Having watched the first three episodes of the box set of the BBC’s sumptuously produced period drama, ‘The Summer of Rockets’ I recently wrote about the way in which those opening episodes attractively portrayed the appealing side of the 1960s as embodying the breath of youth and life that emanated from the USA and swept through Britain. I likened this to the way in which populism is, unbidden, suddenly reinvigorating political debate in the West. By the time I had watched the final three episodes, though, it was apparent that the BBC was running true to form in also portraying and promoting the less appealing side of the 60s – the embracing of the egalitarian Marxist narrative, the desire to junk tradition and everything from the past and to rubbish everything about the Empire – as things that are particularly appealing. For those who are semiotically literate in BBC signalling it was childishly easy to spot the usual heavy-handed tropes, generously ‘educating’ us proles out of the unattractive racist and homophobic views we embrace if we forget ourselves for a moment and revert to wicked type. Thus, the good guys feature a noble Jewish emigré and tech wizard from Russia who employs a black man as his right hand man in 1958. There’s his daughter kicking over the traces by openly having a black boyfriend, there’s the gay comedy scriptwriter who saves the UK from its evil shadow and the brutalised, vegetarian son of the Shaws high on sensitivity. And then there are three principle characters (the impossibly gullible Tory MP and war hero, Richard Shaw, played by Linus Roache, Mrs Petrukhin, played by Lucy Cohu and Kathleen Shaw played by Keeley Hawes), all suddenly realising how blinkered and hidebound by establishment convention they have been, how the times they are a-changin,’ how the scales have fallen from their eyes and how they now have to do their very best to embrace the new age and breathe in the winds of freedom. Oh, how they apologise for their past follies after their simultaneous damascene conversions! If only we could all reform so obligingly.
Most conspicuous, of course, was the anti-Brexit bit. Spoiler alert! It turned out, after we had been skilfully kept for a long time in some doubt by Poliakoff, that the country was under threat of a coup to be led by an anti-semitic General backed by a bunch of reactionary aristocrats who just couldn’t swallow the loss of the days of empire. They had amassed tanks at a secret location in the countryside near London and intended to save the country from the loss of the glory days, the evils of immigration (resonances of Enoch Powell here) and thefalse flag of Russian Cold War penetration of the secret service (which had actually happened in the form of Burgess, McLean, Philby and Blunt of course). They wanted to make Britain great again and, guess what, loved nostalgia and, most depraved of all, watching black and white film celebrating Victorian architecture! They were mainly men in dark suits and getting on a bit. But, alas, the plot was foiled by a leak which led to the lampooning, by Adrian Edmondson, of their intentions via a black and white television set, watched by the Blimp-like plotters in their stately home. Edmondson is a television comedian playing a character called ‘Mad Dog Bonkers’ who drives around the TV set in a cardboard tank in military uniform with a lop-sided moustache while ranting about the empire. Once the plot is exposed and all that evil traditional stuff dispensed with, the true, egalitarian spirit of the 60s is able to assert itself, and we all obediently breathe a huge sigh of relief along with our BBC mentors while looking forward to the sunlit uplands just over the horizon.
Placed alongside their other very recent drama productions, this is the most damning evidence, that the BBC drama department are now bombarding us with a naked anti-Brexit political campaign in the plainest of sight and, of course, funded by our licence fees. ‘Summer of Rockets’ first aired on 22nd May. Two other series featuring dystopian visions of the UK in the near future, ‘Mother, Father, Son’ and ‘Years and Years’ were first shown, respectively, on 6th March and 14th May. ‘Mother, Father, Son,’ a dreadfully incoherent series, featured a highly civilised, Ghanaian Muslim PM who is defeated by a populist party (his son having been murdered by racists in his Cambridge college) with spooky Orwellian branding. The party is led by a sinister but successful businesswoman, who runs paternalistic, Poundbury-style villages, played by Sarah Lancashire. ‘Years and Years’ features another very high profile actress, Emma Thompson, playing the leader of ‘Four Star’(geddit?), a populist party threateningly on the rise in a posited future Britain. That’s the same anti-populist warning template used three times in eleven weeks. The production values on the very respectable Stephen Poliakoff’s ‘Summer of Rockets’ are the highest. It exhibits gorgeous period detail, locations and costumes and Poliakoff’s writing and unfolding of the plot is excellent. Little expense has been spared in the hiring of the casts of the three series. Between them we have Richard Gere, tempted into his first ever television appearance, Helen McCrory, Sinead Cusack, Sarah Lancashire, Toby Stephens, Keeley Hawes, Timothy Spall, Emma Thompson, Adrian Edmondson, Ciarán Hinds and Rory Kinnear.
The BBC aren’t even bothering to hide their allegiances any more and are openly propagandising us and attempting to form our views. There is a new dynamic in our relationship with them, largely involving them handing down right-thinking ideas to us as we proffer our begging bowls to them from the lower reaches. One does wonder if the time has come for a boycott of the license fee given that it is blatantly being used to promote an agenda that over half the country does not buy into. Why should they get away with this any more?
Rejected by TCW as too similar to my other piece on 'Summer of Rockets' and not well written (it isn't)
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