15/09/2013 The Review Show


15/09/2013

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On this month's Review Show...

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Drugs and depravity on the big screen,

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gangland violence on TV,

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greed and deceit on the stage

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and espionage on the page.

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Plus the art of Henry Moore, Francis Bacon and Bob Dylan,

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and music from James Dean Bradfield of the Manic Street Preachers.

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Tonight, razor blades in cloth caps in the new TV drama Peaky Blinders,

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an exhibition links two titans

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of 20th-century art,

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comedy in the Cold War from bestselling novelist Jonathan Coe

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and a modern morality play from the writer of Matilda The Musical.

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Joining me with their verdicts on all of that,

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the novelist AL Kennedy, author and columnist James Delingpole

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and the writer and critic Paul Morley.

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But first, it's been 20 years

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since Irvine Welsh shot to literary stardom with Trainspotting,

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his shocking and witty depiction of drug culture

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in Edinburgh's underbelly.

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Danny Boyle's screen adaptation

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was one of the most successful British films of the 1990s.

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Now imagine, if you dare,

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a world which is even more dark and depraved,

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in an adaptation of Welsh's third novel, Filth,

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about a corrupt copper's descent into chaos.

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James McAvoy plays Welsh's anti-hero,

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the racist, sexist and homophobic Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson.

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Desperate to win a promotion

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which he hopes will reunite him with his estranged wife and daughter,

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Robertson's increasingly erratic behaviour

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wreaks havoc on those around him.

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What does that make me, then? You're a policeman.

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The film, directed by Jon S Baird,

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features a Who's Who of British acting talent,

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with John Sessions as Robertson's Chief Inspector,

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Jamie Bell and Imogen Poots as his colleagues in the force

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and Eddie Marsan as his unlikely best friend.

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What made you join the force?

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Police oppression, brother. You wanted to stamp it out from the inside?

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No, I wanted to be a part of it.

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In Welsh's book, Robertson develops a tapeworm

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which eats away at his intestines,

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the device Welsh used to explain his unscrupulous policeman's back story.

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In Baird's film, he suffers hallucinations,

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in which he's tormented by his psychiatrist,

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a role Jim Broadbent clearly relished.

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How have you been since our last consultation, Bruce?

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No problems, I presume, eh?

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No!

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No more cocaine and chip suppers for Bruce, eh?

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McAvoy is the latest in a long line

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of corrupt coppers on the big screen,

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from Dirty Harry to The Departed.

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But has there ever been one quite as minging as this?

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What we would do is all the men would go to the photocopying room.

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One by one, of course. No offence if that's your thing.

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And what we'd do

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is we would photocopy an image of our wedding tackle.

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BAWDY LAUGHTER

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MUSIC: "Mr Vain" by Culture Beat

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Quite a Christmas party there!

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Now, listen, the shadow of Trainspotting

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obviously looms large over this,

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Danny Boyle's huge hit.

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How would you make the comparison?

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I think it compares very well. Although it's quite an old book,

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obviously it's about corruption at all levels.

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It's got a kind of Jacobean feel

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and I think we live in that kind of world of ultimate cynicism

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and we have this kind of Machiavellian character

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just being completely and successfully - up to a point -

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immoral.

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But with a sense that it is immorality, it's not amorality.

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That he is going wrong.

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And I think that works very well,

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perhaps even better now. And it's very confident,

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it's very slick. The editing is kind of Edgar Wright style -

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bouncy, pacy editing.

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And you've got this beautiful central performance,

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as there was from Ewan McGregor.

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Again, I think that James McAvoy,

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this will be... I mean, he's very...

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renowned now,

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but I think it could be the making of him,

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because he holds it together. He's in every scene and he paces it,

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and because it's coloured by his psychology,

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he really is making the film work,

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and in real harmony with the director.

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And interestingly, in the scene I saw,

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he introduced it, James McAvoy, and he said,

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"This is the riskiest thing I've ever done."

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Yeah, I liked it as a kind of grand grotesque antidote

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to Britain's Got Baking

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and that kind of nonsense.

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Strictly Come Cavorting.

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Just as another side of Britain.

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And I also liked it because of the...

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apart from anything else,

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just the revelation and revealing of great actors, acting.

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And it struck me as a kind of a 21st-century version

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of a Carry On series or a Confessions Of series.

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You know, Jim Broadbent turning up

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and Eddie Marsan, Jamie Bell.

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It just constantly kept coming, these surprises.

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So, on any level, it was just a wonderfully bawdy entertainment.

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It was fantastically bawdy.

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Yeah. Choose life, choose Filth.

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It had that same in-your-face quality that Trainspotting had

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and it also has the most brilliantly chosen soundtrack.

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I love it when they go to Hamburg and you get 99 Luftballons,

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and the one where...Silver Lady

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is played, and...

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a cameo appearance by...

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Can I tell the viewers? Am I spoiling it?

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I think you might have given a very big hint there!

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Well, David Soul...

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This is rather sort of, um...

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because most people won't even be aware of when it's David Soul,

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because he's looking a bit puffy nowadays,

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but everything is perfect in its place.

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Right from the beginning, where there's a kid with the balloon,

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and the kid gives Bruce the middle finger.

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It's wonderful.

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I love the idea of...you know those Scottish Tourist Board adverts, where it says "Surprise yourself"?

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This is a great advert for Scotland. Seriously.

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In a sincere way. This is a great advert for Scotland.

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Because it's confident. It's people making fun of themselves.

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And you don't want a film where the cast is having fun, but you can't really join in.

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Because people are having so much fun.

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Eddie Marsan is picking up his partner, shaking him with his teeth.

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And Eddie Marsan vomiting in his hands is fabulous.

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But the thing is, like you've just given away...

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Sorry! You worry on every level about giving it away,

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because one of the things that's wonderful is people keep popping up,

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whether it's Jim Broadbent or the one you've given away!

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That is the great surprise.

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Because in many ways, it's an old-fashioned film, oddly.

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Because of the British ensemble cast...

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Yes, it could be the '60s, '70s, in many ways.

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What brings it up to date is the vomiting and the swearing and the sexing.

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That gives it a hint of the 21st century.

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I was interested in what you had to say, the idea of it not being immoral but amoral.

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Well, I know that Irvine likes the script very much

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and I think it has the quality that he has.

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Although he's showing you terrible things,

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there's not an awareness that they're not terrible,

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and up to a point, without giving the game away,

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it's got a very redemptive and extremely moral ending.

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And it's making decisions that are a way to combat evil, in a way.

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While being very gleeful. And that redemptive ending...

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It does mean that some of the shocking things,

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and upsetting... It is a very graphic film.

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But you get a completely different view by the time you get to the end. And it's a knife edge.

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It could go either way, without giving it away, James!

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And the whole film would be thrown into doubt.

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So without giving anything away, JAMES...!

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Without giving anything away,

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can I just say that I thought that the ending was exactly the ending that needed to be

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and was most satisfying and true to the film.

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That's all I will say.

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It's that moment when David Soul catches a fish.

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It's OK!

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It's amazing.

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Rewinding a bit to the middle of the film...

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Interestingly, you said this shows a very confident view of Scotland.

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That is different from Trainspotting.

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One of the most famous speeches in Trainspotting was about the cultural cringe,

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about Scotland kowtowing to England.

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So it's a very different mood. Yes, there's a great line...I'm going to paraphrase it.

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John Sessions is saying, "This isn't anywhere. This is Scotland, for Christ's sake!"

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There is a real sense that this is coming from a culture that exists

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and if you don't quite understand the words, there's context, and you'll get it.

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And it's just coming from a place.

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In the way that it's enjoyable to be with those people,

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it's enjoyable to be with a place,

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and although it's very dark, it's just full of kind of life and energy.

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I know that Baird was influenced by things like Clockwork Orange.

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A kind of different, very imaginative, energetic sort of British cinema

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that's been blanded as we've tried to go for Hollywood.

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Absolutely. That's why it would be wonderful to see as the beginning of a series.

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It IS the equivalent of a Carry On.

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The same kind of... Shirley Henderson, we haven't mentioned her. It's an amazing ensemble cast.

