The room quietened as a grey-haired man, tall and craggily handsome, stood up and surveyed the room thoughtfully, apparently unaware that one of his hands was surreptitiously patting his balding patch. Maggie suspected he was also trying to stand up straight so that his stomach didn’t hang too far over his belt, and found this endearing.
“Thanks for coming everyone. I must say, it’s an excellent turnout. Out of all our producers and script editors, development executives and readers, I think we have virtually half here this evening. Did anyone make it down from EastEnders?” Silence fell as everybody looked round. “Evidently not. I’m sure they’re all preoccupied with more important matters up at Elstree: I hear the chicken pox has broken out in Albert Square.” A murmur of laughter spread round the room. Maggie wasn’t sure, but she guessed this bloke must be the Head of Drama, Peter Maxwell. He certainly commanded everyone’s respectful attention.
“Okay that’s enough from me. I now declare the first Drama Discussion Group open! Over to you, Fenella.” He looked round the room. “She is here, isn’t she?” A few people giggled and the door opened, so all eyes turned as a well-dressed man entered in a hurry, his schoolboy hair flopping over his lined face. “Well I’m so sorry I’m late. I’d just like you to know that I’ve been in my office since eight o’clock this morning.” He took a glass of wine and sat down with a mock flourish as everyone chuckled.
“We believe you, Donald,” said Peter. “You didn’t have Fenella with you, I suppose?”
“Rumour and calumny!” exclaimed Donald. “I’ve never touched her.” A few people laughed sycophantically.
“Right, well let’s start anyway,” said Peter, and then Fenella burst in. “I was in a meeting with Salman, I am sorry,” she said as she bustled past the standing crowd at the back of the room. Maggie was impressed and realised that she had no right to expect Fenella to spare time for an insignificant yob like herself. Fenella sank into a chair near Peter, depositing her briefcase on the floor in front of her so that it spilled open in its usual way, and rummaged in it for a few seconds before producing an agenda. She looked up and addressed the group in her normal tone which suggested that she had seen it all a million times and nothing would shock or surprise her; she would simply carry on flogging herself to death doing a superb job in the face of countless difficulties.
“Now I don’t want anyone to feel they’re at Programme Review, this is just an idea for bringing the department together to talk about our work in a completely honest way. Hopefully we’ll have a stimulating discussion and get to know each other a bit better. Good.
“Now the first drama on the list to talk about is EastEnders. Who’d like to start?” Silence. “Well did anyone see it last week?” Everyone looked around, but no-one was prepared to break the ice. “Has anyone ever seen it?” Further amusement as no-one raised a hand. “For God’s sake, someone must have watched the bloody show! From a sense of duty if nothing else!” Peter looked wryly amused and threatened the assembly with detention. Maggie had been watching the twice-weekly soap religiously, of course, but was much too shy to say anything yet; her heart pumped hard at the thought of it.
Eventually someone said they thought the issue of HIV had been introduced very effectively through Mark Fowler, and that public reaction had been favourable, which was an important achievement. Another was enjoying Grant Mitchell’s storyline – a real East End thug with a real East End tart on his arm. They hoped Grant and Sharon would marry, making a great replacement for Den and Ange. Someone else said they didn’t feel it was their place to criticise, but wasn’t the vocabulary somewhat limited – ‘Allo Dot, fancy a cuppa? Ave yer seen my little Willy?’ being the staple diet of social contact. It looked as though EastEnders was held in low esteem here. Maggie was amazed, it was far and away the most successful show the drama department made.
Anthea, standing behind her table of wine, seemed unafraid to contribute to the discussion. She said she thought the Taverniers were sidelined as the black family; a script editor responded that she thought they were too politically correct, and a producer said he found them stereotyped. Anthea said it just wouldn’t do to have one token family from each ethnic minority – they would always be peripheral to the central drama between the whites. Most of the assembled group looked a little browbeaten at this point. Anthea hadn’t raised her voice but they behaved as though she had. Maggie was quietly relieved to see that other people found Anthea intimidating too. She would have liked to support her point of view but didn’t have anything new to add, so she kept quiet. Anthea, the only non-white person in the room, remained motionless, her face inscrutable.
