Workers' Liberty

If you missed the “Black Power Salute” film on BBC 4 last night you missed one of the best hours television for ages.

Chris Marks reviews Dispatches (Channel 4, 23 June)

I’m not old enough to remember Mary Whitehouse’s campaigning years, only the jubilation of my film lecturer informing us she’d kicked the bucket a few years earlier — he filled us in on her puritanical, anti-gay, anti-sex crusades.

Middle class producers at the BBC have conveniently rediscovered the working class in order to make a series that attempts to drive a wedge between workers. The vile advert designed to build some hype around the “White” series depicted a bulldog man’s face being progressively blacked out by foreign words.

This drama about a 1960s New York advertising agency is a full-on period piece. Its attention to historical detail, clothes, manners, dialogue, is very acute.

City of Vice, a new drama series about the Bow Street Runners, is now being shown on Channel 4 (Mondays, 9pm). Cathy Nugent interviews Clive Bradley, the writer of the most recent episode, which deals with molly houses — clubs where gay men and transwomen could meet each other.

Reviews of Boy A (Channel 4)

Who could forget the murder of James Bulger by two teenage boys, Jon Venables and Roger Thompson? That was Liverpool 1993.

After they were released from jail, Venables and Thompson were given new identities and injunctions were taken out to protect them from reprisals. Blake Morrison wrote a fantastic and scrupulously objective book about the case. As If, told the story of the media and public hysteria of the time. Boy A, shown on Channel 4 (2 November), goes over the same social and emotional ground.

The following films are not necessarily the best documentary films every made, and by no means the only films that have changed the course of events in the real world. But they have been either innovative in some aspect of film technique or led to changes in the way filmmakers represented the “creative treatment of reality” (John Grierson). All of the films have been highly influential.

On Monday November 5, the Writers Guild of America went on strike for the first time in nearly twenty years. Last minute negotiations with the employers’ organisation, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) failed to reach a deal. The WGA (which for perverse historical reasons is actually two unions, the WGA west and the WGA east) ‘downed pencils’. This followed, for example, a mass meeting of the WGA west in which 3,000 writers voted 90% in favour of strike action.

BBC4 have just started a series on the history of photography, entitled The Genius of Photography. This review outlines how sometimes photography has served social causes.

By Clive Bradley

Clapham Junction (Sunday, July 22, C4), written by Kevin Elyot - best known for the hit AIDS-themed play ‘My Night With Reg’ - was screened as part of Channel Four’s celebrations of 40 years since the 1967 Sexual Offences Act which decriminalised homosexuality. Following a group of modern gay men over a day and a half, its aim – presumably – was to show that homophobia is alive and well, and murderous, and present even in those places you don’t expect, like Channel Four itself and the dinner-partying middle class.

The good news: Channel Four TV next Monday, 9 July, at 8pm, will screen a programme about the growing threat of anti-semitism in Britain. The bad news: it will be presented by the grotesque right-wing newspaper columnist Richard Littlejohn.

Sofie Buckland reviews “Sex, The City and Me”, BBC2, June 17

I wasn’t expecting to much enjoy BBC2’s one-off drama about sex discrimination at a city bank, “Sex, the city, and me”. It was one of those programmes you only switch on after being faced with a Sunday night schedule barren of anything remotely entertaining.

A story has been doing the rounds over the last week that unruly kids are using quips from TV comedy shows to 'answer back' at teachers. "Am I bovvered?", "Whatev-ah!"

Cathy Nugent reviews Child Slavery, BBC2

What did Tony Blair et al do to mark the anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade? Apart from trying very hard to avoid using that five letter word beginning in s?

Chris Leary reviews Skins

Anticipating the televisual delights promised by all the promos of the new teen drama from E4 (the yoof digital channel from Channel 4), I sat down in front of the telly with my tin of cider. By the half way point I was curled up in a ball, knawing away at my fist in terror and fright, and at some point near the end, I just couldn't take it anymore and switched over to a repeat of Most Haunted.

