Tonight:
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A policeman fights corruption at the heart of the Ripper hunt and so lifelike is the account that we even see home-made film footage taken on Christmas Day in more light-hearted times. That's a moving scene from C4's highly praised Red Riding - two instalments down, one to go and a clutch of awards guaranteed. Except it isn't really true - it's pure faction, mixing documentary techniques with the fictitious invention of the author
Here is the major film and TV growth area of the era - from the dramatic reworkings of Mrs Thatcher's career to the dystopian sweep through the Eighties in Red Riding. It blends things we recall happening with things we think we remember - and adds a large twist of things which never really happened at all.
Interviewing James Marsh, the director of the gripping second drama, on Radio 3's Nightwaves last week, I was struck by his absolute confidence in the hybrid. "It's more powerful and revealing than documentary," he contends. Powerful, certainly. But revealing? I doubt it.
What it reveals mainly is the prism through which we see things at any given time. A load of cultural attitudes and exclusions are incorporated without declaring themselves. Marsh says he doesn't like Peter Morgan's The Queen because he finds it too worshipful and part of the "heritage industry" approach to political drama he dislikes. Both men, though, are part of the trend blurring the boundaries of what happened and what did not. Shakespeare, he adds, is the master of faction. A good point - but it seems to me that today's examples are presented much more as fact than fiction, when it should be the other way round.
One man's truth is another man's docudrama. Caveat emptor.
* Vin de Pays King's Cross is on the way, thanks to the transformation of my local backyard area into London's first vineyard. Like all good localistas, we eat at Konstam, where every animal we consume on a bed of locally grown spinach has been hand reared (and perhaps privately educated) inside the M25 - or at Acorn House with its "sustainable" Modern London cuisine. But how to sell King's Cross as an exotic provenance of the vine? "Grown in the wild territory between York Way and the Midland Road an area of historic dubious night-time activity and fly-tipping " All power to Château St Pancras and its faith in niche marketing.
* Ken is out on the town with his rather glamorous daughter Lottie - looking about as shy and retiring as Peaches Geldof. The eagle-eyed will note that Ms Livingstone is very well groomed, as well as naturally attractive, and has spent some considerable time on her perfectly straight hair, neat brows and flattering attire. Growing up with a father preoccupied by socialist liberation struggles and newts clearly focuses a girl's mind on what really matters.
Reader views (1)
I find it hard to believe that a serious political commentator is scrutinising the appearance of a young girl. Has Lottie really asked for this? Why can't you just leave young girls alone? As a parent, I would have expected something less cheap than these remarks
- Js, London, 17/03/2009 15:54
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