The Problematic Gaze

Watch our YouTube playlist to find out more aboutThe League of Gentlemen and life in 2000Click here to watch our chosen episode of The League Of Gentlemen on I-PlayerHello, Dave? You're our wife now.This week we're taking a local trip for local people as The Problematic Gays head to Royston Vasey for The League of Gentlemen.We're focusing on Series 2, Episode 2 — “Lust for Royston Vasey,” first broadcast on 21 January 2000 — and asking how one of Britain's darkest, strangest and most grotesque comedies looks more than 25 years later.We go back to the beginnings of Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith and Jeremy Dyson's creation, from Bretton Hall and the Perrier Award to BBC Radio 4 and television, and explore the influences behind Royston Vasey's peculiar mixture of Hammer Horror, The Wicker Man, British sitcom and pitch-black comedy.Then it's time to meet the locals.There's Herr Lipp and his deeply uncomfortable interest in Justin; Tubbs and Edward facing the horrors of the outside world; Alvin attempting to escape Sunny's increasingly elaborate sexual appetites; Pauline and Mickey at the Burger Me takeaway; the deeply unpleasant Pop and his sons; Mr Chinnery doing terrible things to another unfortunate animal; and Val and Harvey's spectacularly dysfunctional household.And then there are two characters who have become particularly complicated.We revisit Papa Lazarou, the grotesque circus master whose appearance became central to the controversy that saw episodes removed from Netflix in 2020, and ask what the character was intended to represent versus how that imagery reads today.We also discuss Babs, Royston Vasey's transgender taxi driver, and how a character that could once be defended as being in on the joke becomes considerably harder to defend when the programme returned in 2017.Over in Culture Corner, we're heading back to Britain in 2000: the Millennium Dome, New Labour optimism, devolution, changing ideas of Englishness and the arrival of a little reality show called Big Brother.And naturally, we check the charts — because nothing captures the dawn of a new millennium quite like discovering Bob the Builder at number one.So, was The League of Gentlemen simply pushing the boundaries of turn-of-the-millennium comedy? Which jokes and characters still work brilliantly? And which parts of Royston Vasey are now problematic for very different reasons?Despite everything, we're both giving the series a whopping 9/10.Because this may be a local show for local people...…but there's still nothing else quite like it.Next time: Dynasty!

Hello Gazers! Welcome to our weekly Gazette!We're still circling Jaws (1975) this week — although apparently the most contentious part of our entire discussion isn't the shark. It's coffee ice cream.After our latest Jaws episode, we're debating whether Spielberg's classic really counts as a horror film and tackling the important culinary questions nobody else was brave enough to ask: is coffee a legitimate ice cream flavour? Does anyone still eat rum and raisin? And whatever happened to tutti frutti?Our Jaws adventures also lead us into the glamorous world of copyright takedowns. We reminisce about previous encounters with the social-media copyright police and discover that apparently even 50-year-old mechanical sharks have lawyers.Then it's time for a tour of Britain's rudest place names and the surprisingly innocent history behind some extremely unfortunate-sounding villages, roads and landmarks.There's also a glorious Les Dennis story involving someone mistaking him for Amanda Holden's father before we get thoroughly overexcited about Celebrity Traitors. Richard E. Grant accidentally announces that he's a traitor, Ross Kemp reaches previously unexplored levels of suspicion, and we pick through the latest treachery, paranoia and questionable detective work.We also check in on Big Brother and its latest eviction drama before taking time to remember Esther Rantzen and an extraordinary broadcasting career that stretched far beyond That's Life!. We reflect on her campaigning work and the lasting importance of Childline and The Silver Line.Plus, listener mail takes us all the way to Australia for a brilliant Jaws memory.And next week, we're going somewhere that makes Amity Island look positively welcoming...Welcome to Royston Vasey.Yes, The League of Gentlemen is coming to The Problematic Gaze.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…This week we're heading to Amity Island for Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) — the film that terrified a generation, transformed the Hollywood blockbuster and did absolutely nothing for the shark's public image.We revisit Spielberg's troubled ocean shoot, the notoriously temperamental mechanical shark and John Williams' iconic Oscar-winning score, before diving into the moments that made Jaws one of the most effective thrillers ever made: Chrissie's terrifying opening swim, severed body parts, Ben Gardner's surprise appearance, a doomed dog, a horrifying attack on a child and, eventually, three men heading out to sea to hunt a very big fish.But underneath the shark movie is something rather interesting.We look at Mayor Vaughn's determination to keep Amity's beaches open, asking what Jaws has to say about money, tourism, political denial and managing a crisis when acknowledging the problem might be bad for business.Then there's the men.Brody, Hooper and Quint offer three very different versions of 1970s masculinity, culminating in Robert Shaw's extraordinary USS Indianapolis monologue and the increasingly claustrophobic battle aboard the Orca.Over in Culture Corner, we cross the Atlantic to Britain in 1975, where inflation was running at extraordinary levels and everyday prices were soaring. What did the world outside the cinema look like when audiences first heard those two ominous notes?We also examine the uncomfortable legacy of Jaws. Did Hollywood's most famous shark help turn a vulnerable animal into a monster in the public imagination? We discuss shark hunting, changing attitudes towards the species and the later reflections of author Peter Benchley and Spielberg himself.And next week, we're off to Royston Vasey as we tackle The League of Gentlemen.You're our wife now.

