26/01/2014 The Review Show

On The Review Show this month,

sex, lies and greed on the big screen,

the mother of all art exhibitions,

gender politics on stage, and on television,

a descent into madness in a debut novel,

and chilled out music from Iceland's Asgeir.

Hello and welcome to The Review Show where tonight

we will discuss the first major retrospective

of artist Martin Creed,

feminist theatrical production Blurred Lines,

and a new HBO drama about the lives

of gay men in San Francisco - Looking.

Joining me to roam free over all this are author Denise Mina,

playwright Mark Ravenhill

and our critical kingpin, writer Paul Morley.

We start with two films battling it out for glory in the awards season,

though not against other.

Both feature a spectacular fall from grace,

one from the dizzying heights of Wall Street,

and the other from a bicycle.

Lance Armstrong was the man who had beaten advanced cancer

and gone on to win the Tour de France

a record-breaking seven consecutive times.

Despite worldwide adoration, his career was beset with

accusations of doping, a claim he denied with nothing short

of ferocity and threats of legal action.

Emphatically say I'm not on drugs.

How many times I do I have to say it?

Enter Alex Gibney,

an Oscar-winning documentary film-maker known for his exploration

of the dark side of powerful figures.

This time he was about to make a feel-good comeback story

about the power of sport, gaining unprecedented access to Armstrong

and his entourage.

The film was all but finished when in January last year, Armstrong

finally came out from behind the biggest lie in sport.

I certainly was very confident I would never be caught.

Sitting on what was now an essentially unusable documentary,

Gibney recut the film, putting himself in the story.

When the truth came out, I told him he owed me an explanation.

He agreed to sit down one more time.

The film is an autopsy of a lie, hidden in plain sight.

When everyone cheats, it becomes hugely distorted.

It becomes a different contest, of who has the best doctor,

who has the most money, who has the biggest risk tolerance,

and the guy, who was that guy for this era? It was Lance.

My name is Jordan Belfort.

At the tender age of 22, I headed for the place that fitted my ambitions.

The name of the game. Move the money from your client's pocket

-into your pocket.

-If you can make a client's money at the same time,

-it's advantageous to everyone. Correct?

-No.

A lighter approach to the demise of the deceitful can be

found in The Wolf Of Wall Street -

Scorsese and DiCaprio's fifth collaboration.

DiCaprio plays real life stock swindler Jordan Belfort, whose

hedonistic memoirs inspired the actor

to commit this scandalous story to celluloid.

What was so refreshing about the way he wrote this novel

was his absolute candid honesty about every,

every tumultuous radical endeavour that he went through.

-30,000 dollars in one month, Jordy?

-They're business expenses.

-Look at this, 26,000 dollars for one dinner.

-No, this can be explained.

Dad, we had clients...

-The porterhouse from Argentina.

-Expensive champagne,

we had to buy champagne.

-Tell them about the sides.

-26,000 dollars' worth of sides?

What are they? Do they cure cancer?

The movie has been on the end of some harsh criticism,

claims it glamorises what it is deemed to be

a morally repugnant era - the worst excesses of western capitalism.

Scorsese has defended the portrayal.

Why bother telling a story of someone who is unremarkable?

He thought he could bypass morality, with a combination of money

and drugs, in actuality I feel it is us, you and me...

..and maybe if we had been born under different circumstances,

maybe we would...maybe we would have wound up making the same

mistakes and choices, and doing exactly the same things.

I am good with water for now. Thank you.

It's his first day on Wall Street. Give him time.

Paul, we have had Wall Street's 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

We have had Lehman Brothers. Is this something different?

It is not a great Martin Scorsese, it is Leonardo DiCaprio in a way

on an ego trip to portray something he wants to portray.

It is an actor's movie, look how great I am.

It's repulsively entertaining, there is no doubt about it,

but there's something about it, not just because Joanna Lumley

turns up, that makes it seem like he is doing Absolutely Fabulous.

It's a grotesque farce and in that sense, it's entertaining

but you have to work out - is this a comment on the times? -

as Scorsese is implying, although I think he is

out of his depth, is it a comment on the times or part of the times?

This indulgent way of, you know, entertaining people.

-Three hours of it.

-The only thing is the fact it is three hours long.

Apart from that, you wouldn't know it was Scorsese as such,

it is like a parody, it is Scorsese on Scorsese.

What worried me the most is ultimately it is itself what

is wrong with the times, the fact we are being entertained by this

-kind of grotesque parody rather than it being a comment.

-Denise?

I have read autobiographies by guys who worked on Wall Street

and went into rehab and found they didn't have any money.

That's what the story is.

I think it's like Goodfellas, there are pieces to camera

and interacting with the audience and that kind of thing,

I found it really convincing as a film.

I kept thinking of it as a religious revival.

At the beginning, he says I had this money greed,

this frenzy for money right from the very beginning

so whenever you saw the room...

So it doesn't need a moral current?

I think we've had the moral stories.

These characters have watched Wall Street and read American Psycho

and read Bonfire Of The Vanities, and they know it...

And they even say "masters of the universe" in the film.

-So we can sort of go on the same ride with them.

-It's a caper?

In many ways, it is and there are moments of physical comedy.

The moment he takes too many drugs...

there's almost a Buster Keaton element.

That was what was Absolutely Fabulous for me, that bit.

