I ♥ old British mini-series

Recently, I was talking to some young people of my acquaintance and one of them said that some cruel types had rolled about laughing the other night when she'd told them the year she was born in.

I said, 'What?  1980?', pulling a seemingly ridiculous date out of thin air. 

'Yes, that's right,' she said.

'So you missed out on the seventies AND Brideshead?'

'What is Brideshead?' she asked.

What kind of question is that?  I explained to her that Brideshead was an important televisual saga which screened in 1982 in Australia, of whose lavish proportions has never been nor is likely to be seen again.

'I was too young,' she said. 'And I wasn't allowed to watch popular culture.'

'Well, Brideshead isn't a really pop cultural reference, but a middle-brow cultural reference masquerading as a high-brow cultural reference,' I continued tediously.

[Warning: long post full of nostalgia about British TV & WWII and I can’t do that ‘over the fold’ thing.]

Sigh.  Speaking as an ignorant layperson, the late seventies and the early eighties were to me the heyday of the British mini-series, climaxing with productions like Brideshead and the Singing Detective.  Ever since then, things seem to have gone down hill, as mini-series have become more cramped, with less attention to detail and the original texts on which they were based. I’ve never been that taken with Andrew Davies’ adaptation of Pride and Prejudice as compared with Fay Weldon’s earlier, much more comprehensive rendering of the text. I think Brideshead was one of the few mini-series in which they actually teased out and elaborated on scenes implicit in the text rather than rendering everything down.  I hate it when whole, well-known scenes are suddenly zapped and replaced by two-lines of late twentieth century dialogue (especially in the case of Jane Austen), as if the viewers couldn’t cope with the original text.  I also hate this business in which you’re treated to two tele-movies over and that’s a mini-series.  I want a long sprawl of historical period to be presented on drip filter over a series of weeks, especially during the winter months.  And I want people to keep on saying things like ‘Odious Mr Darcy!’  and ‘She is merely tolerable!’ on TV.

I suspect that only John of former ‘glob’ fame or the Coy Lurker will have the foggiest what I’m talking about here.  (If you really can’t stand British period pieces, I wouldn’t read any further.)  Readers of the blog will remember that a couple of months' back, I managed to stumble on DVD copies of Danger UXB and Reilly Ace of Spies for sale on the net while searching for bike tyres (as you do), which I subsequently ordered.  Both these programs were 13-episode mini-series (made in the days when a mini-series lasted longer than two movie-length instalments) from Euston films (also the makers of Minder) and produced by Verity Lambert.  They're since arrived and I've watched both of them.

Neither are, of course, as exciting as I remember them to be, but they’re still good.  What they do seem to have in favour of them as 13-episoders is adequate and credible development of a broad range of characters, something that seemed lacking in a recent mini-series like Answered by Fire.  There’s a lot of attention to period detail: Reilly is particularly historically fascinating, although watching this program at a later date, I struggle with the main character, who’s basically a bit of a prick, if not some kind of a 'path.   (The young, unlined Sam Neill who plays Reilly also looks rather like the Joker when he smiles -- he’s someone who improved with age).

I asked my mother if she could think of recent British programs that were as good as these, and she said Spooks.  At the time, I was inclined to agree, but after having re-watched these two programs, I find I don't agree, for the reason that Spooks is really a serial, action-based drama, whereas UXB and Reilly are periodised dramas.  Thinking about the kind of TV that's produced now, I'm amazed that the Brits continue to pour money into things like Silent Witness and the Bill, and that they don't seem to make as much mid-length, quality drama as they used to.  I guess this is all about budgets and crime sells, after all.  (I know that there are good American series such as Six Feet Under and Sopranos, but I haven’t had much of a chance to watch them (especially on Imparja TV): I plan to, and I suspect they’re even better than the old British mini-series, but I’m putting them aside for now.  And the Yanks have money, after all.) 

My perspective on these programs is probably quite distorted, as I’m writing this nostalgically.  I was encouraged to watch Danger UXB by mother who was interested in all things relating to WWII, as a child of that era. When I watched UXB at the age of thirteen, I was utterly enthralled by the series as the first piece of adult television I’d ever seen (not counting Dickens, Shakespeare adaptations etc here).   I was also totally captivated by British realism and the feeling that you had seen something that had actually happened: it was a bit Charles Ryder’s conversion to the baroque for me.  I hadn’t realised that television could be like that.  I also think that at that age, you’re still able to suspend reality more thoroughly -- I also remember being totally ‘with’ Sigourney Weaver up until the end of Aliens.

