I’m Rob Buckley, a journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of although you might have heard me on the podcast Lockdown Land or Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Edition or Afternoon Edition. I’ve edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for TV producers magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and was regularly sarcastic about television on the blink-and-you-missed-it “web site for urban hedonists” The Tribe. Since going freelance, I've contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network, TV Scoop and The Custard TV.
They’ve been talking about it for years, but finally Russia’s version of Life on Mars –Обратная Сторона Луны (aka Dark Side of the Moon, since Bowie was unknown but Pink Floyd was big in those days) – has emerged, with a modern day Russian policeman travelling back in time 30 years to work with a KGB officer and work out what he’s doing there: is he mad, in a coma or back in time?
The big change, apart from it being set in Russia? The KGB lot very much played by the rules so it’s the modern-day cop who’s the fast-and-loose Gene Hunt to the KGB Sam Tyler. Here’s a trailer (no subtitles, I’m afraid).
And if your Russian is good, you can watch the entire first episode (and others), too:
NBC red lights: Bloodline, The Sixth Gun, The Gates, Joe & Jane, Brenda Forever, Hatfields & McCoys, Holding Patterns and The Secret Lives of Husbands and Wives
Paganism, while not exactly featuring heavily in the more secular and Christian-influenced television drama schedules of Western societies, hasn’t been completely invisible over the past few decades. As we’re shortly to discover (ie either on Thursday or Friday when I write about it in much greater detail), British writers, particularly those who were working in the 70s, have occasionally taken time out to examine other religions in drama.
Despite coming from a family of strict evangelical Christians, one of the main writers to do so is David Rudkin. As well as translating Greek pagan works, such as those of Aeschylus and Euripides, Rudkin examined British paganism in plays and long-form series such as The Stone Dance, The Sons of Light and ultimately Artemis 81.
One of his major works was a Play For Today: Penda’s Fen. Directed by Alan Clarke, who normally was a strictly realist director and who admits he didn’t really understand it, the play is an evocation of the conflicting forces within England, both past and present. These include authority, tradition, hypocrisy, landscape, art, sexuality, and most of all, its mystical, ancient pagan past. In the play, all of this comes together in the growing pains of the adolescent Stephen, a vicar’s son, who encounters angels, Edward Elgar and King Penda, the last pagan king of England, during the play.
Since its broadcast, Penda’s Fen has gone on to be regarded as a minor classic. Leonard Buckley (no relation) of The Times wrote: “Make no mistake. We had a major work of television last night. Rudkin gave us something that had beauty, imagination and depth.” In 2006, Vertigo magazine described it as “One of the great visionary works of English film” while in 2011, it was chosen by Time Out London magazine as one of the 100 best British films, describing it as:
“A multi-layered reading of contemporary society and its personal, social, sexual, psychic and metaphysical fault lines. Fusing Elgar’s ‘Dream of Gerontius’ with a heightened socialism of vibrantly localist empathy, and pagan belief systems with pre-Norman histories and a seriously committed – and prescient – ecological awareness, ‘Penda’s Fen’ is a unique and important statement.”
