Cartman
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Post by Cartman on Aug 14, 2016 20:12:43 GMT
I watched part of the 70s series he did and wasn't keen personally. I find Sandbrook annoying, he is fond of generalisations and sweeping statements and doesn't always back them up. I also think he's smug and presumptious.
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Post by Dirty Epic on Aug 15, 2016 10:33:32 GMT
Quite interesting to watch for the archive footage though I'm not a fan of the Adam Curtis 'conspiracy theory' style of documentary making ( Adam Curtis made 'The Power Of Nightmares' & 'The Century Of Self' ) that Dominic Sandbrook uses where all things are made to seem linked. They'll pick a theme for each episode & make various different events & phenomena that they've chosen to include ( emergence of video games, the 'video nasty' panic, etc. ) fit the theme as if there was some grand design at work, it's a bit contrived & distorted I think. You have to be careful not to rewrite history. BIB
Yes, it was interesting to learn in Part 1 that Britain’s most important woman in the eighties wasn’t Margaret Thatcher, but Delia Smith! I always tend to get the 'rewriting history' feeling with many of these retro documentaries. For me things get made out to be something else to what they really were. When looking at the 1980's I always feel there's a predominace of Thatcher/the rise of the yuppie and super rich when in reality things like this and people like them were around in decades previous and unlike the cosy point of view commentators like put forward the yuppie didn't suddenly disappear in 1990 either! Yes this may have been true in the 'Square Mile' but perhaps not so in Coventry, Hull and Gateshead back then and what tends to be forgotten when looking at the 1980's is there were pockets and sub-cultures of resistance to the Thatcher philiosphy some good and some bad. Also right or wrong the decimation of working class communities in that period certainly ushered in greed, drug, crime, gang, ASBO behaviour etc. which was more or less around then as it is now. Considering a certain type of period drama has predominace on British television I'd love someone to do a semi ficticious drama about the Miners Strike/Millitant tendancy from this period looking at things from the strikers, police and politicians point of view - if you like something similar to Law and Order. It would certainly be a lot more interesting and hard hitting than what is getting served up at the moment and would certainly give a more balanced view of the 1980's too. Also when commentators have began looking back at the 1990's recently they also tend to put forward a everything in the garden's rosy point of view too that anything and everything was achievable to all - it wasn't unless you were/got rich or got very lucky! Also there's also a over-predominance of Britpop/Oasis being the best (only) thing to come out of the 90's too. Maybe? But other things were around back in the '90's too and as with many things they get airbrushed to represent a convenient view of the truth - a good case in point was Shane Meadows This is England series for Channel 4 which cetainly didn't seem quite right to me! I know if you rememeber it too well you weren't really there... but!
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Cartman
Producer
Posts: 4,022
Online Status:
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Post by Cartman on Aug 15, 2016 11:41:29 GMT
Good points Dirty. I tend to think the media like to generalise and pigeon hole eras into a sort of received wisdom way, The 60s, swinging, flower power, the 70s, grim, strikes, the 80s, Thatcher rescuing the country. All three are clichés and are, basically, rubbish in my opinion. The swinging 60s didn't extend to much more than a small area of West London, the 70s were anything but grim, great summers, great music, the 80s I thought bleak to start with, then became unbearably naff, before ending badly
As for the 90s, I have always thought of them as a bit flat and not very memorable, in comparison to the three previous decades. Very much a game of two halves, the first half (1990-94) I thought was truly dreadful, then suddenly perked up in about 1995. Bit of a false dawn though. A feeling that things were going to get better, but didn't really work out that way
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Post by Dirty Epic on Aug 17, 2016 14:41:57 GMT
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Post by Peter Picard on Aug 17, 2016 21:40:05 GMT
Dominic Sandbrook does make programmes which i find are enjoyable to watch. He's clever in the choice of products from a period that are memorable, and the soundtrack he employs tends to bring back memories of that time. I agree that the way in which he describes some events isn't always in tune with how i remember them, maybe that's an issue with many social history type programmes.
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Post by Charles Bronson on Aug 21, 2016 18:30:19 GMT
The eighties, or least the late eighties doesn't seem (To me anyway) to be such a long time ago. When I watched this documentary though, it was a bit of a shock to realise how much, things had changed since the end of that decade. Not just the technology, but people themselves seem to have changed a bit since those days.
On the whole I like Sandbrook's programmes, but I agree that he does come over as "smug and presumptious." We certainly do have to be careful about people in the media rewriting history. There is indeed, a bit of that going on these days.
I watched part of a BBC documentary recently about Britain at the time of the '66 World Cup. I had to turn it off after a while, as it was really annoying me. The picture they were giving of Britain as a nation at that time was, I felt distorted. It seems to be the trend these days to have people on these documentaries, that weren't even born at the time, describing events as though they present, and were at the centre of the action. I thought "The 80s" was only a two part series so I will have to catch up with part three on the iplayer.
Charles.
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Post by D.C. Burtonshaw on Aug 22, 2016 12:15:03 GMT
After watching the 3rd and final part, I felt it spent quite a bit of too much time in 1990, which isn't really in the decade of the 80's is it? And then all that about the 1990 Italy world cup and Gazza, was that padding out the episode perhaps? I appreciate Mrs Thatcher's resignation was pivotal to the end of an era but a lot mentioned could have been cut out and other topics could have been talked about, like the experience the security forces gained with dealing with IRA attacks (much needed for today problems with Internation Terrorism, the 1987 Stock market crash and the Great storm of that year. I must admit yes having been around in that decade, I forget now what it was like in some ways but my own life that decade consisted of full time education and next to no money, and only starting to work full time from 1989. I remember the "Video nasty" storm but never watched the horror films, only a few cert 15 films (when I was younger than that) at my next door neighbours house. I of course kept quiet but my stupid brother blabbed off what we saw and watched and my dad went ballistic and thought were watching horror and porn and banned us from going round there! It was only Raiders of the Lost Ark and a 70's warfilm with James Coburn called "Cross of Iron".............
But for many working class families life wasn't like it's stereotyped to be in the 80's, some were still struggling or just having to get by.
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