The Jennifer Saunders physical comedy. But it does have fantastic

moments of rhetoric. Leonardo DiCaprio convinces you he could

convince people to buy these worthless stocks. His speeches to

his company are great Shakespearean moments of rhetoric, so I think

as a part for an actor, from that physical comedy to high drama,

it is a very alluring character.

I was held for three hours by DiCaprio.

It's his movie, not a Scorsese movie.

DiCaprio and Brad Pitt went after it.

DiCaprio wanted to play this part.

It is like they are given a gift.

Here is a gift for DiCaprio to be this character.

Once upon a time, it would have been rock 'n' roll. Now it's this.

That is one of the things that strikes you, these people

are living the lifestyle in the '70s we would expect a rock star to have.

Why do they have to be so explicit about expressing that

in such a vulgar way?

Isn't there a better way rather than positioning the women

-in such a way...?

-Isn't there a problem with you go along with it,

this is a virtuoso performance from DiCaprio, then there is

a horrific moment I shouted out at when he punches his wife in the

stomach, suddenly the film, I am not sure...

-There is a lot of orgy action.

-A lot.

-You never see a man's bits.

-You do see one, when he is off his face.

-I must have blinked.

-You see the Ferraris.

-The women are unclothed.

-Always objectified.

-That is what I don't understand.

If Scorsese is making this movie he says he is,

I can't believe there is not

a better way or a more sophisticated way of representing that,

than just giving us the soft porn.

I think we know that it is not a good idea to take that many drugs,

we know it is a terrible thing to rip those people off, we know...

we know if you only think of women as pussy,

as the men do in this film, it is going to end badly.

There is a generation now that... This is the real thing.

That is why I think Scorsese has been hoodwinked into giving it,

because he could do it...

I think he is getting off on it a bit.

If you see screenings of this near Wall Street,

people are shouting and screaming, and these masters of the universe

are there, maybe a bit younger, fitter.

I think the DiCaprio character makes one point,

when he is caught on his boat. He says I am the little guy.

I am the outsider, dealing with these terrible penny stocks,

there are much bigger villains to go after.

And that is a moment where you sort of have a moment to reflect

and think, "He is terrible,

"but maybe he is not as terrible as the really big guys."

I still think these moments are overwhelmed by the explicit

nature of the way it is sold as entertainment -

to get our rocks off.

We are into Oscar season,

how many films are based on real life stories?

12 Years A Slave, American Hustle.

The Butler, Mandela, this, what do you think the chances are for this -

Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor...?

These prizes, they are political and Scorsese is now,

you know, prize giveable, so, and in particular, I think

DiCaprio's performance...

It is about the hype.

The idea this movie is what it is, when, in fact, it isn't.

For some award ceremonies, it has gone under the comedy category

because it does sort of sit between genres, it is more honest.

It is not a great film, but it is enjoyable as a comedy.

If it was on HBO, it would have been like Ab Fab.

One film that is not played as a comedy is The Armstrong Lie.

What do you think of the relationship between

Alex Gibney and Lance Armstrong?

I think Gibney is honest, that is what is fascinating about how

conflicted his attitude to Lance Armstrong is. I think

even when he discovers the lie, all the way into making the documentary,

he himself realises that he has a very interesting story now to tell,

so he resents Armstrong telling him the lie

but as a film-maker he knows he has a great story to tell,

at the same point Armstrong realises maybe this narrative, maybe this

redemption narrative of going on to Oprah and confessing, which has

saved politicians and celebrities before,

Armstrong doesn't get what he wants, the Oprah thing doesn't go as great

as he thought, and Gibney ends up with this film which has got

a conflicted relationship to Armstrong

-but I thought that made it a richer film.

-Paul.

I felt the DiCaprio and this, the heroes are reality TV.

These are reality TV stories.

I felt this about Armstrong, he was like...

this in a way was a Big Brother story, a bachelor story, that was our

fascination with him, it was like...

it is a weird thing that has happened,

that we're now fascinated by villains and anti-heroes

as if they are living reality television, rather than reality.

Do you think that Gibney sold us a pup in a way because

after the Oprah interview he said, "This was the Oprah interview,

"now you will get the true story"?

In a way, I felt there was a slight...

still a kind of being slightly in thrall to him.

-A bromance.

-I think you are right.

What Armstrong did all the way through was control the narrative.

He gave a simplistic narrative, cancer survivor,

went on to win and the tension between him and Gibney was

about who controlled the narrative, and I felt that Armstrong won.

Because you get this version,

and then he touches on the fact he ruined lives.

Yes, I think Gibney pulled his punches on that and was off mic.

Here was the director making the big interview

and didn't mic himself properly.

You never get the completed interview, post-Oprah

and it is a funny thing, Armstrong controls the movie,

but it is Gibney's movie. He is not doing it very well.

He's so overwhelming.

Armstrong is the one controlling reality.

It was... it was just sort of dissatisfaction,

it didn't have a neat ending that felt real to me.

I thought one of the abiding feelings I took away was what a grim

world all these characters lived in.

Nobody said, "I love cycling,

"it gives me a thrill to see the crowds,"

nobody expressed joy, it was relentless training

and this compromise.

It never expanded into the world where what actually happens in sport,

where 99% of those are taking drugs, it didn't really expand

and become sophisticated.

When they were swapping blood to get the more red blood cells,

they stopped a van and changed the blood.

