Brass is a British television comedy drama, made by Granada Television for ITV and eventually Channel 4. "Brass" is northern English slang for "money" as well as for "effrontery". The series was set primarily in Utterley, a fictional Lancashire mining town in the 1930s, Brass satirized working-class period dramas of the 1970s, most significantly When the Boat Comes In. Unusually for ITV comedies of the time, Brass eschewed a laugh track and used a dry sense of humour based in part on convoluted wordplay and subtle commentary on popular culture. The series also parodied the 1977 Granada TV dramatisation of Dickens' Hard Times, which also starred Timothy West.

Timothy Lancaster West, CBE is an English actor and presenter. He has appeared frequently on stage and television, including stints in both Coronation Street and EastEnders, and Not Going Out, as the original Geoffrey Adams. He is married to the actress Prunella Scales; from 2014 to 2019, they travelled together on UK and overseas canals in the Channel 4 series Great Canal Journeys.