This was the week when the BBC lost its licence to broadcast the Australian soap Neighbours. Neighbours is moving to Five.
While this may not be the biggest cultural loss, I feel it is symbolic of a steady decline on BBC television.
Here are two reminders when the BBC spent licence payers money on innovative and entertaining drama rather than an endless line of cooking, home makeover and other "reality" tv....
Firstly from 1993 a young Ewan MacGregor starring in a production of Dennis Potter's Lipstick on Your Collar. Here is an entertaining, if slightly disturbing, scene from his office at the Foreign Office in 1956 London as Britain faces the Suez Crisis. They don't behave like this in my office:
Next, another Dennis Potter production first broadcast in 1986. Michael Gambon stars as crime writer Philip Marlow, hospitalised by a dreadful skin disease. He relieves his suffering through his imagination and halucinating. This clip is long at 9 minutes but is worth watching through to the end for the musical sequence at the end.
Maybe I'm missing something but productions this good rarely get made by the BBC these days ?
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1 comment:
Both were great television,
I'm hard put to think of anything up to the same standards today,
It's all quite derivative plus much more "Changing rooms" and reality. It's all one big make over these days.
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