I wanted to pick up on something you said which was

he was controlling the narrative.

But wasn't he always, what you saw from that film,

controlling other people round him? The way he treated people,

the way he treated Betsy and he won't admit what he did in the room.

And his ex-team-mate he had fallen out with and betrayed,

but when he was going to give interviews, he gave them to that

team-mate who was a TV presenter,

pulling him in, controlling the narrative.

The strange thing about Armstrong is he has this incredible power,

he is scary and yet he is a dull man,

there is something banal about him.

The banality of evil. I wouldn't say he is evil.

But the banality of lying.

The moral dimension is dissolving.

It's kind of beginning not to matter as long as it is entertaining.

I came away thinking, let every cyclist say, "This is my doctor,

"these are the drugs I'm taking," and admit the whole sport is doped.

Well, The Wolf Of Wall Street is in cinemas now

and The Armstrong Lie is released on Friday.

"What is the point of it?" is something we ask

but this time Martin Creed has beaten us to it

because it is the title of the 2001 Turner Prize winner's

first major retrospective.

We were granted access to the Hayward Gallery in London

as the show was being installed for the opening next week.

It features sculpture, murals, film, painting and neons

alongside the musical recordings and new work commissioned for this show.

So, prepare for art. Piles of it.

I feel really weird about the whole thing.

And scared about it.

And sick. I feel sick about it.

I wake up feeling sick most days.

I love this gallery.

I feel a bit suspicious of art galleries

because they are artificial spaces made to kind of protect things,

and I feel uneasy

about putting things in galleries,

because I feel like it is a cosseted environment.

I feel like if work is any good,

it should be able to live on the street, you know.

I've been trying to work on music.

I feel like you can't separate what you see from what you hear.

When you're looking at something, you can always hear something,

and when you listen to something, you can always see something.

I feel like if I didn't work on music I would be ignoring half of life.

I got to thinking of trying to make a piece of music that goes with

the movement of a lift.

# I'm feeling orange

# I'm feeling green

# I'm feeling purple

# I'm feeling cream. #

I was trying to think how you could make words a certain size

and a good reason for doing so.

For some reason, I thought that mothers would look good big.

Later, I thought it was because

mothers have to be big.

To be a mother, you have to be bigger than your baby,

you cannot be smaller.

So mothers have to be as big as...

mothers have to be as big as possible.

Once I thought I would make it as big as I could, I thought, "Well, I may

"as well make it spin round as well," so it goes in all directions at once.

And maybe to make it slightly dangerous as well.

# What's the point of it?

# What's the point of it? #

I don't know what the point of it is,

but I think it's good question.

I often ask myself that question.

You walk in there and this amazing neon is starting to turn.

And swiping over a walkway as well which is taped off.

-It is so threatening.

-Threatening?

I thought it was threatening - an element of danger.

The whole exhibition is so joyous, that is what is lovely about it,

pulsing with joy.

I misunderstood everything because I read the catalogue afterwards.

There is this crumpled bit of paper where he is trying to interfere

as little as possible with his materials, and it is in a glass box.

I thought it was a monument to discarded ideas and I was entranced.

I just found it so stimulating

and really sort of breaking down barriers.

And the bafflement that he expresses in that interview really comes over.

I think that is what most people feel.

It is lovely to see a retrospective as well,

to see ideas developing over time,

-spilling into each other.

-This idea of layers and gradations.

You wrote a great essay,

I won't ask you to distil it into 30 seconds,

but you know this work intimately.

Is it different seeing it all together like that?

Well, the bits of everything go with the Hayward Gallery as well.

I love the signatures. He uses the building.

What's interesting about Martin,

joyous is absolutely a word I would use,

but also, artists are starting to become

something that there isn't a word for yet.

He uses sound and sculpture, scale and comedy.

But he's new and that is why this exhibition is so profound

and interesting and original.

It's the beginning of something else that we yet haven't got a name for.

What you said in the essay was he remains true to himself, whereas

a lot of artists across the world don't remain true to themselves.

And that bafflement - when I first spoke to Martin, I was a bit cynical.

Surely not? No, it's true!

He is that. He is baffled. It is sweet.

There is a sort of promiscuity to the amount of mediums that he uses.

I felt like I was being taken into somebody's world.

It wasn't dark, it wasn't a world of obsession, like Tracey Emin,

but you're being taken into obsession.

He doesn't seem to be an obsessive person.

He seems to have patterns and he is fascinated by smiles

and chairs and boxes.

There are things that repeat but not in a kind of needy, obsessive way.

There are beautifully painted walls in the gallery.

I said, "This will be painted over," and he said, "I'd do it

"again as house paint. It's fine."

He's also said he had a real aversion to labelling

and you can see that because it is hard to label Martin Creed.

I think he was being a bit critical of other galleries

labelling his work. It's better to just have numbers.

Yes, like a composer. He's just given each piece a number.

Work number 25 or whatever.

He has also done an amazing new piece

which was just in construction upstairs.

It is diagonal steel window frames with etched glass inside

and balloons behind them, and again, this idea of almost wonderment.

I loved what you said about artists no longer being boxed into producing

products for sale in one area,

because that isn't people's lived experience.

That's a perfect example of that. He is using the light.

Balloons used up half the air in the room.

You have to go in. They're up to about here on most people.