Fenella tactfully drew the subject to a close, by acknowledging that Anthea had made a very important point, and it was a shame no-one from EastEnders had managed to find the time to come this evening.
Next on the list was Stewart Walker’s Death of a Baby, a hard-hitting portrayal of life on a Bradford council estate in which a young mother’s circumstances forced her into prostitution, and then into the hands of a very nasty pimp who ultimately hurled her baby to its death from a fifteenth floor balcony.
Maggie had found it disappointing. It lacked the wicked humour of other films by Stewart which Maggie had admired so much, and she had found it dull and depressing. However, she had some ideas about why it didn’t work. She waited for others to begin the criticism, but instead there was praise for its uncompromising truthfulness and a superb performance from the first-time actress playing the teenage mother. Admiration of the photography drew a general murmur of assent, and Donald Mountjoy quipped that the props store must have used up all its stocks of stage blood and vomit.
Jonathan asked whether Billy Trowell, the writer, had drawn on his own experience, and Maggie was at last able to discover Stewart. He was a dark, tousled man who had chosen to sit in the back row. He sat up and drew on his cigarette, ignoring the ash flaking off it. “Of course. I wouldn’t like to say which character he might have been closest to, though.”
Jonathan nodded and half smiled as if to say he knew exactly what Stewart was saying. “What would you say was the hardest part of working with a writer who is determined to show the underbelly of life in its worst light? Was it fighting to prevent the language being censored?”
Stewart paused for thought. “I’d say the worst thing was wondering what he’d do to me if he didn’t like the film!”
Everyone laughed. There was a general frisson as the group acknowledged the dangerous forces that had to be negotiated in order to achieve a drama of this calibre. Stewart re-filled his glass from a bottle by his foot. Modesty forbade basking in glory.
Maggie now felt brave enough to join in, so she put her hand up firmly, gaining Fenella’s attention as the laughter subsided.
“Yes – ah, Maggie,” said Fenella.
“I just wondered why it presented such a negative image of women.” Her nerves amplified her voice. There was a shocked silence, which she misinterpreted as interest in what she had to say, so she elaborated, “Every one of the women was a victim. None of them really tried to fight back, apart from the one who got acid thrown in her face.”
Maggie’s face grew hot as people looked round at her, wondering who the hell she was with her daft opinions. The silence was horrendous. She hadn’t meant to launch an attack on Stewart, she merely spoke as she found. She wanted desperately to explain that actually she was a great fan of Stewart’s work and that he should receive her criticism in that context… but, fearing it would sound like she was trying to retract her opinion, she said nothing.
Fenella appeared to feel sorry for her: “You found it offensive.” Maggie tried to deny it, but Fenella didn’t stop. “Well that’s a point of view, anyone agree or disagree?”
Sally put up her hand, “I didn’t think it was offensive at all. The whole purpose of it is to show the endemic violence against women on inner city estates. The women are the victims so how else do you want them portrayed?”
&nb
sp; Maggie was surprised that Sally seemed so antagonistic towards her, she thought they had established some sort of loose friendship over lunch. She felt the majority mentally gathering behind Sally. She glanced at Stewart and saw him smirking into his wine glass. She knew she was right – maybe she hadn’t made herself clear; she decided to try again.
“But it doesn’t leave any room for hope. It’s all so bleak and nihilistic.”
“That’s because Bradford is bleak!” Sally’s tone verged on the superior. “Have you ever been there?” This raised another laugh. Maggie felt furious with this wretched woman who knew nothing at all about Bradford, and didn’t realise that it was Maggie’s home ground; nevertheless it was Sally who was hitting the right note with the crowd. Maggie wouldn’t be walked over.
