Through it, the actors seem to walk endlessly; through a vast car park, passageways and bridges, and into rooms with a strange angle. Outside, everything is gloomy, blocky concrete; dark wood and leather inside. From time to time a beautiful ray of light spills into the corridor, heralding some kind of life.
Although a sharp look at the strange and dark Thatcher Britain was new for its time, it reminded me of an essay by Scottish actress Cathy Leung in the anthology Eastside Voices that actors of any Asian descent should imitate a Chinese accent.
But there is some great, mischievously conceived character; Dr. Jock McCannon, played by Graham Crowden, is a wild-eyed Scotsman whose sassy speech and tongue-in-cheek tone is the uncanny precursor to Peter Capaldi’s Malcolm Tucker.
Barbara Flynn’s Dr. Rose Marie is a sex-positive, power play in which the super-feminist pierces men with her steely gaze; I guess the image is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, but I immediately adore her.
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The Scottish Football Writers’ Association apologizes after Eilid Barbour…
Then there’s David Troughton’s slimy Bob Buzzard representing the era’s political mania for privatization. In an interview, writer Andrew Davis said: Buzzard’s character was “unfortunately…most true to what happened in the universities and most other places.” Buzzard looks like Don Draper, a dodgy deal and corporate cutoff peddler, confident of a place at the top of the food chain and still eager to kick down.
The TV show that debuted the year I was born is a gamble. Is the humor good enough to land on, or will it be weighed down with tedious, crude sexism? After all, I learned a lot, but greasy Dr. Buzzard made one remark that hit me to the core.
Pointing out the new doctor on campus, Buzzard chuckles, “My personal opinion is that there’s nothing wrong with Rose Marie that a damn good specialist wouldn’t deal with.”
When this episode aired on the BBC in 1986, 36 years ago, the character speaking these words was supposed to look like a villainous boor. Earlier that day I read daily report that a senior lawyer had sent messages about the head of Scotland’s largest anti-rape charity saying he would “blow” her “just to have something over her”.
The day before, the Scottish Football Writers’ Association made headlines by chuckling at misogynistic after-dinner jokes, with sports reporter Eileed Barbour tweeting that she “never felt so unwanted in the industry I work in.” Awful for a while, but how do new audiences flock to women’s football? What an embarrassment.
Sexism is not talk, but dissolving into nothingness. It is cruel, humiliating and frightening to spit at women like little poisonous arrows of malice for the amusement of other men. Not only is this behavior shockingly unprofessional; It’s just not funny that some professional organizations in Scotland are stuck in the 80s. Many stopped laughing decades ago.