Re-watching the 60s

James from London

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Carry On Constable (22 February 1960) v CORONATION STREET (9 - 28 December 1960)

I re-watched the three '50s Carry Ons first -- Sergeant (the most innocent and best so far), Nurse (lovely, even if it's little more than a series of sketches) and Teacher (the weakest, although the ending still makes me cry like a baby). The sauciness steadily increases each time until in Constable, we get our first glimpse of Carry On nudity; the collective buttocks of Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, Leslie Phillips and Kenneth Connor. By now, the formula's pretty well-established: bungling new recruits join veritable British institution (in this case, the police force) and everything that can go wrong, does. Replacing flinty William Hartnell (Sergeant) and kindly Ted Ray (Teacher) as the long-suffering authority figure is a world-weary Sid James making his Carry On debut. He's a brilliant addition - effortlessly real as always (not for nothing has he been called the Spencer Tracy of the Carry Ons) - and his presence elevates the whole film, which again is pretty much a series of set pieces that provide a succession of comedy character actresses (Irene Handl, Joan Hickson, Esme Cannon, plus the gorgeous Shirley Eaton) with some nice cameos, and Williams and Hawtrey with an excuse for a spot of cross-dressing. (They're a kind of cut-price version of Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis.) It's notable that far and away the most efficient new bobby on the beat (or at least the switchboard) is a woman, Joan Sims. And it ends with Sid and lovely Hattie Jacques getting together, thereby setting them up nicely to play a married couple in Carry On Cabby.

Like all self-respecting soaps, THE STREET (as it used to be abbreviated to; none of that over-familiar CORRIE business) starts with the arrival of a newcomer to the ranch/cul-de-sac/square/mansion, through whose eyes we are then introduced to the regular characters. In this case, it's Florrie Lindley, new owner of the corner shop. Surprisingly, she disappears into the background after an episode or two, but not before saying she can't imagine ever living in a bungalow and not going upstairs to bed. Given that she'll later turn into the bungalow-dwelling Edna Cross on BROOKSIDE, this probably qualifies as the earliest recorded example of Soap Irony. Florrie reappears just before New Year when she hears a banging sound coming from the wall of the house next door, which she ignores, unaware that it's the sound of THE STREET's very first fatality, May Hardman, pounding her last before sliding to the floor with one of those Mysterious Headaches which will go on to prove the undoing of everyone in Soap Land from Gavin Taylor to Paul Galveston to Arthur Fowler to Krystle Carrington. Spookily, it also foreshadows Florrie/Edna's own end on BROOKSIDE, where we see her through a kitchen window sliding to the floor with a stroke as her husband Harold and Sandra the nurse argue obliviously outside.

The two characters who make the biggest impression in THE STREET's first seven episodes are Elsie Tanner and Ena Sharples, but the two don't appear together on screen. Aside from one trip to the Rovers, we only see Elsie inside her house, dealing with the problems of her twenty-something kids, Dennis and Linda, while spitting onto her mascara brush as she makes herself up in the mirror -- the kind of warts and all behaviour that had simply never been seen on telly before.

Just as Melissa Agretti would later make her debut on FALCON CREST played by an all but silent bit player, Miss Nugent (i.e., the future Emily Bishop) also first appears played by a mute extra.

Oh and Ken Barlow's mother Ida makes a brief appearance in Carry On Constable to report her missing pussy. "The name's Fluff," she explains. "I"m so sorry, Miss Fluff," replies PC Charles Hawtrey sympathetically.

And the Top 2 are ...

1. CORONATION STREET
2. CARRY ON CONSTABLE
 
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Mel O'Drama

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Oh my. This thread is hitting all kinds of heavenly spots already. And I didn't even know I needed it until now.
 

James from London

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CORONATION STREET (4th January - 25th December 1961, assorted episodes, ) v Carry On Regardless (7 April 1961)

Carry On Regardless is a slight departure for the series. Rather than targeting an established organisation like the police or the army, the gang are all employed by Sid James’s odd-job business, and all the usual mayhem — pratfalls, misunderstandings, general incompetence — stems from that instead. By and large, everyone sticks to their by now familiar (but still enjoyable) personas: Williams is an intellectual snob, Connor is neurotic, Hawtrey fey and oblivious, Sims sensible but accident prone etc. But without the pomposity of a hierarchal institution for them to undermine, however unintentionally, it all feels a tad aimless.

On the plus side, there’s the addition to the team of Liz Fraser as a smart and sexy blonde who ends up in her bra and pants while still retaining her cheerful innocence (a prototype Barbara Windsor, in other words). With Fenella Fielding’s cleavage also making its debut, there’s a notable increase in scantily clad females, but it doesn’t feel exploitative. OK, it does feel exploitative, but you never get the sense the film is setting out to humiliate any of its actresses. Rather it’s the male characters, specifically their boggle-eyed and often panicked reactions to being confronted with the female form, who are the butts of the joke in most of these scenes.

With the gang making a spectacular balls up of their final task by accidentally demolishing the house they’re supposed to be cleaning, Carry On Regardless ends with a rallying cry of the film’s title — and there is something about the philosophy of "carrying on regardless" that is quintessentially British. It taps into the Spirit of the Blitz and all that stuff: carry on regardless of bombs dropping over London or, in the case of Charles Hawtrey and co, regardless of one’s own ineptitude. Meanwhile, CORONATION STREET in 1961 is mostly about carrying on regardless of the ups and downs of day-to-day life in a Northern backstreet. As in the Carry Ons, the characters' vicissitudes are often depicted humorously, but as a comedy of manners rather than as slapstick. (An episode from January where a faulty gas main obliges the entire street to camp out overnight in the church mission hall under the beadily disapproving eye of Ena Sharples is a great example. It’s also the first time most of the characters have been in the same room together.)

In the early weeks of THE STREET, it looked as if Elsie Tanner’s ex-jailbird son Dennis might be the series’ rebel, but he soon turns out to be more of a Billy Liar than a James Dean — a head-in-the-clouds dreamer with vague ambitions of breaking into show business. Instead, the biggest threat to the show’s cosy mundanity comes from twenty-two year-old student Ken Barlow, all brooding intensity and film noir cheekbones. First he ruffles feathers by going on a Ban the Bomb march, which leads to father Frank threatening to kick him out of the house. The same scenario would play out twenty-two years later on BROOKSIDE when Lucy Collins clashes with her dad about joining CND, but while Ken merely disobeying his father is sufficient drama for 1961, the ante must be upped in 1983 by having sixteen-year-old Lucy arrested at a political protest when she should be sitting her O levels. Whereas Lucy’s storyline leads to her being written out of the series, Ken, despite Frank's threats and his own various bids for freedom over the next sixty years, will never quite make it out of the street where he was born. The furthest he gets in ’61 is a railway platform where he almost catches a train to London after another row with his dad, but instead he gets chatting to neighbour Christine Hardman who’s just been to an Adam Faith concert on her own (she had a spare ticket but no-one else was interested; Elsie said she would have gone, only she’d just taken off her shoes), and ends up getting the bus home again. Ken also has THE STREET’s first secret romance — with a thirty-three-year-old librarian no less — but a Hollywood clinch followed by a fade to black is as racy as it gets.

There’s a birth, a death and two weddings during THE STREET’s first full year, all of which take place off screen. What’s most remarkable about each event is how non-melodramatic it is: nobody considers jilting anybody, there are no questions of paternity and no serial killers stalking the streets of Manchester. However, the episode where it gradually dawns on the viewer, long it does on the residents of the street, that the reason Ida Barlow has failed to return home is because she's been knocked down and killed by a bus is as tense and gripping an episode as any murder mystery.


The first Black face to appear in THE STREET belongs to Miles Davis on an LP cover jazz-head Ken has pinned on his bedroom wall, alongside one of Frank Sinatra. (Lucille Hewitt, the show’s token teen, favours Cliff Richard on hers.) Miles is followed by THE STREET’s first Black character, a bus driver, who has a brief and slightly self-conscious chat with a very youthful Prunella Scales playing a bus conductor with a crush on Harry Hewitt. Other recognisable faces to appear this year include Patricia Routledge as a cafe manageress and Davy Jones who, five years before getting to No 1 as lead singer of the Monkees, is Ena's eleven-year-old grandson. “Don’t mither your grandmother with that Shirley Bassey,” warns his mum.

And the Top 2 are ...

1. (1) CORONATION STREET
2. (2) CARRY ON REGARDLESS
 
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James from London

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CORONATION STREET (February 7th - December 24th 1962, assorted episodes) v CARRY ON CRUISING (April 11th 1962) v DR NO (October 5th 1962)

Watched alongside the constant mishaps of the Carry On gang and the everyday struggles of life on Coronation Street, the first thing that impresses about James Bond is the ease with which he does almost everything, whether it’s seducing a woman, tossing a trilby onto a hatstand, jetting across the world or dispatching his opponents. This sense of effortless cool is juxtaposed with moments of exquisite tension, usually when Bond’s own life is in jeopardy — the scene where he wakes up to find a deadly tarantula crawling across his bare shoulder being a classic example. The cyanide-swallowing suicide of the driver who picks Bond up at the airport in Jamaica and the fiery death of his likeable pal Quarrel are other moments of grimness amongst the glamour. The balancing act of nonchalance and urgency, the fantastic and the human, is something each Bond film, indeed each Bond, will have to negotiate. We want 007 to be suave and cool — that's his USP, after all — but for the story to matter, we also need him to be vulnerable. When he reveals to Honey Ryder, as they are about to come face to face with Dr No for the first time, that his hands are sweaty with fear, it’s a shock but also kind of refreshing.

