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Delightful post title.
I’ve just finished watching a random episode of “Rumpole of the Bailey”, which is, for the young / Canadian amongst us, a TV series about top-end posh barristers in London (starring the late Leo McKern), which ran from approx. 1978 - 1992.
It was quite astonishingly bad, in terms of a) the hammy acting, b) the frankly bizarre attempt by the scriptwriters to juxtapose some kind of Agatha Christie Victoriana with modern London, but mostly c) one of the sub-plots, which concerned Rumpole’s practice’s attempt to be “inclusive” by recruiting someone from a “minority”. They settled on a barrister who was believed to be gay, and the conversation amongst the senior partners went something like this:
“Not black, is he?”
“No, he’s not black, but being black isn’t so bad; old Fanshawe” (head of another chambers) “appointed a black fella who ended up becoming King of Limpopoland, or something. Made Fanshawe his Chief Justice. No, this one’s a pooftah.”
That’s only a very slight exaggeration of the actual dialogue. There followed an excruciating interview with the candidate in question, in which the senior barrister indulges in all manner of old Tory innuendo about gays, before refusing to shake the interviewee’s hand on the way out. As it turns out, he was a “rampant heterosexual”, so everything was OK.
What this suggests is that 1) my rose-tinted opinion of the halcyon days of ’70s and ’80s television may well be completely flawed, and b) the most likely reason why they don’t repeat more “classic” comedy stuff (eg Monty Python / The Goodies) is that it’s jam-packed with every kind of horrible right-wing prejudice under the sun. Or should that be in “The Sun”.
This entry was posted on Monday, December 11th, 2006 at 8:24 pm and is filed under Film / Telly / Books, General, or uncategorized due to sloppy editing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
My local video rental place, which just closed because the landlord doubled the rent, had all of Rumpole of the Bailey on DVD. I couldn’t fathom why.
In the States the only publicly funded TV network, PBS, tends to get the rights to old British TV programmes on the cheap, so one can take in Rumpole on US government-funded television. I saw a few episodes–just enough to agree with your assessment.
It’s strange, though, which British shows tend to become popular here. My Texan grandparents can’t get enough of Keeping Up Appearances, and my mother has a soft spot for Are You Being Served?. And I like As Time Goes By, which surely marks me as more boring than melba toast.
Shit - this is terribly worrying stuff - what the hell are you doing watching Rumpole of an evening? The only thing that could possibly be worse is if you’d started your post with
Did you know that Rumpole DVDs are increasingly **RARE** these days…? Any they’d be *** PERFECT FOR CHRISTMAS *** wouldn’t they? I think you know what I’m suggesting…..
Jonk - welcome back! Good stuff as always! On behalf of the nation I’d like to apologise for those terrible re-runs on your network - only mitigation is that you’ve got so many channels you have to be VERY unlucky (or very stupid) to end up watching any of it..
ps Shit - great post title - did I say that already?!
pps how about “turd toastie” and/or “botty bagel” ?!
ppps what’s happened to TM? Has he been dragged off to the lab?!
.
TM is…. erm, actually, I’m not sure. Will look into it. “Turd Toastie” is good, although I’m thinking of adopting a new theme altogether for the next round of stupid words.
Just as long as you get rid of ’sheiss brot’. I always type the ‘i’ and the ‘e’ the wrong way round.
And Pal, I commend you for your good work in saving the environment. That **RARE** joke has been recycled, ooh, seven times now, hasn’t it?
Returning to your original observation, it’s surprising the nostalgia networks haven’t decided it’s time for a re-run of “Mind Your Language” whose entire purpose or indeed raison d’etre (thought I’d mind another language there) was to confirm a host of racial stereotypes and ran for 3 (count ‘em) series.
Viewers of Mind Your Language could perhaps have stayed tuned to have their prejudices further honed by watching “Bottle Boys”, starring Robin Askwith. By comparison Rumpole would have appeared to have been scripted by Harold Pinter, from an original idea by Peter Tatchell.
“Mind your Language” apparently continued its success until the late 1980s -
“In 1985 another 13 episodes were made - see following entry - and then the format of Mind Your Language was sold to American TV where it was re-made as What A Country! and syndicated in 1986-87 for 26 episodes. Soviet comedian/defector Yakov Smirnoff (yes, really) starred as a Russian immigrant taxi driver, studying in Los Angeles to become an American citizen, together with Hungarian, Pakistani, Chinese, African and Mexican classmates.”
But even that was as nothing compared to “Love Thy Neighbour“… plenty of horrifying clips on Youtube, EG this one - try from about 90 seconds in…