Anyway, I was on the edge of my chair with Anthony Andrews and his life spent down the bottom of holes and in sewers defusing unexploded bombs during the London blitz.  Marvellous stuff.  Would I have been so engrossed if the series was screening for the first time now?  It’s hard for me to tell, because I know what’s going to happen with every bomb (really quite surprising how good my memory of the program is, how often I remember even what they’re about to say -- my adolescent mind must have been very fertile ground), but I doubt it, because I’m old now and I’ve seen so much other film and television.  The series still shapes up well for me.  The basic story line follows the fortunes of a bomb disposal officer, with each episode pivoting round a new form of bomb or booby trap device that he and others must negotiate.  It also has one of those ensemble casts in which the lives of others, such as the largely working class NCOs, are shown.  There’s enough scope in the thirteen episodes for minor characters to develop decent plot arcs (or whatever they’re called), such as the sad story of the damsel-in-distress-saving Northern English Corporal Salt, played by the wonderfully versatile Kenneth Cranham (also ‘Lenin’ in Reilly and the scary pastor in Oranges are Not the Only Fruit).  The series climaxes with the war taking its toll on the main character, Brian Ash (played by Andrews), who ends up a slightly-mangled, shell-shocked, self-absorbed wreck, a bit like Ronnie Merrick in The Jewel in the Crown. 

Nevertheless, UXB presents what is in some ways a benign, comforting WWII world, in which people, esp from the middle classes, clamp down their emotions for the war effort and say benign, comforting things like, ‘you look absolutely shagged out, you old stoat!’ and ‘I’m sorry darling, that was bloody of me’, and call each other ‘old boy‘, ‘old fruit’, ‘pet lamb’, ‘darling boy’, and so forth.  When they break up with each other, it seems to be done by mail (tho admittedly, their letters are not as analytical as those in Jane Austen novels).  Unlike the characters in Love My Way, they never say things like ‘I’ve come to the conclusion that all women are mad’ or ‘So, are you leaving me?  I need to know, tell me, is my wife leaving me?’, or ‘There are two sorts of people in this world, those who…blah, blah and those who blah, blah, blah, etc.’  I kind of wonder if the Poms are particularly temperamentally suited to realism (not wanting to stereotype anyone here, of course), because their buttoned-up-ness and sense of reserve lends itself to ‘show don’t tell.’  There are only a couple of characters in UXB who are on the verge of caricature  and only a few moments when the class comparisons, which are largely managed by scene juxtaposition, seem heavy-handed.

I hadn't seen UXB since I’d seen Brideshead, the series into which UXB launched Anthony  Andrews as the ill-fated Sebastian Flyte (and also Jeremy Sinden in a very similar role to the one he plays in UXB as Boy Mulcaster).  Re-watching UXB, it now seems to me that Andrews was just itching to play some campy part.  There are many pre-figurings of Sebastian; Andrews isn't quite as bad a case as Helena Bonham Carter but he can rarely hold himself back from doing something strange and twitchy with his mouth or his eyebrows.  I like him far better in this straight role, actually, as there's less much opportunity for face-pulling in Brideshead (he's better-looking in UXB, too). He also brings a certain caustic turn to his character, which seems an appropriate take on someone of that class and time who suddenly finds themselves defusing bombs; without it, he'd be in danger of being just a pretty face.  But as an actor in general, I find Andrews a bit disappointing in some of the roles he went on to play (like Claudia Karvan, his choice doesn’t always seem that great).  According to Wikipedia, he was also invited to Maggie Thatcher’s 80th, which is disappointing but somehow not surprising after all that time spent playing pukka members of the ruling classes.

Far more disappointing is UXB’s leading lady, played by Judy Geeson, the blonde, tarty schoolgirl from To Sir, With Love (supposedly in her twenties in UXB, but looks forty-odd).  I tried to fair to this character, watching UXB at this later stage (I was, after all, jealous of her, at the age of 13), but my conclusion is that she really is quite repellent, like a some kind of over-bred Pekinese dog who whines and simpers her way through the series.  She begins seeming like she might be a woman of purpose, but is in reality just a bossy bitch and a wee-wee girl in disguise.  Personally, I don’t know how anyone in real life could put up with someone who feels compelled to aspirate so much -- there’s a bloody husky sigh or gurgle in practically everything she says.  I think I’d find it sexy for about two minutes and be eternally bored after that. But still, I do have high standards and I suspect that men rank much lower on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs than women, and that finding a partner is just like shopping for the right model of car for most of them.  So her character probably is quite true-to-life really, especially since she’s a blonde and has the right signifiers of status as a Cambridge professor's daughter.  (It’s ‘be unkind to blondes’ here today.)  I’m still quite unsure whether it’s the acting or the scripting that makes this character so awful -- probably a bit of both, tho I suspect Judy Geeson is just an insipid and not particularly inspiring actress.  I also suspect this character was scripted a year or two before the days when male scriptwriters felt obliged to make a nod in the direction of feminism and to create Strong, Interesting, Capable Women, etc.  Anyway, it was a learning for me at the age of 13 that otherwise reasonable men really do go for crap women sometimes, and clearly I’ve been workshopping it ever since (I think something like this also happened in A Horseman Riding By).  Most of the tarty, working class girls in UXB seem a better catch than this woman, and in my opinion, Aunt Do-Do, the main character’s eccentric aunt who does a line with the Cambridge boffin right at the end, is the pick of the lot.