Dr No is a great introduction to the world of 007, of course, but feels almost small compared to the movies to come. The eponymous character is a satisfyingly evil Bond Villain and Ursula Andress gorgeous as a prototype Bond Girl, but, neither will prove the most memorable of their respective categories (a certain emergence from the sea notwithstanding).

Received wisdom has it that one of the many vicarious thrills derived by cinema goers from the early Bonds was the chance to savour the foreign locations, this being a time when overseas travel was still out of reach of most people. By this logic, the setting of Carry On Cruising — an ocean liner sailing between Spain, Italy and North Africa — must also have felt somewhat aspirational, at least compared to the mundane surroundings of the previous Carry Ons. So it’s appropriate that Cruising is the first of the series to be filmed in colour, giving it an injection of ‘60s fun and escapism. In other ways, it sticks to the series' tried and tested formula. For the third film in a row, Sid James (as the ship’s captain) is in charge of a group of bumbling new recruits, while the nautical setting ensures there’s an inbuilt hierarchy between the characters.

A ship’s crew being an exclusively male domain in 1962, there’s no room for Hattie Jacques to do her customary formidable authority figure shtick, and Charles Hawtrey and Joan Sims are also conspicuous by their absence. Lance Percival (as a seasick chef) is a lankier, saner replacement for Hawtrey, while Dilys Laye (as Liz Fraser’s husband-hunting gal pal) is a suitably warm and lovely substitute for Sims, if perhaps a touch more glamorous.

While setting the film at sea broadens the horizons of the Carry Ons in one way, it tightens them in another. Having all of the characters on one ship means they can’t escape from each other, thus obliging the writers to come up with storylines that have actual consequences, rather than a succession of unrelated sketches strung randomly together. As a result, the dialogue is a tad sharper and there’s just that bit more warmth between the characters which makes all the difference.

Diana Coupland, Sid James’s sitcom wife in the ‘70s, crops up twice in my 1962 re-watch. In Dr No, she can be heard singing ‘Under the Mango Tree’, the song Ursula Andress lip-synchs to in her opening scene on the beach. In CORONATION STREET, she makes a brief appearance as Elsie Tanner’s dress shop boss.

In the mere dozen episodes of THE STREET from '62 that I was able to find, there is a distinct increase in the kind of dramatic events that are now considered de rigeur in soaps — a suicide attempt, a cheating husband, a snatched baby, a pub brawl — as well as moments of comedy that wouldn’t seem out of place in a Carry On: Annie Walker finding sea lions in her bathtub, Harry Hewitt’s new car reversing into a lake, and a wonderful Christmas Eve episode where half the locals watch in bemusement as the other half stumble through a performance of an Oscar Wilde-style play in the church hall. It’s like Acorn Antiques twenty-five years before Acorn Antiques existed, but with an additional layer of pleasure that comes from watching characters we already know attempt to convince in roles for which they’re entirely unsuited. The highlight is a terrified Emily Nugent, awesomely miscast as a femme fatale jewel thief.

This is also the year where THE STREET gets the hang of outside broadcasting. During the previous year there had been a day trip to Blackpool where we got to see the regular cast frolicking at the seaside, but without any sound, so the whole thing played like a sequence from a silent film complete with piano music accompaniment. But now we can see and hear a group of neighbours attempting to enjoy an ill-fated bank holiday picnic in the park, Concepta Hewitt wandering frantically through nearby streets looking for her missing baby and, most memorably, Christine Hardman as she contemplates throwing herself off the roof of the raincoat factory. The factory is on the side of the street we never see, but we’re led to believe that it’s on the same site where Baldwin’s Casuals and Underworld would later stand (but the building we’re shown here is far taller than the one that exists in C21st CORRIE). Clearly, the factory scenes in have been filmed elsewhere and slotted in alongside shots of actors standing outside the set of the corner shop looking up in horror at … nothing at all. But even though a modern eye can see the join, it doesn’t detract from the impact of the drama. In fact, in a strange way, it might even add to it.

Watching the episode in isolation, the specific reasons for Christine’s suicidal state aren’t clear, but it doesn’t really matter — it’s enough that she’s an ordinary person with an ordinary job in an ordinary street who simply can’t see a way forward anymore. Ken Barlow’s the one who eventually talks her down, not through any heroics or profound speeches or because he’s especially close to Christine, but simply by identifying with her. He points out that they’ve both lost their mothers since the series began and that it was she who inadvertently dissuaded him from running away to London when they met by chance on a railway platform. It’s a really simple but oddly moving scene.

Up until now, Elsie Tanner has been a depicted as a slightly frumpy, slightly past-it mother of two grownup children. Whatever raciness and romance existed in her past (and rumours of a ladder parked outside her bedroom window on VE Day still persist), the series seems keen to undercut any notion of her as a glamorous character. When her estranged husband shows up seeking a divorce, he’s not the hunk of burning love one might have expected, but a little man in a bowler hat and mackintosh. The one time we see her dolled up for a night on the town, she admits to having “one of our Dennis’s vests” on underneath her party frock. However, after she finds out Bill Gregory, her on-off beau, is secretly married, there’s a shift. When confronted, Bill tells Elsie he’ll leave his wife if she wants him to — all she has to do is give him the nod. But can Elsie, who knows all too well the loneliness of being middle-aged and single, subject another woman to the same fate? Things come to a head in the Rovers where Bill is sitting with his wife waiting for a sign from Elsie, who is standing at the bar, that he should take the next step. When no such sign is forthcoming, he leaves with his wife, silently walking out of Elsie’s life at the same time, seemingly for good. (He’ll return twenty-two years later as part of Pat Phoenix’s leaving story.) Even though the scenario is played out discreetly (Bill’s wife remains entirely unaware of Elsie’s existence), all the regulars in the Rovers bear solemn witness to Elsie’s sacrifice. And thus is she anointed the first of many tragic soap queens who, behind the hair lacquer, mascara and wisecracks, hide a lifetime of heartbreak, thanks to their unending capacity to fall for the wrong fella. More immediately, it brings Len Fairclough, Bill’s closest pal, into Elsie’s orbit as he becomes her confidante, so beginning the great STREET romance that never was. It also marks a watershed moment for Ena Sharples who thus far has been portrayed as an utter tyrant without a good word or an ounce of compassion for anyone, least of all La Tanner. But now she reveals a softer side as she empathises with Elsie’s pain. When she confides that the only thing she misses about the late Mr Sharples is the warmth of his feet in the small of her back, Elsie is so taken aback, she doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Talking of being taken aback, Minnie Caldwell’s casual remark about how much she likes “that chubby Cliff Richard” apparently so alarmed Real Life Cliff that he went on a diet and has remained eerily svelte ever since.

And the Top 3 are:

1 (1) CORONATION STREET
2 (-) 007
3 (2) CARRY ON ...
 
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James from London

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CORONATION STREET (20 Mar - 25 Dec 63, assorted episodes) v From Russia with Love (10 Oct 63) v Carry On Cabby (7 Nov 63) v DOCTOR WHO (23 Nov - 28 Dec 63)

Another year, another aborted suicide attempt by a young woman on CORONATION STREET. Unlike last year’s candidate, the perpetually discontented Christine Hardman, Doreen Birtles has always come across as a cheerful young thing — but that was before she suffered a humiliating rejection from an older man whom nobody seems to have a good word for. (It’s not stated directly, but one gets the impression that he may have lured Doreen into bed before dumping her.) Whereas Christine’s chosen method of ending it all — chucking herself off the factory roof — made it a public spectacle, only the viewer is aware of Doreen sitting alone in the flat above the corner shop, staring blankly into space, a bottle of pills at her side. To convey her disturbed frame of mind, the episode deploys the kind of narrative device one associates with classic Hollywood cinema rather than kitchen-sink drama: the amplified sounds of a ticking clock and Doreen’s own heartbeat. While it was bookish Ken Barlow who unexpectedly came to Christine’s rescue, Doreen’s knight in shining armour is even more unlikely — dopey Dennis Tanner, whose suspicions are aroused when he finds her front door locked — no-one locks their doors on Coronation Street! Next thing you know, he’s shinning up Len Fairclough’s ladder and smashing Doreen’s window with his bare fist. Everyone is taken aback by his gumption, most of all Dennis himself, and the story becomes as much about his heroism as Doreen’s plight.

There are only eight episodes from this year’s STREET available online (the same ones that were released as part of the 1960s box set about fifteen years back) so I cheated and had a sneaky peek on Wikipedia where I learned that Christine Hardman has by this point assembled the kind of soapy bio a present-day HOLLYOAKS character would envy. After failing to throw herself off the roof, she eloped with an old boyfriend who promptly died in a car crash and by March of ’63, she has somehow got herself engaged to Ken Barlow’s widower dad, Frank, who is twice her age and timidly besotted with her. Inevitably, mere days before their wedding, she dumps him. “I’d kill you, Frank,” she explains. “You don’t know what I’m like when I’m trapped … I run into traps — I should stand still. I run on roofs, away from men, towards men, away from meself mainly.”

