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 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!