“I know, but supposing you lived there and you watched the film, how would you feel about it? Wouldn’t you want to think that maybe it wasn’t hopeless and you might be able to overcome the situation somehow?”
Sally had no answer to this so she shrugged as if it were irrelevant, then looked at Jonathan and raised her eyes at him. He politely failed to respond, but his raised eyebrows and downcast eyes indicated solidarity with Sally. Maggie felt angry. This wasn’t going at all the way she had intended. She had hoped to impress Stewart with her insight and her political analysis, but Sally had got to her, and once she was involved in an argument Maggie always felt compelled to see it through.
“I’d be very interested to know how it was received in Bradford,” she said. Fenella, wearing an amused expression, looked over her half-moon glasses at Maggie and then turned to Stewart, inviting him to answer. He dropped his cigarette into a half-empty wine glass and glanced shrewdly at Maggie, who held his gaze.
“Unfortunately neither the ratings nor the audience appreciation figures are broken down by regions as small as that. Of course we do know that inner city viewers are inclined to select ITV or BBC1 as a matter of choice, so given that Death went out on 2 on a Saturday night, I rather doubt whether we succeeded in diverting very many council estate inhabitants from more urgent affairs down the pub.” The audience smiled. “To be perfectly frank, my dear, Screen Two is really for a few million viewers from South East England and the chattering classes in North West London! If we can bring the plight of the inner city working class woman to the attention of those in a position to do something about it, then surely it’s our duty! I’m sorry if you found it voyeuristic.”
Maggie didn’t dare pursue an argument with her redoubtable opponent, often described by the critics as ‘the enfant terrible of television drama’. She knew she’d scored a disastrous own goal. Damn. Shit.
From within a red haze she heard a man speaking reasonably in measured tones.
“… traditionally speaking, the working class victim’s triumph over adversity is what audiences respond to most strongly.”
You understood me, thought Maggie, I love you. Who are you? He was a mature, pleasant-looking individual with wavy grey hair. She soon found out when Jonathan put his oar in.
“Basil’s right, of course, and we’ve got Gas and Boilers to prove that point.” A general nod in Basil’s direction credited him with the seminal sixties drama. “But there are some stories which need a tragic conclusion – look at the novels of Hardy, or Zola.” Basil acknowledged the truth of this by inclining his head in Jonathan’s direction.
The theme was picked up and tossed around the room, while Maggie sat back and resolved to keep her trap firmly shut for the rest of the meeting. So this was Basil! She was amazed to find that her two heroes were so different. Basil looked incredibly old-fashioned, not the sort of person she would ever have imagined herself working with. He was wearing a suit and looked almost like a Conservative politician, or at least a Liberal. Jonathan was perfect for him, of course; Basil would never want Maggie in his office, she felt sure. Stewart, on the other hand, was definitely more her kind of person, obviously a bit of a rebel. In fact if he was twenty years younger he would be quite fanciable.
By now she had lost track of the argument as well as her desire to participate, so she looked around the room, thinking there had to be at least one woman in the room who had agreed with her but was too bloody pathetic to say so. She caught Anthea looking her way, but she appeared to be wrapped up in her own thoughts. Maggie wondered how long the meeting would go on for. Now that she’d blown it she wanted to go home as soon as possible.
After ten minutes Fenella moved the discussion on to the film adaptation of Max Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson, a novel from 1911 about a young adventuress running amok amongst the eligible bachelors at Oxford University. Maggie hadn’t understood it, really, even though she had a degree in English literature. She had found it obscure and unfunny, a parade of men in blazers and boaters who did little but punt girls in long frocks through trailing willow branches in idyllic sunshine – unless they were attending sherry parties at which they embarrassed themselves by hiccuping in front of the Dean’s stuffy wife. At the mere sight of the doll-like heroine every man in it was reduced to a quivering wreck, and none of them was apparently capable of having a conversation with her.