But you have to sort of trundle about blindly and find your way.

And also the way he's responded to the space.

He's taken down some walls and he's built things

and the wall that he built complements the architecture

and he's used a window with curtains that open and close,

so the outside world is allowed in as well.

Behind the balloons there's another window where light comes through.

So he's really playing with the space,

and the gallery has a conversation with the outside world.

He's very, very... he loves movement, doesn't he?

Static is not necessarily something that he likes.

It is inevitable in a way that he would be a musician

because he loves movement and scale.

I love that when you look at some of the objects it is like music.

There is a lot of music around at the moment that sounds like

post-punk music from 1981. That's all it is.

30 odd years later, I would have imagined being there in 1981

looking at those people and what they would be including is all of

this as well. That's what's fascinating. And if you look at him

just as a musician making a certain sort of music, he's got all this

other stuff as well that represents the music and represents his mind.

That, to me, is why it's interesting that he's inherited so much

that elsewhere we look at it as being nostalgic and ripping things off, here not.

Here he's moving forward. Very discretely moving forward.

-With the broccoli wall...

-A thousand images. He's never put it together before.

It's sort of a reference to Warhol and his Campbell tins

but it's not cynical like Warhol.

It's not saying, "We've all been commodified," it's just saying,

"I can reproduce a piece of broccoli a thousand times."

And planting it in the world as it is now.

I think that repetition is trying to make order out of a lived world.

-You know, the constant repetition.

-It's definitely control, isn't it?

Yeah, it's trying to find some sense.

Control and harmony and beauty. It's very poetic as well.

-Sometimes it's farcical but it can be very poetic.

-It's very calming.

And then you're hit at the end of the exhibition...

there's an explicit film of a penis being flaccid and then erect,

then flaccid again, but at the end, there is this room

where you see a film of basically defecation and sickness.

I was going to take my kids but I think maybe not now

because that's the only way to get out of the exhibition.

I even had a positive reading of that.

You feel calm, you feel liberated, you feel joyful

and so I thought, "We're being purged," - it's a good thing.

We've taken a really good effective enema purgative and we're just

letting it all out so I actually felt rather positive.

It's not that I felt negative, I just thought what it did

was show the contrast. It shows he's capable of anything.

It's also interesting in a modern world which is so self-conscious

that there can be this pure optimism, somehow, which is also incredibly

refreshing at a time when everyone is so inward and disconnected.

-He's just so open.

-He is so open. He won in 2001 The Turner Prize.

This is his first big retrospective, though he's had exhibitions.

-Is there a danger he will become a national treasure?

-I hope not.

I wish I hadn't said that now.

What's The Point Of It opens at The Hayward on 29th January.

We Used To Be Kings is the debut novel by Stewart Foster

and is already being compared to success stories

such as the Booker-nominated Room by Emma Donoghue

and Stuart: A Life Backwards,

which went on to be adapted for both stage and screen.

Set against the space race of the 1970s, Foster's novel deals with

the impact mental illness has,

focusing on the unbreakable bond between two brothers,

one of whom is dead, and their missing father.

The story begins in a mental health institution with Tom

who has been incarcerated because his dead ten-year-old brother Jack

continues to live on in his head.

Tom has just turned 18. However, this is not cause for celebration

as he is about to be transferred to an adult facility.

'We close our eyes. We smell damp mixed with soap,

'hear the snap of a towel and a scream.

'Our head is buried deep in the pillow but we can still hear

'the gargle of water trickling through the drains.

'We need to be quiet to give ourselves space to think,

'because tomorrow will be different,

'tomorrow there won't be a Mrs Hunter or a Mrs Foulks

'or a Mrs Drummond. Tomorrow we won't be locked up with boys.

'Tomorrow we will be locked up with men.'

The way they interact is Tom is always the narrator.

If you look where the dialogue actually starts,

it's always Jack that jumps in and he starts the conversation first

which is why he's so irritating but he's always constantly interrupted.

When I look at it now, I realise that Jack is a massive anxiety

all the way through it. He is the anxiety even though he's great fun.

Tom, with Jack's voice in his head urging him on,

escapes from the institution in search of their father

who they believe has gone to the moon.

The way that space came into it was

originally I had written a short story and...

where a father had gone missing but actually hadn't gone anywhere.

Once I'd decided that the father said he was going to go to the moon,

the only period it could be set was the '70s

because it was the time where everybody was naive

but also excited by travelling into space.

'Dear Jack. Dear Tom.

'I'm sorry I've not written. I am tired.

'Jack, I love your rockets, even when they go the wrong way.

'Tom, keep writing your book, lots of people will read it soon.

'I have to go. The Russians are coming.

'Tonight the sun will burn a hole through my head

'and in the morning, when I wake up, everyone will be gone.

'Love, Dad.'

I got the interaction between the two of them,

they were two separate individuals to start with.

Then I was writing the dialogue

and found they were bouncing off each other.

And it also came quite early in the piece

how much they loved each other.

My main thoughts were if you love somebody so much

that even if they died, you wouldn't mind them back in your head.

The strength of the relationship is they love each other so much that they don't want to be separated.

Unfortunately, it's destructive in the end,

but they just chatted like mad and I couldn't stop them.

There has been a whole slew of books about young boys' mental states.

There was no research, by his own admission, done by Stewart Foster.

Is it OK just to have a work of the imagination

when you're dealing with this stuff?