Hello Gazers!The postbag is open and A Taste of Honey has got you talking.Listener John Bishop—not that one—gives the film a whopping 9/10, remembers a Welsh stage production that relocated the story to Cardiff after the Manchester accent proved something of a stumbling block, and somehow takes us on a detour to seeing Jaws at the IMAX.Then Johannes joins us from Norway with his thoughts on why A Taste of Honey still feels so remarkable: a British New Wave film centred on a young woman while giving unusual prominence for the period to a Black character and a gay man.From kitchen-sink realism, we make the entirely natural transition to sequins as we discuss Strictly Come Dancing's new three-presenter line-up—and a newspaper's rather enthusiastic attempt to turn the show's ratings into a "flop" narrative.We're also mourning the loss of Ride or Die, the Octavia Spencer and Hannah Waddingham series cancelled by Prime, before diving into our latest television recommendations.Dr Lee's been watching Furious, the new crime thriller starring Emmy Rossum as an FBI agent hunting a female serial killer, while we also get stuck into Last Seen.Elsewhere, apparently iPods are becoming desirable again, which is excellent news for anybody with a drawer full of obsolete Apple products and the patience to find the correct cable.We also have a moan about the increasingly peculiar experience of paying for streaming services and then being shown adverts anyway, discuss a new version of The War Game involving politicians, and disappear down a nostalgic Blue Peter rabbit hole involving Peter Duncan, terrifying stunts and that unforgettable green-and-white checked suit.Listener mail, television recommendations, streaming grumbles, nostalgia and several subjects that really shouldn't fit together in the same podcast.In other words, a fairly standard week at PG Manor.

Visit our YouTube playlist to find out more about "A Taste Of Honey" and the cultural landscape of Britain in 1961Interracial romance. Teenage pregnancy. Homosexuality. An unmarried mother. In 1961, A Taste of Honey put subjects British cinema usually kept firmly out of sight right at the centre of the screen.This week we're revisiting A Taste of Honey (1961), Tony Richardson's landmark British New Wave drama starring Rita Tushingham, Dora Bryan, Murray Melvin and Paul Danquah.Adapted from Shelagh Delaney's groundbreaking play, the film follows Jo, a Salford teenager living with her neglectful mother Helen. When Jo becomes pregnant by Jimmy, a Black sailor, she forms an unconventional household with Geoffrey, her gay friend—until Helen's return threatens the little family they've created.But to understand why A Taste of Honey caused such a stir, we're going back to the Britain that produced it.We look at the respectable world of post-war “consensual cinema”, the arrival of the Angry Young Men, Free Cinema and kitchen-sink realism, and the changing representation of working-class life that was also appearing on television in Coronation Street.Then there are the subjects the film dared to tackle.We're discussing interracial relationships and racism in 1960s Britain, the stigma surrounding unmarried pregnancy and “illegitimacy”, and Geoffrey's remarkably sympathetic portrayal at a time when sex between men was still criminalised in England and Wales. We also look at the Wolfenden Report and the political debate that would eventually lead to partial decriminalisation in 1967.We explore the film's depiction of Salford and working-class Northern England, its music and performances, its international controversy and censorship, and the major recognition it received at the BAFTA Awards.And, more than six decades later, we ask the question at the heart of The Problematic Gaze: how does A Taste of Honey hold up today?Is it an uncomfortable relic of 1961—or does Jo and Geoffrey's makeshift little family still feel surprisingly modern?Grab yourself a taste of honey and join us as we head back to the beginning of the Swinging Sixties… before Britain had actually started swinging.Click here to watch A Taste Of Honey on YouTube

