Post by Dirty Epic on Apr 1, 2019 8:00:30 GMT
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I recently got this on DVD and just wondered if anyone else has seen or remembers this? Please note this contains a Spoiler
{Spoiler Alert - Click Here To Reveal}
Written as a play by Willy Russell and directed by Our Friends in the North’s Pedr James, Our Day Out – using untrained ‘real life’ 14 year old actors, is the story of a group of under-educated kids in a ‘remedial’ class in a inner-city Liverpool school with seemingly no way forward and few if any prospects to look forward to. They’re taken under the wing of a compassionate, progressive teacher Mrs Kay who has arranged a ‘day out’ for them at Conwy Castle. Mrs Kay’s approach is at odds with the disciplinarian approach of Mr Briggs (Alun Armstrong) who has questioned Mrs Kay’s methods to his headmaster (Robert Gillespie). To ensure Mrs Kay and the kids don’t get into mischief – or worse, Mr Briggs decides to accompany Mrs Kay on the outing – a wise move as some older boys led by boisterous Reilly (Stephen Caffrey) have convinced Mrs Kay to allow them on the visit too.
Yes we get some chaos along the way. Notably the scene at the Welsh café, when the owners see their coach party ‘pay day’ ruined by the ‘streetwise’ kids ‘liberating’ it of it’s contents, a similar event with the animals at the Welsh Mountain Zoo and a missing Carol (Julie Jones) who doesn’t want to return to Liverpool and despite her years and education sees there is more to life than the bleak streets of home and what she is being offered and ‘expected to do’. This results in an exchange Mr Briggs and Carol who break some of the walls – the us and them kids had/have with teachers – especially back then. That is also explored in a vague love interest Reilly has another teacher Susan (Elizabeth Estensen). This element of outside stimulus, don’t accept what you’re given and expected and self-discovery/self-education is a major element in Russell and Alan Bleasdale’s work and it’s one the reasons why it’s so interesting and gripping all these years on.
What Our Day Out also shows quite well and perhaps foretells were the changes occurring in Liverpool and amongst it’s people around that time. Beatlemainia/Merseybeat honeymoon past glories that Liverpool had traded on for too long had were gone, examples of industrial decline and failed post-war redevelopment’s were starting to become obvious, (being honest) the failings of the Callaghan Labour government, spectre of Thatcherism, the social upheaval (right or wrong) this would bring to Liverpool and other cities and the beginnings of the new breed Liverpudlian with a ‘punky’ later ‘scally’ attitude which still prevails today are all represented by Russell here – for example compare the attitudes and behaviours of the school’s ‘cock’ (top boy) Reilly and his cohorts especially in the scene with the lollipop man who perhaps represents Liverpool’s old guard and when they directly/forcibly commandeer the back seats of the coach you get my gist and this would be expanded and taken further with the next adaptation from Russell One Summer which I really like and will review at some point – even if Russell himself wasn’t happy with older established actors being cast in the roles and the end result not quite as he envisaged to the point he took his name of the credits of the show.
Yes there are things here which made me cringe and the ‘Scouse’ stereotypes (exploitations) are there. However you can find similar stereotypes in say other Northern film/TV like say Clement and La Frenais depiction of the North East, Emmerdale, Coronation Street, Last of the Summer Wine etc. A degree of truth exists in every stereotype. I’m fine with that as writers like Russell and Bleasdale do this in a natural ‘of the people’ way the likes of Brookside and many of Liverpool-set things since didn’t/haven’t and instead played up the negatives with no positives. Considering this and as I mentioned previously Russell and Bleasdale also try and make you think and point to other ways – education, life generally etc. than where and what you’re expected to be in life. Phil Redmond/Brookside certainly never did that and I do think that (Brookside) perhaps not intended/by design more of a negative impact on the city than anything else from the 1980’s onwards. I feel it’s a big a shame neither writer has really done anything over the last few years I do feel they’ve got other stories and works in them. However the Liverpool of today or even over the last 20+ years or so like many other cities is a very different thing to the city they wrote about in the 1970’s/80’s and they’ve now become the ‘old guard’ they used to depict in their works.
