The Cadburys TV series based on book by Chiswick author

The Cadbury’s – (L-R) Jessica Barden, Toby Regbo and Harry Gilby; image UKTV

Drama about the Cadbury family based on Chocolate Wars book by Deborah Cadbury

Filming has just started in Birmingham on The Cadburys, a six-part drama series to be screened on UKTV next year.

Unlike Steven Knight’s Victorian Guinness family saga House of Guinness, which premiered last September on Netflix, this will be an altogether cosier watch, with none of the Peaky Blinders style violence and aggression that played out in the Guinness heirs’ battle for supremacy.

It is based on the non-fiction book Chocolate Wars by Chiswick author Deborah Cadbury, who is a scion of the family, but not the chocolate making side, she told The Chiswick Calendar ruefully:

“There were two brothers, Benjamin and John. John had the chocolate shop and Benjamin had a draper’s shop. I was very sad to discover I am descended from the draper’s side of the family”.

Ruth Cadbury, MP for Brentford & Isleworth, is however descended from the chocolate side and has invoked her Quaker antecedents more than once in the House of Commons.

Deborah Cadbury talking about Chocolate Wars at the Chiswick Book Festival last year

“If someone did something wrong like stealing from them they would invite them into the office to pray”

It was the Quaker values involved in the business which first caught Deborah’s interest.

“My father used to tell me as a child how the business was founded on religious values and after the financial crash in 2008 and the scale of greed and corruption that revealed, I wondered how it was possible to build such a successful business on religious values”.

Looking to unearth skeletons in the family cupboard she buried herself in the Bournville archive and the Birmingham library and found that indeed there was such a thing as Quaker capitalism which succeeded despite its lack of ruthlessness.

“What I found was really lovely. They wanted to lift everybody up and when orders were slack, they didn’t get rid of staff, they would take them on family outings to improve their health. If someone did something wrong, like stealing from them they would invite them into the office to pray”.

They built the model village of Bournville for their workers to “alleviate the evils of modern, more cramped living conditions”.

Houses in the model village of Bournville; image – Rept0n1x at Wikimedia Commons

‘A warm-hearted family drama’

UKTV describes the TV series as ‘a warm-hearted family drama following the visionary Cadbury family, the underdogs of the cocoa world, on their journey towards creating the world-famous Cadbury’s chocolate bar.

‘In 1860s Birmingham, when chocolate as we know it doesn’t yet exist, two very different brothers, Richard and George Cadbury, find themselves in charge of their family’s failing cocoa business.

‘Together, they have the radical genius and burning ambition to turn Cadbury into one of the world’s most beloved confectioners – if they can only learn to trust and rely on each other.

‘Their sister Maria is navigating her own role within the family and the business, but things become even more complicated when she falls in love with Cadbury’s biggest rival, Francis Fry and is forced to question where her true loyalties really lie’.

Bournville Cocoa – Museum of Brands; Bournville chocolate – The Cadbury Story, Cadbury World

“Being in chocolate in the 1880s must have been like being in mobile phones in the 1908s”

The Frys, based in Bristol, were another Quaker family, as were the Rowntrees in York, so they all knew each other.

Chocolate was initially developed as a savoury product with chicory and mustard added, Deborah told me. There was no regulation covering food manufacture – in fact food manufacturing in factories was a new concept – so unscrupulous manufacturers would add substances such as brick dust and even vermillion, a poison, to the mix.

“They were on the cusp of the food revolution”, says Deborah, “as people flocked to the cities”.

Chocolate went from being something only available to the very rich to a product that was on every shopping list.

“Being in chocolate in the 1880s must have been like being in mobile phones in the 1908s”.

Pearce Quigley in The Gentlemen (2024) IMDb; Joanna Scanlon – joannascanlon.com

Star-studded cast

The star-studded cast stepping into the leading Cadbury family roles are Harry Gilby (Boarders, The Last Kingdom) as George, Toby Regbo (Outrageous, A Woman of Substance) as Richard, and Jessica Barden (Dune: Prophecy, The End of the F****ing World) as Maria.

Pearce Quigley (Small Prophets, The Gentlemen) plays the head of the chocolate dynasty, John, while Ben Hardy (The Conjuring: Last Rites, Unicorns) is the unwanted son in law Francis Fry.

Joanna Scanlan (Riot Women, Missed Call) and Poppy Gilbert(The Other Bennett Sister, My Oxford Year) are also in it.

Deborah, who has had several of her books made into films and TV series, told me the process of working with the TV production had been “such fun – so collaborative, with so much good will on all sides”, though she has yet to visit the set to see the characters being brought to life.

Bournville Village; Image – Cadburys World