I know quite a lot about the secure units at that time

and what would've happened

and it's not been researched and I think it's wrong

and it's fine because it's a story.

I think the vast majority of people you get...

you can't make TV shows because policemen might watch them and say,

"You're not allowed to wear a belt like that."

So I think it is absolutely fine. It doesn't really matter.

The narrative, you know, really pulls you forward.

I had a bit of a problem with the two voices

which he said becomes a bit irritating.

I couldn't... they're in different fonts

and I loved all that inter-textual stuff - it was very playful,

but I found the interaction and the characterisation

between Jack and Tom, they were so similar...

-I thought they were twins at first.

-They're supposed to be twins.

But I found after a while,

the repetitiveness of it slightly lost me.

Having said that, there is so much to love in this book

and he's such a beautiful, crisp writer.

For a first book it's really amazing.

I loved the sort of flashback section,

which is probably half of the book, which is 1971,

Dad's going away and tells the kids he's going to be a cosmonaut,

he's going to go up with the Russians into space

and the kids believe him and you know Dad's going somewhere else.

That drove me though that section - that fantasy of a kid making

their father into a hero, as we all do as boys,

and you know it's going to end terribly. That drove me through.

Yet I did think the stuff that was set ten years later with the twins,

it is interesting you say about the lack of research...

and I'm not...I don't think all writers have to research,

but there was something a bit nebulous about that world

that didn't pull me in in the way the 1971 strand did.

What did you think about the dialogue between the brothers?

I agree, they had such similar voices.

I thought...to be a dialogue you need two different energies.

We now know Jack was the younger one. We start out thinking they were twins.

Paul, that whole thing about the space race,

-did he capture the excitement of that?

-Not for me.

In many ways the fault of the book for me was that it was an example

of creative writing, and I think the things you are mentioning

in a way was, for me, coming from that -

that it's a technical book, it's very technical

and it feels like it has had a lot of work at it to make it happen

and even the idea of the descent into madness and the space race,

they all seem like ideas that come out of studying the idea

of, "What kind of book am I going to write?"

I could never get away from that.

At the end, I'm not going to give the end away,

but there's four pages of blank space and then his acknowledgements

and they were done in the style of the book.

If I'd had doubts - did I believe it or not? - that would have given it away.

-To me that was that was really annoying.

-I loved that.

No, I thought, "Pencil, pencil."

-You loved it?

-I did like that.

It's an exercise and the book therefore became an exercise.

It infuriated me.

All those doubts we might have had about no research, it's a story,

it's imagination, for me it became about creative writing.

It was an exercise.

I can write a first book and it will be taken as a first book

and hailed as a first book

and I could never get away from the fact, it is not that great.

What about the role of the mother?

She has a role where she tries to be protective,

but she's a kind of shadow character.

She's not really there that much. I found it hard to work out what ages the boys were

when their father went missing. I wasn't too sure.

She did go missing a lot and they were left with a neighbour.

Actually, that is what people did with kids in the '70s.

You forget we are so massively, clawingly overprotective.

And people did just give kids keys

and let them in and out when they were eight.

And that's interesting because even though clearly there were

difficulties with the children, she still let them roam free.

-Everybody did in the '70s.

-I remember my childhood.

There is a moment where the mother becomes complicit in the lie

which I thought was very strong. There's a moment where she can

tell the boys, "No, he's not in space," because the cosmonauts

are under threat so they think, "Daddy's dead, Daddy's dead",

and she decides to let them carry on with the lie.

I thought that was a strong moment.

But essentially it is the father and the dream of the father is what drives the book

and the mother and the female character they meet in the present

seem much shadowier figures.

-It's almost like a children's book at times.

-A teenage book.

It's one of those books you could market to teenagers and adults.

Which was the case with The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time,

-which is probably why a book like this...

-It's almost become a genre.

This autistic child, seeing the world through...it's very appealing

to see something through naive eyes.

We can both feel we are naive but also more knowing than them.

-I don't think the book had the wonder.

-No, it didn't.

Well, see for yourself or read for yourself,

We Used To Be Kings is published on 30th January.

Music now from Icelandic artist Asgeir,

whose album In The Silence was No.1 for nine weeks

in his homeland.

It has been translated into English and is released this month.

This is King And Cross.

# Glistening night-time dew

# And she is walking with me

# From the house of red

# I hear a child crying

# Foxes heading home

# Their prey hangs from their jaws

# And the forest knows

# But it won't share the secret

# When the king takes sides

# Leaving moral minds

# Soldiers take their share

# Nighthawks seem to sense that

# Now is the time

# Deep inside them burns the raging fire of life

# He'll take back what he owns

# Death cannot take hold

# If I can keep momentum

# Fortresses of stone

# Turn into crystal tears

# Soothed by southern winds

# I've found my strength now

# And nobody knows

# And we must keep their secret

# When the king takes sides

# Leaving moral minds

# Soldiers take their share

# Nighthawks seem to sense that

# Now is the time

# Deep inside them burns the raging fire of life

# He'll take back what he owns

# When the king takes sides

# Leaving moral minds

# Soldiers take their share

# Nighthawks seem to sense that

# Now is the time

# Deep inside them burns the raging fire of life

# He'll take back what he owns. #

And there will be more music from Asgeir later in the show.