Click here to check out our new YouTube playlists, this week it accompanies our last main episode on UK sitcom 'Bread' from 1986Click here to watch the documentary on Shelagh Delaney (writer of A Taste Of Honey from next weeks main show)Click here to watch 'A Taste Of Honey', the topic of next weeks main episodeThis week at PG Manor, we're recovering from a rather busy weekend. We've been entertaining Hungarian actress Sonya, seeing Ricky Gervais and Jack Whitehall, preparing for a mammoth upcoming recording session—and issuing an important correction after apparently relocating Aqua to Sweden. They're Danish-Norwegian. We apologise to Scandinavia.Following our trip back to the world of Bread, the Boswell family and 1980s Liverpool, Dr Lee has also been investigating the mysterious “cotton mill whisper” and whether workers really developed a special way of communicating above the deafening machinery.Then it's over to the Gazers.Listener mail takes us from biodegradable bowel-screening test paper in Australia to a sanitised version of Saturday Night Fever and a spider of frankly unacceptable proportions.There's also some actual news to discuss. We look at the BBC's tender process for the future of Doctor Who and what its emphasis on character-driven, distinctly British storytelling might tell us about the programme's next incarnation.Then we discover why the United Nations has backed a move away from distorted world maps that make Africa appear far smaller than it really is. The UN General Assembly has encouraged the use of equal-area projections when relative size matters, following an African-led campaign against the distortions associated with the Mercator projection.We also learn about purple poppies commemorating animals lost in war before encountering possibly the week's most horrifying story: a woman who says that while she was in a coma, she could hear the same song her family was playing to her over and over again for a month. She later described the experience as torture.Plus, we've started creating new YouTube companion playlists to take you even further into the films, television, music and culture we're discussing each week.And next week we're heading back to 1961 for A Taste of Honey, Tony Richardson's landmark British New Wave film starring Rita Tushingham and Dora Bryan.Expect pregnancy, class, race, sexuality, Salford—and presumably considerably less Bread.

Click here to watch the episode of Bread discussed in this show on YouTubeThis week we're heading to Liverpool to revisit Bread, Carla Lane's hugely popular BBC sitcom about the Boswell family. First broadcast in 1986, Bread became one of the defining British sitcoms of the decade, following formidable matriarch Nellie Boswell and her Catholic, working-class Liverpool family as they navigated love, money, unemployment and an impressively creative relationship with the DHSS.We're focusing on Series 1, Episode 6, first broadcast on 15 June 1986, and there's an extraordinary amount going on.Joey is dealing with his father's gambling debts—and some men with a suspicious interest in fur coats—while Adrian loses his job, Jack handles stolen goods and Billy discovers that his girlfriend Julie is pregnant. Their discussions about abortion, marriage and finding somewhere to live give us a glimpse of some very real pressures facing young couples in 1980s Britain.Meanwhile, Aveline gets her topless photographs published, Grandad struggles with depression and the Boswells continue their elaborate attempts to stay one step ahead of the benefits system.We look at the sitcom's portrayal of working-class Liverpool, Catholicism, unemployment, benefit fraud and petty crime, and ask whether the Boswells are affectionate comic creations or part of a much less comfortable tradition of stereotypes about people living on benefits.Has Bread aged surprisingly well—or does its politics look very different nearly 40 years later?Then it's off to Culture Corner, and this time we're going properly 1986.We're flicking through an original Smash Hits to discover the pop gossip, celebrity nonsense and surprisingly serious nuclear-war debate occupying British teenagers that year. We revisit the UK Top 10 singles from the week this episode aired and then take a dangerous trip into the 1986 Argos catalogue to see what Britain apparently considered the height of domestic sophistication.Come for the Boswells, stay for the 1980s home furnishings.On with the show, la!GAZER HOMEWORK: Next week we focus on the film 'A Taste Of Honey' from 1961. Click here to watch on YouTube