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But it's giving... You're talking about Carry On. Yes, there are funny moments.

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But it's very dark as well.

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Carry On was quite dark. Bruce Robertson, he's disintegrating

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before our eyes, isn't he?

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The sex scenes... I'm not going to mention because I don't want to give away any of the plot!

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But the...the sex phone calls involving Frank Sidebottom

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with Shirley Henderson...

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That scene is both grotesque

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and funny

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and weirdly erotic.

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And it's the same, as you said, about his treatment of drugs.

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It's amoral.

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He shows the good side of drugs, the fun side,

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and the bad side.

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So it's all mashed up.

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And it's not prurient. They've worked out - not to give anything away - lots of ways to do things

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that it would conceivably be quite upsetting to do from other angles.

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They've worked out a curiously polite way to do a lot of really terrible things.

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And it's rooted in a great piece of writing.

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And even though there's certain things they cannot do

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because it could only be done in writing, they've managed to find a cinematic way of doing it.

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Like the hallucinations, which could have been, you know, he starts, and we see it very early on in the film,

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he envisages the characters as different animals.

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It could have been comical, but actually it's rather frightening, I think.

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Very.

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You're wondering for quite a lot of the film why it is that this handsome man who's always...

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I mean, he is quite handsome underneath the revoltingness,

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and he's supposed to be quite sexually attractive to women.

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..why he can never quite get it up.

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Then when the hallucinations start kicking in,

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you realise exactly why, because it's rather horrible.

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It's incredibly hard to get hallucinations or heightened reality right as a director

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or as an actor.

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Again, I would emphasise just how good that performance is.

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That's why it's a revelation for McAvoy. I think it is his breakthrough role.

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When you can see everything he can do. I think we're agreed.

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From now on, even his next five roles, as weak as they could be, he's OK now.

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It was a risk worth taking.

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I think it'll be a Yuletide classic, to rank with It's A Wonderful Life and The Muppet Christmas Movie.

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I doubt that very much,

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but this Yuletide classic, Filth, opens in cinemas in Scotland on the 27th of this month

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and it's being released right round the country on the 4th of October.

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There's plenty more violence and moral collapse

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in a new BBC2 series, Peaky Blinders,

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referring to gangsters' cloth caps laced with razor blades.

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This time, though, the mean streets are in Birmingham

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and the setting is the aftermath of the First World War.

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The Peaky Blinders were a notorious gang in Birmingham's slums.

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Dealing in bookmaking and protection rackets,

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their distinctive brand of violence

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made them widely feared.

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Cillian Murphy plays Thomas Shelby.

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Fresh from the front lines of the Great War,

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he's the ruthless head of the clan.

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Sir, this is her.

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The girl who tells fortunes.

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WHISPERED INCANTATIONS

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It's important to do the research and know the historical context.

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These men were just sent back from the trenches, sent back from France

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and just spat out into society.

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I read a lot of books about the First World War and the trenches,

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and he's come back and he's been decorated,

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and he's seen something, but he's a changed man.

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Are you Lee boys laughing at my brother?

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Are you?

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Eh?

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Tommy! Tommy! Tommy! I asked you a question.

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Tommy, come on, it's just the craic!

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Get your family out of here and go to the fair before you start a war.

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These were stories that were told to me in snapshots -

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really, really limited amounts,

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but just little glimpses of a world

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where my dad used to take messages to his uncles

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who were all immaculately dressed gangsters,

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sitting round a table covered in money.

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Birmingham was pounding out stuff made of metal

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24 hours a day, and so add to that this great influx

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of damaged war veterans with their guns,

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add to that the political situation with communists

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who wanted to change the world,

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add to that the new policemen...

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You know, all of these layers come in

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and all I'm doing is looking at what really was there.

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They're approaching Protestant Irishmen

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to come over here as specials.

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To do what?

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To clean up the city, Ada.

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He's the chief inspector.

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The last four years, he's been clearing the IRA out of Belfast.

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How do you know so bloody much?

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Cos I asked the coppers on our payroll.

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Why didn't you tell me?

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I'm telling you.

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James, Filth, which we were discussing - set in Edinburgh, got a very strong sense of this.

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Peaky Blinders in Birmingham - does it have the same sense of place, do you think?

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It's got a very strong sense of place,

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but not anything to do with Birmingham, I don't think,

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starting with the accents.

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The accents seem to belong to

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a sort of melange of generic northern,

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Liverpudlian and Irish.

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Birmingham barely gets a look-in.

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And as a Brummie myself - as you can probably tell by my accent(!)

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Talking of dodgy accents(!) BRUMMIE: I feel slightly cheated, I do.

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You would. I do, because Birmingham doesn't normally get a look-in, our kid.

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Normally it's places like Manchester or London.

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Because unfortunately, Birmingham hasn't had its own screenwriter -

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the north had Alan Bleasdale and Paul Abbott, and London's had loads of people.

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So Birmingham gets its first shot of being on TV...

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It ain't there. And...it ain't there! No.

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Our kid, it's rubbish!

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I'm not going to attempt the accent, but did you think it was rubbish as well?

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My parents were from there and, yes, I don't know where these people are from!

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It's really quite painful, and it's difficult to act if you're not actually placed.

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And I know that Stephen Knight, his parents are from there and he was born in Birmingham,

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but it doesn't have either the accent of the kind of music of place.

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If you think of James Mitchell writing When The Boat Comes In...

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In a way, quite similar period.

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Really rooted, and there was this upswelling of interest in the Northeast.

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Or you think of Dennis Potter not always writing about the Forest of Dean,

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but definitely being from there, having that music.

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And, yeah, Birmingham never gets a look-in, not since Second City First,

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which was, what, the '60s, '70s? And it's such an interesting place.

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Does that lack of authenticity matter, Paul? Doesn't bother me in the slightest.

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I was thinking Jim Baines, late 1970s, Crossroads,

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for the Birmingham accent, maybe early Ozzy Osbourne.

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Didn't bother me in the slightest. It's a fabled place, and as such,

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in many ways, that was what I loved about it.

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It was the closest I've seen British TV get to the HBO, cable TV classics

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that we're all in thrall to at the moment.

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And I loved the music too - the use of the Dirty Three

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or the White Stripes or the Black Keys or Nick Cave.

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Because it wasn't important to me that necessarily it was geographically saying Birmingham.

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It was giving me an idea of a historical moment,

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and in that sense, it was terrifically, absolutely brilliant.

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The accents... You've been giving me a worse accent than a Birmingham accent I've ever heard!

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You're from Manchester, so you don't care about Birmingham.

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One of the things I loved about this was that it was giving me an idea of a history and a place.

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I don't care about the accents in Game Of Thrones.

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I don't really give a shit about the accents in this.

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It's not important.

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Did you not feel...? There was an awful lot of exposition, and you did get a lot of facts,

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because people were kind of explaining things to each other a hell of a lot.

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There was one line where she said, "So-and-so, he's your best friend from school".

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And we also learn that during the First World War,

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women have taken on a more important role back at home.

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Who would have thought that, eh(?) Can you imagine?!

0:17:120:17:15

Well, this, I suppose, was the social history that you enjoyed.

0:17:150:17:18

It didn't bother me.

0:17:180:17:20

And I thought it was the best use of Churchill I've seen as well.

0:17:200:17:22

I LOVE the use of Churchill!

0:17:220:17:24

Fantastic. And the accretion of subtlety that I think is important

0:17:240:17:28

and Cillian Murphy, the way he's developing.

0:17:280:17:30

And Helen McCrory.

0:17:300:17:32

And some of the things we adore at the moment have been going six, seven, eight series.

0:17:320:17:36

And if you go back to the first or the second,

0:17:360:17:38

then maybe we would have already jumped upon them.

0:17:380:17:41

I could see this going through the whole of the 20th century,

0:17:410:17:44

and I would be quite enjoying the fifth and sixth series.

0:17:440:17:47

Did you use the word "subtlety" in the context of this programme?

0:17:470:17:50

You bet, James! When Cillian Murphy walks into a bar,

0:17:500:17:54

they seem to superimpose a halo on his head

0:17:540:17:56

and he seems to have been bathing his cheeks in asses' milk beforehand...

