Don't Need The Sunshine

The seaside has always been a special place for me. Every summer my family and I would go to Swanage. Swanage was where my mum was born and where my Nan lived. It is also home to Jonathan Ross- at least in the summer- so my mum continues to tell me. For two weeks every year we would wave goodbye to the Home Counties and set up home in Hardy country. Having made the trip so many times, the journey was as much a part of the holiday as the holiday itself: getting lucky on the M25, an easy ride on the M3 (“God’s road,” according to my Dad), a smooth passage on the M27, then the real work would begin: the longueur of the serpentine A road. (It was our Highway 61 and like Dylan we had been there before.)  Its 60mph speed limit a sleight of hand trick, a deception designed to make you think that you’re tearing tarmac when in all actuality you’re treading treacle on a limbo trail to nowhere. On escaping the Bermuda Triangle, we would start queuing in Sandbanks for the ferry. Being British, I love a queue. It gives me valuable daydream time. (My daydream time like the bee is currently under threat. I remember a time when I could dissolve into my imagination, making fantasia of my subconscious: images of lifting the FA Cup or flirting with Kirsty Young on Desert Island Discs would play out on my dream reel. Now as a classroom teacher, I don’t get a minute to myself. I think here’s my chance; I’ll have a little stare out of the window, and then just as I'm about to go through the turnstiles of my imaginarium, I see a fight that I have to go and split up.)

Making our passage across the waves, the drawbridge of the ferry was lowered and we'd disembark. Journeying down the hill, we see what we came for: there in all its splendour is the sea. Invariably, the sun would be shining on it, making diamonds out of water. Across the seafront we'd go, then up through the town where the search for the parking space would begin. Sometimes the Gods would be shining on my dad's company car and the vehicles would part to fit the four wheeled longboat; other times the Gods didn’t get the memo and we’d have to circle potential vacancies before an occupancy could be found.  

Unloading the boot, we would run down the alley, throw open the gate and make our way through the garden, approving the recent botanical upgrades. Nan could hear the gate from the kitchen and was there ready and waiting to throw out kisses like a winning fruit machine. Then love dispensed with, she gathered herself and returned to the task of making us feel at home. My Nan’s hero was the Queen; like her she was born with a sense of duty, a belief that the needs of others should be put before herself. Every time we went there, there were chocolates waiting for us in the spare room. More often than not, it would be ‘Misfits’: chocolates that were misshapen on the assembly line and consequently re-packaged and sold on at a cheaper price. Just because they were malformed, they weren’t any less delicious. In many ways the ‘Misfits’ chocolates were the confectionary equivalent of an Aesop Fable teaching us not to judge something on appearance.

In the evening we would all sit down to enjoy my Nan’s cooking. A regular at the WI my Nan knew how to cook. She was a one woman restaurant: Head chef, maître d’ and waitress. If you tried to help, you were paid short shrift. There would be a full main course served on the kind of plate that Alan Partridge would bring to a hotel buffet. Also, you would get multiple pudding options: ice cream and jelly, melon and brown sugar, blackcurrant cheesecake and cream. For a woman living on a state pension, she made it go a long way.

Then in the morning, it would be the beach. No matter the rising costs, my family would always have a beach hut. While other families would enjoy a place in France, we would have a place on the sand. Chairs out and windbreakers erected, the land was ours; shovels readied to ward off invaders. And there we stayed: from dawn ‘til dusk. The intervening hours filled with games of boules, bat and ball and beach cricket. On hot days I would run into the sea, believing that the temperature outside the water would match the temperature inside the water; I was sorely mistaken. Out I would run into the arms of the approaching towel – like an exhausted marathon runner blanketed at the end of a race.

