Sparky
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Post by Sparky on Sept 23, 2019 18:22:32 GMT
I just got hold of "Scum" on DVD - I didn't realise until I brought the DVD that the TV play was made for Play for Today and the BBC were worried about showing it.
The Feature Film was made & released instead.
For me, that's still one of the best. Even old "Rumplole of the Bailey" started life as a Play For Today.
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Post by Arthur Pringle on Sept 23, 2019 18:49:05 GMT
There's an earlier thread on Play For Today ( and tv plays in general ) if Gene or one of the mods wants to merge with this one & blimey, what a coincidence, the thread was started on Sep 22 & about this time of the day! DONE. Thanks Arthur. GH.
Dog Ends, what a great performance by Mr.Pringle Unfortunate name they gave the family dog, I remember seeing a British war film where a dog had the same name, in those days 'n*****r brown' was a colour, no way this would be shown on tv today though. Written by Richard Harris who wrote 'Trust Red' & 'Down To You Brother'.
By coincidence I've just read the novel of 'Scum' based on the original tv play by Roy Minton. Minton fell out with the director of Scum, Alan Clarke & didn't speak to him again as in Minton's words he 'f****d the script' when it was remade as a feature film. In fact it's not that much different from the tv version apart from a scene where Carlin takes a prison 'missus'. The tv play was shelved by BBC bigwigs as they considered it too biased against the Borstal system, offering a catalogue of abusive & brutal acts by the borstal staff with no sympathetic characters. In fact on the Scum blu ray there is a 70's ITV documentary showing life inside a borstal & the staff are shown being friendly with the trainees.
So many great plays from this series & The Wednesday Play before it. Of course we're limited by the ones we are able to see, mostly poor quality off air recordings. I think I've seen about 50 or so of them, there were over 300 made. I'd love to see a massive blu ray set of them similar to the Alan Clarke boxset.
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Sparky
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Post by Sparky on Sept 23, 2019 20:40:34 GMT
There's an earlier thread on Play For Today ( and tv plays in general ) if Gene or one of the mods wants to merge with this one & blimey, what a coincidence, the thread was started on Sep 22 & about this time of the day! DONE. Thanks Arthur. GH.
Dog Ends, what a great performance by Mr.Pringle Unfortunate name they gave the family dog, I remember seeing a British war film where a dog had the same name, in those days 'n*****r brown' was a colour, no way this would be shown on tv today though. Written by Richard Harris who wrote 'Trust Red' & 'Down To You Brother'.
By coincidence I've just read the novel of 'Scum' based on the original tv play by Roy Minton. Minton fell out with the director of Scum, Alan Clarke & didn't speak to him again as in Minton's words he 'f****d the script' when it was remade as a feature film. In fact it's not that much different from the tv version apart from a scene where Carlin takes a prison 'missus'. The tv play was shelved by BBC bigwigs as they considered it too biased against the Borstal system, offering a catalogue of abusive & brutal acts by the borstal staff with no sympathetic characters. In fact on the Scum blu ray there is a 70's ITV documentary showing life inside a borstal & the staff are shown being friendly with the trainees.
So many great plays from this series & The Wednesday Play before it. Of course we're limited by the ones we are able to see, mostly poor quality off air recordings. I think I've seen about 50 or so of them, there were over 300 made. I'd love to see a massive blu ray set of them similar to the Alan Clarke boxset.
Thanks Arthur. I must have missed that I would love to see a box set release of them too. Even regular repeats on BBC4 or similar would be worthwhile.
BBC4 did repeat a few of the episodes sporadically, and always at some random time where I catch the last 5 minutes. They did a Mike Leigh season around 2013, and showed 'Abigales Party' and one of my favourites 'Nuts in May' with Roger Sloman on a camping trip. People forget, Colin Welland (Tober) contributed a fair few scripts too.
It mystifies me why the hell we don't have a series like this on TV now - there is a heck of a lot of undiscovered writing talent out there - it needs a platform. The afternoon plays "Moving On" aren't far off the format - though are restricted in what they can get away with due to it's scheduling. I still think there is scope for a series of Short story 1 off plays (something that would run for up to 40minutes)
These films (for me) are what defines British TV. Grit!