0:17:560:18:00

I think that's what he looks like. He is very attractive.

0:18:000:18:03

He is very pretty, but... Jealousy!

0:18:030:18:05

OK, he's slightly better-looking than me,

0:18:050:18:07

but it is so stylised. The other thing I really object to - I'm sorry - as a Brummie...

0:18:070:18:12

Birmingham people are the funniest people in the world.

0:18:140:18:16

Not me, but Brummies in general.

0:18:160:18:19

And there was no sense of that humour, that banter that you get in the Midlands.

0:18:190:18:23

There was none of it. It was very, very serious. Very up itself, I thought.

0:18:230:18:26

You'd got the right name for the chemist, but you hadn't got that sort of city...

0:18:260:18:31

I wanted to love it. I wanted to see...

0:18:310:18:33

It is great to see Sam Neill up against Cillian Murphy

0:18:330:18:35

and see them acting at each other - OK, in bizarre voices.

0:18:350:18:39

I want to love it.

0:18:390:18:40

And I hope it does turn into Boardwalk Empire.

0:18:400:18:42

I'm very suspicious about the attempts British television has made

0:18:420:18:45

to try and join in with this wonderful television

0:18:450:18:48

that's coming from different Golden Ages from other worlds.

0:18:480:18:51

This was the closest... There's a kind of intelligence about it that I really adored.

0:18:510:18:54

Not least in the way they used the music,

0:18:540:18:57

and the way they were using that combination of cinema and novel-writing,

0:18:570:19:01

but creating a third thing, which is a new kind of television.

0:19:010:19:04

This for me was the moment when I saw it growing.

0:19:040:19:06

And the production values are very high.

0:19:060:19:08

Yes, and it's very cinematic,

0:19:080:19:10

maybe in a way that isn't all that suitable necessarily to television.

0:19:100:19:13

But there are these kind of staid moments.

0:19:130:19:16

There's an Irish mole

0:19:160:19:18

who has to sing, who isn't a terribly good singer.

0:19:180:19:21

I don't know if that's kind of a joke or what goes on with that.

0:19:210:19:24

Then you've got the pub singing, but it's all very...

0:19:240:19:26

Maybe that soap element that is the heart of this

0:19:260:19:29

is because, you know, you didn't watch Crossroads, did you?

0:19:290:19:33

You didn't watch Prisoner: Cell Block H. I watched it at my grandmother's knee.

0:19:330:19:36

I like the combination. There's a soap element, but there's this other resonant, glorious element

0:19:360:19:40

that I'm really liking as television.

0:19:400:19:43

It's got so much money in it, though, and I just wanted it to REALLY work,

0:19:430:19:47

because some of the shots, and the horse coming in...

0:19:470:19:49

They go to the gypsy fair. Yes.

0:19:490:19:52

The cart. With the golden light, it looks beautiful. Great.

0:19:520:19:54

But it is proof that you can polish a turd. That's the problem.

0:19:540:19:57

Well, I don't know if it's quite...cloacal.

0:19:570:20:00

It's not The Sopranos, is it?

0:20:000:20:02

What about the view of gangsters which we've seen certainly in Sopranos and so many other dramas?

0:20:020:20:06

I mean, the glamorisation of the gangster world?

0:20:060:20:09

There's somebody in a an office somewhere, thinking,

0:20:090:20:12

"Oh, God, let there not be hat-related crime

0:20:120:20:15

"after we've shown the episodes of this".

0:20:150:20:18

I mean, yeah... Hat rage!

0:20:180:20:20

I think, you know, it is tapping into...

0:20:200:20:24

You mention your disappointment that it doesn't give you Birmingham

0:20:240:20:27

and it doesn't give you The Sopranos either.

0:20:270:20:29

I'm surprised by that,

0:20:290:20:31

because in a way, the insight and the beginning of many sophisticated responses to a moment in history...

0:20:310:20:38

I mean, you're being cynical about the idea of the women being in control during the war...

0:20:380:20:44

No, I'm cynical about the way it's presented.

0:20:440:20:47

It's a historical fact.

0:20:470:20:49

Personally, I think it's a really good insight into something that we lack.

0:20:490:20:53

It's the beginning of... There's much to plunder in British culture

0:20:530:20:58

that hasn't been plundered.

0:20:580:20:59

That's the frustrating thing. It's all there. Birmingham is fascinating.

0:20:590:21:02

The history's there, the women are there... Opium, sex...

0:21:020:21:05

Italians, Chinese...

0:21:050:21:07

But it should all work, and maybe it's just got slightly too much.

0:21:070:21:11

Well, you can make your own minds up

0:21:110:21:13

and decide if you like hat-related crime in Peaky Blinders,

0:21:130:21:16

which continues on BBC2 on Thursday night.

0:21:160:21:19

Now, it's quite a move, isn't it,

0:21:190:21:21

from the family entertainment of Matilda The Musical

0:21:210:21:23

to a Faustian pact,

0:21:230:21:25

but the playwright Dennis Kelly has always been eclectic,

0:21:250:21:29

enjoying recent success on Channel 4 with Utopia.

0:21:290:21:31

His modern morality play at the Royal Court Theatre in London,

0:21:310:21:35

The Ritual Slaughter of Gorge Mastromas,

0:21:350:21:38

traces one man's journey from childhood innocence

0:21:380:21:41

to a downfall caused by naked ambition and greed.

0:21:410:21:45

Gorge Mastromas was conceived on the 15th of July 1973.

0:21:490:21:53

It was a warm and balmy night, not too hot,

0:21:530:21:56

with a gentle breeze coming in through open summer windows.

0:21:560:21:58

It had rained earlier that day,

0:21:580:22:00

but the air was now clear,

0:22:000:22:02

and the night had a softness to it that felt like...

0:22:020:22:06

..a pause.

0:22:070:22:08

The lovemaking was not particularly enjoyable.

0:22:080:22:10

But neither was it particularly unpleasant.

0:22:100:22:13

George's father had not been in the mood.

0:22:130:22:15

George's mother had not been in the mood.

0:22:150:22:17

In keeping with his unremarkable start in life,

0:22:170:22:20

Gorge, played by Tom Brooke,

0:22:200:22:22

grows up to be an ordinary guy who always tries to do the right thing.

0:22:220:22:26

However, one day at work, Gorge is faced with a moral dilemma

0:22:260:22:30

which forces him to choose between his own code of honour

0:22:300:22:34

and self-advancement, which could propel him into a life

0:22:340:22:37

that's anything but ordinary.

0:22:370:22:39

Now, I'm going to make this quite quick, because I've only got two minutes and 23 seconds left.

0:22:390:22:44

Existence is not what you have, up until this moment, thought it is.

0:22:440:22:49

It is not fair.

0:22:490:22:51

It is not kind. It is not just.

0:22:510:22:53

The majority of the universe is, in fact,

0:22:530:22:56

so cold it would freeze the water in your eyes in an instant.

0:22:560:22:59

The rest - great big balls of fire surrounded by clumps of matter.

0:22:590:23:05

Matter

0:23:050:23:07

doesn't care.

0:23:070:23:08

Most of the world are ignorant of this.

0:23:080:23:11

The believe in God or Marx

0:23:110:23:14

or the unseen hand of the market

0:23:140:23:16

or honesty...or goodness.

0:23:160:23:19

It's a bold start for Vicky Featherstone's directorial debut

0:23:210:23:25

since taking the helm of the Royal Court earlier this year.

0:23:250:23:28

The play reflects contemporary themes like financial collapse

0:23:280:23:32

and child abuse,

0:23:320:23:34

with Kelly taking the implosion of the property boom

0:23:340:23:37

as the starting point for his take on late-20th-century capitalism

0:23:370:23:40

and what he sees as a climate of greed.

0:23:400:23:43

Gorge was remade in those few tiny, eternal seconds.

0:23:460:23:50

His rules were born, his mantra,

0:23:500:23:53

his new way of life, his three golden rules.

0:23:530:23:57

1 - Whenever you want something,

0:23:570:23:59

take it.

0:23:590:24:00

2 - All that is required to take everything you want

0:24:000:24:03

is absolute will and an ability to lie to the depths of your heart.