After some extraordinary comments on women's worth from Nigel Farage,

an embarrassment of sexual harassment sexual scandals

and a salacious year in pop,

gender politics is already firmly on the agenda in 2014.

Now a brand-new national theatre production created by two rising

stars of the British stage aims to shift the focus away from the

power players to the plight of real women in a play that owes its name

and its inspiration to a very controversial song.

It was the smash hit of last summer,

but the fallout from Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines is still unfolding.

The lyrics and explicit video sparked outrage,

with some describing it as rapey.

When theatre director Carrie Cracknell

and playwright Nick Payne were looking for a provocative title

for their new gender-political theatre piece,

they didn't have to look too far.

Blurred Lines is based loosely on Kat Banyard's The Equality Illusion,

a book full of shocking contemporary statistics

asserting that the feminist revolution remains unfinished.

Cracknell and Payne determined to demonstrate

this masked modern-day misogyny on stage.

Those are the ones who are being forced.

Those other ones from Eastern Europe. I don't use those women.

Not any more. Not after that.

The women who work like that,

on the street, they are obviously the ones who have been trafficked.

I don't use those women.

How much did it cost?

45 quid.

-Jesus.

-That one night was a one-off.

I wouldn't do it again and I haven't done it since.

It was like... It was...

Like a cup of cheap coffee?

It was like a cup of cheap coffee.

Meaning?

Disposable.

At just 70 minutes,

and with one set, Blurred Lines is a dense performance.

The eight-strong female cast are on stage at all times,

and take turns performing vignettes demonstrating

the regular encounters with inequality faced

by the modern woman.

The cast includes newcomer Michaela Coel.

Do you need an African accent?

Cos you can just say so,

because I have descended from a lineage of blur and illusion.

AFRICAN ACCENT: And I am so game for stoking in the whole validity of your confusion,

to form a strange union of every African accent

I heard on the bus I took to get here.

Although the song Blurred Lines itself doesn't feature,

the play is peppered with pop songs past and present,

and the lyrics take on a new resonance

when performed by this troupe.

# Don't liberate me

# Just love me. #

Mark, calling it Blurred Lines, did it set up a certain expectation?

Absolutely. I think you expect a response to that Robin Thicke song,

and you sort of get one.

I think it maybe suggests we'll get a more direct response

to Blurred Lines than we do,

and in a way maybe the piece is too generalised, too ambitious.

But I think we are still at this point where women in theatre

have looked around and said, "Hang on, most of us

"have called ourselves feminists now for 40 years," and are taking stock

and realising how little has changed in casting, directing, writing.

So, in a way, something has to go right back to the basics

and ask really quite naive questions about feminism

in a way that even a few years ago would have been embarrassing.

This is just so simplistic, this is so naive.

But women in theatre and men in theatre have said,

"OK, even if this is simplistic and naive, this is necessary.

-"We need to do this at this moment in time."

-Do you think we do?

In this way?

Well, as someone who has been a feminist for 40 years,

I couldn't work out what was going on in the play.

At the start, I thought it was going to be a play about being an actress,

cos they were talking about who they'd been cast as

and doing lines from the parts they'd had,

which I thought would have been really interesting.

And then it goes off. There's just too much.

They're trying to do too much. To me it feels like,

"I've just found out about feminism, and it's not fair to women."

Because it covers everything.

And I've been hearing those songs that were performed

at feminist cabarets for 30 years, and I've heard them done better.

So, I think it tried to cover too much ground.

But a play about being an actress and what it is to represent

gender would have been fabulous, and they kept touching on it.

At the very end, there is a Q & A with the director.

That would have been great, if there'd been more of that stuff.

At the end, you sit down

and the point about the Q & A with director...

as one of the women plays a male director,

a kind of archetypal, well-established,

arrogant male director and that actually is very funny.

It's completely different to the rest of it,

which makes me think, had they done it all as a revue

or some cabaret satire or something?

It verged on that. It is sketches, really.

It's like That Was The Week That Was, but going back to the '60s.

You're right, there is a quaintness and a politeness

about any form of protest or comment on this ridiculous piece of music

that actually we should be thoroughly ashamed we've even played it, you know.

We played that much of it,

we only played it because we thought it was Marvin Gaye.

This makes no sense whatsoever.

But it is interesting, there's a kind of quaintness.

And what really annoyed me the most about it, the politeness of it,

is that when they say they didn't get permission to play the song.

Play the bloody song. What's going to happen?

Who's going to come and sort you out?

That's part of the politeness and the quaintness of protest at the moment.

It's almost like you talk about the power that Thicke

and that ridiculous film we talked about at the beginning,

The Wolf Of Wall Street, and everything.

It's like somehow at the moment it seems wrong to say anything

about this as if you are ruining people's fun.

I thought for the National Theatre it was far too timid.

-Unbelievably timid.

-It does feel like a tentative first step.

It was great to see such a fantastic cast,

Ruth Sheen, Marion Bailey, both wonderful actresses

and to start to explore this style where they don't have to pretend to be someone else,

they can sort of talk... There was something happening there that was really exciting.

It definitely felt like a work in progress.

And I think there are companies out there who would have gone

further with this work.

There's a fantastic company in Germany called SheShePop

who are a feminist collective who are, in a way, really asking

the questions of the '60s and 70s, but I think they do it with

the danger and the anger that maybe Paul is looking for.