Why am I talking about this? Because this week I’ve been reading John Osborne’s Don’t Need The Sunshine. I first heard about John (I know its customary to refer to artists by their last name, but 
Osborne is such a lovely, familiar chap that the forename seems more appropriate) whilst reading Stewart Lee’s article on the government’s latest attack on the BBC. In the piece, he mentioned how on a drive home he listened to a new young writer called John Osborne, whom had left him and his family spellbound. On listening he cried, knowing that no other media would broadcast something of such beauty. Being an admirer of Lee's work, I listened to the Radio 4 broadcast and agreed wholeheartedly that it was something entirely special. In the show John spoke about four different seaside holidays: it begins in Scarborough where he’s teaching at a summer school, goes back in time to recollect a childhood holiday on the Isle of Wight, then onto university where his friends enjoyed a day trip in Wales, before ending in Southwold with a paean to pier plaques.

I loved Osborne’s voice and language. His love for people shines through in his work and reminds me a lot of comedian, Daniel Kitson, who also makes heroes out of the ordinary, magic out of the mundane. Looking online, I noticed there was a book version of the Radio 4 show so ordered it immediately. The Radio 4 show is a fine distillation of the book: the hit singles to the albums if you will. But the book is rather beautiful too. Where the radio show felt more poetic with vignettes flitting in and out of one another, the book reads more like a Bill Bryson travelogue. I laughed at the description of two-penny pushers and beach family cricket; but I also learnt loads about how the railways helped popularise the seaside, then when the going got tough turned its back on it. By the end of the book, you're left worrying that what you've read is an eulogy to a dying tradition.

This year my Nan passed away. She was a lady who swam in the sea, come rain or shine, up until the age of 80. A few months ago, my parents and uncle scattered her ashes in the water. I don’t believe in an afterlife, but I believe in symbolism; I love the fact that their action means she'll continue doing what she loved. Now she's gone, there's the risk that our attachment with Swanage might go too. Fearing this, my mum and dad have talked about buying a caravan or flat there, which will ensure the seaside stays in our family for generations to come. If this plan comes off, I’d like to think in the Year 3000 the heirs to our noble line will be down on that beach, arguing over umpire calls in the millennium-long tradition of beach family cricket.

John Osborne's Don't Need The Sunshine is available to buy from all good retailers.

This is England

This week Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was hauled over the coals for refusing to participate in our national anthem. In refusing to sing a song of subjugation he was branded unpatriotic and disloyal. For Conservatives, patriotism is about honouring timeworn institutions; it is about kowtowing to history and acknowledging that because something is old it is therefore worthy. Not once in this national anthem are the people of the country mentioned; it’s all about the big man in the sky and the privileged one on the throne. Moreover, for a nation that says ‘Never again’ every November 11th, the hymn is a paean to militarism. If it sounded half as good as Rule Britannia, I might accept it, but it doesn’t: instead it sounds like a Daily Mail reader’s burp put to six verses. Is this what England is? A country enthral to God and the Queen?

No, a better representation comes in the aptly named, This is England.

The series begins with Toots and the Maytals, a Jamaican Ska Band, soundtracking a montage of England in 1983. This is an England in upheaval: from Poll Tax protestors clashing with police to the Falklands being returned to Britain, the year was a decisive one for Thatcher. With public unrest over inequitable taxation, she was close to being shown the door, but with victory in a faraway land Thatcher’s name was changed almost overnight to ‘Maggie’ - our mother and saviour. In fact, Thatcher is the silent character in the This Is England series: her mucky handprints are all over the character’s hardships as they feel the pinch of her economic and military campaigns.

Shaun Fields is a character that receives a bloody nose off the back of Thatcher’s iron fist. The film begins with a photo of Shaun’s father, a victim of the Falklands, on the mantelpiece. Having lost his father, Shaun is spiritually lost: alone and friendless, he kicks out at the world. Hope though comes in camaraderie and when Woody, a goofy gang leader, sees Shaun hurting he plays the part of surrogate, offering the boy direction and friendship. Accepted in the gang, Shaun must now look the part: being fans of Ska culture, this means Shaun is shorn like a sheep and made to sport a skinhead, much to his mum’s chagrin. To be accepted into the church of the walking bass-line though, he must undergo his confirmation and pledge his life to Doc Martins - this anointment takes place in a hilarious shoe shop scene. The first half of the film reads like a comedy – and it is. The second half of the film is anything but.