Christine isn’t the only woman on THE STREET with a fear of being trapped by domesticity. Len Fairclough and Elsie Tanner’s long-running “will they, won’t they?” story is now underway and by August, it seems as if Len has got as far as proposing marriage. While the men are away on a darts trip/piss up, the women congregate at the Rover’s for a girly stay-behind. As the Street wives compare notes on married life, the camera concentrates on Elsie’s silent reaction as she listens. “Everything sort of quietens down, doesn’t it?” observes Valerie Barlow, Ken’s relatively new wife played by a baby-faced Anne Reid. “When you’re courting, one minute you’re up in the air, the next you’re sobbing your heart on your pillow. When you’re married, you just — go on.” Suffice to say, Len and Elsie don’t get married.

The mundanities of a working-class marriage are also at the centre of Carry On Cabby. Not for nothing has Cabby been called “the kitchen sink Carry On”. Earthy and domestic, it feels closer in tone to CORONATION STREET than to the earlier films in the series. The not so happy couple is played by Sid James and Hattie Jacques. While Sid, playing the boss of his own cab firm, is as reliably Sid as ever, Hattie sheds her usual bossy harridan persona to play soft and vulnerable as his neglected wife. It’s a lovely performance which gives the film its heart. Other Carry On regulars get to show different sides to themselves as well. Esma Cannon, ordinarily a giddy eccentric, is a tough old bird from the East End, while Kenneth Connor, instead of playing a lovestruck neurotic overcome by his feelings for Dora Bryan/Joan Sims/Dilys Laye, is already in an ongoing relationship with Liz Fraser when the film begins. There’s no room for Kenneth Williams this time around as there’s only one hapless new recruit in Cabby — Charles Hawtrey, who compensates by being even more accident-prone than usual. He spends the film dressed like Joe Orton while ogling all the women — an interestingly incongruous combination. And now that she’s been run over by a bus on CORONATION STREET, Ida Barlow is free to return to the series and deliver Jim Dale’s baby in the back of Sid James’s cab.

Like the wives Elsie listens to at the Rover’s, Hattie Jacques is in a marital rut, fed up with playing second fiddle to her husband’s business. To get her own back, she uses his money to secretly start her own business — a rival, all-female cab firm — which shrewdly exploits men’s weakness for pretty girls in short skirts to turn a tidy profit. In other words, it’s exactly what Sue Ellen Ewing will do with Valentine Lingerie in twenty-three years time. Glam Cabs even has a heart as its logo, just as Valentine’s will. Hattie may not actually deliver Sue Ellen’s line, “I’m a woman — I know my audience,” but she’s certainly thinking it as she unveils her fleet of sexy drivers in revealing uniforms. If there is an equivalent of Mandy Winger’s Valentine Girl among the Glam Cab ladies then it’s Amanda Barrie, who doesn’t have an awful lot to do in terms of plot, but steals every scene she totters into by being devastatingly pretty and ending every huskily delivered line with the word “darling.” (At the risk of stretching the Glam Cabs/Valentine Lingerie comparison to breaking point, just as JR and Sue Ellen were finally reconciled as a result of the BD Calhoun hostage situation, it takes Sid and his trusted band of drivers riding to Hattie’s rescue after her cab is hi-jacked by a couple of bank robbers to provide Cabby with its happy ending.)

Ena Sharples may have mellowed a bit since CORONATION STREET first began, but in The One Where Jerry and Myrna Booth Tie the Knot, she has managed to piss off everyone off to the extent that almost the entire street has sent her to Coventry. (Ken is the pious exception.) The episode concludes with what might possibly be the first whodunnit in soap history (or British soap history at any rate): Ena returning from the wedding to find her bedsit has been completely trashed — but by whom? The most likely candidate (which means he couldn’t possibly have done it) is Len, last seen drunkenly abusing her at the reception.

This whodunnit is followed by a Christmas Day who-is-it as THE STREET goes meta by staging its own version of THIS IS YOUR LIFE, with Dennis Tanner channelling Eamon Andrews as host. Just as it will forty-odd years later when EASTENDERS has the same idea, the “victim” turns out to be the incumbent pub landlady, in this case, Annie Walker. There’s no real drama about the episode as such, just a couple of guest appearances from the Walkers’ recurring children, but in its own modest way, it’s really charming and funny.

The first episode of DOCTOR WHO, which aired a month earlier, is genuinely eerie. It starts as a conventional, modern-day drama set in a regular comprehensive school where two nice middle-class teachers, Ian and Barbara, puzzle over the behaviour of one of their pupils, Susan Foreman, who seems to know everything there is to know on the subjects of history and science, but next to nothing about everyday matters such as monetary currency. Confused about her given address, they decide to follow her home (perfectly acceptable behaviour in 1963 it would seem), only to see her disappearing into a junkyard where a police call box is has been incongruously housed — a police call box that vibrates. “It’s alive!” Ian exclaims upon touching it. A crotchety old man, purportedly Susan’s grandfather, appears but refuses to answer any of their questions. Hearing Susan’s voice from inside the police box, they become concerned that the old git is holding her prisoner (not such acceptable behaviour, even in 1963) and, ignoring his protests, barge into the police box … to find themselves on a large futuristic set which Susan calmly insists is a TARDIS, a machine her grandfather, aka the Doctor, stole when they left their home planet and which they use to travel in time and space. Ian and Barbara logically assume they’re completely mental — but that doesn’t explain why the police box is bigger on the inside than out. Rather than let Ian and Barbara leave and blab to the authorities, the Doctor essentially kidnaps them — and after flipping a few switches, they find themselves transported back in the Stone Age where they are immediately thrown into their first adventure.

Unfortunately for us, prehistoric cavemen turn out to be quite boring. All they do is moan about whose job it is to invent fire whilst declaiming their dialogue in the sort of cod-Shakespearean way actors are wont to do in not very good historical dramas. That aside, the atmosphere of this first WHO story is fascinatingly grim. No one so much as smiles for at least three episodes. We’re a very long way from Billie Piper and Catherine Tate beaming with delight and excitement at the prospect of experiencing all the universe has to offer. “I hate this too, you know,” Ian assures Barbara during a brief respite between life-threatening situations.

At one point, the TARDIS gang are being chased through a forest by an angry caveman and his missus who are intent on killing them, when the caveman is attacked by an (offscreen) animal and left badly injured. Ian and Barbara’s first instinct is to stop and tend to his wounds. The cavewoman is incredulous: all she understands is survival; the concept of compassion is totally new to her. What’s really interesting is that it’s new to the Doctor as well. Like Stone Age man, his only concern is saving his own skin (and, at a pinch, his granddaughter’s). In fact, Ian has to prevent him from bashing the injured caveman’s head in with a rock. Clearly, he has a lot to learn before he becomes the hero we regard him/her as today, and his new companions are just the people to teach him.

Barbara and Ian are really, really likeable. They remind me of two old school BLUE PETER presenters whose default setting is friendly and helpful, but who have been plunged into a surreal nightmare where they must fend off one bizarre peril after another whist having to rely on an untrustworthy old weirdo if they are ever to return home again. I’m less thrilled about Susan. As the “unearthly child” of the first story’s title, she manages to sustain her aura of mystery until about ten minutes into the second episode whereupon she starts screaming hysterically and never really stops.

One of the cool things about early WHO is that, in true Saturday Morning Picture style, one adventure leads straight into the next which means no sooner has the TARDIS escaped from the dark and drab Stone Age than it rematerialises on a futuristic planet that soon turns out to be Skaro, the homeworld of the Daleks. Nowadays, of course, these glorified pepper pots are hugely familiar and maybe even seem a bit silly, but it’s not hard to imagine how utterly strange they must have appeared in December '63. Without anything remotely human, or even animalistic, about their appearance to latch onto, there would simply have been no frame of reference for them. The same can be said for the series’ original opening titles (a succession of monochromatic psychedelic images before psychedelia even existed) and the theme that accompanies them (alien-sounding electronic music before electronic music even existed). Running counter to all this weirdness are the stories themselves. Despite the difference in their settings, most of the action in the first two adventures boils down to characters getting captured and imprisoned and then trying to figure out a way to escape and return to (relative) safety. Both contain perilous journeys through forests or jungles (all created within the confines of a BBC studio of course) that recall Little Red Riding Hood and other Grimms’ fairytales — ideal for triggering children’s playground imaginations.

“Why do people never hit me for what I do to them?” Christine Hardman asks herself after breaking Frank Barlow’s heart on CORONATION STREET. “They should hit me more.” James Bond hits his girlfriend in From Russia With Love when he suspects her of betraying him. The way it’s presented, it doesn’t seem that shocking. In fact, it’s almost casual — she’s a KGB agent on a secret mission (more secret than she even realises) so it feels like it kind of goes with the territory.

From Russia With Love makes a lasting contribution to pop culture by introducing the image of an evil mastermind sitting behind a desk stroking a cat. It also initiates another Bond tradition: the evil mastermind’s weird sidekick — and they don’t come any weirder or kickier than Rosa Klebb, hunched and humourless with a dagger secreted in the toe of her shoe. Just as memorable is Robert Shaw’s blond assassin, an escapee from Dartmoor Prison recruited and turned into a killing machine by SPECTRE. After Klebb assigns him the task of eliminating Bond, he spends most of the movie lurking menacingly in the shadows before finally approaching Bond on the Orient Express where he assumes the identity of a posh British agent to get close to him. However, he gives himself away over dinner by ordering red wine with fish. Today, this would be regarded as a (public) schoolboy error, but wine drinking was a much more rarefied experience back in ’63 (as evidenced by the episode of CORONATION STREET where, in order to serve wine to their guests at a fancy dinner party, Harry and Concepta Hewitt must request a bottle in advance from Jack Walker at the Rover’s, who then has to have it specially delivered.) That Shaw’s bit of rough’s attempt at playing posh should be rumbled by Connery’s Bond, who is, in reality, a bit of rough playing posh himself, is pleasingly ironic. The subsequent brawl between them — a brutal fight to the death in a cramped train compartment — is the highlight of the film.

