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Post by Dirty Epic on Feb 9, 2018 12:21:40 GMT
Fox is good if perhaps a more genteel drama from Trevor Preston - especially compared to Out which came out a few years earlier. Well worth a watch if you hadn't seen it and a nice snapshot of Sarf London in the late 70s/early 80s. A few things hit and miss but for me it's a good 8/10 IMO.
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Lord Emsworth
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Post by Lord Emsworth on Jan 16, 2020 12:05:14 GMT
I've watched about half of the first episode so far, so early days for me
Plenty to enjoy already, not least the stellar cast and the London locations
I agree with Mr Epic, having recently watched and loved Peston's Out wth Tom Bell, this feels very different tonally...
Not quite as dark and gritty, and whilst Peter Vaughan as Billy Fox makes a great Patriarch of a gangland family he lacks Tom Bell's incredible brooding and menacing presence. So far he almost seems too jolly to be truly intimidating. That said, it is his birthday and in all the scenes so far he's with friends and family.
I was also a little unconvinced by the King Billy song early in the episode which tells of Billy's background and personality - it seemed to jarr a bit and felt at odds with the mood (I assume) the series is trying to convey.
Still all of that is a bit nitpicky and, overall, it's good stuff
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Post by Arthur Pringle on Jan 16, 2020 17:40:04 GMT
The songs throughout Fox are quite curious when you first hear them & some work better than others. I think what they do is act as an observer/narrator/commentator, someone saying 'look at this lot' in a slightly mocking tone. Quite a brave move to include them, it would've been easier not to.
Preston did have an art school background, I think director Jim Goddard did as well, in fact I think they met as students, so he's coming from that perspective as well as a traditional South London working class one & I believe the male characters in the show all have a bit of Preston in them.
Here are some scans on the show from the book 'Made For Television Euston Films Limited'.
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Post by Lord Emsworth on Jan 16, 2020 19:08:07 GMT
That's fascinating Arthur - both your musings and the scans*
The songs are sort of like a Greek chorus then?
I've just started episode two
I was impressed by how Billy seemed to shrug off having a sack full of rats dumped into his 70th birthday party
I'm not sure the narrative about the stalkerish woman who is fixated by Larry Lamb is going to end well for anyone
* I had to stop reading the final one as it was venturing into serious spoiler territory
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Post by Lord Emsworth on Jan 16, 2020 20:46:43 GMT
The songs throughout Fox are quite curious when you first hear them & some work better than others. I think what they do is act as an observer/narrator/commentator, someone saying 'look at this lot' in a slightly mocking tone. Quite a brave move to include them, it would've been easier not to.
The song in episode two, which soundtracks Phil and his upper class girlfriend Anna wandering the streets of London, works very well and is a charming song in its own right
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Post by Arthur Pringle on Jan 16, 2020 23:52:03 GMT
Yes they recovered very quickly from the rat invasion. Those scenes remind me of the fight that breaks out in the Sweeney episode 'Messenger Of The Gods' & the two villains who dumped the sack of rats at the Fox house, nicknamed 'handsome & gristle', are pretty comical as well.
Reading about Peter Blake who sings the songs, he played Frank N Furter in the Rocky Horror Show over a thousand times, whilst Joey Fox's possessive girlfriend is played by Patricia Quinn, most famous for playing Magenta in the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
It's never made very clear how Billy combined working at Covent Garden with being the local equivalent of a Kray. He clearly didn't run a criminal empire or even get up to much villainy, so how is he tied up with a rival gang?
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Post by Dirty Epic on Jan 17, 2020 12:56:21 GMT
It's never made very clear how Billy combined working at Covent Garden with being the local equivalent of a Kray. He clearly didn't run a criminal empire or even get up to much villainy, so how is he tied up with a rival gang?
Trying my best not to mention spoilers for anyone not fully up to speed with Fox here but yes I'm a bit mystified about that too Arthur as it seems Billy and most of his family are semi-respectable.
It's only really Ray (Derrick O'Connor) who seems to have dabbled into a sort of villain lifestyle and had previous compared to his brothers and that's not really that heavyweight compared to the characters Trevor Preston had in Out - even the minor league players like Pretty Billy and Vic Lee!