You see, the term gang is a misnomer for Woody and the guys. Their only brush with criminality is smashing up derelict buildings and smoking a bit of draw. Consequently, they simply aren’t equipped to deal with the nefariousness of Combo, an old friend just released from prison. Feeling unloved by family, society and country, Combo declares war on anything he defines as un-English: Thatcher’s phoney wars and immigration being two of them. Rejected by all and sundry, his fire and brimstone prophecies are compulsive viewing. Bewitched by his dark arts, Shaun and some of the other boys follow Combo’s fervour and become unwitting soldiers of nationalism. Woody, older and ever so slightly wiser, knows Combo is dangerous, but is too hamstrung by meekness to do anything about it. Therefore, in the battle for the boys’ soul, the devil wins. The consequences of Combo’s victory are brutally realised at the end of the movie.

That was just the film. 

This Is England’s characters have avoided the hangman’s noose by being granted a reprieve on TV. In This is England ’86 and '88 the focus widens from Shaun to include Woody and his girlfriend, Lol. Shaun has survived his racist conversion but suffers a hangover when his mum brings home a Pakistani shopkeeper. The struggle to accept his mum’s mixed-raced relationship may be a metaphor for a nation that for a long time couldn’t see past colour. His story though of teenage tantrums appears smaller when we see the struggles of Lol and Woody. 

Woody is suffering from that perennial twenty-something problem of losing your identity to a job: the brown overalls of factory floor manager don’t match Woody’s previous career as a colourful character. Assimilated into the machine, he becomes boring to the principled Lol. 

Lol is experiencing greater problems than anyone. Her father’s return has sent her free-falling. Where previously she was headstrong, now she is silenced. The menace Johnny Harris brings to the role is truly frightening. Sporting a bald patch and intimidating growl, we watch in horror as his lies make a hero of him and a liar of Lol. Seeing a brilliant, spirited woman blunted by evil is hugely dispiriting. As uneasy as this is to watch, it does give rise to some of the best acting ever committed to TV. Vicky McClure is one of Britain’s finest actors and her scenes as Lol confirm this. Her character’s seek for salvation is utterly heartbreaking and shows how child abuse doesn’t just destroy the child but the adult too. The scene where she reveals her past to a kind nurse is in my eyes one of the great moments in acting. Instead of chewing scenery, McClure reveals Lol through nuanced shifts in body and expression, making her descent into invisibility even more tragic.

Last week ‘90 began. It has the same clash of comedy and drama that its predecessors enjoy. A hilarious split-screen phone conversation between Woody and his stuffy parents shows Meadows can do sunshine as well as rain. However, with it being set during 90’s Rave Culture, you get the feeling storm clouds are gathering; with the vultures of addiction circling the dance floor, threatening to destroy the gang’s halcyon days.

Ultimately, Meadows documents England as it is. It is not the land of hope and glory. It is a land where Rule Britannia has created a false sense of superiority and subsequent racism. It isn’t a country of bowing to your superior. It is a land of misrule where our great dramatists, from Shakespeare to Meadows, can write heartbreak one minute and a cock joke the next. It is a country that has embraced disparate people and cultures to make ‘its’ people and culture better. God? The Queen? England doesn’t need them. Why? ‘Cos we have each other.

This is England '90 continues on Channel 4, Sunday 9pm.

Parks and Recreation

The best sitcoms are about the friction between little people and big dreams. It is a tradition as old as time. Tony Hancock, Basil Fawlty, David Brent and Alan Partridge all have egos too big for their towns. Pumped on self-importance, we laugh as life deflates them. Parks and Recreation’s Leslie Knope is both of and antithetical to this tradition. Being the Deputy Director of the Pawnee City Department of Parks and Recreation, her plans to be the first female President seem starry-eyed; however as unrealistic as her aspirations may be, we admire her because - unlike the said males- she is actually good at her job. The problem isn’t so much with her, rather the team around her.

Trapped in the province.

