'The Guardian's Top 50 Television Dramas of All Time'

2010-01-12 The Guardian's critics have compiled a list of all time best dramas, and "the results might just surprise you". Controversies aside, here are the relevant positions.

21-30
30. Inspector Morse
29. Clocking Off
23. Cracker

2-10
3. Our Friends in the North

"Three decades, four friends and the world that shaped their lives" was the tagline for this epic drama in nine 70-minute episodes. It is as sharp and wonderful today. Tightly plotted and warmly scripted, Our Friends is a gripping lesson in social and political history, touching on crooked 60s local government, 70s London porn empires, glitzy 80s prosperity and the 90s New Labour dream. Every school history department should own the DVD box set, for among titillating scenes of go-go dancers, gangland squabbles and unplanned pregnancies a strong lesson about Britain's past mistakes resonates clearly. Most brilliantly, Our Friends stars the cream of the country's then fresh young acting talent: future Doctor Who Christopher Eccleston, Bond-in-waiting Daniel Craig, the elegant Gina McKee and brooding Mark Strong. The closing scenes in 90s Tyneside ­accompanied by an Oasis soundtrack are unforgettably moving. GD

'Our Friends In The North' at BFI

Report by Hedgehog

Apologies for this taking so long – someone at work decided if I had taken a whole week of holidays I might as well make up for it this week so I ended up with a hell of a lot of double-shifts. Plus, it wasn't quite as easy to tell the upcoming story as I thought it might be; partially because I was lacking words, but also partly due to digressing ever so often because new thoughts kept sparking up and last but not least deciding what to keep, when to refer to Jen’s report and what to leave out. But here we finally go:

There was a short introduction at the beginning of the programme, announcing the panel who were to join in after the screening (writer Peter Flannery, producer Michael Wearing, Christopher Eccleston). It also was mentioned that the discussion was to be recorded (let's hope there'll be a way to access that recording in the future!) and would the audience please not use any recording devices of their own. (Would have really *loved* to use a recorder, thankyouverymuch, but I had already ruled this out and was at that point just hoping not to get thrown out for using a very old fashioned 'recording device' called pen and paper – and neither can I screw off my head and throw my brains away. ;-) )
The panel was to consist of questions asked by Michael Billington of the Guardian with about 15 minutes of time allotted to questions from the audience at the end.

The room was full, about 150 people. At a guesstimate, the average age was about 40-45, with some in their twenties and some in their sixties or above, but mainly the age group between mid-thirties to fifties. Neither gender dominated by a noticeable margin. Interestingly enough there was a woman talking with a French accent, so I wasn't the only 'non-British-tax-payer' there (I think it was PF who at one point told the audience OFITN was paid for by *them* - the British tax payers). Sadly I didn't get a chance to exchange more than a few casual words, I'd have liked to know what got her there. Outward looks were everything in between casual jumper/jeans to decent suit/jacket-style.

People were highly attentive and disciplined. No mobiles ringing (*lets out grateful sigh*), no whispered discussions - but at a handful of scenes there was a collective response, many times a chuckle at the funnier moments, and a very emotional collective gasp and shock at the Rottweiler-scene. During the panel discussion they loosened up a bit, going with the flow so to say. In short, if I was a teacher that's how my dream of a perfect class would look like.

As for the screening itself, it was a great experience to watch OFITN on a big screen. There was a short 'what happened last time' which isn't on the DVDs, but I suppose it might have been part of the original telly version. And it's also just brilliant to have a large audience around you who all react to what's happening on the screen.