But the most mysterious characterisation in UXB is that of Sergeant James, Ash right hand man in the bomb disposal unit.  This character’s a mystery because although the actor playing him is billed as one of the lead roles, he seems to have no life of his own, apart from bringing Ash the steam steriliser and saying things like ‘Clockstopper on!’ and ‘Come along then, pet lamb!’  It seems like an incredible oversight for a major character to have no qualities whatsoever beyond kind and loyal, and absolutely no life beyond the bomb squad  -- no family, no history, no love life to speak of at all.  Watching UXB the second time round, I developed a new theory about this character, namely that he’s gay and secretly in love with Ash, but that this can’t be brought to the surface.  After all, they spend far more time together with each other than any other characters, including the Pekinese dog, there are many admiring looks cast Ash’s way by Sgt James, and the latter ultimately saves his commanding officer’s life.  Also, when Ash is ill, he tells the girlfriend to piss off (finally) but revives when Sgt James comes to visit, tho really, anything would have to be better than the prospect of going home at the end of the day maimed and shell-shocked to a sighing Pekinese dog. 

Anyway, with the wisdom of hindsight, I’m convinced there’s some kind of homo-something bond going on here (social, if not erotic). I’m also reminded of something I think Stephen Crittenden said earlier this year on RN about Brokeback being about that part of men’s life or the male world that women can’t access.  One of the things I like about UXB is how a dichotomy is set up between the world of men and war and that of women and domesticity: the war turns the main character into something he wasn’t before, a soldier.  In the end, when he’s got the chance to return to what he was in peacetime and to resume a domestic, more feminine life, he doesn’t want to take it, because his identity has become circumscribed by that of the masculine world of war.  While UXB’s ending isn’t totally bleak, it holds back from being overly optimistic, which struck me then and now as being very British and convincing.  (I of course love things in which people end up becoming bitter and twisted.)  One of the strange things about re-watching this was the thought that the '60s are now about the same distance in time from us as WWII was from the late '70s when this program was screened.  That is, WWII was still a shaping memory for many people, in the way the 60s and 70s probably are now.  I do remember other British TV series on WWII from that time: I’m not sure that so many are made now, and I’ve definitely OD’d on WWII myself since then.  But UXB and the Australian series Come in Spinner probably remain for me the most evocative WWII television.

Come in Spinner -- now that’s another story.  Of course I realise it's terribly uncool to admit to enjoy middle-browness on this scale, but I was brought up with it -- it's like mother's milk to me -- and by and large, I don't find popular culture particularly relaxing, she said defensively.

Still, you’ve done very well if you’ve made it this far down this post.

(Mr Tiley:  Linda Agran?)

  <Life as a man of action is far more interesting than a lifetime spent amongst wee-wee girls>

<Sgt James looks on admiringly at his Lieutenant>

Comments

[laura]

phew....great post, though your guess was right and I have absolutely no idea what is this UXB whereof you speak. On the strength of hearing it spoken of in the same breath at Brideshead, though, I'm going to try to get it from a library.

There is a community TV station in Melbourne and large slabs of daytime are programmed by something called Renaissance TV which is aimed at OAPs. They show repeats of Brideshead and other Thatcherite Granada TV productions (the Raj Quartet etc) - bit dangerous if you work at home.

[Mel]

Oh I am feeling so nostalgic... i loved Brideshead!Scarey enough.. it allowed me to discuss SEXUALLITY with my family! Man I was so grown up! I did put my teddy bears away but.

[elsewhere]

Really? It seems patently obvious to me now both watching and reading BR that S & C were lovers, but at the time I was prepared to run some line with my family that you couldn't tell one way or the other.

Laura--re-watching BR will be next on my list. WOuld love to see the Raj Quartet again.

[Mel]

No wait.. I have a further confession. I loved the life and times of david loyd astor and The Nanny........... ahh I hope someone can edit my typos!

[elsewhere]

Don't worry about the typos. I do remember the quality BBC dramas of which you speak.

[Zoe]

I believe I am the only person in the history of the world who went to a Brownies dress up party as Sebastian Flyte. My bear was already called Aloysius and I even had a special gag brandy balloon hunted out by my mum for the occasion. I don't think Brown Owl or any of the kids got it, but I felt very grand.

[elsewhere]

A *Brownies* dress up party? I'm speechless.

[Kelly]

At last - I've found the other person who watched A Horseman Riding By.
The WW2 drama I recall most clearly was The Secret Army.
Ride On Stranger?
Or perhaps that's slightly before your time?
I think there was a kind of khaki TV-noir perfected by the BBC (shown on Sunday nights on the ABC) in that era. Perfect performances, dodgy sets. Fabulous.

[elsewhere]

But what about the sets for their medieaval period pieces?

The khaki-noir TV period coincided nicely with my reading of Wilfred Owen and other doomed youth type poetry.

I thought _Secret Army- was a bit ho-hum in some ways.

(Remember: To Serve Them All My Days?)