The series suffered the tragic loss of its leading actor when Maurice Colbourne, who played Tom Howard, died of a heart attack in 1989 aged just 49. Episodes of the fifth series were hurriedly rewritten to explain the character's absence before finally killing him off at the beginning of the sixth and final series.
Stephen Yardley (Ken Masters) and Jan Harvey (she played Jan Howard) started a relationship while working on the series and got married. They also were prominent in promoting the DVD release many years later by recording commentaries and giving interviews.
The original working title for the series was "The Boatbuilders".
BBC executive Jonathan Powell cited the series as an example of a pro-Thatcherite drama against accusations by Conservative politician Norman Tebbit that the BBC had a left-wing bias.
Kate O'Mara described the series as "wonderful escapist television". She enjoyed making it because she knew Tony Anholt and Jan Harvey, who had both worked on Triangle (1981), and she described Stephen Yardley as "divine".