However, Maggie now knew better than to say as much, which was just as well because everyone else had loved it to bits. They showered Donald, who had produced it, with praise. It was apparently sweet, enchanting, witty, and compared very favourably with Merchant Ivory films despite the budget being only a fraction of theirs. Maggie tried to damp down her bile by reasoning to herself that the corporation’s drama output needed to be broad, and that there was no need to deny audiences who wanted to see this kind of nostalgic escapism now and then, just because she thought it a waste of time. But she was puzzled when someone referred to the satire. What satire? It was a satire? What on? Someone was saying that they suspected the satire might have escaped some of the audience if they weren’t very familiar with Oxford. Maggie realised that she was one of them. Damn and shit. She felt outraged on behalf of the 95% of viewers who, like her, had never been to Oxford let alone Oxford University, and weren’t remotely interested in it.
Sally was defending the film. “Even if the satire did go over some peoples’ heads, they still enjoyed it on a literal level. My hairdresser loved it.” People chuckled.
Maggie spoke out without thinking, “On a literal level it’s totally crass. There isn’t a single character you can care about and none of them really communicate with each other. I really don’t see what it’s got to offer a nineties audience.”
Sixty heads seemed to turn as one and glare in disgust at Maggie. She almost gasped, and could hardly believe what she’d done. Her hands and armpits sweated as a drone of disbelief and noisy tutting rippled round the room. She rallied when a sarcastic woman said she presumed Maggie thought the women were misrepresented too. “They were no more stupid than the male characters,” she replied. Her heart pounded. She would have to maintain her dignity for now, but this was obviously the end of her career at the BBC. She had managed to impress herself on every member of the department as a whinging, humourless feminist – a stereotype which was evidently about as popular here as maggots in the canteen kedgeree.
After that, she really did keep her trap shut. She couldn’t leave early, it would look pitiful, so she sat out the rest of the discussion on Zuleika Dobson in humiliated rage, and barely listened to what they all said about the latest classic serial, Eminent Victorians. No-one else said anything controversial apart from Anthea, who remarked that apart from EastEnders none of the shows discussed featured black actors at all; the assembly listened in polite silence and gazed expressionlessly at the stained carpet.
Finally the purgatory came to an end, and Maggie shuffled out keeping her eyes low to avoid Sally and Jonathan whilst telling herself she hadn’t liked either of them anyway. A silver-haired man with whisky breath pushed past her and squeezed her arm. She looked up momentarily and he winked at her. What did he mean? Was that some sort of encouragement, or was he just
laughing at her? She walked off as briskly as the crowd would allow.
As she neared the lifts she heard her name called, but she pretended not to hear – she just wanted to get out of the hateful place. The caller was not put off, and hurried up behind her.
It was me, chasing after Maggie. I’d watched it all unfold with my heart in my mouth. There was no way I would stick my own oar into that shoal of piranhas. I thought Maggie was right in most of her opinions, and I wanted her to know she wasn’t alone. They’d all made her look like an idiot, but she seemed like a good person to me. I caught up with her at the lift doors.
“Hello, I’m Rhiannon. I just wanted to say that I agree with you.”
“Thanks for your support!” she snapped sarcastically. I felt terrible. Perhaps I should have spoken up in the meeting – but it wouldn’t have helped Maggie, it would just have put me in the same boat.
“Look, I’m sorry. I’m new to this kind of thing too.”
“Oh, right. Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I take it back.”
“I don’t suppose you fancy a drink?”
“Why not?” Maggie smiled, relaxing a fraction. “Just what I need. Shall we go to the club?”
The BBC Club was a big lounge area concealed on the fourth floor of the Television Centre doughnut (in the middle of the Light Entertainment department, inevitably). You had to join to use it, and there were two bars, tables and chairs, and little else. The atmosphere was relaxed, and it was the place to retreat to after studio recordings (or to spend an hour or two at lunchtime, if you were in the LE Department).
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