More glorious TV heritage in a two month festival at the BFI Southbank.
British television could really do with more single plays. The Secrets, the recent week-long run of half hour plays by new writers on BBC1, was specifically created to give scriptwriters new to television a chance. (Typically, the BBC-bashing Daily Mail dismissed the short season of plays as 'rubbish', showing not only how culturally ignorant that so called newspaper really is, but also making you wonder if the reviewer had actually bothered to watch any of them).
It's sad that
something like The Secrets has become an exception. In the halcyon days
of British TV in the 1960s and 1970s, single plays were everywhere: Armchair
Theatre, Play for Today, Play of the Week and The Wednesday Play (so
called because it was, um, shown on a Wednesday). Writers such as James
Mitchell, Harold Pinter, Alan Bleasdale and Alun Owen all had their breaks into
writing for television through single plays, going on to help make British
television a richer and more diverse place.
Throughout
September and October, the BFI is focuing on The Wednesday Play, and the
four screenings so far have been something of a revelation, giving what, for
me, had previously just been the title of a dusty old programme in reference
books depth and vitality.
Apart from
having a wonderfully modish title sequence involving a Mary Quant-style dolly
bird and a space-age TV perched on a stone wall, Who's A Good Boy Then? I Am
from 1966 was creepy, funny and menacing, a slice of vintage Harold Pinter
written by somebody else. Richard Harris's vivid realisation of domestic hell
involved a childless couple - Ron Moody and a brilliant Thora Hird -
manoeuvring for the affections of their slightly sinister young lodger played
by Ronald Lacey. Confined to a few sets, it showed what can be done with three
great actors and a terrific script.
Next up was The
Mayfly and the Frog. Before watching it I'd never been convinced of all the
claims made for what a great actor Sir John Gielgud was, but now I can really
see why he was so lionised. Essentially a Mod version of The Prince and the
Showgirl with Felicity Kendal as a scooter girl who's transport is in a
collision with Gielgud's Rolls Royce, Gielgud is effortlessly amusing,
charming, abrasive and introspective, as his luxurious but sterile life is
gradually given meaning by Kendal's very fresh-faced interloper. It's made me
want to look up more things that Sir John's been in.
Moving on to
1969, Sling Your Hook, about the misadventures of a coach full of miners
an a weekend bender in Blackpool, and The
Season of the Witch, the
days-in-the-life of a young runaway who falls in with some work-shy hippies (Paul Nicholas and Robert Powell),
look as fresh as the day they left the editing suite, largely because they were
both made on film. The invention of more portable - and affordable - film
cameras towards the end of the 1960s saw a minor revolution in TV drama, as
writers and directors could now take their stories out on to the streets and
into the countryside.
I could watch Sling
Your Hook over and over again. Written by Roy Minton, best known as the
author of the harrowing borstal drama Scum, his Wednesday Play features
a fantastic ensemble cast including Michael Bates, Joe Gladwyn, Patrick
O'Connell, Kenneth Cranham and Warren Clarke on a boozy, true-to-life odyssey
through Britain's premier seaside resort. From being a tight knit group of
friends and workmates, their cameraderie gradually fall apart as they're
tempted by the possibilities of a better life in the town, to the point where a
glum Bates and Gladwyn return home in an empty bus.
The Season of
the Witch stars
the singer Julie Driscoll from the in-vogue group Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger
and The Trinity and her bandmates supply a suitably frenetic and bluesy
soundtrack. Not a lot happens and Driscoll isn't the world's greatest actress,
but as a piece of social history you can't get more 1969 than the story of a
sheltered suburban girl running away from a dull job to join the counter
culture. Glynn Edwards (Dave the perennial barman in Minder) is great as
her bemused Dad. The Season... was
also one of the first Wednesdy Plays to be made in colour, in the year
that the BBC and ITV were gearing up for the big switchover to colour
transmissions. The film making is so accomplished that you'd never know that
the production crew were new to working with colour film.
I'm really
looking forward to the next WP screening at the BFI; as ever, it's the
place to go to have your cultural horizons widened. And next time you're
gritting your teeth through crap like The X Factor or Britain's Got
No ****ing Talent, just think how much better the money could be spent.
No comments:
Post a Comment