0:24:030:24:07

3 - The effectiveness of a lie

0:24:070:24:08

is compromised only by your attachment to the outcome of the lie.

0:24:080:24:12

Therefore, never think of the outcome.

0:24:120:24:15

Always assume discovery. Embrace each second as if it were your last.

0:24:150:24:19

Never, ever regret.

0:24:190:24:21

Three simple rules. Three golden rules for life.

0:24:210:24:24

And when Gorge looked at that old man,

0:24:240:24:27

he looked at him with fresh and energetic new eyes.

0:24:270:24:31

New and beautiful eyes,

0:24:310:24:33

and he opened his mouth and he said...

0:24:330:24:36

Yes.

0:24:360:24:37

You must sell.

0:24:370:24:39

Paul, we got a very strong sense in that short extract

0:24:430:24:46

of the chorus, the way the chorus is used.

0:24:460:24:48

And the first 30 minutes just has the actors in chairs on the stage,

0:24:480:24:53

giving what I thought was... It was about Gorge's early life.

0:24:530:24:56

But a really interesting insight into the politics of the playground.

0:24:560:25:00

Well, yes, but then the whole play

0:25:000:25:03

becomes five or six versions of something.

0:25:030:25:07

It doesn't stay there - it goes somewhere else.

0:25:070:25:09

It was strange for me,

0:25:090:25:11

because it was very, very weird.

0:25:110:25:13

I don't know if it was deliberately weird or unintentionally weird.

0:25:130:25:16

I couldn't quite work it out at all.

0:25:160:25:18

It had a kind of strange quality, where I loved everything about it except the play.

0:25:180:25:23

I love the setting, I love the acting, I love the timing, the comic timing,

0:25:230:25:27

I love the lighting, I love the music,

0:25:270:25:28

but the words themselves struck me as being

0:25:280:25:31

a writer who's desperately looking for something to say

0:25:310:25:34

and had absolutely nothing to say in the end.

0:25:340:25:36

And so, absolutely, that first part is wonderful

0:25:360:25:39

because of the comic timing that elevates some of the language

0:25:390:25:42

to be somewhat wittier than it might otherwise be.

0:25:420:25:45

Then we have another thing. We have five or six pieces that don't fit together,

0:25:450:25:49

where ultimately the cast seem trapped by something that doesn't lead anywhere.

0:25:490:25:52

I found it utterly underwhelming.

0:25:520:25:55

James, did the content strike you in the same way?

0:25:550:25:58

Yeah, I thought it was... I agree with Paul, actually.

0:25:580:26:01

Happily!

0:26:010:26:02

Less than the sum of its parts, I thought.

0:26:020:26:05

Whereas with the Irvine Welsh movie,

0:26:050:26:08

the more I thought about it afterwards, the better it got in my imagination.

0:26:080:26:12

I think it's a really good piece of work.

0:26:120:26:14

This one, the more I analysed it afterwards,

0:26:140:26:17

the less impressive it became.

0:26:170:26:19

I enjoyed it at the time.

0:26:190:26:21

I thought the cast were really enthusiastic.

0:26:210:26:23

That scene where they're sitting there, they really draw you in.

0:26:230:26:27

And then it just goes a bit floppy.

0:26:270:26:30

But what about the quality of the writing?

0:26:300:26:32

Here and there, I would maybe have snipped it a bit.

0:26:320:26:35

And unless they were forgetting things... It may be they had snipped it a bit.

0:26:350:26:40

I liked it much more than these guys. I like everything!

0:26:400:26:43

I'm just in a good mood.

0:26:430:26:45

You're the right generation for this then! I think it's quite a delicate thing.

0:26:450:26:50

Filth is on a knife edge and it's the right side of the knife edge

0:26:500:26:54

and either they'll find a way of performing a text

0:26:540:26:57

that's quite light and it's funny, but you have to handle the humour

0:26:570:27:01

or...particularly at the end...

0:27:010:27:04

I don't think the end is quite firing. There seems to be a time gap.

0:27:040:27:09

But you have to say, Tom Brooke playing Gorge - he's remarkable.

0:27:090:27:12

I sometimes felt it had the logic of a dream, and I was trying to give it the benefit of the doubt.

0:27:120:27:16

Is this meant to be this strange and weird?

0:27:160:27:18

And I decided in the end, thinking about it more, that it was just clumsy.

0:27:180:27:22

I just think it's a very, very bad piece of writing.

0:27:220:27:25

At the centre of this production, there's a guy who's got very little to say, doesn't know how to say it,

0:27:250:27:30

and he's very good on technique, on craft - he can do a lot of different things -

0:27:300:27:33

but what comes home in the end is he didn't really have any idea what he wanted to write about.

0:27:330:27:37

Well, I suppose what he's writing about...

0:27:370:27:40

It's a modern morality play.

0:27:400:27:43

It's an attack on capitalism, isn't it?

0:27:430:27:45

Well, it decides that at the end.

0:27:450:27:48

If you're going to do an updated Marlowe...

0:27:480:27:50

At the end of Dr Faustus,

0:27:500:27:51

Dr Faustus gets dragged down to hell by the demons.

0:27:510:27:54

This one, I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying

0:27:540:27:57

that the actors just stumble off apologetically,

0:27:570:28:00

rather embarrassed about the conclusion that's been written for it.

0:28:000:28:03

It feels like a workshop production

0:28:030:28:05

that could really do with a bit of shape. Five or six, because of the sections.

0:28:050:28:10

There's different ways of approaching something,

0:28:100:28:13

looking for something, so you do get the seven characters looking for something.

0:28:130:28:17

You get six or seven scenes looking for something.

0:28:170:28:19

And it's all done, and we're all hyped up for this thing to happen.

0:28:190:28:23

But nothing seems to be happening, because at the centre of it, it's about nothing.

0:28:230:28:26

One of the sections touches on another contemporary theme -

0:28:260:28:30

child abuse and misery memoirs, which I thought was very effective.

0:28:300:28:36

It is. It's not really about that - it's about somebody doing something incredibly despicable,

0:28:360:28:41

which was to appropriate all the architecture to advance themselves,

0:28:410:28:44

so it's not really looking at abuse per se.

0:28:440:28:47

Not at all. No, no. It's not the play being cheap and nasty, it's Gorge being cheap and nasty.

0:28:470:28:51

But on behalf of writers, it's very difficult to write about what he's writing about,

0:28:510:28:55

particularly at the end, because what are you going to do?

0:28:550:28:58

There's a world revolution that hasn't happened yet and wouldn't?

0:28:580:29:01

Is there a literal slaughter?

0:29:010:29:03

Is there, what you've been getting an awful lot lately,

0:29:030:29:06

everybody has a love-in and we all dream together and somehow it works out?

0:29:060:29:10

It's like you seem to be ticking off things...

0:29:100:29:12

Because at the centre of this,

0:29:120:29:14

he has to write something for these people to speak and for there to be a stage setting,

0:29:140:29:17

but suddenly it becomes the memoirs, the misery memoirs.

0:29:170:29:21

Suddenly it becomes this. Suddenly it becomes the Howard Hughes recluse who's made too much money.

0:29:210:29:26

It just seemed to be ticking off things, rather than tackling them.

0:29:260:29:29

Hasn't it got a unified idea of one man's moral decline,

0:29:290:29:33

in the way we were talking about, in the other items earlier?

0:29:330:29:35

The initial premise is really, really interesting.

0:29:350:29:38

This idea that, in the first part of his life,

0:29:380:29:42

he has done the right thing. He's done the right thing by his friends, by his girlfriends and stuff.

0:29:420:29:49

He's taken the path of goodness.

0:29:490:29:52

But is it really goodness, or is it cowardice?

0:29:520:29:54

Is it just because he's not seizing life by the horns, as it were?

0:29:540:29:58

Is he not embracing the world and taking the bold move?

0:29:580:30:01

I think a lot of us have thought about this.

0:30:010:30:03

We've sleepwalked through our lives,

0:30:030:30:05

sort of done what seems to be right,

0:30:050:30:08

but maybe we should take the bolder, aggressive course.

0:30:080:30:10

But then he gives...

