Courtesy of Youtube I have been revisiting a cherished tv drama of my past memory ... When the Boat Comes In. The conception of James Mitchell, I would struggle hard to imagine a more dynamic piece of popular television, and yet with a quality of writing that rocketed it far beyond its Cathryn Cookson milieu. (No disrepect to her writing intended but Mitchell achieves Chekovian/Dostoyevskian moments of insight).
This thread is not to celebrate some 'golden age', albeit that this series was emblematic of a particular era of quaility production, but rather to acknowledge the work of a writer that has been totally forgotten and to recall an era when rivetting, dynamic performances came into our living rooms almost as a matter of course.
It was the acme of James Bolam's career, not to forget Sue Jameson, and they achieved an on-screen dymanic that endures after an astonishing thirty-five plus years later.
When I see them now in New Tricks they are as charming and beguiling as ever, but there's no Mitchell putting jewels in their mouth alas.
Tell me I'm wrong, tell me I'm rosy eyed, but do me this favour, watch the opening episode from 1976 and tell me that this is not more neater and and sharper an introductory episode to a most beguiling saga.
This thread is not to celebrate some 'golden age', albeit that this series was emblematic of a particular era of quaility production, but rather to acknowledge the work of a writer that has been totally forgotten and to recall an era when rivetting, dynamic performances came into our living rooms almost as a matter of course.
It was the acme of James Bolam's career, not to forget Sue Jameson, and they achieved an on-screen dymanic that endures after an astonishing thirty-five plus years later.
When I see them now in New Tricks they are as charming and beguiling as ever, but there's no Mitchell putting jewels in their mouth alas.
Tell me I'm wrong, tell me I'm rosy eyed, but do me this favour, watch the opening episode from 1976 and tell me that this is not more neater and and sharper an introductory episode to a most beguiling saga.
Comment