim. And it's all started in the back garden of his South Wales home. George is a single dad. His wife, Bethan, died a year ago, leaving him to bring up son Tom (7) and daughter Angela (13). Tom thinks his Dad is fantastic. Angela sometimes feels that she's the one keeping the family together. George is better at acquiring rocket parts than cooking tea. George originally came to South Wales as an engineer building trains in the Carriage Works – he married Bethan and became best mates with Barney, an amiable, overweight local man. Then the Carriage Works closed. George and Barney, like thousands of other men, found that their manual skills were no longer in demand. The two of them now work (surrounded by women) on the production line of a sweet factory. It's not great, watching the pink-white-pink-white procession of marshmallows all day long. The construction of the rocket is the one place where the two men can still exercise their masculine skills – welding, metal beating, searching for parts on scrapheaps… And over the course of the series the rocket brings all the redundant men in the community back together with a renewed sense of purpose. For George, the rocket was also something he could immerse himself in when Bethan died. Tom delights in the rocket – he and his Dad spend hours together talking about it, building models, gazing through telescopes… It's what bonds them. And ultimately what will help them let go of Bethan as they plan to launch her ashes into space in the rocket. So that they can look up at the stars and always see her in the heavens. But it's not easy sustaining a dream when you're struggling as a single dad. Tom's teachers are starting to worry about his terrible schoolwork. Angela is about to have her first boyfriend. Can George keep the dream of the rocket alive? Or will the responsibilities of parenthood, the dilemmas of finding a partner – or the sheer difficulty of finding liquid oxygen in South Wales keep the rocket earthbound? Starring: Robson Green – George Credits Produced by Phil Leach Directed by Jon East Exec Produced by Rob Pursey / Sandra Jobling Written by Alison Hume, Simon Block & Shaun Prenderghast ^ Top