Mozart in London: BBC4 21.6.16, 9pm

[Nick Armstrong]

This might be worth watching (with toes suitably curled, maybe, depending on how one reacts to Ms Worsley):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07hk1qx

[Richard Tarleton]

This might be worth watching (with toes suitably curled, maybe, depending on how one reacts to Ms Worsley):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07hk1qx

She chose some Mozart perf. by Mitsuko Uchida when she was on Private Passions (also demonstrating her impeccable good taste by choosing a Liszt Petrarch Sonnet )

We get her playing, apparently - here's a bit about her piano playing. She is undoubtedly a gifted television presenter, the camera loves her, her addiction to the dressing-up box merely part of her schtick.

[Cockney Sparrow]

I wondered, for a moment, whether this was a voice other than Tom Service, or some of the other roster of programme makers for BBC TV/Radio. If so, it would have broken the hiatus in serious music programming (remember Friday night at 8pm on BBC4 -before shed loads of repeated Top of the Pops and the like repeats were spilled into those vacant slots on the schedule?). For goodness sake, they've been broadcasting the cringe-worthy (to 21st century eyes and ears) The Good Old Days for weeks now. Heaven help us, there are shed loads of those to come after the Proms has boosted the "serious music" content quota.

I'm not allergic to Lucy Worsley, and it may prove a worthwhile programme - but I wonder whether we will ever see another new Film by John Bridcut - or any other new, or infrequent, voice?

(And as a postscript - if all the BBC can do is ransack its archive, why not re-broadcast the English music films in which Michael Berkeley was involved - I'd love to see the Tallis Fantasia performance in Gloucester Cathedral again. (I'll answer my own question - presumably the rights involved mean they'd have to pay more than peanuts to broadcast them again).

[pastoralguy]

Excellent programme!

Many thanks for the heads up!

[ardcarp]

I concur with CS (#3) in mourning the passing of grown-up TV presenting, but given that these days everything has to be presenter-led, then Lucy W is a great deal more acceptable than some. Is there no end to her accomplishments? Dressing-up, dancing, plonking the harpsichord...what next. But the Mozart-in-London programme was genuinely informative.

[greenilex]

Didn't catch the beginning - stupidly punching Agree and Disagree buttons during the Wembley debate - but what I saw was great, even the over-the-top candlelit foggy London interiors. Was Wolfie ever a child in the modern sense? Or was he a child his whole life?

[Stanfordian]

This might be worth watching (with toes suitably curled, maybe, depending on how one reacts to Ms Worsley):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07hk1qx

Ms Worsley makes every programme about her desssing up. I suppose I can cope with that but whatever she wears she always looks like an unmade bed. Meoooow!

[Nick Armstrong]

Ms Worsley makes every programme about her desssing up. I suppose I can cope with that but whatever she wears she always looks like an unmade bed. Meoooow!

It was an ok programme, but I found I got enough out of it while just listening and browsing the internet at the same time; i.e. there wasn't much that needed to be watched (apart perhaps of the shots of Mozart's childhood manuscripts) and it could have worked just as well as a radio programme, without the dressing up and simpering, charming though I personally find that in the case of Ms Worsley!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I've finally got around to watching the programme. Overall, I'd give it three stars, but there were a few irritations - Lucy Worsley, who's yet another BBC presenter with the word "fantastic" drilled into her, though as the programme progressed, she seemed to get better; also the odd choice of music - in a programme about Mozart in London, centred on 1764, why were we given chunks of Die Zauberflote and the 40th symphony?

Perhaps the best TV presenter of classical music programmes is Clemency Burton-Hill, who knows her onions, and doesn't just sound as though she's reciting the scriptwriter's lines.

[Richard Tarleton]

and doesn't just sound as though she's reciting the scriptwriter's lines.

A researcher, and the archive sources, are credited, along with the usual producers, director etc., but I'd be very surprised if the script, whilst to that extent a collaborative effort, wasn't largely Dr Worsley's own. She is a considerable expert on the period in her own right after all, a senior research fellow, visiting professor, etc. etc. Nobody else can script her inimitable style

CB-H would undoubtedly have made an excellent programme also, but it would have been a very different one. I thought this was a most enjoyable frolic. The lighting and colourist are credited; it did indeed have a nice Stanley Kubrick feel to it all, lots of natural light.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

"Three Stars" - out of how many, Alpie? I'd agree with 3/5 - more a social history doculite than one on Music; more on London fashions in the mid-1760s than on J C Bach, for instance. That was OK - it is Worsley's metier, after all (as Richard points out) - and I enjoyed most of it, which hasn't been the case with most of her TV froth recently. Improvising "Love" or "Wage" arias at the piano definitely was NOT her her strong point, and those three-or-so wasted minutes would have been more usefully spent asking one of the Musicians to go into a little more detail about Arne's "influence" on the young Mozart.


Oh! And did anyone else notice that one of the production team was called Jacquie Hayden?!

[Richard Tarleton]

The costume expert's hair stylist and manicurist were not credited, but should have been

(Who is Jacquie Hayden??)

[Bryn]

The costume expert's hair stylist and manicurist were not credited, but should have been

(Who is Jacquie Hayden??)

Here you go:

With production credits covering everything from shiny-floor entertainment to current affairs, taking in religion, quiz shows, drama and documentaries along the way, it was probably inevitable that Jacqui would finally find her niche in the ever-changing world of development.
Before becoming one of the founding directors of Matchlight, Jacqui was Head of Development for IWC Media in Glasgow where she developed an incredibly diverse range of series including Mountain, Lost Kingdoms of Africa, Britain's Last Wilderness and Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive for the BBC and Robbie Coltrane's B-Road Britain for ITV.
Series achievements for Channel 4 include Richard Dawkins: The Genius of Darwin, Stephen Hawking: Master of the Universe. For Five Jacqui developed Extreme Fishing with Robson Green and Paddy & Rory's Great British Adventure. And for Discovery US, a 13-part series called Detonators.
Key single films included Ten Days that Shaped the Queen, Beauty Queens and Bloodshed, Mississippi Burning, The Queen Mother in Love, Key Witness: Joanne Lees and A Mother's Journey.
Jacqui has been based in Scotland since 1998 and lives in Glasgow with her husband Ron.

[Richard Tarleton]

Thank you Bryn. I did briefly try Google but was spoilt for choice!

[ardcarp]

CB-H would undoubtedly have made an excellent programme also, but it would have been a very different one. I thought this was a most enjoyable frolic. The lighting and colourist are credited; it did indeed have a nice Stanley Kubrick feel to it all, lots of natural light.

I think (in spite of presentational gimmicks) one can warm to Lucy W. because she doesn't talk down to her audience. Somehow you are sharing in her slightly cheeky slant on the subject matter....whatever it is.