As Jen already wrote in her excellent summary, the panel started with a bit of a 'making-of'-discussion; Michael Wearing talking about among other things the time it took until it finally got commissioned and the legal issues surrounding it. Peter Flannery remembered at one time he was told he could perhaps "set it in a country called 'Albion'".
[When the scripts had to be 'legalled', Flannery admitted it was based on real people. At the time of eventual broadcast he said: "I was told to set the story in a fictional country called Albion, that I mustn't mention Labour, the Tories, Newcastle or any police rank above superintendent. I said no one would sue me - people had either been in prison and lost their reputations, or they had helped me, or they were dead and that, as this is a fictionalised account, anything I'd written was fair comment." // M. Eaton, "Our Friends In The North", BFI TV Classics]

In reply to MB's next question CE then recalled (after a remark about not wanting it to sound like namedropping ^^) it was Danny Boyle who'd brought it to his attention. He also highlighted the Rottweiler-scene as the one that he found outstanding.
[Danny Boyle was the first director attached to the series, but "he insisted on directing all nine episodes." Charlie Pattinson thought the task wasn't for one person to weather. After 'Shallow Grave's success Boyle got an all clear for 'Trainspotting', "so he pulled out. But he did leave behind one lasting contribution in the person of Christopher Eccleston". "When Danny Boyle had first approached Christopher Eccleston he was thinking of him as Geordie, but when the actor read the scripts he instinctively knew that the more complicated, anti-heroic part of Nicky was the role he wanted to play." // M. Eaton, "Our Friends In The North", BFI TV Classics]

Completely out of context, but I thought I'd mention it here: at one point during those first couple of minutes the usage of the word 'fantastic' got a very positive response from the audience. Quite impressive. Nice to know I'm not the only one completely unable *not* to laugh. I think if there were people in the crowd with qualms about a Vindici-style haircut, there were less of them afterwards.

There was more on the political issues connected to the episode shown (and on Nicky changing from an activist into a photographer), and the discussion considerably gained momentum when by and by it came to focus on the point of quality of TV-shows. I think it started with the question whether it was possible that a show like OFITN would happen today, and from there, the panel of three just sort of took over and there weren't many more questions from MB (and I think I haven't seen a reporter/moderator who just knows when to let things take their own course and not to interrupt an interesting, vivid discussion in a long time!).

There was a lot of laughter during that discussion, albeit it is a somewhat bittersweet topic (the demise of quality on TV), if you really look at it. I was fascinated with Michael Wearing's 'Edge of Darkness' when I was nine or ten years old. And only a few years later, that sort of stuff simply wasn't there anymore, and the then-nine-year-olds were fed 'Pokemon – the animated series'. Why has this changed? What makes someone decide the audience's average attention span is like 20 seconds or so, and why do they get away with it?

It's really hard to report on the details of the discussion – you'd have to have a word-by-word transcript or, even better, the audio recording to get the whole dynamics. Jen has done a fabulous job with summing up the contents, so I can really only add the three of them harmonized so well, that at times it felt a little like watching a ball game – passing the ball around, with ever so often a well-aimed shot that scored laughter from the crowd. They didn't mince matters much, to say the least.

I wish this 'vision of a channel' as MW called it, wouldn't stay a vision. Make it pay-TV and register me as a customer. ;-)

There was time for three questions from the audience before the panel had to be ended (because of something else being scheduled in the same room). The answer to the first question (I jotted down "series today" but can't get transferred back into what the question was) led to the discussion about stories having to have an ending, because that's where usually the meaning/message can be found, but today's recurring drama / soaps are just never-ending. The second question was connected to the original play.

After a brief pause from the audience when asked for a last question, a woman asked if (paraphrased) a series was possible today that dealt with dishonesty (iirc in connection to the whole media business). That would've been an interesting question for a longer discussion, as there are many different kinds of manipulation.

The first that comes to mind of course being the manipulation of facts and documentaries, but if you think about it films are a medium that lives by 'manipulating' the audience in some way (at least imho – that's because I do think 'emotionally moving' is a form of manipulation as well, although not in necessarily a bad way – it's up to the audience to recognize it and to decide how far we want that positive kind of manipulation; and of course, there are also negative examples). I think it was PF who at that point asked "What is truth?" (and thus ensured I had a Johnny Cash song playing in my head for the rest of the night, thankyouverymuch.)

