Classic TV

Classic shows that have almost been forgotten, as well as shows that should probably have been forgotten

The Weekly Play

The Wednesday Play: Play For Today – William Trevor’s O Fat White Woman (1971)

11 February 2015 Rob Buckley Post a comment

O Fat White Woman

Well, I’ve mentioned it already, but now it’s actually time for O Fat White Woman, William Trevor’s 1971 Play For Today starring Maureen Pryor. Taking it’s name from the Frances Cornford poem ‘To a Fat Lady Seen From The Train’, it sees Pryor playing the wife of an outwardly charming headmaster (Peter Jeffrey) who gradually becomes aware that he is physically abusing his pupils. Simultaneously, we learn about her sexual frustration, caused by both the world and even her husband finding her unattractive.

In and of itself a great and typically bittersweet play, O Fat White Woman is also notable for including music written by Radiophonics Workshop legend Delia Derbyshire.

Classic TV

Nostalgia Corner: Play School

10 February 2015 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Play School presenters

Play School was a much-loved UK kids TV show that ran between 1964 and 19778. If you were a kid then, you’ll remember Play School and the names of Brian Cant, Floella Benjamin, Derek Griffiths, Stuart McGugan, Carol Leader, Fred Harris, Chloe Ashcroft, Don Spencer et al will be burnt into your memories. You’ll probably also remember ‘the windows’, as well as the toys: Humpty, Big Ted and Little Ted, Jemima and Hamble.

Play School was cancelled in 1988 to make room for first Playbus and then Playdays. And if you’re a parochial Brit like me, you probably thought that was the end of Play School.

However, since the 1960s, the show had been franchised out and that there were different versions around the world. Norway, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Spain and Israel all made their own versions; Canada’s Polka Dot Door was an adaptation of Play School; and even Sesame Street was modelled on Play School.

Down under, New Zealand ran its own version between 1975 and 1990. Interestingly, the New Zealand version had toys with virtually the same names as the UK version, with the minor difference that Hamble was replaced by the Maori-esque Manu.

Australia, by contrast, never cancelled its version of Play School, which has run continuously since 1966, making it the second longest running children’s TV show in the world. Over that time, it’s changed considerably. Initially very similar to the UK version – indeed, Don Spencer of the UK version also hosted the Australian version and all the toys’ names were the same – it’s altered the content, style, titles, toys and virtually everything else about it. But it’s still Play School. And it’s still running.

What TV’s on at the BFI in March 2015? Including The Wednesday Play: Culloden (1964)

3 February 2015 Rob Buckley Post a comment

It’s time for our regular look at the TV that the BFI is showing, this time in March 2015. Surprisingly slim pickings this month, but there is a preview of Jimmy McGovern’s forthcoming Banished, complete with Q&A with McGovern, Julian Rhind-Tutt and Russell Tovey, a short season of Jenny Barraclough documentaries and a triple bill of Peter Watkins films, including The War Game and Culloden, a faux documentary about the Jacobean uprising. And as you can watch it below, it’s also this week’s The Wednesday Play… on a Tuesday.

Continue reading “What TV’s on at the BFI in March 2015? Including The Wednesday Play: Culloden (1964)”

The Wednesday Play: Play For Today – The General’s Day (1972)

21 January 2015 Rob Buckley Post a comment

William Trevor is widely regarded as one of the greatest contemporary writers of short stories in the English language. Nominated for the Booker Prize five times and winner of the Whitbread Prize three times, he was awarded an honorary CBE in 1977, made a Companion of Literature in 1994, and was given an honorary KBE for his services to literature in 2002.

Although most of his work has been literary, between 1965 and 1978, he wrote many plays for both the BBC and ITV, including the famous O Fat White Woman, which was adapted from a short story in 1971 for the BBC’s Play For Today. The following year, he wrote The General’s Day, which starred Annette Crosbie (One Foot In The Grave), Dandy Nichols (In Sickness and Health) and, in one of his last ever roles, Alastair Sim (Scrooge, the St Trinian’s movies and Ealing comedies). Sim plays the general of the title, General Suffolk, who wants to get rid of his housekeeper (Nichols) as he’s persuaded a much younger school teacher (Crosbie) to move in with him.

It’s a bittersweet piece, demonstrating Trevor’s typically acute observations of the human condition, and it’s today’s Wednesday Play.

Airwolf
Classic TV

Nostalgia corner: Airwolf (1984-87)

15 January 2015 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

The 1970s was a time of great change for the US. It had fought and lost a war in Vietnam; it had seen one of its presidents forced to resign to avoid impeachment; and its decade-long detente with the Soviet Union was perceived in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to have failed and to have been a ‘long con’ by the opposing superpower.

The election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980 was a turning moment for the US. Backed by the newly emboldened Christian right, Reagan seemed to bring back the US’s self-esteem. Casting the Soviet Union as ‘the evil empire’, he redefined the US as the ‘leader of the free world’, a beacon of liberty and human rights founded on rugged individualism rather than big government, and backed by a technology-enhanced and financially boosted military. On top of that, the arrival of the microchip in the 1970s began to revolutionise technology and, in particular, computers, touching on more or less every industry, from manufacturing all the way through to music, and it was this ‘white heat of technology’ that helped Reagan to cement this philosophy in practice and demonstrate American superiority.

How the entertainment industry reacted to the new official American outlook varied. Movies, still full of an independent spirit but sensing the shift in perspective, began to embrace technology and the new sentiments. TV shows, however, under attack for the perceived effect of violence on children, retreated more into fantasy rather than face up to the new Cold War and American military might straight on.

Airwolf

Airwolf is coming…

But there was one TV show that embraced all these trends whole heartedly, becoming perhaps the epitome of the Reaganite philosophy. It was also one of the best US TV shows of the early 1980s.

Created by a former US marine and Christian Republican, with a central, rugged, individualist Vietnam veteran as hero, full of religious symbolism and military technology, and with the oppressors of the Soviet Union and its allies firmly cast as the enemy, Airwolf was coming.

Continue reading “Nostalgia corner: Airwolf (1984-87)”