I saw on the TV a couple of days ago in the review of the next days papers that the Daily Express had a headline in large letters forecasting 7 inches of snow. Straight away I came to the conclusion that this was unlikely to be true, as truth and the Daily Express are incompatible. Sure enough here there was very little snow. Some parts of the country did have more snow, but nothing like the 7 inches the Express forecast. Nevertheless, yesterday the TV was full of stories about the shocking weather, and so on as the sky had fallen in rather than just a few flakes of snow from it.

A favourite 'fun' 'teambuilding' or 'group' activity that teachers often put in front of captive students is that sinking ship exercise, or variations on it where you're asked to choose which poor fucker you'd have to kick out of the hot air balloon, in what order, to save your own skin. There's usually a societal context, so you'd have to decide whether you'd prioritise the life or death of the plumber, the doctor, the teacher or the priest and so on.

Now this is getting ridiculous. Tomorrow night sees the start of a new TV show where celebrities hang out with endangered species. Then you the viewer get to vote for which animals should get help to survive.

Amy Fisher reviews A Harlot's Progress, 2 November, C4

This one-off drama, conceived and written by Solidarity supporter Clive Bradley, was described by a reviewer in the Daily Telegraph as “execrable”. As you might expect, then, it was a very enjoyable, clever and thought-provoking two hours.

I watched the Dispatches programme on Channel 4 last night, "Women only Jihad", about Muslim Women and MPAC campaigning for the right of women to pray in Mosques, with interest. For some time I have thought that young Muslim women were likely to be the most likely modernising force within Muslim communities, and watching the trailers for the programme I was interested to see how much this was coming about. Having watched the programme I'm not sure.

Last night Channel 4 held a Dispatches debate chaired by Jon Snow on the question of whether Free speech is under threat from Muslims. The format was the same as that employed in the past to debate the Iraq War etc. In other words a prosecution and defence calling witnesses for their case, who are then cross examined by the opposing side. For a debate it is in my opinion a flawed format, especially given the very limited time for questioning and cross examining the witnesses. More significant, however, was the fact that yet again the British liberal media effectively copped out on an important issue of defence of free speech, despite the title of the programme.

Darren Bedford reviews Robin Hood (Saturday BBC1)

The traditional Robin Hood story goes like this. Young Saxon nobleman returns from King Richard’s crusade full of idealism and good-will towards his fellow man. He is outraged at the injustice that Richard’s brother, John, and his henchman like the Sheriff of Nottingham are perpetrating against the downtrodden Saxon peasantry.

I didn't blog about Torchwood after its opening two episodes last weekend because I don't like to state a definite opinion after an opening bite. Then a few days later, I realised that wasn't quite the real reason, which was ... that I couldn't quite believe how good it actually was.

The BBC’s programme Shoot the Messenger caused a bit of a furore. When I sat down to watch it I was already aware that its working title had been Fuck Black People. To say the least I felt somewhat uncomfortable, not least because this a story about a black IT worker whose idealism leads him to become a teacher — which is also a remarkably accurate description of me (though my idealism is of a different brand). Although I didn’t get to relax during the course of the programme, the nature of my discomfort changed.

Last night Channel 4 showed a 2 hour documentary by Baldric, sorry Tony Robinson, that was supposed to expose the nonsense of the fundamentalist Christians known as Endtimers - that is those nutters who believe in the Bible literally, and believe that the world is about to end in accorance with the predictions in Ezekiel and Revelations.

I have been watching the TV series "What makes Us Human?" I haven't made my mind up about it yet.

In the first programme it looked at genes which whilst separating us from other animals by allowing us to operate in complex ways within a social environment could explain some social problems, because it was found that the optimum social grouping for a human community was around 250 people. As the day before, I had nearly had to kick the shit out of three youths on the way home from the gym who for no good reason decided to throw something at me, and then objected to me throwing it back, I was sort of sympathetic to the idea that something is definitely going wrong in the ways humans relate to each other.

Andy Hilton reviews That Summer Day, a short film by Clive Bradley.

Dion D’Silva reviews “How to plan a revolution”, BBC2

Azerbaijan is situated alongside the Caspian Sea, and sandwiched between Russia and Iran. It is ruled by a brutal crypto-Stalinist regime.

This review by Paddy Dollard of a TV programme — The Sword of Islam — on the rise of political Islam was first printed in Socialist Organiser (a forerunner of Solidarity) in April 1987.