Over far too soon, this discussion was.

2009-12-21

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And on this occasion, we'd like to invite you to share your thoughts on the topic.

Christopher Eccleston has always maintained that the viewers are often short-changed when it comes to industrial TV programming, and this time he remarked as well that "intelligent isn't hard for the audience", it's hard for the controllers.

Additionally, consider this quote from David Foster Wallace from his article 'E Unibus Pluram':

"TV is the epitome of Low Art in its desire to appeal to and enjoy the attention of unprecedented numbers of people. But it is not Low because it is vulgar or prurient or dumb. Television is often all these things, but this is a logical function of its need to attract and please Audience. And I'm not saying that television is vulgar and dumb because the people who compose Audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests. It's all about syncretic diversity: neither medium nor Audience is faultable for quality."

Read also an excerpt from 'Sight and Sound' magazine (1996) on 'Our Friends In The North'.

So what is your impression of television these days? How is it changing? In your country, how are the television dramas profiled? What do you feel there should be done in order to improve the overall quality? And who do you think is responsible? What role do you as the audience have in this? What would you watch?

'Our Friends In The North' - Eccleston Joins Panel

2009-12 BFI is offering Radical Television Drama screenings and discussions. In the programme on Friday, 11th December, 18:20 is one episode of 'Our Friends In The North', and for the discussion part, beside Peter Flannery, producers Michael Wearing and Charles Pattinson, Christopher Eccleston will also join the panel.

BFI Southbank:

Loyalties to family, community and political principles are tested to breaking point in this episode of Peter Flannery's seminal series. As the miners' strike takes hold, police brutality is used to hold the line and contain 'the enemy within'. Combining the personal with the political, this caught the mood for a whole generation.

Episode 7: 1984

We are delighted to announce that cast member Christopher Eccleston will join the panel discussion after this screening.

Book the ticket here.

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Additionally -- Excerpt from 'Sight and Sound':

'Our Friends in the North' will be one of the major television programmes of this or any other year. Its ambition alone is invigorating, as is its lack of concession to international market forces; the script is one of the most passionately engaging since Bleasdale's 'Boys from the Blackstuff' or 'GBH'. According to writer Peter Flannery, the joke was that the BBC hierarchy worried it had commissioned a drama about post-war British housing policy; that lasted until a Controller of BBC2 was heard that "no one is interested in the Labour party anymore" (about as inaccurate a prediction as was possible). Good sense prevailed, and Flannery's story of four Geordie friends and the political forces shaping their lives over a 30-year span, was recognised as the nearest thing we're likely to get to a British 'Heimat'.

'Our Friends…' is a study of social responsibility, including a vividly dramatised debate about the increasingly dirty manipulation of politics by early spin-doctors and PR men, and "the great moral issue facing British politics – corruption." It centres on some particularly colourful cases […] played out against a background of entrenched complacency; Flannery's work is a culmination of that tradition of British engaged – some might say enraged – realism that began with 'Cathy Come Home' (and includes his own 'Blind Justice'). The character of Nicky Hutchinson is used to test the old certainties of political social realism, to question whether the forms of commitment familiar from television drama are still workable as the legacy of the 60s and 70s passes away. Which makes 'Our Friend' very contemporary. And the great strength of the television serial – the ability to present the passing of time in a long-form narrative – has never been better used: every episode is set in a different election year, from 1964 to the present... How the cultural can infect the personal is also brilliantly realised.

--Ray Cathode, 'Sight and Sound', February 1996--

Thanks to Hedgehog.

Brief report by Jen:

"First of all they showed the episode and then had a Guardian journalist speak to the panel about the making of it, the controversies surrounding it and why Christopher was attracted to it in the first place. Christopher had just finished 'Lennon Naked' for BBC4. Wearing jeans, black jogging top and his black Timberland boots, with a shaven head he looked threatening to the audience, but lightened up after a few minutes, taking two plastic cups of a unknown red wine. There was time for three questions in the following discussion.