1963 was the year the Beatles took off and their influence can be felt in both CORONATION STREET, where Liverpudlian would-be pop sensation Brett Falcon lodges with the Tanners, and at the very beginning of DOCTOR WHO where Susan shows off her teen credentials by nodding along to Merseybeat combo John Smith and the Common Men on her transistor radio. But neither Brett Falcon nor John Smith is quite as groovy as they appear: While Brett Falcon is really a gormless window cleaner called Walter Potts, Susan is informed by her down-with-the-kids teacher Ian that John Smith is actually the stage name of the Honorable Aubrey Waites and he’s the son of a peer.

The year ends with the Beatles at Number 1 with 'I Want to Hold Your Hand', and the Doctor, Barbara and Ian not only the prisoners of the Daleks on Skaro but critically ill with radiation poisoning to boot. Their only hope is for Susan to stop screaming long enough to return from the TARDIS with a possible cure, unaware that the Daleks plan to steal it for themselves!

And the Top 4 are …

1 (3) CARRY ON CABBY
2 (1) CORONATION STREET
3 (2) 007
4 (-) DOCTOR WHO
 
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Mel O'Drama

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Another year, another aborted suicide attempt by a young woman on CORONATION STREET. Unlike last year’s candidate, the perpetually discontented Christine Hardman, Doreen Birtles has always come across as a cheerful young thing — but that was before she suffered a humiliating rejection from an older man whom nobody seems to have a good word for. (It’s not stated directly, but one gets the impression that he may have lured Doreen into bed before dumping her.) Whereas Christine’s chosen method of ending it all — chucking herself off the factory roof — made it a public spectacle, only the viewer is aware of Doreen sitting alone in the flat above the corner shop, staring blankly into space, a bottle of pills at her side. To convey her disturbed frame of mind, the episode deploys the kind of narrative device one associates with classic Hollywood cinema rather than kitchen-sink drama: the amplified sounds of a ticking clock and Doreen’s own heartbeat.

Although it aired before I was born, I've been fascinated by this storyline since I first read about it at some point in the Eighties. Or more specifically, the story behind the storyline, with this being an early example of a hyperbolic newspaper spoiler having an impact on the way the story aired.

As I understand it, the original plan was for Sheila to commit suicide by overdose and gas, but once the press leaked it there was a public outcry over its imitability and it had to be hastily rewritten.

It's years since I last watched it, but from what I remember the finished episode feels even more off-kilter because it's not clear what's going on. There are still a couple of lines with characters commenting that they can smell something. I can imagine if the viewer was aware that Sheila was gassing herself at that moment it would have added suspense, with the fake-out that Sheila might be discovered, before it turns out the character is speaking about a new perfume or whatever.

A few years ago, there was a documentary that showed a clip or two from unearthed footage of the version as originally shot, and an interview with Eileen Mayers who seemed genuinely disappointed that her best work on the show had never been shown.



Christine Hardman has by this point assembled the kind of soapy bio a present-day HOLLYOAKS character would envy. After failing to throw herself off the roof, she eloped with an old boyfriend who promptly died in a car crash and by March of ’63, she has somehow got herself engaged to Ken Barlow’s widower dad, Frank, who is twice her age and timidly besotted with her. Inevitably, mere days before their wedding, she dumps him.

Christine was a standout to me last time I worked through the DVDs. She seems to have been somewhat forgotten in the annals of Corrie history but she was the first of her kind and I'd say became something of a template for the tragic young drama queens that followed, from Irma Ogden and Suzie Birchall to the late teens and twentysomethings in more recent years.



And now that she’s been run over by a bus on CORONATION STREET, Ida Barlow is free to return to the series and deliver Jim Dale’s baby in the back of Sid James’s cab.

Ha ha. I hadn't made that connection, but then I've never done a Sixties rewatch as thorough as this.



In other words, it’s exactly what Sue Ellen Ewing will do with Valentine Lingerie in twenty-three years time. Glam Cabs even has a heart as its logo, just as Valentine’s will. Hattie may not actually deliver Sue Ellen’s line, “I’m a woman — I know my audience,” but she’s certainly thinking it as she unveils her fleet of sexy drivers in revealing uniforms. If there is an equivalent of Mandy Winger’s Valentine Girl among the Glam Cab ladies then it’s Amanda Barrie, who doesn’t have an awful lot to do in terms of plot, but steals every scene she totters into by being devastatingly pretty and ending every huskily delivered line with the word “darling.” (At the risk of stretching the Glam Cabs/Valentine Lingerie comparison to breaking point, just as JR and Sue Ellen were finally reconciled as a result of the BD Calhoun hostage situation, it takes Sid and his trusted band of drivers riding to Hattie’s rescue after her cab is hi-jacked by a couple of bank robbers to provide Cabby with its happy ending.)

Oh wow! Another parallel I hadn't spotted. I like it.



I’m less thrilled about Susan. As the “unearthly child” of the first story’s title, she manages to sustain her aura of mystery until about ten minutes into the second episode whereupon she starts screaming hysterically and never really stops.

Oh dear.

I think I've only watched the first episode in isolation when it was shown on some significant anniversary. My main memory is of Susan (at least I think it was Susan) doing that weird, head-wobbling, vibrating Sixties dancing by herself which all added to the unearthliness for me.



James Bond hits his girlfriend in From Russia With Love when he suspects her of betraying him. The way it’s presented, it doesn’t seem that shocking. In fact, it’s almost casual

It's all in a day's work for Mr C.

 

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As I understand it, the original plan was for Sheila to commit suicide by overdose and gas, but once the press leaked it there was a public outcry over its imitability and it had to be hastily rewritten.
Fascinating. I had no idea the press were into spoiling the audience's fun that early on, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
It's years since I last watched it, but from what I remember the finished episode feels even more off-kilter because it's not clear what's going on. There are still a couple of lines with characters commenting that they can smell something.
Hmm, I don't recall any reference to smells, or maybe I didn't pick up on them.
A few years ago, there was a documentary that showed a clip or two from unearthed footage of the version as originally shot, and an interview with Eileen Mayers who seemed genuinely disappointed that her best work on the show had never been shown.
Oh wow. I'm kind of curious about the early actors' recollections of working on the series, but I'm reluctant to google them in case they all turn out to be dead.
Christine was a standout to me last time I worked through the DVDs. She seems to have been somewhat forgotten in the annals of Corrie history but she was the first of her kind and I'd say became something of a template for the tragic young drama queens that followed, from Irma Ogden and Suzie Birchall to the late teens and twentysomethings in more recent years.
Very much so. She's got that self-destructive, animal-in-a-trap-gnawing-on-their-own-arm-thing going on, which is very compelling and feels very contemporary.

Have you watched all the CORRIE-by-decade box sets?
My main memory is of Susan (at least I think it was Susan) doing that weird, head-wobbling, vibrating Sixties dancing by herself which all added to the unearthliness for me.
Yes, that all too brief fusion of cool '60s chick and mysterious alien girl might be her finest moment.
 

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Fascinating. I had no idea the press were into spoiling the audience's fun that early on, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

They're certainly consistent.



"To stop a star committing suicide in front of millions of viewers". They make it sound like a snuff episode.

I've also realised it means Corrie wasn't live at this point. The text in the Mirror article pictured above suggests it was recorded just five days in advance of screening. I'm not clear on how early they started recording it in advance (or if I know I've forgotten).

Here are a few articles regarding the deleted scenes coming back into the light of day, with some still pictures in the two Mirror ones.




I'm quite shocked to see that one article is over a decade old now as it only feels like a year or two ago.



Hmm, I don't recall any reference to smells, or maybe I didn't pick up on them.

It's a long time since I last watched but I have a feeling it was a conversation between Lucille and Florrie, either in the shop or in the hallway between the shop and the flat at the back.

I probably only noticed because I remembered reading the story of the hastily rewritten scenes.



Oh wow. I'm kind of curious about the early actors' recollections of working on the series, but I'm reluctant to google them in case they all turn out to be dead.

It would be great to get some insight into those early days from people who were there. I'm sure there must be some stuff out there. Although equally, I'm sure a number of them are indeed quite dead.



Very much so. She's got that self-destructive, animal-in-a-trap-gnawing-on-their-own-arm-thing going on, which is very compelling and feels very contemporary.

Oh yes. Very true.



Have you watched all the CORRIE-by-decade box sets?

I have indeed. I've watched the Sixties to Eighties several times, and the Nineties and Noughties once each. And I've loved every one.

It would be nice to get a set for the Tens now that decade is completed.



Yes, that all too brief fusion of cool '60s chick and mysterious alien girl might be her finest moment.

That's kind of reassuring. At least I know I haven't missed much by not watching the rest of her episodes.
 

