Television

Zola's vision of socialism

The BBC are now showing a major adaptation of one of Emile Zola’s more neglected novels 'Au Bonheur des Dames' (sometimes translated as 'The Ladies Paradise'). This is a good excuse as any to look again at a great but overlooked work. Quite a few people (especially on the left) have read Emile Zola’s novel 'Germinal' with its grim realistic depiction of class struggle in the coalfields of northern France. Others have also read 'Le Bete Humaine' and 'Therese Raquin' which are intense psychological thrillers obsessed with sex and death. Compared to these 'The Ladies Paradise' can seem like a...

A positive view of Asperger's?

Detective Saga Noren in The Bridge was fairly clearly high-functioning autistic, having Asperger Syndrome or being somewhere nearby on the autistic spectrum. This portrayal was, I felt, broadly positive. Saga is an intelligent woman, capable in her field of work, with focus and a useful detachment. Her personal and emotional life was atypical, but not in a particularly negative way. Her autistic-literal thinking was shown in amusing ways too: on one occasion in a nightclub, a man she fancied offered her a drink and walked away bemused when she refused; she followed him to explain that she...

Lines of enquiry

The Bridge was the latest BBC4 programmed Scandinavian crime dramas, which sentenced it to inevitable comparisons with previous successes such as The Killing. As someone who really rated The Killing, I initially fell into this trap: being dissatisfied by the first couple of episodes, wanting The Killing theme music to kick in, etc. But by about halfway through I think The Bridge definitely held its own, and managed to keep the intensity of drama throughout, whereas I feel The Killing began to tail off towards the end. This came from investment in the characters from the beginning, although at...

Intransigence and betrayal in the General Strike

Tim Thomas continues a series of articles on the British Film Institute’s Ken Loach retrospective with a review of Days of Hope, his TV series looking at class struggle in early 20th century Britain. Jim Allen, author of the reprehensible play Perdition, wrote the script for this 4-part TV production. Allen’s themes, intensely focused on the class struggle, are about intransigence and betrayal in real historical circumstances — here, the history of working-class organisation from the First World War to the General Strike. Ben, played by Paul Copley, decides to join up with his mates though he...

Learning disbilities: not out of sight

Like anyone else who watched it, I felt sickened by Panorama’s expose of how people with learning disabilities were tortured by their carers at a private hospital near Bristol (31 May). As a social worker who works with adults with learning disabilities I review placements like Winterbourne hospital fairly frequently. I’ve never seen anything like the treatment shown by the programme, but my heart often sinks when I walk into these places. The closure of long-stay hospitals was heralded by many as the end of institutionalisation — and the end of the appalling treatment that went on. But “care...

Adam Curtis and his “yellow brick road”

Adam Curtis documentaries have become their own genre. When you watch one you get an idiosyncratic TV essay, illustrated with a montage of old films, archive footage and adverts. The films are always fascinating but can also be infuriating. Curtis says his latest documentary series, “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace”, is about how the dream of liberation by technology has gone sour. But the programme is more about the idea of self-organising networks and the failure of an ideology of extreme individualism. The first episode ranged from the private life of the novelist Ayn Rand to...

Return of the slums?

In this programme, author and journalist Michael Collins reviewed the history of council housing and interviewed some of the people whose lives were shaped by it. He presented it as a social experiment with a legacy of failure, and described the vision of “council housing for all” as “utopian”. The programme nonetheless went some way to redressing Tory and right-wing denigration. Before the great council house building programme of the 1945-51 Labour government, “the slum landlord” was king; most working-class people lived in hovels, often paid exorbitant rents, and had no security of tenure...

Frankie Boyle: not a joking matter

In defending broadcasting comedian Frankie Boyle's “joke” about the eight year old disabled son of Katie Price, Channel 4 essentially had this to say: Price had already exploited her son by putting him in the media spotlight, so why shouldn't we? What a rotten, self-serving argument. You don't have to endorse Price's celebrity antics to recognise that making a joke at the expense of a child is wrong. This is Frankie Boyle’s “humour”: "Jordan and Peter Andre are still fighting each other over custody of Harvey — eventually one of them will lose and have to keep him." He went on to say some...

Uncovering the truth about human society

“[The capitalist mode of production] is based on the dominion of man [sic] over nature. Where nature is too lavish, she “keeps him in hand, like a child in leading-strings.” She does not impose upon him any necessity to develop himself. It is not the tropics with their luxuriant vegetation, but the temperate zone, that is the mother country of capital. It is not the mere fertility of the soil, but the differentiation of the soil, the variety of its natural products, the changes of the seasons, which form the physical basis for the social division of labour, and which, by changes in the natural...

Travellers: beyond the stereotypes

According to the BBC , the documentary series My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding is Channel 4's most popular programme since Big Brother in 2008, peaking at 7.4 million viewers. Unsurprisingly, the show concentrates on stereotypes: horse fairs, lavish wedding dresses and bare-knuckle fighting. Despite the title, most people featured are Irish Travellers rather than Roma and the issues facing the community are barely mentioned. The European Parliament Committee of Enquiry on Racism and Xenophobia in 2009 concluded that Travellers were the most discriminated against group in Ireland. A 2007 report found...

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