Nostalgia Ain't What It Used To Be
May. 17th, 2022 08:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo You Tube has taken down Mick's Nostalgia Corner- an archive of British TV shows from the 60s onwards- most of them single plays. The page that apprised us of the fact hinted at nameless crimes but I imagine it was all about copyright.
The single play- often issued in seasons under a heading like Play For Today or Armchair Theatre- used to be a staple of the schedules- but is now a great rarity. First rate writers like Alan Bennett, Denis Potter and Jack Rosenthal contributed. I won't say the standard was high, because how could it be?- but even when the artistic quality was negligible the socio-historical value wasn't. I watched three of the plays that Mick had salvaged- all cast in that curious, betwixt and between style- with the actors performing as if on stage- no blurring and slurring of speech or any of your Stanislavskian nonsense- but with occasional cinematic trappings- that you hardly see any more. Two really weren't much cop, but the third, The Mayfly and the Frog- a bittersweet Shavian comedy by Jack Russell- starring those highly distinctive actors John Gielgud and Felicity Kendal - he enjoying his Indian Summer, she just starting out- was- as I remember it being when I first saw it at 15- a complete and utter delight.
I'm not going to say You Tube was wrong to scupper Mick. Copyright is a serious business- and artists deserve to make a few pennies from their back catalogue- but the archive he'd put together was unique- and it's contents rare- and it's a great pity it'll no longer be available.
The single play- often issued in seasons under a heading like Play For Today or Armchair Theatre- used to be a staple of the schedules- but is now a great rarity. First rate writers like Alan Bennett, Denis Potter and Jack Rosenthal contributed. I won't say the standard was high, because how could it be?- but even when the artistic quality was negligible the socio-historical value wasn't. I watched three of the plays that Mick had salvaged- all cast in that curious, betwixt and between style- with the actors performing as if on stage- no blurring and slurring of speech or any of your Stanislavskian nonsense- but with occasional cinematic trappings- that you hardly see any more. Two really weren't much cop, but the third, The Mayfly and the Frog- a bittersweet Shavian comedy by Jack Russell- starring those highly distinctive actors John Gielgud and Felicity Kendal - he enjoying his Indian Summer, she just starting out- was- as I remember it being when I first saw it at 15- a complete and utter delight.
I'm not going to say You Tube was wrong to scupper Mick. Copyright is a serious business- and artists deserve to make a few pennies from their back catalogue- but the archive he'd put together was unique- and it's contents rare- and it's a great pity it'll no longer be available.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-17 07:48 am (UTC)That was one of the ones I hadn't gotten around, and was looking forward, to. I was hoping the fact that it was a personal archive of tapes rather than rips of material readily available on home media would hold off the algorithms for a little longer. I loved what I saw.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-17 08:16 am (UTC)There were things I had earmarked to watch- a play featuring an elderly Alastair Sim for instance...
Ah, well....
no subject
Date: 2022-05-17 05:50 pm (UTC)I can't remember half of what I was interested in because so much of it was new to me, but the list included Mad Jack (1970) with Michael Jayston as Siegfried Sassoon, John Bowen's A Photograph (1977), and the two out of three of Graham Reid's Billy plays with a very young Kenneth Branagh that YouTube permitted to be shown in my country. There was also some Dennis Potter I had read about but never seen, as well as the original 1976 Brimstone and Treacle which I hadn't seen since 2008. I was lucky enough to watch one of the Wessex Tales because it featured John Hurt and discovered when the titles came up it had been adapted from Hardy by Potter.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-17 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-17 06:17 pm (UTC)Me neither. A Tragedy of Two Ambitions (1973) was the one I watched for John Hurt; it also turned out to feature a wild supporting Edward Petherbridge; it is a rustic conte cruel about two brothers studying for the cloth, their swaggeringly drunken father, and their sister's endangered, advantageous marriage. Very prettily photographed, which made the last act a kind of daylight horror. Hurt was great.
- Coward, Rattigan, Ibsen-
I was going to watch a Separate Tables from 1970 because I disliked the 1958 film so much!