0:30:100:30:13

We didn't meet Mrs Faust, did we?

0:30:130:30:14

He doesn't show us an alternative.

0:30:140:30:17

If we did lead a good life, what would happen?

0:30:170:30:19

We only learn that, if you become very rich,

0:30:190:30:22

you become rather selfish and...well, that's it.

0:30:220:30:26

There's also this thing with this generation of the moment...

0:30:260:30:29

Because this is very much born in the early '70s,

0:30:290:30:31

so the generation becomes, "I'm going to talk about what it was like at school,

0:30:310:30:34

"then about the moment I started raving,

0:30:340:30:36

"then about that moment that I'm not sure what happened, because everybody started to become..."

0:30:360:30:40

It seemed to hit really banal beats, without really amplifying

0:30:400:30:44

some of those moments of the latter part of the 20th century.

0:30:440:30:47

It just seemed to be ticking off subjects, rather than actually getting stuck in.

0:30:470:30:51

OK. Well, The Ritual Slaughter Of Gorge Mastromas

0:30:510:30:53

is running at the Royal Court in London until the 19th of October.

0:30:530:30:57

Still to come tonight,

0:30:570:30:59

the art of Bob Dylan at the National Portrait Gallery

0:30:590:31:02

and the new comic novel from Jonathan Coe.

0:31:020:31:04

Now, though, the first of two tracks from the Manic Street Preachers,

0:31:040:31:08

whose new album is out tomorrow.

0:31:080:31:10

Here's James Dean Bradfield and Gavin Fitzjohn

0:31:100:31:13

with Show Me The Wonder.

0:31:130:31:15

# This is no threat

0:31:220:31:24

# Just an invitation

0:31:250:31:27

# A sense of belonging

0:31:280:31:31

# A sense of inspiration

0:31:320:31:35

# Is heaven a place

0:31:360:31:38

# Where nothing ever happens

0:31:400:31:42

# Is it too much to ask

0:31:420:31:46

# To disbelieve in everything

0:31:470:31:49

# Show me the wonder

0:31:520:31:54

# I have seen the birthplace of the universe

0:31:540:31:59

# Show me the wonder

0:31:590:32:01

# I have seen miracles move in reverse

0:32:010:32:06

# If you're exiled

0:32:110:32:13

# By all the cruel tongues

0:32:130:32:17

# Then show me the wonder

0:32:170:32:20

# The wonder of your love

0:32:220:32:24

# A tapping pain of madness

0:32:260:32:28

# Running through the veins

0:32:290:32:32

# We may write in English

0:32:320:32:35

# But our truth remains in Wales

0:32:360:32:39

# Show me the wonder

0:32:420:32:44

# I have seen the birthplace of the universe

0:32:440:32:48

# Show me the wonder

0:32:500:32:51

# I have seen miracles move in reverse

0:32:510:32:56

# Praying for the silence

0:33:090:33:11

# When we look into the mirror

0:33:110:33:14

# Staying so patient

0:33:150:33:18

# We measure the nostalgia

0:33:190:33:22

# Is heaven a place

0:33:240:33:25

# Where nothing ever happens

0:33:270:33:29

# Is it too much to ask

0:33:300:33:33

# To disbelieve in everything

0:33:340:33:37

# Show me the wonder

0:33:400:33:41

# I have seen the birthplace of the universe

0:33:410:33:46

# Show me the wonder

0:33:470:33:48

# I have seen miracles move in reverse

0:33:480:33:54

# Show me the wonder

0:34:010:34:03

# I have seen miracles move in reverse. #

0:34:030:34:08

James Dean Bradfield of the Manic Street Preachers with Show Me The Wonder.

0:34:290:34:33

And there'll be another track from James at the end of tonight's how.

0:34:330:34:36

Now, did you know that Francis Bacon once asked Henry Moore

0:34:360:34:39

for sculpture lessons?

0:34:390:34:41

Just one of the revelations at a new exhibition in Oxford

0:34:410:34:44

which highlights the shared influences and passions

0:34:440:34:47

of two of the 20th century's best-known artists,

0:34:470:34:50

who are traditionally seen as being poles apart.

0:34:500:34:53

At first glance, these two giants of 20th-century art

0:34:530:34:58

may seem to have little in common.

0:34:580:35:00

One worked in paint, the other, in stone and bronze.

0:35:020:35:06

While Moore gained renown for serene sculptures of the human form,

0:35:090:35:13

Bacon's figures are often distorted and tormented.

0:35:130:35:16

But a new exhibition finds fresh comparisons

0:35:190:35:21

between the two great men, bringing their work together

0:35:210:35:24

for the first time in 50 years.

0:35:240:35:26

Both men's work was shaped

0:35:280:35:30

by living through two world wars.

0:35:300:35:31

Moore celebrated human stoicism

0:35:310:35:35

through sketches in the mines...

0:35:350:35:36

..while Bacon's art is twisted in torment.

0:35:380:35:40

But by placing their work shoulder to shoulder,

0:35:420:35:45

the exhibition shows a more monumental,

0:35:450:35:47

sculptural side to his paintings

0:35:470:35:49

and all the influences shared by the two men,

0:35:490:35:53

from the classical world to Picasso.

0:35:530:35:56

At the National Portrait Gallery,

0:36:000:36:02

the work of another 20th-century colossus is on show

0:36:020:36:05

in a major British museum for the first time.

0:36:050:36:08

Bob Dylan has always pursued an interest in art

0:36:080:36:11

alongside his music.

0:36:110:36:13

Face Value is a set of 12 portraits

0:36:130:36:15

of semi-fictional people.

0:36:150:36:17

They have invented names

0:36:290:36:31

and deliberately elusive titles.

0:36:310:36:33

Abstract, sketchy portraits of people

0:36:350:36:37

have long been at the heart of Dylan's songs,

0:36:370:36:39

but he wouldn't thank you for comparing his music to his art,

0:36:390:36:42

which he sees as entirely separate.

0:36:420:36:44

Nevertheless, these works developed the idea

0:36:440:36:47

that behind the many faces he encounters

0:36:470:36:49

on his long musical journey,

0:36:490:36:51

there lies a story.

0:36:510:36:53

Well, let's begin with the Henry Moore and Francis Bacon exhibition.

0:36:580:37:01

There's a great quote I found in the catalogue from Myfanwy Piper.

0:37:010:37:05

She says, "Henry Moore never forgets the solidity of flesh upon the bone,

0:37:050:37:08

"the strength of the bare bones beneath the flesh.

0:37:080:37:12

"Bacon never forgets that flesh is meat."

0:37:120:37:15

So there you have a summary of the differences between the men.

0:37:150:37:19

But this exhibition was about their similarities. Yeah.

0:37:190:37:21

And I was unconvinced other than they were chronologically...

0:37:210:37:24

Obviously Moore's a little bit older. ..similar.

0:37:240:37:26

But looking at Moore's drawings and the sense of motion

0:37:260:37:30

and the three-dimensionality in Bacon

0:37:300:37:33

and looking at Moore's drawings of the people sleeping in the shelter

0:37:330:37:38

and the miners and bodies being acted upon,

0:37:380:37:40

you are beginning to see great similarities.

0:37:400:37:44

And they both have this difficulty with presenting the human face,

0:37:440:37:49

because it became difficult in an age of war

0:37:490:37:52

to bring that human-ness

0:37:520:37:56

fully and protectedly there.

0:37:560:37:59

And I think...there's this idea that Moore is terribly calming,

0:37:590:38:02

and you sit next to the King and Queen, and it's all very nice.

0:38:020:38:05

He's very disturbing too.

0:38:050:38:07

The helmet with the figure inside, which was described as being maternal...

0:38:070:38:11

A very scary mum if you think that.

0:38:110:38:14

There's darkness in him too.

0:38:140:38:17

It's coming from a place where,

0:38:170:38:19

apart from anything else, literally coming back from World War I.

0:38:190:38:22

Suddenly you could survive a traumatic facial injury.

0:38:220:38:24

There were thousands of men wandering around who literally didn't have faces

0:38:240:38:29

or didn't have the faces that they had.

0:38:290:38:31

Moore was in the trenches,

0:38:310:38:34

Bacon was an ARP during World War II.