Perhaps Billy was a villain in the past but this isn't really mentioned nor any past life like this referenced and there's also the general disapproval of a crime lifestyle from Billy's second wife Connie (Elizabeth Spriggs) which puts this rivarly with the Macey's a little bit odd IMO unless of course Billy grassed them or their father's for things in the past.
That said Billy is very much a traditionalist and doesn't really seem to like Phil's (Eamon Boland's) movement away from the family traditions to his university education and up market relationships/friends which is a life Phil wants to pursue but Billy doesn't want him to. That is perhaps more a traditional London family thing than maybe a crime-related thing but.
That said for all these flaws Fox is a good piece of TV drama and is a good insight of what a traditional London family up to say 1980 was like... keep enjoying the episodes LE you've got some good ones coming up.
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Post by Lord Emsworth on Jan 17, 2020 13:15:03 GMT
Thanks for the info about Peter Blake & Patricia Quinn Arthur - you're a mine of amazing intel
Re Arthur's and Dirty Epic's posts....
I wonder if Billy is more a legendary hard man figure than a gangster
He's only known on his manor, and the police don't (so far - end of ep 2) take any interest in the Foxes (except Ray)
All the Fox boys are in work or studying/training
As Mr Epic says, it's only Ray, with his club, who seems to interact with villains
I'm hoping the origins of the feud with the Maceys is explained later
Are the Maceys supposed to be villains? That's not clear so far either. They seem more likely to be than the Fox family.
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Post by Arthur Pringle on Jan 17, 2020 17:41:55 GMT
There is the grass character in the cafe in one episode who challenges Billy's 'King Billy' reputation- 'some people round here think you're an arrogant pig' he says. I expect Billy was the equivalent of the 'cock of the estate' as well as getting up to Del Boy like dodgy deals on the side, not quite 'one of the chaps' but known as a hard man. Though Ray Fox's semi villainous dealings are frowned upon by Billy & it's in fact Phil, the Left Wing university student who seems to be most at odds with him & his working class Tory values that he acknowledges as his favourite son.
Preston was either married to or lived with an upper middle class woman, I think a relation of actor Denholm Elliott & you see in several of his stories his working class upbringing & values coming into conflict with middle class values, particularly where relationships with women are concerned. It's obvious from the Sweeney dvd commentary he did for 'Ringer' that his working class roots are both a blessing & a curse, it gave him material for his stories but he is obviously bitter & resentful at the predominance of the middle class in the tv/film industry & in British life generally.
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Post by Lord Emsworth on Jan 17, 2020 18:49:11 GMT
That's fascinating Arthur - thanks
...including his bouts of manic depression
I found this section particularly illuminating especially as, outside of the Sweeney, Out and Fox, I knew little of his other output...
Preston also created Ace of Wands (1970-72), a fantasy series that he described as a children’s crime drama. It featured Tarot, a super-sleuth magician, and featured psychedelic opening and closing credit sequences.
By then, he had started writing for peak-time crime series: Callan in 1969, Special Branch between 1969 and 1973, and Public Eye in 1971. After the success of Out and Fox, he scripted a 1984 episode of Minder but found producers no longer receptive to his ideas for series, so he wrote single dramas such as Slayground (1989), Children Crossing (1990) and The Negotiator (1994) before adapting the novels Thicker Than Water (1993), Dylan Jones’s story about identical twins, and Little White Lies (1998), Elizabeth McGregor’s psychological thriller.
His 1987 film Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire, directed by Alan Clarke, developed a cult following and was described by the British Film Institute as “the only vampire snooker musical ever made”. Later, Preston teamed up again with Hodges to make the 2003 film I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead.
He drew on his experience of manic depression to write Flaw in the Motor, Dust in the Blood, a 2008 BBC Radio 4 play about life with bipolar disorder. In recent years, he suffered from cancer and acute arthritis but continued writing for radio and painting.
I blimmin loved Ace of Wands
What about those other credits?
Anyone seen any?
Any recommendations?
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