Viewed by contemporary audiences, a lot of it is enjoyable on a trash basis. So, what's good about it? It's ludicrousness. Could there be an "Andrew Newman" who's fooled us all? Abysmal. I wonder if "Andrea Newman" isn't a pseudonym. Not badly enough to end up in hospital, mind you, but enough to make it exciting. Elsewhere, Newman has her leading lady proclaim as fact that what all women secretly want is to be slapped around by their men. Sorry but this degree of complacency is inexcusable, even by Seventies standards. And besides, the couple have a sado-masochistic relationship, so that's OK then. For example, a major character (pregnant) is beaten half to death by her violent husband and the police are NEVER mentioned, not even by the doctors who treat her! The assault is put down to everyday domestic strife. The serial's sexual politics would rightly enrage even a mild feminist then and now. It pretends not to pass judgement on the characters, but, really, their comeuppance is judgement enough. The naughty girls and naughty boys get what they deserve in the end - misery and death. Yet, for all its supposed sexual candour (hints of incest and the endless confessions of sado-masochism) it's a deeply conservative piece at heart. White middle-aged, middle-class swingers and bed-hoppers had rarely been brought under such close scrutiny on UK TV. These people should write novels! Bouquet of Barbed Wire was a huge hit in 1976. Elsewhere, the dialogue is quite entertaining although perhaps not for the intended reason, and every character seems to be a tad more eloquent than is credible. Such lapses of taste were, doubtless, symptoms of insecurity on the part of the producers - a lack of faith in their audience.
These are emotional shades of grey painted in very gaudy colours. This is a prime example of over-writing, typified not only by the characters' continuous declarations of their states of minds, but also by the occasional "thought voice-over" - a device as blatantly literal-minded as it was crudely achieved. spelling out EXACTLY what the characters are thinking and feeling at all times so as to not confuse an ITV audience. Other times she stubs her toe on the dramatic conventions of soap opera ie. Writer Andrea Newman displays a gift for reproducing the broken speech rhythms of people under intense emotional pressure. I like verbose scripts and this had dialogue by the ton. I rather enjoyed it for it's slow, single-minded approach. Does that make it rubbish? No, not completely. This was LWT mainstream peak-time television viewing, not a night at the Royal Court. I expected something a little more philosophically lethal, perhaps along the lines of Potter or Pinter in "Betrayal" mode. Maybe so, but what they were actually getting was little more than a dramatised Woman's Own article produced, perhaps inevitably, in the style of Crossroads. I dare say that its upmarket target audience were flattered to see "their lives" being portrayed with such candour. Well.! What a carry on! What a palaver! What an outrage! What a great, glorious, steaming pile of melodramatic bilge. I first saw this as a small child (progressive parents or irresponsible ones? You be the judge) and have revisited it recently on DVD.
0 kommentar(er)