Welcome Gazers to this weeks Gazette! This week we're dealing with some of the social-media reaction to our Dam Busters episodes. We're also returning to The Dam Busters' extraordinary influence on Star Wars, including just how closely George Lucas's climactic Death Star attack echoes moments from the 1955 film. Once you start spotting the similarities, they're rather difficult to unsee. Click here to watch Star Wars Vs The Dam Busters on YoutubeListener Ruth then introduces us to the world of white poppies, the Peace Pledge Union and the UK Peace Museum, which leads us into the perennial British tradition of the "poppy wars" and the arguments over what different coloured poppies actually represent.Elsewhere, Dave encounters a director whose treatment of runners and PAs leaves rather a lot to be desired, and we somehow end up discussing the military drinking game known as the Dance of the Flaming Arseholes. We promise these two subjects seemed connected at the time.Then comes a genuinely important public-service announcement: if that bowel cancer screening kit drops through your letterbox, do it. We discuss why the NHS test matters, what it involves and why embarrassment is a considerably worse reason for avoiding potentially life-saving screening than you might think.We're also recommending the extraordinary Naudet brothers' 9/11 documentary, filmed alongside New York firefighters as the attacks unfolded. Click here to watch the 9/11 documentary on YouTubePlus: a wonderfully strange story involving the Ghostbusters theme, schoolgirls who apparently didn't receive quite the credit they deserved, British weather performing its traditional overnight transition from drought to deluge, questionable vocal warm-ups and all the usual nonsense from PG Manor.GAZER HOMEWORK: In our nest main episode we look at Bread, a UK sitcom from 1986. Click here to watch our chosen episode on YouTube

This week we're heading back to 1955 for bouncing bombs, stiff upper lips and one of the most famous pieces of music in British cinema as we revisit The Dam Busters.Based on the true story of Operation Chastise, the film follows engineer Barnes Wallis as he develops his extraordinary bouncing bomb and Wing Commander Guy Gibson as he leads 617 Squadron on the daring 1943 raid against Germany's Ruhr dams. But more than 70 years after the film was released, how much of The Dam Busters is history—and how much is British myth-making?We explore why the film became such a national institution, from its famous Dam Busters March and innovative special effects to its portrait of heroism, masculinity, class and that quintessentially British determination to face potentially catastrophic situations while displaying approximately three-and-a-half emotions.We also look beyond the legend to the reality of Operation Chastise: the aircrew who never returned, the civilians killed by the resulting floods, and the continuing historical debate over how strategically successful the raid actually was.And then there's the dog.We discuss the racial slur used as the name of Guy Gibson's black Labrador, how later television broadcasts and releases have attempted to deal with it, and the difficulties it presents when showing a much-loved 1950s film to modern audiences. We also look at the long-discussed Peter Jackson remake and the extraordinary influence The Dam Busters had on later filmmakers—including some very familiar moments in Star Wars.In Culture Corner, we're exploring Britain in 1955, a year in which Winston Churchill resigned, Anthony Eden became Prime Minister, ITV arrived to challenge the BBC, television advertising began, Dixon of Dock Green hit our screens, the first Guinness Book of Records appeared and Birdseye introduced Britain to the fish finger.We also revisit Ruth Ellis becoming the last woman executed in Britain, the Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend controversy, the suspiciously well-timed demise of Grace Archer, Cardiff becoming the capital of Wales, and some of the biggest films of the year.And next week we're making quite a leap: from bouncing bombs and Barnes Wallis to Bread (1986).Now that's what we call range.Next week we deep dive into Bread, a UK TV sitcom from 1986. Click here to watch our chosen episode on YouTube