It’s good that Our Day Out is now on DVD now, it may not be everyone’s cup of tea here and perhaps you may need to understand some of the narrative/background to fully appreciate it. However if you like good kitchen sink realistic of the people drama that Play of Today represented and something which is distinctly lacking with today’s wholesome, twee period pieces and over the top action drama’s then I’d fully recommend Our Day out to you. Now if they could just get a proper release of The Muscle Market…
Written as a play by Willy Russell and directed by Our Friends in the North’s Pedr James, Our Day Out – using untrained ‘real life’ 14 year old actors, is the story of a group of under-educated kids in a ‘remedial’ class in a inner-city Liverpool school with seemingly no way forward and few if any prospects to look forward to. They’re taken under the wing of a compassionate, progressive teacher Mrs Kay who has arranged a ‘day out’ for them at Conwy Castle. Mrs Kay’s approach is at odds with the disciplinarian approach of Mr Briggs (Alun Armstrong) who has questioned Mrs Kay’s methods to his headmaster (Robert Gillespie). To ensure Mrs Kay and the kids don’t get into mischief – or worse, Mr Briggs decides to accompany Mrs Kay on the outing – a wise move as some older boys led by boisterous Reilly (Stephen Caffrey) have convinced Mrs Kay to allow them on the visit too.
Yes we get some chaos along the way. Notably the scene at the Welsh café, when the owners see their coach party ‘pay day’ ruined by the ‘streetwise’ kids ‘liberating’ it of it’s contents, a similar event with the animals at the Welsh Mountain Zoo and a missing Carol (Julie Jones) who doesn’t want to return to Liverpool and despite her years and education sees there is more to life than the bleak streets of home and what she is being offered and ‘expected to do’. This results in an exchange Mr Briggs and Carol who break some of the walls – the us and them kids had/have with teachers – especially back then. That is also explored in a vague love interest Reilly has another teacher Susan (Elizabeth Estensen). This element of outside stimulus, don’t accept what you’re given and expected and self-discovery/self-education is a major element in Russell and Alan Bleasdale’s work and it’s one the reasons why it’s so interesting and gripping all these years on.
What Our Day Out also shows quite well and perhaps foretells were the changes occurring in Liverpool and amongst it’s people around that time. Beatlemainia/Merseybeat honeymoon past glories that Liverpool had traded on for too long had were gone, examples of industrial decline and failed post-war redevelopment’s were starting to become obvious, (being honest) the failings of the Callaghan Labour government, spectre of Thatcherism, the social upheaval (right or wrong) this would bring to Liverpool and other cities and the beginnings of the new breed Liverpudlian with a ‘punky’ later ‘scally’ attitude which still prevails today are all represented by Russell here – for example compare the attitudes and behaviours of the school’s ‘cock’ (top boy) Reilly and his cohorts especially in the scene with the lollipop man who perhaps represents Liverpool’s old guard and when they directly/forcibly commandeer the back seats of the coach you get my gist and this would be expanded and taken further with the next adaptation from Russell One Summer which I really like and will review at some point – even if Russell himself wasn’t happy with older established actors being cast in the roles and the end result not quite as he envisaged to the point he took his name of the credits of the show.
Yes there are things here which made me cringe and the ‘Scouse’ stereotypes (exploitations) are there. However you can find similar stereotypes in say other Northern film/TV like say Clement and La Frenais depiction of the North East, Emmerdale, Coronation Street, Last of the Summer Wine etc. A degree of truth exists in every stereotype. I’m fine with that as writers like Russell and Bleasdale do this in a natural ‘of the people’ way the likes of Brookside and many of Liverpool-set things since didn’t/haven’t and instead played up the negatives with no positives. Considering this and as I mentioned previously Russell and Bleasdale also try and make you think and point to other ways – education, life generally etc. than where and what you’re expected to be in life. Phil Redmond/Brookside certainly never did that and I do think that (Brookside) perhaps not intended/by design more of a negative impact on the city than anything else from the 1980’s onwards. I feel it’s a big a shame neither writer has really done anything over the last few years I do feel they’ve got other stories and works in them. However the Liverpool of today or even over the last 20+ years or so like many other cities is a very different thing to the city they wrote about in the 1970’s/80’s and they’ve now become the ‘old guard’ they used to depict in their works.
It’s good that Our Day Out is now on DVD now, it may not be everyone’s cup of tea here and perhaps you may need to understand some of the narrative/background to fully appreciate it. However if you like good kitchen sink realistic of the people drama that Play of Today represented and something which is distinctly lacking with today’s wholesome, twee period pieces and over the top action drama’s then I’d fully recommend Our Day out to you. Now if they could just get a proper release of The Muscle Market…