In 1995 Christopher had just finished 'Shallow Grave', and it was Danny Boyle who said at the time to him there were a lot of good scripts floating about, I think you ought to look at them, one of which was 'Our Friends In The North' - which Christopher's agent at the time was getting her hands on. The one thing that attracted Christopher to the series was when his character's father (played by Peter Vaughan) was attacked by the Rottweiler, it reminded him so much of his parent's generation living in the same estate all their lives and suddenly finding the world changing at an alarming rate. Made him realise that society was changing too.

Regarding drama production - it's not so much about quantity, Christopher suggested, but quality. He thought once he went to America ("to make some shite movies" in his own words) he'd come back to real drama because that's what he was brought up in his generation (those who are aged 40 or over, including me) with single stand outs such as 'Play For Today' and 'Abigail's Party' et al.

Regarding the historic events in this episode of the series, in reality the power of editing distorted actual truth. You may remember the controversy surrounding the furore about 'Queensgate', and how the BBC were forced to apologise over how the Queen 'appeared' to be storming out of a photoshoot with Annie Lebowitz? The same matter happened with the Miner's Strike and the battle of Orgreave Colliery. The BBC edited images so it 'appeared' that the miners were in the wrong, and that they had caused trouble, and that the police had stormed in. Fact was that it made it cheap to sell the story to the tabloids, and that nearly twenty five years on the BBC had to retract it.

They cited BBC2 controller at the time, Michael Jackson (no, not that one or the beer expert either), to take the gamble of not only making 'Our Friends...' but 'This Life' too. Both were high quality dramas way ahead of what BBC1 were putting out. Michael Grade just said 'no' at the time, "it wouldn't work", and that he much rather put on Noel Edmonds on a Saturday night to attract a larger share of the audience. People aren't dumb, but just look at the state of television now, the same mediocrity is being churned out at an alarming rate.

Television writers have to clinically sanitise dramas to satisfy those in the organisation i.e. to play it safe. There was according to Peter Flannery a course and a questionnaire that they all had to fill out suggesting ways how to film. Mainly because of what happened after the Brand "and what's that other chap's name?" telephone calls. Example given was the mouse scenario which Christopher played on sarcastically. There's a scene with an actor and you need to capture an emotion so you put in a mouse into the shot. Do you a) film it, b) not film it or c) film it to see the reaction of the actor. There's no right or wrong answer until there's one answer, a basic Catch.22 situation is played out.

There was going to be a prequel called 'Our Friends In The South' and that Geordie Peacock was going to be stuck out in the jungle somewhere.
[The original play dealt with "the scandal of sanctions-busting by which British oil companies supplied the illegal white supremacist regime in Rhodesia." This abandoned strand actually provided the title for the series: "An internal memo from BP in South Africa cryptically spoke of looking after 'Our Friends In The North' - a coded reference to the rebel government of Ian Smith" // M. Eaton, "Our Friends In The North", BFI TV classics book]

Christopher said that the programme has to have an ending, while he thought continual dramas such as 'Lost', coming back season after season, a bit of waste of time; there must be a conclusion. He also criticised 'Spooks' for being unrealistic.

There will never be a drama serial quite like in the realms of 'Our Friends In The North' not because of the expense, but because of getting a commission for it. It's a scary thought that the BBC is now concentrating on what they call "returning dramas" i.e. soaps instead of producing good quality drama. Any wonder why Jimmy McGovern is not making any more of 'The Street' - it's simply because of this, and it made the panel angry that there are good writers out there who want to put on dramas for the modern age and can't.

This is tragic insomuch that the generation below me is going to be spoon fed on 'X-Factor', reality TV and soaps, and that the likes of 'Our Friends...' would never get commissioned by any of the main five channels let alone any of the satellite stations. It's criminal to think that no-one has the courage to and stand up for intelligent scripts and the like."

Continue to Hedgehog's report.