It's getting more and more difficult to actually do that,

and it to hold and not just be absorbed and in a way be dissolved.

It just dissolved somehow.

If there is a new misogyny about, how do we tackle it, then?

It's not a new misogyny, it's the same old misogyny.

-There's money to be made, that's the issue.

-They're allowed more space.

The space they are allowed is extraordinary,

that's what I can't understand -

why everybody's putting up with it and it's just extraordinary.

There are responses to it.

Whether you think it is right or not to ban it,

that's a different question,

Blurred Lines isn't played in certain university campuses.

What I mean is where is the serious riposte to it?

-To Blurred Lines?

-Who's doing it?

Who's putting the money behind it to do it? Nobody.

I think every time a song like Blurred Lines is a hit,

maybe 400,000 young women think, "To hell with this,

"I'm not putting up with this, this is nonsense.

"You have no right to rape me."

I think these things are intensely politicising.

It's like an army going into Iraq and saying, "We're here to help you."

That's how you create, you know, an armed response.

And I think, actually, it's not... From my point of view, I think

it highlights a misogyny that's already there,

the problem isn't the song, the problem is

you don't get paid the same money,

and the police don't come if you're battered.

And you are embarrassed to tell anybody if you're raped.

Those are the problems, it's just a pop song.

Yeah, but it's the fannyness of the world now, in a way.

Even talking about the films at the top, fans are reviewing things now.

The critical perspective is being stripped away.

Therefore it's just about how enjoyable it is, how much value of money it is,

rather than looking at...

Except, I suppose, they're having a huge response...

Again, they have been butted out.

Amongst very young people getting politicised, listening to this

and thinking, "We live in a profoundly pornographic world,

"porn saturates the whole culture."

That can pass across someone's desk

and they say, "Yeah, all right, make that video."

I think these things are very politi...

And I think there are undercurrents that we're not dealing with.

We're really dealing with the cream on top of the trifle.

There's all sorts of stuff going on like the German theatre companies.

Talking of fannyness, I think there is a danger that any...

celebration of female sexuality, the female body becomes commodified

and that is one of the things that a theatre can do is actually

find women's sexuality and their bodies away from commodification.

-In a more sophisticated time....

-And there is something quite puritan about this piece.

Everything seems to be going backwards in terms of the emotional response.

Well, Blurred Lines is on at The Shed at the National Theatre

in London until 22nd February.

HBO, the major force behind TV successes such as Game Of Thrones

and Girls has a new offering on Sky Atlantic this month.

Described as a dramedy,

Looking focuses on the lives of three gay friends

living in sexually-liberal San Francisco.

-I know what you're doing.

-What?

-I'm alone now, and I need to find a roommate.

-Oh, really?

-On...

-OKCupid, huh?

-I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone.

You know, get a boyfriend and a roommate.

Looking focuses on the lives of three close friends -

Patrick, Agustin and Dom, who are living,

but not necessarily thriving, in the gay metropolis, San Francisco.

Patrick, played by the actor Jonathan Groff,

is a 29-year-old games designer,

just getting back into the dating world in the aftermath

of his ex's engagement.

Why do you even care, you dumped him?

I know, I know we broke up for a reason,

but things are complicated and...

Yeah, the reason was cos he was boring.

Yeah, I know that he was boring.

But now he met Gabe and four months later, they're getting married?

How does that even happen?

Hailed as Sex And The City for gay men,

Looking is the work of British director Andrew Haigh

who received critical acclaim for his 2011 movie Weekend

about the fleeting relationship between two men.

Looking takes the same naturalistic approach and at times

gives a forthright insight into the daily struggles of dating.

So, what was your longest relationship?

Like six months, I think.

-What about you?

-About five years.

Five years is a good chunk of time.

I think I'm not making the best impression.

-I think we should back it up.

-I'm going to stop you, I'm sorry.

-You seem like a really nice guy.

-Thank you.

But...you know, when it's working, you shouldn't have to try so hard,

and this obviously isn't working, you know.

Unlike its well-known predecessor Queer As Folk,

the series doesn't aim to shock or to be controversial.

Instead, we have a group of 30- and 40-somethings who merely

want fulfilled lives.

Listen, do you think you could help me with this?

Instagram filters have ruined everything and I can't tell

if this guy is hot or not. What do you think?

Ooh, Paddy...that is a lazy eye.

-No, it's not.

-The right one.

Oh, my God, it is!

All the kind of naturalism, everyday stuff,

does it matter there's no dramatic tension in this, particularly?

Well, it's kind of interesting that it is so boring, in a way,

and so everyday.

There's part of me that says,

"Why didn't this happen 30, 35, 40 years ago?"

And I can't get that out of my head at all when I am watching it.

Why is this such a big deal now?

I quite liked, if I liked anything about it, that it was so boring.

But on the other hand, I'm thinking,

"Well, if we have something now that is going to be

"the thing that people are talking about that it is,

"shouldn't it be more complicated and peculiar and strange?"

Well, you know, it is partly reflecting reality.

Gay men have become more boring.

Their lives and their culture are more boring than

when things were all a bit more illegal and a bit more...

Even when they started shooting this, gay marriage hadn't been legislated in California.

When they got halfway through shooting, it had.

I think that's one of the things that gay men are discovering,

maybe to their horror,

you get your human rights, you also get a whole heap of boredom with it.