I'll have to look out for the book of "Scum".
I have just acquired the 1980, 40 short stories by Roald Dahl - all stories used as a basis for episodes in "Tales of the Unexpected"
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Post by Arthur Pringle on Sept 23, 2019 21:25:33 GMT
I saw an interview with Dennis Waterman & he talked about how tv used to make plays with a 'remember them?' tone in his voice as if to say 'what has happened to tv?' I think the format is considered old fashioned today, too slow & wordy for modern audiences, even the word 'play' seems outdated, after all how many of us go to the theatre to see plays? There must be writers & actors who are capable of making decent tv plays but tv itself has changed so much that you wonder how they'd turn out. I think single plays would be hard to sell to BBC or ITV today, serials are the thing, netflix boxsets & all that American style palaver. It's all about what makes money today of course, so few if any risks are taken, it's about repeating a formula.
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Post by Steve Austin on Sept 23, 2019 21:57:46 GMT
Arthur, that's one of the reasons I love this forum as tonight for example, there have been a couple of great recommendations that I'll watch. Keep them coming As Blur said, "Modern Life Is Rubbish".
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Three Litre
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Post by Three Litre on Sept 23, 2019 22:19:19 GMT
Arthur, that's one of the reasons I love this forum as tonight for example, there have been a couple of great recommendations that I'll watch. Keep them coming As Blur said, "Modern Life Is Rubbish". Yes, like how the hell are my kids going to afford a house?
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Sparky
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Post by Sparky on Sept 24, 2019 6:18:52 GMT
I saw an interview with Dennis Waterman & he talked about how tv used to make plays with a 'remember them?' tone in his voice as if to say 'what has happened to tv?' I think the format is considered old fashioned today, too slow & wordy for modern audiences, even the word 'play' seems outdated, after all how many of us go to the theatre to see plays? There must be writers & actors who are capable of making decent tv plays but tv itself has changed so much that you wonder how they'd turn out. I think single plays would be hard to sell to BBC or ITV today, serials are the thing, netflix boxsets & all that American style palaver. It's all about what makes money today of course, so few if any risks are taken, it's about repeating a formula.
That pretty much sums it up Arthur. Proves that with the myriad of "Celebrity this & that" programmes we are force fed.
IF any TV plays are made these days (usually under the guise as a 'TV Movie' - obviously a US term) they tend to turn up hidden deep in Netflix, and even Sky Arts a produced a handful a few years back.
About 10 years ago SKY invested millions in making these 'TV Movies' - some from well known writers, others from unknown writers. A few mates worked on them. Though when they were shown it was under a banner (similar to Play for Today) - but featured more US produced dramas than the UK ones.
Thing is, as you say Arthur - Money is more important - such TV Movies cost a small fortune to make. Producers are to quick to want to make their money back via programme sales, advertising space sales and DVD releases. Most of the time such production is Finanaced externally - and I would expect would have interest on it too.
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Post by Dirty Epic on Sept 25, 2019 12:15:13 GMT
I think single plays would be hard to sell to BBC or ITV today, serials are the thing, netflix boxsets & all that American style palaver. It's all about what makes money today of course, so few if any risks are taken, it's about repeating a formula.
You've hit the nail on the head their Arthur.
When British TV does drama (or plays) it's very formulaic, very similar to the movie franchise style or things like the period style they know they can sell to US Markets and the likes of Amazon Prime, Netflix etc.
Maybe a bit of risk taking and allowing new people and ideas rather than what dominates their focus groups wouldn't be bad things.
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Post by Gene Hunt on Sept 25, 2019 19:35:24 GMT
That's a great play that I've seen a few times Sparky. One of my favourites though is Kisses at Fifty starring Bill Maynard. For those of you that have watched this now, you might like to take a look at this short clip from a 1985 remake of sorts of Kisses at 50 with Gene Hackman in the Bill Maynard role. Like the original, it was penned by Colin Welland but I'm sure most of you will agree, it has nowhere near the power of performance that the original had. It's called "Twice In A Lifetime" Gene.
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Three Litre
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Post by Three Litre on Sept 25, 2019 19:47:31 GMT
That’s cos Hackman got a dodgy first name.
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