I have an announcement to make: I admit that, as a child, the soap opera ‘Crossroads’ was one of my guilty pleasures. I have no idea why. The sets were so flimsy it looked as if they’d been held together with paper glue. As false as the sets was the acting. It was like watching Daleks learning by rote. Two of the most memorable scenes were when the entire Crossroads Motel went up in flames during one bonfire night fireworks display, and when Meg Mortimer, the motel manager, sailed off into the sunset aboard the QE2 for a new life overseas.
Meg was played by the late Noele Gordon. She was regarded as the closest thing Birmingham’s Associated Television company (which broadcast ‘Crossroads’) had to celebrity royalty. It was therefore a seismic decision to axe her from the show. Gordon had been with the production since its inception in 1964. Quite simply, she was to ‘Crossroads’ what Elsie Tanner and Ena Sharples were to ‘Coronation Street’.
Thus, when a biopic of Gordon’s last weeks on the show was broadcast just a couples of weeks ago, I decided to tune in to see if Helena Bonham-Carter could do justice to the part. Called ‘Nolly’, the three-part biographical miniseries focused on the contractual betrayal by ATV and Gordon’s subsequent departure (https://www.thesun.co.uk/tv/25171331/nolly-cast-plot-filming-locations-explained-itv/). But no sooner had the opening credits rolled when I was left scratching my head at the appearance of a black character called Poppy Ngomo. I couldn’t for the life of me remember any black characters in ‘Crossroads’. Sandy Richardson? Stan Harvey? Benny Hawkins? Adam Chance? David Hunter? Doris Luke? Miss Diane? Arthur Brownlow? Yep, I can recall every one of those characters vividly- and they were all white. But Poppy Ngomo? Nope, that one escapes me!
It transpires that the writer of ‘Nolly’, Russell T Davies, specifically included the character of Poppy to make the series more ‘progressive, diverse and inclusive’. Forget trivial things like historical accuracy. Nowadays the entertainment industry is infinitely more preoccupied with box-ticking than it is with keeping viewers’ eyes glued to their television sets. If it isn’t stretching the bounds of credibility in terms of ethnic political correctness, it is doing so in respect of same-sex relationships or the inclusion of those with disabilities purely because they have a disability. It’s not that I have anything against any actor or actress of any background being included in British entertainment. For example, some of you may recall an early episode of ‘A Touch of Frost’ called ‘An Appropriate Adult’. First aired in 1995, it dealt with a young Down’s Syndrome lad called Billy Conrad, who’d been falsely accused of a child’s murder in fictional Denton. Conrad was played superbly by the actor Timmy Lang (https://disabledtvcharactersblog.wordpress.com/tag/timmy-lang/). In a similar vein, it would have been ridiculous for ‘Only Fools and Horses’ to have had no black characters amongst its stars. How accurate would any portrayal of South London in the 1980s have been with an all-white cast? ‘Totally inaccurate and second-rate’ is my honest answer. All I ask for is the inclusion of minority particularities to be based solely on either reality or as a beneficial ingredient to the overall storyline!
Let’s turn the ‘Nolly’ situation on its head. Let’s say the Dreamworks company in the United States decided to commission a miniseries called ‘Berry’, based on the life of Berry Gordy Jr – the founder of Tamla Motown records. Set in 1988, just before Gordy sold his stake in the company to the Music Corporation of America, the series opens with the arrival of Cyndi Lauper who Motown have signed up to be their first white female artist on the label. Could you imagine the scorn that would have been forthcoming in the reviews, not to mention the anger of those (myself included) for whom Motown is THE most outstanding example of the contribution of black artists to US popular culture? In a comparable analogy, if it wouldn’t be acceptable in acting circles for Russ Abbot to play Nelson Mandela, why is it acceptable (nay, cheered in some quarters) for Jodie Turner-Smith to portray Anne Boleyn (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/who-was-first-woman-color-bring-anne-boleyns-story-screen-180977882/)!? And why does a cerebral publication like the Smithsonian Magazine lazily cite racism for the backlash? Could it simply be the annoyance felt by audiences of all backgrounds with the constant drip-feeding of identitarian proprieties masquerading as entertainment?
If it isn’t general TV programming, it’s the advertising industry. When was the last time you saw a product or service being promoted on your screens that didn’t involve a family with one black parent and one white one? Again, I have nothing against inter-racial marriages, but let’s be candid in saying these still form a very small proportion of family structures in today’s Britain. However, if you believed the images in each commercial break, you’d think they were the preponderant matrimonial demographic! When did we segue into this parallel universe of absurdity? When did the television and film industries start caring more about the sensitivities of eccentric or permanently-aggrieved critics than the general public who want nothing more than entertainment for entertainment’s sake, as opposed to a diet of covert Left-wing didacticism?
Cast you minds back to the great films and television programmes of the past. The one common thread they all had was the ability to tell a basic story without the need to get involved in the promotion of sociological tropes. Many modern productions no longer have that simple quality, and are all the poorer for it. Returning finally to ‘Crossroads’, it would be perfectly reasonable to argue that a motel in 1970s Birmingham should have included more actors from an ethnic minority background. But it didn’t, and ‘Nolly’ was supposed to be a biopic of the final weeks of Noele Gordon in that particular show, not a critique of the ethnic uniformity of those actors on the ATV payroll back in the day. I hope future writers and producers of drama and comedy will be capable of reverting back to the skills of more straightforward tales for the generations yet to come.
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