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DOCTOR WHO (4 Jan - 26 Dec 64) v CORONATION STREET (5 Feb - 23 Dec 64, assorted episodes) v CARRY ON JACK (23 Feb 64) v CARRY ON SPYING (29 Jul 64) v GOLDFINGER (17 Sep 64) v PEYTON PLACE (15 Sep - 31 Dec 64) v CARRY ON CLEO (10 Dec 64)

1964 was an unusually prolific year for the Carry Ons, spawning no less than three films, all of which dispense with the series’ poking-fun-at-a-modern-day-institution format in favour of poking fun at either history (Carry on Jack, set at the time of the Spanish Armada), movie genres (Carry on Spying) or, in the case of Carry on Cleo, both.

Empire magazine made this shrewd observation about Carry On Jack — “it was the first [of the series] to feature a historical setting, something that paid dividends for the team for, despite the distinct lack of budget, it not only provided tons of mileage for punning and farce, it also set their worldview at one remove, creating a universe that exists by its own laws and logic, therefore making any form of ludicrousness acceptable.”

That said, Jack is the weakest of the year’s Carry Ons. Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey are the only series regulars who appear (not counting another brief cameo from Jim Dale, steadily working his way up the Carry On ranks) and you can’t help but miss the rest of the gang. It also falls back on the increasingly tired “incompetent new recruits” device with newcomers Bernard Cribbins and a cross-dressing Juliet Mills joining Hawtrey aboard the HMS Venus as a trio of bungling sailors. The big change, however, is that rather than placing them under a long-suffering Sid James-style authority figure, the man in charge, Captain Fearless, is just as clueless, and twice as eccentric, as they are. Williams, who has played nothing but well-meaning but pretentious intellectuals since the series began, is finally allowed to indulge his manic side as Fearless and his performance is the film’s highlight.

As a child, I remember finding the scene at the end of Carry On Jack where Fearless, delirious with gangrene, is strapped to a table and has his leg amputated by Bernard Cribbins one of the funniest things I’d ever seen. It’s not quite as hilarious today but still raises a titter or two. This year’s Bond offering, Goldfinger, includes an even more memorable leading-actor-strapped-to-a-table sequence. As the beam of an overhead laser burns through the surface of the table to which Bond has been bound, moving slowly but inexorably towards his crotch, it’s not his leg he’s worried about losing. Suffice to say, the scene has lost none of its wince-inducing tension in the last 56 years.

Goldfinger must rank as the quintessential 007 movie. It boasts the most famous Bond song, belted out by the singer most closely associated with the series, the most outrageously named character (Pussy Galore), the kinkiest murder (Shirley Eaton nude and painted gold), arguably the most memorable line of dialogue that isn’t a 007 catchphrase (“No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die”) and a villain’s sidekick against whom all other villain’s sidekicks must be measured (the short, mute Odd Job with his killer bowler hat). As for the titular character, the fact that all of Gert Fröbe’s dialogue is dubbed should count against him, but while Auric Goldfinger may not be the best Bond bad guy of all time, he’s a wholly satisfying one.

Goldfinger was released three months after Carry On Spying, which means Spying only had the first two Bond flicks on which to base its parody. If that seems a tad previous, then it’s surely a testament to the strong cultural impression 007 had already made by this point. Still, it doesn’t give the Carry On gang a huge amount of material to draw from and so the scope is widened to include references to other spy films, most notably The Third Man, by aping its famous zither music and having Jim Dale (him again) fall into the Vienna sewers, and The Ipcress Files, with Agent Daphne Honeybutt undergoing the same kind of psychedelic brainwashing as Harry Palmer.

Agent Honeybutt, aka Barbara Windsor in her Carry On debut, is the best thing about the film. She’s sexy and mischievous, while also being as naive and adorable as a newly-hatched chick. What makes Windsor so good is exactly what will make people underestimate her for the entirety of her career: she’s so effortlessly convincing as this little blonde ditz it’s almost impossible to imagine there’s any craft or even thought behind her performance. But nobody’s that funny by accident. The film itself acknowledges this dichotomy: for all her apparent innocence, Honeybutt is the shrewdest character in the film — just as Juliet Mills was in Jack, Hattie Jacques was in Cabby and Joan Sims in most of the Carry Ons before that.

Alas, Spying is marred a misjudged performance from the usually reliable Kenneth Williams. His braying cockney, “‘Ere, stop messing about!” shtick is great for those occasional asides when his pompous persona slips (such the ace running gag in Carry On Cleo: “Friends, Romans …” “Countrymen?” “I know!”), but here he bases his entire character on it and it soon becomes as grating as it is relentless.

The Bondian references in Spying are easy to spot — Dr No becomes Dr Crow, SMERSH becomes STENCH, 007 becomes Double O-OH, etc. — but perhaps it’s not an entirely one-way street. One could argue that Pussy Galore’s Flying Circus — a hugely efficient all-female aviator team in sexily clinging uniforms — owes a debt to Hattie Jacques’ Glam Cabs — a hugely efficient all-female taxi fleet in sexily revealing uniforms — from Carry On Cabby. (Pussy Galore’s Flying Circus would, in turn, inspire the title of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, even down to the double entendre — pussy = python — and the font of its logo.) Also, Spying opens with a murderous milkman armed with explosive milk bottles. In a parody of a parody, such a character would turn up again twenty-five years later in Bond's The Living Daylights.

The story goes that the final Carry On of the year came about by accident. The original Cleopatra movie, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, was intended to be shot in the UK, but delays caused the production to relocate to Italy, and lots of unused costumes, props and sets were left behind at Pinewood Studios. These were then snaffled up by the Carry On team, who promptly build a film around them. The result, Carry On Cleo, turns out to be one of the best of the series, with writing and gags as sturdy as the Hollywood scenery it was staged on.

Moreover, as the team get into their stride with this whole film genre parody lark, it becomes apparent that the mere placing of the familiar Carry On gang in situations that are just as familiar from other sources creates a comedy of its own. Just the idea of prissy Kenneth Williams as Julius Caesar, dizzy Charles Hawtrey as his father-in-law Seneca and randy Sid James as Mark Antony is funny. Anachronisms abound with historical references, Shakespearean quotes and classic Carry On double entendres all becoming joyously and wittily mangled together — for example, the “Ptolemy?” “I am telling you!” exchange or the speech to the senate where Caesar/Williams suddenly lurches into a Winston Churchill impression. (The best thing about that scene is the actor sharing the screen with Williams failing in his attempts to keep a straight face.) Everyone’s on top form but special mention must go to Amanda Barrie as the titular (cackle) Cleo. Flying in the face of Carry On convention, which dictates that everyone must act their heads off at all times, Barrie imbues her role with the same kind of deadpan nonchalance that Bananarama would later effect when lip-syncing their way through numerous editions of Top of the Pops. Barrie’s idiosyncratic underplaying might explain why she never became a series regular, but it works perfectly here.

As was the (possibly apocryphal) case with Carry On Cleo, the first DOCTOR WHO adventure of 1965 was also the unplanned result of set-related issues. With the construction of sets for WHO’s seven-part historical epic, ‘Marco Polo’, taking longer than anticipated, Script Editor David Whittaker was obliged to whip up a two-episode filler adventure, ‘The Edge of Destruction’. In modern parlance, this is a bottle story — one which occurs entirely inside the TARDIS and features only the four regulars, whose minds are taken over by an invisible force and who then proceed to turn against each other, leading to a memorably controversial scene where Susan tries to stab Ian with a pair of scissors. The whole thing’s completely nuts and I don’t fully understand what’s going on, but it is strongly suggested that the TARDIS is somehow sentient (an idea that won’t be fully explored until Karen MacDonald from CORONATION STREET turns into a physical manifestation of it in ‘The Doctor’s Wife’ forty-seven years later) and this is its way roundabout way of warning the crew that they are in great danger. Or something.

The highlight of the story, which also proves to be a turning point for the series, comes after Doctor Who has accused Barbara and Ian of sabotage and threatens to throw them off the ship. The usually mild-mannered Barbara finally loses her rag and tells him what a stupid, selfish old git he is. When her calm intelligence later saves the day, the Doctor realises how wrong he’s been about his new companions and asks their forgiveness. The next story, ’Marco Polo’, is missing (by all accounts it's a lost classic) and by the time we rejoin the TARDIS gang for ‘The Keys of Marinus’ (an enjoyably bonkers space romp), they have become a unified team. The Doctor still gets grumpy but is always quick to apologise, while Ian and Barbara seem philosophically resigned to the idea that they might never make it home again. But the WHO crew still have yet to become the pro-active righters of wrongs we expect to see in the series today. Instead, each story follows the same pattern: the TARDIS lands somewhere at random, the gang wander off to explore and, in the process, become separated from their ship which either gets stolen or incapacitated or, in the case of ‘The Aztecs’, buried inside a tomb. It is only because they have no other choice that they then stay and help out with whatever disaster they find themselves in the middle of.

During his first season, Doctor Who’s travels in time and space, while supposedly random, alternate neatly between historical stories and out-of-this-world space adventures. The TARDIS never lands during Earth’s present or its future. The closest it gets is when it materialises on an Earth spaceship in ‘The Sensorites' which features Margaret Dunne from SONS AND DAUGHTERS as an astronaut from the 29th century who nonetheless sports a groovy Shangri-Las style bouffant. A similar look is favoured by Agent Honeybutt in Carry On Spying and Elsie Tanner on one of her posher nights out.

On paper, historical WHOs should be a bit dry and boring. Unlike the “pseudo-historicals” of the C21st series, they contain no sci-fi elements other than the TARDIS gang’s presence. These stories were intended as part of the BBC’s mandate to educate as well as entertain. But they’re surprisingly good. As costume dramas have always been one of the BBC’s strong points, production values tend to be higher than the sci-fi stories which mostly look as if they’ve been made for 50p.