 Joining Leslie in her war against red tape is Parks and Recreation Director, Ron Swanson, a man who believes the state sector should be bulldozed to the ground with the subsequent clean-up sold to the highest bidder. Ron is akin to Catch 22’s Major Major, in that you can only have a meeting with him when he’s not there. Essentially, his work routine is a game of hide and seek where the job never finds him. If having a work-shy superior wasn’t hard enough, Leslie has to cope with subordinates who have made a full-time job out of shirking responsibility. Tom Haverford is one such underling: as a child of Hip Hop, Tom has been raised to believe in glitz and glamour. Realising his world is now a government cubical, he spends time devising business plans that are beyond his capabilities - in essence a Richard Branson with a Northern Rock account. Another one of her charges is intern April Ludgate. Interns are today’s capitalist success story: poorly paid but thankful for gainful employment, they work with a fervour that borders on the insane, so desperate are they for that elusive permanent contract. Well, April isn’t that kind of intern. If it takes more muscles to frown than smile, then April is the ripped face of apathy. Only Jerry, a rotund civil servant, offers anything in the way of good ideas, and he isn’t listened to because he once mispronounced the word ‘murial.’ Driven to create better parks for the townspeople, Leslie will not let these road blocks get in her way. Against her ‘Yes I Can’ enthusiasm, resistance is futile: the job can either be done now or immediately. Her team, part afraid, part in thrall to this zeal, join together to make her plans come true.

Leslie and her team.

It is this togetherness that makes the sitcom so special. I don’t think it is the funniest sitcom of all time, but it is immensely likeable and charming. At the last Comedy Awards, Johnny Vegas complained about the sneering state of sitcom: how Ricky Gervais’ atom bomb of ironic racism and disabalism has continued to pollute the comedy landscape. In his speech he praised Paul Whitehouse for creating characters that championed ordinary people. Parks does the same. Leslie Knope is the unrecognised face of civic duty: the people who collect our rubbish, clean our streets, open our libraries, improve our towns. She is a totem of what can be achieved when your passion out-rivals your connections. In a world of cut-backs and kickbacks, she perseveres.

In Leslie Knope we trust.      

Parks and Recreation is available on Dave, Monday 8pm.

1984

I’m 16-years-old. I’m in my Nan’s spare room (I’m here because it’s the summer holiday). I’m lying in bed. On the floor is my Sony Discman. The disc spinning inside: Elbow’s debut, Asleep in the Back. (When considering the band's recent output of over-produced melancholia, Asleep is a curiosity. Incongruous to the rest of their work, the album is a horror show put to audio: it sounds like an abandoned building that's lights have been punched out by poverty and paranoia. It scares the shit out of me.) While the soundtrack spins in my ear, my eyes are making a movie of the letters beneath. In my hands, 1984: Orwell’s dystopian nightmare of surveillance and interrogation. In having Guy Garvey provide the score for this read, I've made a rod for my own back: Orwell’s landscape becomes more disturbing when coupled with the album; Garvey’s soundscape becomes more distressing when coupled with the book. Like Special Brew and Absinthe, the two shouldn’t be put together. Impervious to consequence, I make a tall glass of the two and toast oblivion.

I’m now 30-years-old. I’m in the Playhouse Theatre, readying myself for Headlong’s adaptation of 1984. A poster warning audiences that the performance contains scenes of gunshots and blood and torture has freaked my girlfriend out. (She hasn't read the book and my three word synopsis of 'brutality,' 'horrifying' and 'disturbing' might not have helped.) It also re-assures patrons that the animals used in the production are under the governance of specialist handlers. This detail is evidence that the mind games have already begun. Most people in the theatre are aware of the book: when they read the sign, they think ‘rats.’ Questions began to abound: Is the actor going to go ‘method’ with the final scene? Are we about to witness a Bush Tucker trial live on stage? The boy in me, one predisposed to adrenaline, immune to fear smiles; the man, on the other hand, checks his brow and prays for safety.

Together, we begin our ascent to the viewing gallery to watch the torture unfold. On the staircase we’re addressed by an usher, warning us there will be no re-admittance, that there is no interval, that the play is 101 minutes long. The denial of a break is an inspired decision. Just as Winston’s subjugation is total and unrelenting, so is ours. There will be no half-time succour of ice cream and Facebook to retain equilibrium; no, Winston’s world will be our world until the curtain says otherwise.

