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Stevie Binns (right) had never considered acting, but now plays a member of the Cragg Vale Coiners gang in The Gallows Pole

By Ian Youngs

Entertainment & arts reporter

Director Shane Meadows has made his first period drama, about a little-known 18th Century criminal mastermind. The cast includes established and first-time actors, from a mechanic to a financial manager.

Stevie Binns says her friends had a long-running joke about her broad accent. So when they saw a social media post looking for people with Yorkshire accents to be in a new TV drama, they tagged her.

"I think it was a bit of a sly dig from my friend," she says with a smile.

Binns, from Halifax, is a team leader in the financial industry and had never considered acting. "I'd done a grand total of nothing at all."

While she may have been sent the advert as a bit of a joke, she decided to give it a go.

"I thought, why not? It was Covid time and I'd been stuck in the house with my cat for a very long time. So I thought I'd try something different, and I sent off a tape."

She's had the last laugh. Her audition tape earned her a role in Meadows' The Gallows Pole, which is set in West Yorkshire in the 1760s and starts on BBC Two this week.