0:38:340:38:37

They were surrounded by these different pressures and forces

0:38:370:38:41

working on the physicality of bodies.

0:38:410:38:43

And they're both kind of expressing this...

0:38:430:38:46

torment.

0:38:460:38:47

And also, there's this kind of... There's an eroticism and a beauty.

0:38:470:38:51

It's very complex, lovely, lovely stuff.

0:38:510:38:53

It made me look at these two artists who we think we know

0:38:530:38:56

in a very fresh way,

0:38:560:38:58

particularly the sculptural nature of a lot of Francis Bacon's paintings.

0:38:580:39:02

Absolutely. It is interesting, that idea that he supposedly asked

0:39:020:39:05

Henry Moore, indirectly.

0:39:050:39:09

But then what's funny,

0:39:090:39:10

when you think of a 3D version of Francis Bacon,

0:39:100:39:13

you do get basically the monsters from Alien,

0:39:130:39:15

so it's possibly better that he didn't go there, that he stayed where he was.

0:39:150:39:19

I like the exhibition as a sort of element of the politics of artistic reputation as well.

0:39:190:39:24

In the end, let's face it, they've put one against the other.

0:39:240:39:27

Going in, you'd think, "Is it the Beatles versus the Velvet Underground?"

0:39:270:39:31

Henry Moore, the familiar, friendly face of Modernism,

0:39:310:39:34

versus Bacon, which has got this more distorted sort of cerebral, aggressive...

0:39:340:39:39

He's got the intellectual mystique that Moore doesn't have,

0:39:390:39:42

and so it was interesting for me to see the parallels that come.

0:39:420:39:45

And for me, Moore starts to elevate slightly.

0:39:450:39:48

You suddenly start to see a weird rigidity about Francis Bacon that surprises you.

0:39:480:39:52

After a while, it becomes more...

0:39:520:39:54

You think, "Oh, my God, it's a little bit of gimmickry",

0:39:540:39:57

and suddenly you're becoming...for me,

0:39:570:39:58

there's some things about Henry Moore you've not noticed before,

0:39:580:40:01

because you've dismissed him slightly as being a bit more Elton John to...

0:40:010:40:05

I've changed it now. Elton John to Bacon's Ornette Coleman.

0:40:050:40:08

But I like that side of it as well.

0:40:080:40:10

It's always a controversial thing to do, to pit one against the other.

0:40:100:40:15

But for me it was something I really enjoyed exploring.

0:40:150:40:17

And the shared influences, from the classical world

0:40:170:40:21

in Bacon's Eumenides that we saw in the little film there,

0:40:210:40:26

Christianity, even though both men were atheists,

0:40:260:40:30

Michelangelo, and so on.

0:40:300:40:32

Yes, well, one learned that Francis Bacon

0:40:320:40:35

spent most of his life living within walking distance

0:40:350:40:38

of the British Museum

0:40:380:40:39

and would regularly go and admire the sculptures.

0:40:390:40:41

What's fascinating is that he was familiar with all these beautiful works of art

0:40:410:40:46

and his response to them all was really to mash them up and deconstruct them

0:40:460:40:51

and make them all ugly.

0:40:510:40:53

You think of the work he's most famous for -

0:40:530:40:54

the screaming Popes.

0:40:540:40:57

So Velazquez was a pretty good artist.

0:40:570:40:58

And what is Bacon's contribution to art?

0:40:580:41:02

He sort of makes it a bit ugly and messy.

0:41:020:41:04

Like Paul, I came away from the show

0:41:040:41:07

feeling much warmer towards Henry Moore than I had hitherto

0:41:070:41:11

and really kind of unimpressed with Francis Bacon.

0:41:110:41:15

It was interesting to see that even at his peak in the '60s,

0:41:150:41:20

Brian Robertson, who was a great critic,

0:41:200:41:23

was pointing out that actually he's pretty...

0:41:230:41:26

It's as much about his life as his art.

0:41:260:41:29

It's as much about Bacon pissing his life away in the Colony Rooms

0:41:290:41:33

and being this kind of angry man

0:41:330:41:35

as he is a painter.

0:41:350:41:36

And I'm not sure he amounts to much more than that.

0:41:360:41:39

I think he's more of a sort of a rock star figure than a really great artist. Alison?

0:41:390:41:42

Well, that's a bit harsh! I think he was quite good, in his way.

0:41:420:41:45

Better than me. And that triptych, those enormous...

0:41:450:41:49

That amazing, blazing, kind of boiling dark, complicated triptych

0:41:490:41:53

of the three figures at the base of the cross.

0:41:530:41:56

That is extraordinary.

0:41:560:41:58

I love his paintings. I don't think they're just ugly.

0:41:580:42:01

They have all kinds of emotions going through them.

0:42:010:42:03

I know people were... Not joy.

0:42:030:42:05

Not necessarily joy. Not beauty either.

0:42:050:42:07

But they had the beauty of some kind of passion.

0:42:070:42:10

I would not, as some people did, volunteer to have my portrait painted by him necessarily,

0:42:100:42:15

but I think they both came across as very thoughtful, skilled...

0:42:150:42:20

I think it's also interesting seeing the source material.

0:42:200:42:24

They begin... It's Picasso, it's Surrealism, it's non-Western tribal art,

0:42:240:42:29

and what they both did with it.

0:42:290:42:31

And I also enjoyed that element of putting the two together -

0:42:310:42:34

how two different frames of thinking

0:42:340:42:37

came up with a different approach.

0:42:370:42:38

You've got the country squire, Henry Moore,

0:42:380:42:40

and you've got the slightly sleazy, sordid myth of Francis Bacon.

0:42:400:42:44

And putting the two together and seeing how they arrived at different ways of expressing that,

0:42:440:42:50

their influences and also their environment.

0:42:500:42:52

And you've actually got the Rodins there, so you can see...

0:42:520:42:55

And the Michelangelos.

0:42:550:42:56

And the Moore crucifixion...

0:42:560:42:59

That amazing drawing with this kind of strange figure

0:42:590:43:02

drooping and sloping.

0:43:020:43:04

What I love sometimes is if you look through a Henry Moore hole,

0:43:040:43:07

as often one is going to do... Steady!

0:43:070:43:10

..and you suddenly see a Francis Bacon William Blake death mask,

0:43:100:43:13

then, oddly, out of these differences,

0:43:130:43:16

you saw the similarity.

0:43:160:43:18

Well, we've obviously been talking about two men who have an incredible international reputation

0:43:180:43:23

for their art. We'll move on now to a man whose reputation across the world is for his music,

0:43:230:43:28

but has just started to have an exhibition in London for his art,

0:43:280:43:33

and that's Bob Dylan.

0:43:330:43:34

Lots of musicians have an art school background, don't they?

0:43:340:43:37

David Bowie, Bryan Ferry. You could probably name a lot more.

0:43:370:43:41

What do you think about Dylan's work?

0:43:410:43:44

Some of those musicians, certainly in Britain in the '60s and '70s,

0:43:440:43:48

basically instead of using paint and bronze and clay,

0:43:480:43:52

used music to represent their art.

0:43:520:43:54

And they were artists.

0:43:540:43:55

And sometimes used the fact they can paint

0:43:550:43:58

to suggest they had more artistic quality than maybe they might otherwise have.

0:43:580:44:02

But Dylan just is an artist.

0:44:020:44:04

What I love about this particular exhibition - it's very modest,

0:44:040:44:07

it's very small, it's just 12 paintings on three walls,

0:44:070:44:10

is that it gives you a little insight into the way his mind works.

0:44:100:44:14

And therefore gives you a little insight into how his songs work,

0:44:140:44:17

and what an extraordinary artist he is.

0:44:170:44:20

An artist whether he uses what he's using here

0:44:200:44:25

or music.

0:44:250:44:26

What I love about this as well is that it's 12.

0:44:260:44:29

So it's like an album - there's 12 pieces.

0:44:290:44:31

And it's also very interesting to look at the cover of the self-portrait...

0:44:310:44:35

Another self-portrait that's just been released - the tenth in the series of his bootleg records.

