Dirty Digest #8: August 2023

LABOUR TOMORROW

An early newsletter this month, as I have an absolutely diabolical couple of weeks coming up at work, and may not get the chance to send it out later.

On the plus side: who doesn’t love a 15 year old TV mystery, finally solved?

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“Happy Wedding Day, Sis!”

BBC Four, 2nd December 2008, 10:30pm. It’s the third episode of Series 5 of Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe. It’s an extended episode - twenty minutes longer than usual - and is also a rather unusual format. This is a whole programme of writers talking about the process of writing.

It is, of course, utterly marvellous. Among a certain kind of person, it became one of those shows. The ones which still echo around your head, long after most people have forgotten it.

But one anecdote in particular became a combination of genuine writerly advice, and a running joke. It’s at 31:36 in the above video, and yer man Russell T Davies.

“Bad dialogue is is like 95% of television, and most television dialogue is just really functional and talks about the plot, and ping-pongs… you’re absolutely in trouble where people are actually talking to each other. “What you doing here?” “I’m doing this”, “Why?” “Oh, because of this”, “Oh, who said so?” “He did.” “Why?” That’s just rubbish, that’s just explaining the plot, it’s just filling two pages, actually.

I saw a drama once that I won’t name, but its opening line of dialogue was “Happy wedding day, sis!” Wedding, sister, right, got it! It’s like ouch, no-one calls their sister “sis”, it doesn’t exist, and you shouldn’t write like that, you’re giving up all responsibility. You are faced with those scenes where you’ve got to say that someone’s their father, or someone’s brother to this character, and you must not write dialogue that says “Well you would say that, being my brother!” So often you hear that on telly. You’re just doing a bad job if you’re doing that. And I know why people do it, because they’re sitting at home going “how can I explain this”… you’ve just gotta write it better.

Or, there’s a great phrase Jimmy McGovern uses: he says “I’d rather be confused for ten minutes, than bored for five seconds.”

I really, really wish the writers of Season 1 of Picard had heard the above advice. “Patience, sister" indeed.

Of course, RTD deliberately doesn’t say which programme he’s talking about. That’s because he is a nice person. I, however, am not a nice person. So for years, I’ve wondered exactly which show, and specifically which episode, he watched, absolutely aghast. Some people guessed it was a soap, perhaps EastEnders. Other suspected that it might not actually be a specific memory at all, but something concocted or combined to make a point.

Doesn’t this sound like some ridiculous research task I could take on, like I am wont to do? Where I piece together the clues, watch a million and one programmes, and eventually have the answer slot into place during some kind of thrilling climax, sexual or otherwise?

Well, I could do that. Or the answer might just just fall into my lap without having to do a damn thing. So with thanks to Rhonda Dalkein, let’s name names.

It’s BBC women’s football drama Playing the Field. Specifically, the very first episode, broadcast on 8th March 1998. Russell had remembered the moment for a whole decade. What’s more, he also remembered the dialogue perfectly.

So here’s the moment some of us have been waiting to see for years:¹

Phew.

Yet it has to be said, there’s one aspect of the above clip that doesn’t make Russell’s anecdote. (Fair enough, you can’t over-complicate it.) I think it’s notable that the word “sis” is fairly well-obscured by one character putting their hand over the mouth of the other!

I’m always wary of leaping to conclusions. But is it possible that the production itself wasn’t much in love with the line either, and did their best to obscure it?

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This Month on Dirty Feed

Just the two this month, but one of them I’ve been threatening to post since January, so it’s nice to actually get it done. Yes, it’s the continuation of…

• Freeze-Frame Gonna Drive You Insane, Part Two - The story of a Party Political Broadcast, the McWhirter twins, and what appears to be an incompetent Labour press office. I found this one a little difficult to write - dealing with the McWhirters is not my favourite thing - but it turned out OK.

• The Facts of the Case Are These - A short tribute to Doreen Mantle, through the medium of One Foot in the Grave paperwork. So business as normal for this place, then.

Part Three of the flash frames nonsense will be published next month, and is all about Spitting Image poking everybody repeatedly until they ended up in court. Fantastic.

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Not on Dirty Feed

Fewer links this month, but that’s what happens when I shoot my bolt early.

• Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em: Film Trims and Unused Takes - Pip Madeley pokes at the recently-repeated 1977 documentary To Be Perfectly Frank, and sees what unused material falls out.

• George Michael on Piccadilly Radio May 31st 1984 - With Timmy Mallett. God bless tapes in lofts.

• Respect Your Elders: The Making of Parallel 9 - Jonathan Bufton interviews one of the kids who appeared on the first episode of Parallel 9, in the blog post most perfectly designed for me to be published in 2023.

• Finally, we need more adverts these days like this. Or this.

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Current life status: taking a crash course in Greta Gerwig. Done: Lady Bird, Mistress America, Frances Ha, and Baghead. Next up: Little Women, Nights and Weekends, and Greenberg. Never let it be said I don’t deal with my new obsessions with panache, however late I am to the zeitgeist.

See you next month, my friend.

1. Apologies for the postage stamp video. The series was broadcast 14:9 in a 4:3 frame, which causes annoying problems in these days of widescreen video. I should probably enlarge and crop, if I can figure out the correct FFmpeg settings.