My fave historical of the first season is 'The Aztecs' where the TARDIS lands in 15th century Mexico. Barbara takes advantage of the fact that she has been mistaken for a goddess to try and right some historical wrongs. Appalled by the idea of innocent people being needlessly sacrificed to the gods, she calls a halt to such a ceremony, only for the would-be sacrifice to become so upset at not being able to fulfil his destiny that he throws himself off a building and dies anyway. (It’s Christine Hardman on top of the raincoat factory all over again, only more tragic.) The intriguing but bleak conclusion seems to be that not only shouldn’t the TARDIS team attempt to alter history, but they can’t even when they try.

The crew have learned their lesson by ‘The Reign of Terror’ where they find themselves caught up in the French Revolution. However, the problem with adhering to a policy of non-interference means there’s nothing much for them to do except witness historical events unfold and occasionally get thrown in jail and then escape, get recaptured, escape again and so on, until it’s time to get back in the TARDIS.

Save for a six-week break in the summer, DOCTOR WHO was shown all year round in the '60s. Season 2 kicks off with ‘Planet of Giants’ where the characters are finally returned to contemporary Earth, and contemporary England no less, for the first time since the series’ opening episode. There’s only one snag: they’ve been reduced in size to the point where Ian gets trapped inside a matchbox. When the gang encounter a bored cat, its head is as big as a house from their perspective. The kind of everyday mundanity one might see on CORONATION STREET — a character preparing to wash his hands — spells imminent, Titanic-sized disaster for the miniaturised Doctor and Susan, hiding in the u-bend under the kitchen sink. It’s a hugely ambitious story and for the most part, the effects aren’t quite up to it, but perhaps it’s in that gap, between the series’ wild fantasies and the production’s limitations, that the true magic of early WHO lies. Whatever shortfalls there are in its execution are compensated for by the imaginations of the (usually young) viewer. It’s a kind of unspoken collaboration between the programme-makers on one hand and the audience on the other, each doing their bit to bring the fantastic to life.
 
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More '64:

Part of the fascination of watching these early years of DOCTOR WHO and CORONATION STREET is seeing both series gradually take shape in front of your eyes. The final episode of ‘Planet of the Giants’ marks the first time the TARDIS gang as a whole have been motivated by anything other than self-preservation. Barbara has been infected by a deadly something or other, the only antidote for which is back in the TARDIS, but rather than returning to the ship straight away, the gang agree to expose the insecticide-related wrong-doing they’ve stumbled upon first, even though the delay means putting Barbara’s life at risk. Meanwhile, Coronation Street itself is still literally half-formed — only one side of the street physically exists as yet — and I’m not sure if Weatherfield, the fictional town in which it is set, has even been invented at this point. By contrast, THE STREET’s American equivalent, PEYTON PLACE, another twice-weekly half-hour evening soap opera, arrives fully-formed. Sitting down to Episode 1 feels more like taking a novel down from a shelf and embarking on its opening chapter rather than tuning into the beginning of a series that has yet to wholly discover its identity. Of course, the fact that PEYTON PLACE previously was a novel, and as well as a couple of films, has more than a little to do with that.

Production-wise, PEYTON PLACE leaves both CORONATION STREET and DOCTOR WHO in its dust. No one ever fluffs a line the way actors occasionally do on THE STREET and poor old William Hartnell regularly does as the Doctor. It is slickly filmed and combines interior and exterior scenes with ease, with none of the studio-bound feel that the British shows have. Cars drive down real streets and characters come out of what look like real houses. There are lots of interesting and surprising camera angles and some really impressive end-of-episode crane shots where, as a character is shown leaving or arriving in the town, the camera pulls up, up and away from them until you’re seeing a bird’s eye view of them in the wider context of the town square. Over on Coronation Street, if a character was to keep walking in a straight line past the corner shop, they’d end up bumping into a hand-drawn picture of Viaduct Street.

While the focus of CORONATION STREET is specifically on the street itself (the side of the street that actually exists, that is) and its occupants, the geographical and dramatic parameters of PEYTON PLACE are vaguer. This allows the town to expand or contract as the storylines require. The workplaces of the most important characters — the offices of Dr Rossi, Leslie Harrington and Matthew Swain, as well as Constance MacKenzie’s bookstore — are lined up conveniently next to one another in the town’s main square. When a major story about Elizabeth Carson’s death eighteen years before is introduced towards the end of the year, we are suddenly made aware of other business holdings on the same street: the chandlery owned by Eli Carson (father of Elizabeth’s husband Elliot who is presently serving time for her murder) and the drugstore owned by Calvin Hanley (father of both Elizabeth and her brother Paul, who as a child provided damning evidence against Elliot as his trial). Beyond the square, there is the seemingly idyllic, white-picket-fenced home of Constance and her daughter Allison, the rather more imposing Harrington manor and Dr Rossi’s beach house, which alternates between being a groovy ‘60s bachelor pad and the ghostly scene of the Carson murder. There’s also Doctors Hospital, the setting for so much medical drama, intrigue and romance that it could easily have been spun off into its own serial. Unlike on THE STREET, where everyone’s houses and hang-outs are within walking distance of each other, we don’t get a firm sense of where these places exist in relation to one another.

Whereas CORONATION STREET’s USP is its ordinariness — it’s about the little things — PEYTON PLACE’s sense of saga and the size of its characters’ emotions are big enough to fill a widescreen technicolour movie, but the constrictions of the medium means they must be squeezed into a 4 x 3 black and white TV screen. This creates a feeling of intensity and claustrophobia at times reminiscent of a film noir. In the best way possible, the story feels hemmed in, just as the characters — particularly Allison the dreamer and ambitious, discontented Betty Anderson — feel hemmed in by the parameters of the small town they inhabit.

If ‘60s CORONATION STREET is about the shared experiences of a community, PEYTON PLACE is, from its opening scene, a series about secrets — secret pasts, secret yearnings, secret romances. In the first episode, rich boy Rodney Harrington stumbles on one of these secrets when he walks in on his (married) father Leslie in a clandestine clinch with his (also married) secretary Julie Anderson, who just happens to be the mother of Rodney's own girlfriend Betty. Rodney immediately dumps sexy, earthy Betty without explanation and falls instantly in love with the ethereally virginal Allison. The resultant triangle between Rodney, Betty and Allison, which fuels the next thirty or so episodes, sometimes feels like an intense psychological drama disguised as a slushy teen romance and sometimes feels a slushy teen romance disguised as an intense psychological drama, but mostly feels like both things at once.

As well as secrets, everything in PEYTON PLACE is about sex. This being a TV series set in New England and made in 1964, however, no one comes right out and says so, which only makes the subject more potent. When Rodney and Betty recall the idyllic hours they spent by the pond over the summer, they’re talking about sex. When aspiring writer Allison laments the lack of life experience she has to draw on, she’s talking about sex. When Constance frets about Allison making the same mistakes she did as a teenager, she is also talking about sex. When Matthew Swain describes the young woman, three hundred years earlier, who “was drummed across this square to do public penance in the Pillory” before her head was shaved and she was banished from the town forever, you can bet whatever she did to warrant such a punishment had something to do with sex (and/or witchcraft). But it isn’t until Episode 5 when Betty says to Rodney, “I’m going to have a baby,” that the series unequivocally confirms that the subject everyone’s been alluding to so euphemistically is ... sex.

It’s open to interpretation, but sex — or more specifically, sexuality — could also be the not-in-so-many-words reason behind Emily Nugent’s decision to leave Leonard Swindley standing at the altar on CORONATION STREET in July. It’s not because she doesn’t love him, she explains, but because she knows that deep down he doesn’t desire her. Again, this being 1964, there’s no way the series is about to address what lies behind his lack of desire, which makes the situation all the sadder. The fact that the would-be bride and groom never address each other as anything less formal than “Mr Swindley” and “Miss Nugent” is both comical and heartbreaking.

“What will the neighbours say?” is a constant concern on both soaps. On THE STREET, the gossip is on display for all to hear, as characters openly speculate about and pass judgement on each other’s business as they go about their day. On PEYTON PLACE, the whispered conversations and dirty looks are mostly left to nameless extras and bit players — yet the consequences of scandal and disgrace feel far graver, as symbolised by the Pillory in the town square. Indeed, Constance Mackenzie’s whole adult life has been built around keeping a terrible truth from her daughter (as well as the community at large): that the man in the framed photo on the Mackenzie mantlepiece isn’t her late husband and Allison’s father as she has always claimed, and that Allison is, in fact, illegitimate.

The CORONATION STREET party line has always been that the show’s only irreplaceable star is the street itself. Annie Walker and Ena Sharples may both like to think of themselves as the leader of the community, but whenever either gets too big for her boots, she is inevitably brought down to earth with a bump. Not so on PEYTON PLACE where no-one questions the moral authority of newspaper proprietor Matthew Swain (although, as Carly Simon might put it, sometimes I wish someone would). Not only does he make a habit of bestowing words of advice upon everyone he comes into contact with, but each episode opens with his disembodied voice delivering a few words of scene-setting narration. His all-knowing overview of the town and its inhabitants imbues his character with an almost celestial wisdom. Here at least, the voice of the press is also the voice of God. In addition, his frequent hints of what lies ahead for the characters (“X is about to do Y, little knowing that their actions will have consequences for everyone concerned”), adds to the sense that PEYTON PLACE is much a televised novel as it is a day to day serial.

