Drama!

I have always been a lover of 70's/80's drama.  I find modern day television utterly abhorrent.  Reality TV does not appeal and I find myself going back to the 70's and 80's as a source of entertainment. Here are some of the shows that I have been watching over the last couple of months.

'Hattie' - one-off drama about Hattie Jacques, everyone's favourite matron from the 'Carry On' films.  This focuses upon Jacques' affair with her driver, John Schofield and her marriage (at the same time) to Dad's Army actor, John Le Mesurier.  I had no idea (until I had viewed this drama) that both Jacques and Le Mesurier embarked upon extra-marital affairs during their time together.  Hattie moved her young man into the master bedroom, and Le Mesurier moved into the spare room.  They both kept up the facade for the public of a happy marriage.  At the end of the marriage, Le Mesurier agreed that he would take the blame as the unfaithful party in their divorce case.  This was a gripping drama, and made me think lots about the normal, day-to-day things that went on in the lives of these celebrities.  Of course, there was no happy ending.  Schofield left Jacques for a younger model after several years, and Le Mesurier married again, but he and Jacques still remained friends until her death.  Weird chain of events, I think.

'Sun, Sex & Suspicious Parents' - this is pure 'car crash' TV from BBC Three.  The basic gist is that it follows a group of young 'uns on their first foreign holiday without mum and dad.  What the kids don't know is that the parents are also in the same resort, watching everything that they get up to.  It's messy, make no mistake.  Why are the young people of today obsessed with drinking 'shots' and drinking until they soil themselves out of every orifice?  Utter madness.  I think that I only watch it so that I can feel superior.  I never went abroad as a teenager with my mates.  I never wanted to.  I think that I am most definitely in the minority on this one.  Most of the kids on this show make me wonder why they were not flushed out as foetuses.  Seriously.

'The Good Life' - this was a birthday present.  To my shame, I had never watched this series, although I was totally aware of it.  I have to confess to being more on the side of the snobbish Leadbitters, rather than the 'holier-than-thou' Goods.  Felicity Kendal's Barbara deserved so much more than welly-wearing Richard Briers' Tom.  I really rather wanted her to say, 'Fuck your self-sufficiency, I haven't had any new clothes in months and I'm off...goodbye'.  Of course, she didn't.  Fool.