We struggled almost to the end of that *Five* pretentious twaddle that struggled to be a history of the Seventies. They dealt with industrial unrest entirely superficially.
What a contrast with BBC2's documentary, a few weeks back, about the Secret Coup against Harold Wilson, when they detailed how the Right Wing Establishment and The City organised the overthrow of the Democratically Elected Government. I thought it was all a bit far-fetched, having read widely in the past about Wilson's decreasing mental powers.
According to this documentary, the coup plotters went to The Queen Mother (gawd bless her) and got her consent to install Lord Mountbatten as the Quisling Head of Government. The troops even had a rehearsal manoeuvre at Heathrow. But they did quote senior MoD and MI5 sources who confirmed that rogue but senior figures in those organisations were indeed plotting to overthrow the elected government. I'm still uncertain - my intellectual and professional inclination to scepticism is fighting my instinctive naivety and "They wouldn't, would they?"
We thought last week's was poor when they went on and on about how awful high rise inner city council blocks were without actually getting the views of anybody who had lived in them. They asserted that in the Seventies everyone was going on holiday to exotic foreign destinations. Well, maybe they were in affluent media-working North London, but I left Primary School in 1979, in an area which though not affluent, was hardly poor, and today is one of the top ten most affluent constituencies in the country. If I recall, other than visits to relatives in Ireland, only three people went abroad - and that was to the Balearics.
The final one last week so took the biscuit that we switched it off less than halfway through. We had got to commercial break two and had been told repeatedly that the Seventies were VERY CREATIVE without anybody actually citing anything that had been created, and Steve Harley saying that Abba are irrelevant to the Seventies. Yeah, because the output of Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel has endured, right...?
The claimed that the Seventies was the decade where everybody wore trendy clothes, which had never happened before. Well, that wasn't the case in Sale. And Sale wasn't exactly behind the times, I mean, George Best owned a boutique there. But most people did not have much disposable income, especially with pay increases struggling to catch up with inflation. They certainly didn't shop at trendy boutiques. Altrincham market more like.
They also claimed that Biba was the first example of mass-production. Marks and Spencer, I suggested. Ladybird at Woolworths, suggested Jimmy. Then, in the next breath they declared that it was not until the Seventies that male teenagers had ever thought about following fashion and being tribal. This rather surprised Jimmy who as a teenager had a Beatles haircut, a Beatles jacket and winkle-pickers (but, oddly, no camera...!).Then we remembered Mods and Rockers, and decided we really didn't want any more of this poorly researched tripe.
And we concluded that Rick Wakeman is a total tosser.
In contrast, Life on Mars, which we missed first time around but are enjoying in repeat on BBC4 is far more accurate. I liked the bus. I was convinced they would make it a GMT* bus, but to my delight it was SELNEC**. I'm not saying that LoM is deadly accurate, but not too many of those characters, cops or crims or witnesses were dressed in hippy boutique designer fashion.
(I also flash back to the first series of Grange Hill, made and shown in 1978 and repeated in about 1990, at which point I gasped at how Trisha Yates's older sister, Carol, not required to wear uniform in Sixth Form, dressed like a middle-aged frump. Because Sixth Formers did in 1978).
So many aspects of Life on Mars are excellent. Philip Glenister is a star; I love that whole John Thaw/The Sweeney "You're nicked" thing, but I also like the snippets of stuff we forget. When 2006 cop Sam Tyler instructs the ambulance man to insert a saline drip, the ambulance man says "I'm an ambulance driver not a doctor." Heavier stuff, too, like the callous contempt the police showed to key witnesses. Not to mention the "Plonks" - there was Annie Cartwright stuck with being a WPC, almost certainly on significantly lower wages than a PC, and stuck brewing tea and cleaning up vomit-strewn cells, when she had the skills and intelligent to be a DI or higher. Good to see the police have thrown off those neanderthal attitudes.
* Greater Manchester Transport - created 1974
**South East Lancashire North East Cheshire, created to prepare for Local Government reorganisation in 1974.
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