Unlike CORRIE’s opening titles which, democratically, feature none of the actors, PP’s include flattering close-ups of its star players. In this regard, as well as the episodes’ dramatic musical score which regularly swells to a cliff-hanging crescendo, it anticipates the prime time super soaps of the ‘80s. Indeed, a lot of the ingredients of PEYTON PLACE feel familiar from DALLAS, only assembled in a different order. Betty Anderson loses a baby in the show’s fifth episode just as Pam Ewing will, but this occurs before she and Rodney have run off to get married. Leslie Harrington offers Betty money to get out of his family’s lives in the same way that JR does Pam, but again does so prior to her marrying Rodney rather than afterwards. Indeed, Betty’s angry, humiliated response to Leslie's offer is what pushes her into marrying Rodney under false pretences, i.e., pretending she is still pregnant. In today’s nutty soap universe, faking a pregnancy pretty much passes for normal behaviour, but when Betty does it in 1964, it’s a breathtakingly audacious act of both desperation and ambition that feels almost heroic. Consequently, instead of kicking off the saga with an elopement between a boy from a rich family and a girl from the wrong side of the tracks the way DALLAS and THE COLBYS will, PEYTON PLACE waits a full thirteen episodes before detonating the same bomb, by which point we’ve gotten to know all the players well enough for the subsequent explosion to have maximum impact.

Had Rodney and Betty been created for an ‘80s soap, they might easily have been reduced to juicily enjoyable archetypes: the playboy stud and the gold-digging slut. But however unsympathetic their behaviour may look on paper, both are depicted on screen as sensitive, complicated characters wrought with inner conflict. Meanwhile, Constance Mackenzie does her best to project a permanent Krystle Carrington-style serenity from behind her bookstore counter, but her nervous, Sue Ellen-style twitchiness indicates that she has Something To Hide. Even her enormous eyelashes look guilty.

When CORONATION STREET, began, only fifteen years had passed since the end of World War II. Despite, or perhaps because of this, there are surprisingly few references to the war in the series’ first few years. Admittedly, I’m only basing this on the episodes I’ve seen, but it's certainly less than in the early days of EASTENDERS where reminiscences about the Blitz, rationing and doodlebugs were very much part of that show’s DNA. Perhaps that’s because wartime memories had grown less raw by the mid-1980s, and most of those memories belonged to the wives and children of the men that had gone off to fight — when ENDERS began, there were very few Walford residents left who had experienced armed combat. This wasn’t the case for Coronation Street’s inhabitants when their show began, of course, but such experiences are spoken of only tacitly (such as when Albert Tatlock gently chides Ken Barlow for his magazine article where he criticises his neighbours for their complacency and indifference despite the threat of nuclear war and other social ills: “You must understand, Kenneth, that these people have had it rough in the past and now because things are better, you can’t blame them for making the most of it”) or at moments of strong emotion (an angry Len Fairclough, during the same storyline: “There’s one little thing you don’t seem to understand, Kenneth Barlow. It’s that Harry and me were scrapping for you during the war — you know, when you were still running round in little nappies — with rifles and bayonets and all that kind of stuff, only you wouldn’t understand that. We had no time to write articles, did we, Harry?”). Len’s words are echoed in PEYTON PLACE by salesman George Anderson. Despite being hailed a hero when he returned from the war, George still bears the psychological scars of killing thirteen men in action. In contrast, his childhood contemporary, Leslie Harrington, sat the war out and is now the richest man in the town — as well as George’s employer. “When I was face down in the mud, he was selling war bonds and marrying the boss’s daughter,” broods George. George's clammy desperation, his feeble jokes and phoney bonhomie as he refuses to acknowledge his life and marriage falling apart are hard to watch at times.

Violence towards women manifests itself in various forms throughout 1964. In Goldfinger, Bond uses a young (albeit duplicitous) woman as a human shield when someone fires a gun at him as well as, notoriously, forcing his attentions on Pussy Galore “until she likes it.” “There’s no prettier sight than a young couple courting,” observes Jim Dale in Carry On Cleo as a Flintstones-style caveman walks past, casually dragging a woman along the ground by her hair. And the film ends with Dale doing the same thing with his bride as he walks down the aisle on their wedding day. (It’s such a crazy mashup of anachronisms, it’s impossible to take seriously, much less be offended by.) Even Barbara on DOCTOR WHO is obliged to fend off a couple of would-be rapists (one in 18th-century France, the other in the icy wastelands of the planet Marinus). But only on PEYTON PLACE is the subject treated as the same kind of gravity as it would be today. When George Anderson lunges towards his wife Julie, the episode ends with her terrified scream. What happens next is neither shown nor directly described, but when Julie walks into Connie’s bookstore with bruises on her face, everyone knows how she got them, even if they don’t say so. The town’s collective denial makes the storyline all the more powerful.

Not only is PEYTON PLACE ahead of its time in treating domestic violence as wholly unacceptable, but it manages to do so without demonising the perpetrator. The depiction of George as a broken, pathetic figure is altogether more nuanced than that of either BROOKSIDE’s Trevor Jordache or EASTENDERS’ Trevor Morgan some three decades later — both Trevors were violent husbands portrayed as a cross between an evil bogeyman and a pantomime villain.

Given CORONATION STREET’s seeming reluctance to discuss WWII up to this point, the story in September where the residents are evacuated to the mission hall following the discovery of an unexploded bomb in Albert’s backyard, leading to an episode full of nostalgic reminiscences of wartime, is surprising. (Ena Sharples’ transformation from “malevolent bitch” to “OAP whose cantankerous exterior conceals a heart of gold” can be measured by contrasting the hostile reception she gave the residents in a similar mission-based episode in 1960 with her behaviour in this ep, where she gamely dons her old air raid warden helmet to dole out cups of tea and lead the rest of the cast in a good old-fashioned sing-song.)

Nervous breakdowns in CORONATION STREET are fast becoming an annual occurrence. This year, it’s the turn of the previously perky Florrie Lindley, whose lonely single life appears to have finally got the better of her. She undergoes the same kind of Big Soap Meltdown that Arthur Fowler famously will on Christmas Day ’86 and which has since become quite commonplace — she trashes her own shop, breaking a window in the process. While Florrie’s distress feels quite real, the reactions of the rest of the street and a no-nonsense district nurse who attends to her are amusingly insensitive. Indeed, the tone of the storyline as a whole is noticeably lighter than those dealing with Christine Hardman’s and Doreen Birtles’ mental problems. Comedy and drama collide in the unexploded bomb episode as Florrie refuses to leave her sickbed to take shelter with the rest of the residents, insisting she’d be better off dead. Stan Ogden’s response is to matter of factly barge into her bedroom, throw her over his shoulder and carry her over to the mission hall, where she ends up having quite a nice time despite herself.

In 1961, Ken Barlow, feeling stifled by life on Coronation Street, set off for London, only for a chance encounter with Christine Hardman on a train platform to change his mind. In 1964, Betty Harrington, feeling stifled by life in Peyton Place, makes it as far as the bus station from where she also plans to flee to the big city (New York). Her chance encounter is with Allison Mackenzie who likewise manages to change her mind. The irony of Ken’s situation was that Christine had no idea of either his plans or the effect of her words on him; the irony of Betty’s is that Allison, despite being Betty’s rival and having everything to gain by her departure, knowingly persuades her to stay. At the end of the year, having faced up to the fact that both her and her parents’ marriages are over, Betty again decides to leave and is again discovered at the bus station by Allison who again tries to dissuade her. This time, however, Betty’s mind is made up and off to New York she goes. There’s a strong sense of finality to the scene and for all we know that’s the last we’ll ever see of her. Nor is Betty the only young female character to depart her series at the end of the year.

For its final adventure of ’64, the TARDIS makes its first trip into Earth’s future — 2164, to be exact — where the Daleks, making their first return to the series almost exactly a year after their debut story, have pretty much conquered the planet. (New York, the city Betty Harrington was so anxious to see, is just one of the cities they have destroyed.) The unusual amount of location work in this story means we get to see still thrilling scenes of the Daleks amidst familiar London landmarks: gliding along Westminster Bridge, patrolling Trafalgar Square, even emerging from the Thames. This is an early example of what Jon Pertwee would later describe as the “Yeti on the loo” effect, i.e, the juxtaposition of the ordinary and the alien, which would become a hallmark of WHO in the '70s. ’The Dalek Invasion of Earth’ is also the first WHO story to include a variety of regional accents among its supporting cast, as opposed to the standard posh BBC pronunciation with which all aliens and historical characters have spoken up to now, and it’s remarkable what a difference it makes: the people the TARDIS gang encounter suddenly feel like real individuals, and whenever one is killed, it matters. Among the survivors is David, a Scottish freedom fighter, whom Susan falls for. As the TARDIS crew are preparing to leave at the end of the story, having conquered the Daleks, he asks her to stay, but she sadly explains that she could never abandon her grandfather. So the Doctor takes matters into his own hands, shutting her out of the TARDIS and taking off without her. It’s the first unequivocally selfless thing we’ve seen him do and it’s a heartbreaker.