The play begins by plunging us into darkness. (The disorientating use of lighting will be a recurring motif throughout the play.) When the lights do arrive, Winston Smith, centred, sits at a desk penning a journal. He is just out of a sight of a telescreen, an apparatus of control that allows the State to look in on you and observe your behaviour. In 1984, a diary is a weapon of rebellion, anything that allows someone to register the past is suppressed- the past after all is a foreign country: they do things differently there. The state of Big Brother does not want people to know of difference.  An understanding of the past gives people a context with which to scrutinize their present: the objective of a totalitarian state is to be impregnable to such scrutiny. Although the details of Winston’s diary are cold and dead-eyed, documenting bland observations, it is the start of his spiritual awakening.

 The next scene took me by surprise. Instead of tracking Winston’s growing defiance, we’re transported to a book group, whose attendees debate the book. For people who haven’t read the source, this does not appear in the novel. Initially, I thought this scene was pat-on-the-back postmodernism, discussing the author’s work. Instead they’re doing something that is totally in keeping with the story. At the back of 1984 is a little-read appendix that documents the fall of Big Brother; its first sentence reads (‘Newspeak was the official language of Oceania.’) Was shows the system and its language collapsed and in its place was a return to thought and freedom. The main story is a bleak predictor of fascist rule, but the appendix is Orwell’s positive belief that tyranny can be overcome. The book group, therefore, takes place in a post-Big Brother world. Delightfully, the production nods at how some things have improved (the language of the people has been restored and returned back to the people) and how some things haven’t changed (people are still in thrall to the screens: this time though its mobile phones, not telescreens).

The book group

Other than this addition, the play stays largely loyal to the text. That’s not to say Headlong’s adaptation is regurgitation; it’s far too imaginative for that. For instance, a scene is repeated three times to show the deadening malaise of living in a system opposed to expression. Winston goes to work and is told day after day the same anecdote by a colleague. Alongside this recollection, a cleaner scrubs the floor with the taut gestures of a machine – under Big Brother people have become automatons, incapable of intimacy and thought. Another inspired moment is when Winston enters into an affair with another State worker, Julia. Finding sexual refuge in the back room of an antique shop, the audience becomes the State, observing the unfolding rebellion on an overhead telescreen. What makes the production truly revelatory though is its staging of the iconic torture scene. Do those rats make an appearance? You’ll have to go along to find out.

Thank God, this kind of torture doesn't exist now.

1984 has finished its London run, but the production re-commences its tour in Bath on the 9^th September.

Frasier

In December 2013 I sat down to watch the first episode of eleven-season behemoth Frasier with my girlfriend. The pilot episode begins by panning across the city, showing its inhabitants listening to their local radio station KACL. The voice in the booth belongs to Seattle's prodigal son, Dr. Frasier Crane, a radio quack who dispenses three-minute diagnoses to the lovelorn and defeated. This return home has arisen as a result of a broken marriage foretold in prequel sitcom, Cheers. With an exclusive bachelor pad overlooking the city, Frasier appears to have the building block to help him re-build his life and ingratiate himself into Seattle high society. His spiritual convalescence is short-lived though because his father, Martin, is in need of a different recuperation. Smarting from a physical injury sustained as a policeman, he needs a home: Frasier and his brother, Niles, argue over who is going to provide it. Niles reasons he can’t go with him because his wife, Maris, would never sanction it (Maris is an Old Testament God in the sitcom: never-seen, but perennially referred to in anxious tones); Frasier, unmarried and unencumbered therefore draws the short straw and takes in his father. Accompanying Martin is Manchester-born Health Worker, Daphne Moon, a woman grounded in breeding but flighty in emotion. Essentially then, the sitcom is a comedy of manners with Niles and Frasier depicting the pretentious upper middle-class and Daphne, Martin and Roz (Fraiser’s Radio Producer) providing an earthy counter-weight.