0:44:350:44:41

And there's a picture on that that's supposedly of him,

0:44:410:44:44

that also suggests that all of these are actually him.

0:44:440:44:48

I was going round trying to work out who was who

0:44:480:44:52

in their disguised identities.

0:44:520:44:53

Yeah, you sort of look at the angry woman and you think,

0:44:530:44:56

I wonder whether he came on to her and she turned him down?

0:44:560:44:59

And is that person a gangster, perhaps?

0:44:590:45:02

But that's as far as it goes.

0:45:020:45:04

I think Paul was characteristically generous towards the show.

0:45:040:45:08

When I went to see it, people were sort of

0:45:080:45:11

half-heartedly wandering around,

0:45:110:45:13

going, "Oh, Bob Dylan? Yeah, right, off we go."

0:45:130:45:15

It's...don't give up the day job time, I think.

0:45:150:45:18

Alison, do you think he should be at the National Portrait Gallery?

0:45:180:45:21

Er...it gets people through the door.

0:45:210:45:23

The woman on the desk... I said, "Where's the Bob Dylan...?"

0:45:230:45:26

and she gave me that look of, "Right, you've just come for the Bob Dylan,

0:45:260:45:30

"but you might see some other things you might like."

0:45:300:45:33

"Down there and round the corner."

0:45:330:45:34

And I kind of get it from the gallery's point of view.

0:45:340:45:37

He's got so many dense layers of skill and characterisation

0:45:370:45:40

which he can express in music, and he can't do the same in art.

0:45:400:45:44

Also, you must remember it's not necessarily Bob Dylan

0:45:440:45:47

that's demanded on his bended knees that the National Portrait Gallery put this on.

0:45:470:45:50

It's been put on for various reasons to do with the National Portrait Gallery.

0:45:500:45:54

Having arrived, rather weirdly,

0:45:540:45:55

past the picture of Anna Wintour in the foyer, which I thought was strange...

0:45:550:45:59

and past a picture of the Queen,

0:45:590:46:01

and you get to these... I think they are fabulous...

0:46:010:46:05

We're not going to wander round all the corridors! I could do that for you if you want!

0:46:050:46:09

Another night.

0:46:090:46:11

Both of the exhibitions we've been talking about -

0:46:110:46:13

Flesh and Bone and Face Value - are running until January.

0:46:130:46:17

Jonathan Coe has won critical acclaim

0:46:170:46:20

and bestseller success for his satires on British life in the recent past.

0:46:200:46:24

Think of The Rotters' Club and What A Carve Up!

0:46:240:46:27

For his latest book, Coe's gone back to the buttoned-up Britain of the late 1950s

0:46:270:46:32

for a tale of espionage and intrigue at the heart of Europe.

0:46:320:46:36

A wife, a baby, a house in Tooting and a steady job

0:46:380:46:42

at the Central Office of Information.

0:46:420:46:44

It's 1958,

0:46:440:46:45

and Thomas Foley is plodding through a humdrum middle-class life.

0:46:450:46:48

But out of the blue, an unexpected assignment

0:46:480:46:52

thrusts him into a brave new world.

0:46:520:46:54

Hosted by Belgium, Expo '58

0:46:570:46:59

was the first international world fair after the Second World War

0:46:590:47:03

and was an extravagant exercise in shiny, futuristic design

0:47:030:47:07

and international one-upmanship.

0:47:070:47:10

Thomas is sent there to look after British interests.

0:47:100:47:12

"Here, for the next six months, would be thrown together all the nations

0:47:120:47:17

"whose complex relationships, whose conflicts and alliances,

0:47:170:47:20

"whose fraught, tangled histories had shaped, and would continue to shape, the destiny of mankind."

0:47:200:47:27

Thomas is a quiet, diligent civil servant.

0:47:290:47:33

There are two things which attract the attention of his superiors -

0:47:330:47:36

his mother is Belgian and his father used to run a pub.

0:47:360:47:40

As soon as they realise that they have to organise a fake British pub in Belgium,

0:47:400:47:44

they call upon him.

0:47:440:47:46

So he gets catapulted into a completely unreal and unfamiliar,

0:47:460:47:51

multinational, multilingual world.

0:47:510:47:54

If you really want to observe the British acting as they truly do,

0:47:550:48:01

then you take them out of their element. You plop them in a foreign locale

0:48:010:48:05

and suddenly, all their Britishness is kind of magnified tenfold.

0:48:050:48:08

Defining Britishness

0:48:160:48:18

is a perennially challenging, if not impossible, task.

0:48:180:48:22

I thought it might be, among other things,

0:48:220:48:26

a kind of interesting contribution to that debate to rewind 50 years.

0:48:260:48:29

"What did it mean to be British in 1958?

0:48:320:48:34

"Nobody seemed to know.

0:48:340:48:36

"Britain was steeped in tradition.

0:48:370:48:39

"Everybody agreed upon that.

0:48:390:48:41

"Its traditions, its pageantry, its ceremony

0:48:410:48:44

"were admired and envied all over the world.

0:48:440:48:46

"At the same time, it was mired in the past,

0:48:460:48:50

"scared of innovation,

0:48:500:48:51

"riddled with archaic class distinctions,

0:48:510:48:54

"in thrall to a secretive and untouchable establishment.

0:48:540:48:58

"Which way were you supposed to look when defining Britishness -

0:48:580:49:01

"forwards or backwards?"

0:49:010:49:04

Well, Jonathan Coe, a Birmingham writer, so let's turn to our resident Brummie first here!

0:49:070:49:12

Now this idea of Expo '58, it is an extraordinary microcosm of the geo-political tensions

0:49:120:49:18

at that time in the aftermath of the Second World War.

0:49:180:49:21

Does he make the most of this?

0:49:210:49:23

Well, it's a good setting, I agree.

0:49:230:49:25

You get an excuse to wheel on Russian spies

0:49:250:49:28

and American spies and all sorts of...

0:49:280:49:31

Yeah.

0:49:310:49:33

You get the chance to see a Brit abroad in a weird context,

0:49:330:49:37

but I found it a disappointingly slight book in the end.

0:49:370:49:41

My problem with Jonathan Coe...

0:49:410:49:42

and I had the same problem with What A Carve Up!

0:49:420:49:45

I know a lot of people really rate it.

0:49:450:49:47

It's the uncertainty of tone.

0:49:470:49:50

One's never sure whether he's caricaturing his subject

0:49:500:49:54

or whether he's giving you a sort of lovingly realised portrait

0:49:540:49:58

of a particular era.

0:49:580:50:00

There's an excruciating scene quite early on

0:50:000:50:03

where the husband and wife...

0:50:030:50:06

The husband is about to go off to Belgium.

0:50:060:50:09

And the next-door neighbour comes into the kitchen

0:50:090:50:12

and starts making the most leering innuendo to the wife.

0:50:120:50:16

Now, it might just about work in a Carry On movie,

0:50:160:50:19

but it doesn't work in a portrait of that period.

0:50:190:50:22

People were quite subtle in the 1950s.

0:50:220:50:24

They weren't these vulgar caricatures.

0:50:240:50:26

Is this a form of pastiche?

0:50:260:50:28

One of the blubs talked about the book being "Hitchcock meets Ealing comedy".

0:50:280:50:32

I gave it huge benefit... No, I gave it the benefit of the doubt,

0:50:320:50:36

as a kind of found object, the kind of book you might find in the late 1950s - a minor novel.

0:50:360:50:42

A slight novel.

0:50:420:50:44

So therefore, everything about it, I truly enjoyed.

0:50:440:50:47

There were certain things you couldn't do,

0:50:470:50:49

because you couldn't apply now-knowingness to that period,

0:50:490:50:53

because it would have burst that bubble.

0:50:530:50:55

So in the end, I kind of enjoyed the idea that what he'd done,

0:50:550:50:59

the great craft, was really to write a...modest late-1950s novel

0:50:590:51:06

about the late-1950s,

0:51:060:51:08

with a sense that it's written now, but it's not actually, so he doesn't burst any bubbles.

0:51:080:51:12

And it gives us a sense of something that's on the precipice of happening.