Another memorable departure takes place in May on CORONATION STREET. The sudden death of Martha Longhurst introduces two now well-established soap tropes. The first is “the tragedy set against the backdrop of a celebration.” The residents of the street are busy celebrating Frank Barlow’s recent windfall with a knees-up in the Rovers when Martha, sitting alone in the snug, quietly collapses and dies without anybody realising. When Jerry and Myrna Booth catch sight of her with her head on the table, they assume she’s had one too many and passed out. (Fifty-four years later, during the celebrations to mark Harry and Meghan’s wedding on EASTENDERS, Mick Carter will jump to a similar conclusion when he sees Shakhil Kaseemi stagger past the Vic and presumes him to be drunk, not realising he’s just sustained a soon-to-prove fatal stab wound.) This trope has become so commonplace on British soaps that it is now unthinkable for a wedding or a Christmas Day episode to take place without some terrible disaster to accompany it. The second trope is a bit more subtle and possibly more applicable to THE STREET than the other soaps. Periodically, a character will envisage a fresh start beyond Coronation Street — for Ken and Valerie Barlow, that means emigrating to Jamaica, for Alf and Renee Roberts, moving to the countryside — only to be cruelly cut down on the eve of their departure, almost as if fate were punishing them for getting ideas above their station. Martha wasn’t planning to move away from the street, but the fact that her death occurred on the same day as she received her very first passport and she then proceeded to brag to anybody who would listen of her plans to holiday in Spain with “our Lily and her Wilf” is surely no coincidence.

So it is, with this infusion of fatalism and dramatic irony, that THE STREET is very gradually moving beyond its original remit of reflecting the everyday lives of its viewers back at them to evolve its own mythology, complete with unspoken tropes and boundaries. When Stan and Hilda Ogden move into No 13, Ena enjoys informing them of the fates of its previous occupants — the mentally ill May Hardman who died alone, her occasionally suicidal daughter Christine, Jerry and Myra Booth whose marriage lasted a matter of months — before concluding that the house must be cursed. The same explanation will be offered during the early ‘80s to rationalise the succession of tragedies that have accumulated at No 10 Brookside Close: an abrupt and fatal brain tumour, a miscarriage, a suicide and an unjust arrest and prison term. Sudden death, suicide, marital breakdown — these are no longer merely random events that befall the ordinary person, now they have acquired an almost mythical significance because they happen within the confines of Coronation Street.

By chance, someone recently posted this remarkable clip from Martha Longhurst’s funeral episode on Twitter. I’d never seen it before but it seems to combine these two aspects of THE STREET: its mythology (the music, the cortege) with its social realism (what looks like documentary footage of the city the series was based on).


Martha’s natural successor is Hilda Ogden. Another birdlike gossip, she also steps into Martha's shoes as the Rovers’ cleaner. The Ogdens are noticeably more “larger than life” than previous residents. Stan in particular, with his greased-back hair and shirt proudly unbuttoned to reveal a large beer belly, looks like a cartoon caricature of the work-shy layabout come to life. Paving the way for the Duckworths and Battersbys in ‘80s and ‘90s CORRIE, the Jacksons then Corkhills of early BROOKSIDE, the Dingles on EMMERDALE and most recently the Taylors on ENDERS, the Oggies represent a lower-class archetype so "common" that even their working-class neighbours can look down on them. Such families also pander to the prejudices of viewers who, even as they enjoy the soaps, nonetheless regard those at the lower end of the social scale as thick, loud, boozing scroungers. Hopefully, over time, such preconceptions are subverted as the characters evolve into more rounded and sympathetic figures (either that or the shows simply rub off their more abrasive edges and sentimentalise them). All that said, and while my enduring memory of the Ogdens during their '70s heyday is Hilda constantly nagging Stan while the two of them served as the butts of everyone else’s jokes, back in ’64 they are welcomed into the community without judgement. There's no sign of Annie’s future disdain towards Hilda, nor Elsie’s contempt. And at this point, Hilda is still an adoring wife, blind to her husband’s faults even as he casually boasts about his extra-marital conquests to his new mates over a pint. Thus far, all derision directed towards Stan and Hilda comes from their wisecracking daughter Irma.

If the Ogdens’ immediate function is to provide light relief then they succeed. During the episode where a terrified Stan is pitted against a real-life wrestler in the ring, I laughed more than I did during the entirety of Carry On Regardless (1961), which includes a sequence where Charles Hawtrey finds himself in an almost identical predicament. Another notable episode captures Stan’s extremely short-lived career as a chauffeur. As he pulls up outside the Rovers to give his pals an unsanctioned ride in his new boss’s Rolls Royce, continuity is scattered to the four winds: this real-life pub might display a sign that says the Rover’s Return, but it bears no resemblance to the one that’s been regularly seen on screen for the past few years.

The last (available) STREET episode of the year features the Christmas Day pantomime. When Lucille Hewitt’s Cinderella tells one of the Ugly Sisters s/he’s “got a nose like Ringo”, it isn’t a compliment. “Oh yes you have!’ insist the excited kiddies in the audience. Both the panto and the episode conclude with a rousing rendition of ‘She Loves You’. As the credits roll and the camera roams amongst the “yeah, yeah, yeah”-ing kids, any attempts at maintaining the fourth wall are abandoned as the children gaze directly into the lens while singing. It’s very sweet and weirdly moving (and, bearing in mind that they’d all be pensioners now, kind of mind-blowing). Beatlemania is such an integral part of the cultural landscape by 1965 that it even permeates the timeless world of Bond, with the unintended effect of making 007 seem a bit of a square. “My dear girl, there are some things that just aren't done, such as drinking Dom Perignon '53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit,” he teases the soon-to-be asphyxiated Shirley Eaton. “That's just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs!”

And the Top 7 are …

1 (3) 007
2 (-) PEYTON PLACE
3 (2) CORONATION STREET
4 (4) DOCTOR WHO
5 (1) CARRY ON CLEO
6 (1) CARRY ON SPYING
7 (1) CARRY ON JACK
 
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Mel O'Drama

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I've only read Part One of 1964 so far, but...


As a child, I remember finding the scene at the end of Carry On Jack where Fearless, delirious with gangrene, is strapped to a table and has his leg amputated by Bernard Cribbins one of the funniest things I’d ever seen. It’s not quite as hilarious today but still raises a titter or two.

I don't think I even saw this one until I was in my late teens or early twenties, but I've had pretty much the opposite journey with it. Because the subject matter is pretty grim I found it quite shocking and intense on first viewing, and only came to appreciate the humour on rewatches.


Alas, Spying is marred a misjudged performance from the usually reliable Kenneth Williams. His braying cockney, “‘Ere, stop messing about!” shtick is great for those occasional asides when his pompous persona slips (such the ace running gag in Carry On Cleo: “Friends, Romans …” “Countrymen?” “I know!”), but here he bases his entire character on it and it soon becomes as grating as it is relentless.

While I didn't hate it, I'm very glad this only really stuck for one film. I remember reading that Tony Hancock had a real issue with Kenny's "Snide" characterisation on his show which was part of the reason they parted ways.



The Bondian references in Spying are easy to spot — Dr No becomes Dr Crow

Good Lord. While I spotted many of the Bond references, can you believe I've never twigged with the Dr Crow thing?! Talk about not seeing my nose in front of my face.


Barrie imbues her role with the same kind of bored nonchalance that Bananarama would later effect when lip-syncing their way through numerous editions of Top of the Pops.

Oh yes. That's the perfect analogy!



Barrie’s idiosyncratic underplaying might explain why she never became a series regular, but it works perfectly here.

Yes, I enjoyed both her Carry Ons and would love to have seen her in more.





I'm looking forward to getting stuck into Part Two very soon.
 

Mel O'Drama

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I've only read Part One of 1964 so far

And it's only taken me six months to get round to More '64...



It’s open to interpretation, but sex — or more specifically, sexuality — could also be the not-in-so-many-words reason behind Emily Nugent’s decision to leave Leonard Swindley standing at the altar on CORONATION STREET in July. It’s not because she doesn’t love him, she explains, but because she knows that deep down he doesn’t desire her. Again, this being 1964, there’s no way the series is about to address what lies behind his lack of desire, which makes the situation all the sadder.

Gosh. This thought is fascinating and never occurred to me at all whenever I've watched it. Of course, it all makes perfect sense. I dare say the term "confirmed bachelor" was even uttered at some point, which would be a bit of a clue.

I'll certainly see these scenes in a different light next time I watch them.



The fact that the would-be bride and groom never address each other as anything less formal than “Mr Swindley” and “Miss Nugent” is both comical and heartbreaking.

Agreed. The deadpanning makes it funny. Neither acknowledges, nor even seems to fully recognise, how peculiar this is for a kind-of-betrothed couple.




When CORONATION STREET, began, only fifteen years had passed since the end of World War II. Despite, or perhaps because of this, there are surprisingly few references to the war in the series’ first few years.

Again, this is blindingly obvious... now that you've pointed it out. I don't think it had consciously occurred to me how this differed from 'Enders' somewhat romantic view of WWII. With 'Enders, I remember how significant a part of many characters' official biographies the war was, with some of the earliest official novels set during that time and of course that one-off CivvyStreet thing with Fay from Grange Hill as Ethel.



Not only is PEYTON PLACE ahead of its time in treating domestic violence as wholly unacceptable, but it manages to do so without demonising the perpetrator. The depiction of George as a broken, pathetic figure is altogether more nuanced than that of either BROOKSIDE’s Trevor Jordache or EASTENDERS’ Trevor Morgan some three decades later

Yes. PP's approach feels far more daring for its shades of grey. It would be fascinating to know how audiences at the time felt about it.
 
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