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: Dennis Potter’s Follow The Yellow Brick Road (1972)

8 May 2014 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Follow The Yellow Brick Road

It’s easy to imagine that the likes of Abed in Community are the first fictional characters on TV to realise they’re fictional characters on TV and to be aware of genre conventions being applied to their everyday lives:

But, of course, they’re not and in this week’s play, we look at Dennis Potter’s Follow The Yellow Brick Road, part of BBC2’s 1972 series of eight plays, The Sextet, which featured the same six actors throughout: Denholm Elliot, Billie Whitelaw, Richard Vernon, Bernard Hepton, Dennis Waterman and Michele Dotrice. Potter’s play, which (of course) borrows its name from the song in The Wizard of Oz, follows Jack Black (Elliot), a disturbed actor who believes he’s trapped in a television play, being followed around by an invisible camera.

A major theme of the play is the exploration of individual choice in the face of a seemingly omniscient narrator. Black comments on the drama as it progresses. In the opening scene, Black talks about the “shoddy” set design and the play’s apparent lack of pace (“Not much bloody action, is there? Hardly any dialogue at all – just background noises… People will switch over or switch off”); when an elderly patient tries to make polite conversation with him, he chastises her for the banality of her dialogue (“You don’t get many interesting lines, do you?”) before acknowledging this is “not [her] fault” and that she has “only got a small part”.

Jack’s paranoia about his predicament is intensified by his awareness of the camera, which he frequently addresses, either to demand that it stops following him, or to ridicule the audience (“I can picture them now… Munching away on their telly snacks, the corrupt zombies”). He also abdicates responsibility for his actions in the early part of the play – when he beats his wife Judy (Whitelaw) during their walk on Barnes Common he immediately apologises by saying it is what the script demanded of him.

Is Jack mad or is he really in a play? Well, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?

Electra Woman and Dyna Girl: the 2001 version

6 May 2014 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Remember Electra Woman and Dyna Girl? No, of course you don’t, you liar. It was a 1970s superhero show that was part of The Krofft Supershow. Like you ever watched that.

Think Batman – think spoof of the already spoofy Batman. And here’s the first episode in case your imagination fails you.

You’d think that one series of that would be enough, but post-Buffy, all bets were off and networks were looking for superheroine shows. Trouble was, somehow the idea of superheroines is hard for (male) networks to understand for some reason, so the idea of a reboot of Electra Woman and Dyna Girl seemed like a viable idea. Except they wanted to spoof the spoof of a spoof and there’s only so much spoofing you can do before you lose track. And this was the result.

Kind of puts that David E Kelley Wonder Woman pilot into perspective, doesn’t it? Surprisingly enough, it was never picked up to series…

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The Wednesday Play: The Lie (1970)

30 April 2014 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Ingmar Bergman is obviously best known as a film director, but intriguingly, back in 1970, he wrote a play for British television called The Lie. To be strictly accurate, it was commissioned by the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation on behalf of European members participating in ‘The Largest Theatre in the World’ – a project to have a play broadcast simultaneously in several languages across Europe – and the BBC carried the UK version as part of its Play for Today strand.

This was directed by Alan Bridges and starred Frank Finlay and Gemma Jomes as a married couple with a not especially great relationship. Finlay’s character is being over-looked in favour of younger men at work, while Jones spends most of her time with her mentally ill brother (Joss Ackland) and her lover (John Carson). The only things that keep the two together are lies. And then the lies get exposed.

Sounds as cheery as most Bergman works, hey? Well, it’s this week’s Wednesday’s Play and you can watch it below. Enjoy!

Interestingly, despite The Lie being a European project, Alex Segal directed a version in 1973 in the US for CBS’s Playhouse 90 that starred George Segal, Shirley Knight Hopkins, Robert Culp, Victor Buono and William Daniels.

UPDATE: Now with newly working video, thanks to Chaim

What TV’s on at the BFI in May 2014

4 April 2014 Rob Buckley Post a comment

It’s time for our regular look at the TV that the BFI is showing, this time in May 2014. Edwardian drama is top of the bill this month – bet you didn’t see that coming? In fact, it’s the only thing on the bill, so savour it, since as well as a Q&A with Zoë Wanamaker, there are plays featuring Jeremy Brett, Sean Connery, Patrick Stewart, Ian Richardson, Jeremy Irons, André Morrell, Peter Vaughan, Annette Crosby, Timothy West, Anna Calder-Marshall and Colin Firth, to name but a few.

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