0:51:120:51:16

And I enjoyed all that - that rock n roll is about to happen,

0:51:160:51:18

that pop culture's about to happen, that a different thing is about to happen.

0:51:180:51:22

So I ended up enjoying it, because I viewed it as a rather wonderful found object.

0:51:220:51:26

The last ebbing of a kind of innocence, I suppose.

0:51:260:51:29

Yeah, um...

0:51:290:51:30

No, I just... He's a lovely guy.

0:51:300:51:34

He's a nice person. I wanted to like it!

0:51:340:51:36

It's a great setting,

0:51:360:51:38

lots of good ideas. It is a very interesting time.

0:51:380:51:41

The trouble is, if you're setting it in that period,

0:51:410:51:44

you're always going to be up against Evelyn Waugh and Kingsley Amis

0:51:440:51:47

and Graham Greene, in some of the territory.

0:51:470:51:49

And it's not any of those things.

0:51:490:51:52

It's not Hitchcockian. That's what's on the back of the book.

0:51:520:51:55

It's not Carry On.

0:51:550:51:57

The funny...

0:51:570:51:59

You know, doesn't really work for me.

0:51:590:52:00

You seem quite engaged by the espionage idea and the two spies.

0:52:000:52:04

The spies are versions of Thomson and Thompson from Tintin.

0:52:040:52:09

There's one extraordinary scene where he's about to get off with this rather attractive Belgian bird

0:52:090:52:14

and it's raining,

0:52:140:52:16

and they need an umbrella. Suddenly, from behind...from nowhere,

0:52:160:52:20

appears this umbrella, which is being held by the Thomson and Thompson detectives.

0:52:200:52:24

It's... I'm not saying it was a horrible read, because it wasn't.

0:52:240:52:27

I'm with Paul on that one.

0:52:270:52:29

It was enjoyable, but...

0:52:290:52:31

it does unsettle you, this changing of tone.

0:52:310:52:34

Where are you?

0:52:340:52:35

The fact that Delingpole can use the word "bird"

0:52:350:52:38

suggests that actually Jonathan has achieved everything he needed to do!

0:52:380:52:42

Because he's created a weird period piece.

0:52:420:52:44

Without somehow it being infected by...

0:52:440:52:47

the knowingness he obviously has.

0:52:470:52:51

I'm giving him the huge benefit of the doubt.

0:52:510:52:53

I think he knows enough to know everything within it that people are criticising

0:52:530:52:57

for being a laziness or a weakness is in fact part of the point of the book.

0:52:570:53:02

You described it as a slight book, but his ambition, as we heard, for the novel,

0:53:020:53:06

is much more than that, because it's about British identity, isn't it?

0:53:060:53:11

Through the ludicrous...

0:53:110:53:13

Nothing's changed, really.

0:53:130:53:16

And he does make that point, and then that's the only point that he makes.

0:53:160:53:20

And lots of people were much better at Brits being abroad

0:53:200:53:23

and Britishness really being about a particular area of England,

0:53:230:53:27

and a particular set of values.

0:53:270:53:29

Yeah, that's there, but he's not really running with it.

0:53:290:53:32

I began to wonder - he's got a lot of support from Belgium -

0:53:320:53:35

if he's actually, like many of us,

0:53:350:53:37

mainly our income now is coming from Europe,

0:53:370:53:40

if he's almost speaking to Europe, because that is sort of a European idea of us.

0:53:400:53:44

I like that idea that in many ways - for what he is setting up is about to happen,

0:53:440:53:49

like the Beatles, like rock n roll -

0:53:490:53:50

that idea of what it is to be English or British,

0:53:500:53:53

not a lot has changed since the late 1950s.

0:53:530:53:57

With everything that has happened and happened since,

0:53:570:53:59

many things that were about the way we represented ourselves in the late 1950s in Belgium

0:53:590:54:05

would pretty much be the same now.

0:54:050:54:06

Which would be great if he talked....

0:54:060:54:09

We're examining our own national identity when the Russians

0:54:090:54:12

are apparently calling us a small island that nobody cares about!

0:54:120:54:15

They must have read this book!

0:54:150:54:17

There's one line where one of the characters says,

0:54:170:54:20

"We like our imperial past, we Brits."

0:54:200:54:22

That's not very good...that's a bit obvious, isn't it?

0:54:220:54:24

And a lot of the dramatic reveal is at the end,

0:54:240:54:27

when it doesn't matter and everybody's dead and you won't...

0:54:270:54:30

You know what? I really like the last four pages as well,

0:54:300:54:33

when he sped through. I thought that was really great.

0:54:330:54:35

I liked that a lot, when he brought everything up to date. Fantastic!

0:54:350:54:38

They should all do that, shouldn't they?

0:54:380:54:40

The Russians can talk about us being a small nation.

0:54:400:54:43

You had a lovely thread about melancholy and the past and the future and how you relate to it,

0:54:430:54:47

but again, it wasn't quite...

0:54:470:54:49

It's a better book than you think. I just wanted it all to hang together and fire,

0:54:490:54:52

and it seemed to be about four different books.

0:54:520:54:55

What I did applaud - and this is SO superficial -

0:54:550:54:57

but that it was attempting to be funny, in a world where the novel...

0:54:570:55:02

I know it's a chilling phrase "the comic novel",

0:55:020:55:07

but he is ploughing kind of a lonely furrow here.

0:55:070:55:10

It's things like the gay Belgium joke.

0:55:100:55:12

You can have the gay Belgium joke, It's a bit of a weird push of a translation of "Belgique joyeuse",

0:55:120:55:17

but OK, it's not happy Belgium, it's not joyous Belgium or merry Belgium -

0:55:170:55:20

we'll make it gay.

0:55:200:55:22

You don't do that joke three times.

0:55:220:55:23

There's one place where it works and then you move on.

0:55:230:55:26

I think he's a good writer, but he tries too hard. OK.

0:55:260:55:29

Well, gay Belgium and the Thompson twins from Tintin

0:55:290:55:33

are both in Expo '58, which is out now.

0:55:330:55:35

That's almost it for this month's show.

0:55:350:55:37

There's more on all the items

0:55:370:55:39

we've been discussing on our website.

0:55:390:55:40

Thanks very much to my guests, AL Kennedy,

0:55:400:55:42

James Delingpole and Paul Morley.

0:55:420:55:45

Kirsty will be back next month

0:55:450:55:47

with a special show looking at the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize,

0:55:470:55:50

which was announced earlier this week.

0:55:500:55:52

I have to say, all brilliant choices,

0:55:520:55:54

but then I was one of the judges.

0:55:540:55:56

To play us out tonight,

0:55:560:55:57

another track from the brand-new Manic Street Preachers album.

0:55:570:56:00

This is James Dean Bradfield and guest vocalist Cate Le Bon with Four Lonely Roads.

0:56:000:56:05

Good night.

0:56:050:56:07

# Four lonely roads

0:56:080:56:11

# The terror it had flown

0:56:110:56:13

# Never led you home

0:56:130:56:16

# Four lonely roads

0:56:190:56:21

# Got sunk into my heart

0:56:210:56:24

# Then it fell apart

0:56:240:56:27

# Staring with an idle eye

0:56:290:56:34

# Measuring the pain inside

0:56:340:56:40

# Darker hell stood up on high

0:56:400:56:45

# Then disappeared without reply

0:56:470:56:51

# Four lonely roads

0:56:580:57:02

# I'm trapped inside this skin

0:57:020:57:04

# Can't let love back in

0:57:040:57:06

# Four lonely roads

0:57:090:57:12

# The cities drunk and mute

0:57:120:57:14

# Lost in your pursuit

0:57:140:57:17

# Staring with an idle eye

0:57:190:57:25

# Measuring the pain inside

0:57:250:57:30

# Darker hell stood up on high

0:57:310:57:35

# Then disappeared without reply

0:57:370:57:41

# I don't know why

0:57:410:57:44

# And if we can, then we must

0:58:090:58:14

# Hold our heads up, learn to trust

0:58:140:58:19

# It's up to you, it's up to us

0:58:190:58:25

# Some dignity, a little love

0:58:250:58:30

# A little love. #

0:58:300:58:34

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

0:58:340:58:37

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