Post by Teddy Bear on Feb 28, 2011 18:00:15 GMT
I must admit I haven't seen this programme or read the book, but Peter Hitchens has, and written about it in the Mail. I certainly can recognize the BBC mindset in his judgement on it.
The sex-fuelled BBC bulldozer has demolished South Riding
Don’t waste time watching the BBC’s ghastly, sexed-up version of South Riding on Sundays. Buy the book and read it instead.
That tiresome nuisance, Andrew Davies, has completely missed the point of this glorious, generous novel, so good and beloved that it has never been out of print since it was published more than 70 years ago. But he and the BBC have only just heard of it.
Mr Davies says: ‘I often find myself writing scenes that the original author forgot to write.’ What he means is that he rides his big red sex-fuelled bulldozer through the works of better writers, shoving aside their subtleties and putting in grunts and clinches – and cliches – instead. He would find a way to put explicit sex and crude Left-wing politics into Treasure Island if anyone let him.
Actually there is sex and there are Left-wing politics in South Riding. There are also other kinds of love and disappointment, cruel death, feminism, pacifism, and a fiery, angry desire to bring education to the poor. But they are not the sort of sex or politics the BBC likes.
For they are coupled with a deep and open-minded understanding of the older, conservative England that the old Left sought to change, with a strong if reluctant sympathy for the Christian religion, and a liking for the English people as they are, rather than as busybodies might want them to be.
The book is a long love letter to the East Riding, to Yorkshire and to England. And its thoughtful heroine would never – as Anna Maxwell Martin does on TV – make a trite pacifist speech at a job interview, or turn up for such an occasion in a short-sleeved scarlet suit.
‘Nothing could have been more sober and businesslike than her dark brown clothes,’ says the book about this very scene.
Mr Davies and the BBC think they know better. But they don’t.
Don’t waste time watching the BBC’s ghastly, sexed-up version of South Riding on Sundays. Buy the book and read it instead.
That tiresome nuisance, Andrew Davies, has completely missed the point of this glorious, generous novel, so good and beloved that it has never been out of print since it was published more than 70 years ago. But he and the BBC have only just heard of it.
Mr Davies says: ‘I often find myself writing scenes that the original author forgot to write.’ What he means is that he rides his big red sex-fuelled bulldozer through the works of better writers, shoving aside their subtleties and putting in grunts and clinches – and cliches – instead. He would find a way to put explicit sex and crude Left-wing politics into Treasure Island if anyone let him.
Actually there is sex and there are Left-wing politics in South Riding. There are also other kinds of love and disappointment, cruel death, feminism, pacifism, and a fiery, angry desire to bring education to the poor. But they are not the sort of sex or politics the BBC likes.
For they are coupled with a deep and open-minded understanding of the older, conservative England that the old Left sought to change, with a strong if reluctant sympathy for the Christian religion, and a liking for the English people as they are, rather than as busybodies might want them to be.
The book is a long love letter to the East Riding, to Yorkshire and to England. And its thoughtful heroine would never – as Anna Maxwell Martin does on TV – make a trite pacifist speech at a job interview, or turn up for such an occasion in a short-sleeved scarlet suit.
‘Nothing could have been more sober and businesslike than her dark brown clothes,’ says the book about this very scene.
Mr Davies and the BBC think they know better. But they don’t.