I loved Andrew Haigh's film Weekend and actually that was almost

no story - two men meet and spend the weekend together.

But there was a sort of bubbling anger, political anger,

underneath it.

And quite a sort of objective eye of the world that they were living in.

I don't get the same sense of any kind of political anger bubbling away

off-screen that I did...

Somehow, the American actors can't help,

although they are very naturalistic,

be a little bit cute and for it to be

a little bit aspirational, so it does sort of want to sell you...

It's not glamorous, but it does sort of want to sell you

the idea of living in this slightly grungy San Francisco.

-It's kind of aspirational.

-It's slightly grungy, but not.

Some of them aren't so grungy,

and it's very much 30- and 40-somethings, isn't it?

This is not a very young gay scene. This is a kind of middle-aged gay scene.

-Which is quite interesting.

-Interesting, given what they went through.

We have a lot of dramas about teenagers and young men.

And there is something, which I think is deliberate,

a little bit sad about these people -

30, 40, still sort of doing a circuit of clubs and bars and parties and hoping for dates.

A 40-year-old man talking about whether he will be successful on a date or not...

Partly, I'm sort of, "This is very dull."

-Part of me thinks, "This is tragic!"

-Denise?

Welcome to 40. That's being 40, you're a bit disappointed.

I was watching and I was thinking, "What is this about?"

Because... I found because...

All the actors are so good looking.

I found it quite hard to tell them apart,

and I was grateful one of them had a beard.

They all live in San Francisco, but San Francisco is...

I find it quite chaotic.

I find there are always a lot of homeless people

-wandering about and they're really bolshie.

-But in that area?

Didn't see any of them.

I don't think it's a realistic depiction of San Francisco.

Like you, when I went there, I was overwhelmed by the amount

of homelessness and mental illness on the streets.

This is an aspirational... It's a different type of aspirational.

I think the thing that happens is because it is what it is,

everyone assumes it's going to be radical and strange,

-and it's like Thirtysomething.

-It is!

It's a nice, soapy, you know, very banal.

I was glad as the episodes went on that the cast got a bit bigger,

because the initial three weren't quite interesting enough.

I did think, "Are we going to come back week after week to these same three flat, dull people?"

But actually the cast does get a bit bigger and starts to open out.

Maybe I was just getting used to its rhythm...

I wish it wasn't half an hour. I wish it was longer.

Maybe if it was longer, then there would be much more development

-of storyline, as well.

-And even more boring, which would suit it!

I yelped with joy when Russell Tovey came on.

Cos he's great in everything. He's so warm.

That was one of the things...

I couldn't work out why I couldn't get a handle on it.

Russell Tovey is warm and he's melancholy.

There was a lack of warmth.

You kind of wonder what the point of it is other than

everyone hailing it as an arrival of something.

Maybe it will settle down once that...

What did you make of that whole social media? It really was social media heavy, wasn't it?

Everybody was looking at their Apple computers,

everybody's looking at phones.

Yeah, I mean that is the reality of our lives.

We were sort of supposed to buy into the idea that they were sort of

struggling to get by and they were sort of leading

a slightly bohemian life.

But nobody ever seemed that worried about money.

Nobody ever seemed to be struggling to...

You sort of felt they were always going to be safe.

So they were sort of grungy, but without any real worries

at the end of the month about paying the bills.

It's about loneliness as well.

It's about dating, which is the big American thing.

Everything is about dating, whatever that is.

-It's about loneliness in the modern world.

-In that scene as well,

there would be as well hopefully some credible female characters

that have been part and parcel of it rather than just one ex-girlfriend.

I think one of the things that was really interesting about it,

when it did open up and got a bit more interesting,

it became more about the culture of San Francisco

and they go on a march and it's a leather match.

That was really interesting. because I didn't know about that.

And the scene in the baths, where suddenly we meet

a much older gay man who has a memory of San Francisco pre-AIDS

and then during AIDS, and those moments where you get

a sense of historical, cultural, social perspective,

actually I thought brought the show alive.

That's true about everything we've been speaking to.

Maybe why it's so dull is because we are in a different place here

to where they are in America, where it's still...young people

are killing themselves because they're gay and they live in Milwaukee.

That might be... We are speaking to different audiences.

Looking is on Sky Atlantic, Monday nights at 10.35.

That's just about it, but if you'd like to see tonight's show

all over again, you can watch us on iPlayer endlessly for the next week

or catch our BBC2 repeat on 13th February at 24.20,

that's just the start of Valentine's Day.

We'll be back with our next show on BBC4 on Sunday, 23rd February,

put it in your diary.

Thanks to my guests, Denise Mina, Mark Ravenhill, and Paul Morley.

We'll leave you with another song from Asgeir.

This time, it is Torrent, good night.

# Gods of iron clashing Wind in battle through the night

# Tears will fall and strength is needed to overcome

# This old house is full of leaks and mould on the walls

# Dragons of the mind are lurking in the shadows

# Torrents wash away everything

# Raindrops flowing all around

# Queen takes King

# The pawns are falling onto the ground

# Over you and me

# There is rising the pink moon

# Merciless, though the wind takes hold with freezing cold

# Come, my friend, sit with me

# Take counsel in the warmth

# Torrents wash away everything

# Raindrops flowing all around

# Torrents wash away everything

# Raindrops flowing all around. #