Initially our climb up this box-set mountain was slow and arduous. Up until this year, my girlfriend and me weren’t living together, which meant, like a parent with a poor divorce lawyer, our access was stymied to weekend's. Now we’re living together, we’ve made up for lost time and worked really hard to gain ground on our gargantuan quest to reach the 264-episode milestone. We’re nearly there. Last night we finished Season 9 leaving us just 2 more seasons to complete. A future without Frasier is difficult to comprehend. I imagine Edmund Hillary and other mountain-climbers have expressed dissatisfaction at life after the mountain: once you’ve achieved the pinnacle, reached the summit and seen the sunset, life thereafter can seem a boring groan of banality. Frasier is that peak. I’m unconvinced a better horizon lies out there.

An American sitcom is different to a British one in terms of breadth and ambition. Because of British budgetary constraints, a sitcom can’t hope to run for a long time (Last of The Summer Wine being a notable exception), therefore there is more opportunity to produce something brilliant and not have it tarnished by over-saturation. In America where the advertiser is king, a sitcom that proves successful is treated as a cash cow, milked again and again until the thing is so dry its screaming for its own culling; typically then, what happens is a sitcom that should finish keeps going (see Friends). Frasier hasn’t suffered the same fate. To use an analogy, it is like a fine ballroom dancer: its effortless waltz across the screen belies the sweat of the rehearsal room. I guess what I'm saying is people may challenge the assertion that Frasier is the best sitcom of all time, but they would be hard pushed to find a better written one. Even when challenges were put in their way - actress Jane Leeves unexpected pregnancy being one of them – the writers found a way to make the sitcom work.

The secret of the success lies in the misnomer of the title: Frasier. Frasier and his naval-gazing look at love may be the centre of each episode, but there is enough in the other characters that means they could survive without him. In fact as the seasons progress, the secondary characters are given greater precedence, allowing the writers to explore other aspects of love. Daphne and Niles’ ‘will they, won’t they’ union is painted with all the painstaking patience of an Old Master, leaving us desperate to see the finished article; Roz isn’t like other sitcom women: she is empowered, an agent- not an object- of sexuality. And Martin only plays the archetype of the wise old man up to a point: he too pursues his predilections, showing the desire for love and sex is not forgone in retirement. Given the sitcom was written over the 90’s, it is highly progressive, drawing three-dimensional women that are sexy, sassy and fun, as well as fallible and deluded. Unlike some sitcoms the women in Frasier aren’t models of perfection, scenery dressing to admire, rather they are sentient creatures as capable of wit as they are idiocy. Also, there is much talk at the moment of the ‘grey pound’: how societal neglect of older people has led to a surge in cinema representing the demographic and their concerns; in Martin Crane Frasier was showing that the elderly were more than cantankerous, long before the success of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

If an aspect of the sitcom were to be highlighted for special praise, it would be its immaculate sense of timing. The sitcom is clearly inspired by British farce with stand-out episodes ‘The Innkeepers’ and ‘The Ski-Lodge’ paying homage to the improbable plots and slamming doors of Noel Coward's plays. To say Frasier is a sitcom that invokes the past though would be to do it a disservice; indeed episodes such as ‘Don Juan in Hell Part 2’ defy easy categorisation. In this episode, Frasier spurned by love yet again reflects on why he can’t get his love life in order. Whilst in the car he’s joined by the ghosts of female past, including his dead mother, whom physically play out his warring subconscious. Only in a sitcom as cerebral as Frasier could an episode take place inside the mind of the protagonist.    

Don Juan in Hell.

Ultimately, Frasier is a genius comedy because it doesn’t talk down to its viewers. It references ‘high’ tastes of opera, classical music and wine without ever feeling elitist. The sitcom has great depth, showing the Crane brothers’ obsession for the finer things in life is part displacement activity for the love and community they’re missing in their own lives. To make heroes out of a couple of well-heeled asses is a vertiginous feat that isn’t easy. Perhaps, the current government could hire the Frasier scriptwriters to make them appear more human. They’re that good; it might just be possible.
In a month or two, we will watch the last episode of Frasier. The end-credit Jazz tune, a euphemistic paean to Frasier's radio callers, will play out one last time: ('And I don't know what to do with those tossed salads and scrambled eggs. They're calling again') and end one last time on that signature sign-off: 'Frasier has left the building.' I, along with my girlfriend, will be sad to see the good doctor go.