#Our Friends in the North

[ghost-bison]

a christopher eccleston appreciation post

i will never say this enough because i don't know enough words, nor do i think such words exist, that could even begin to summarize how much i love christopher eccleston, but... i love christopher eccleston. and, more importantly, i have a deep-rooted respect for that man.

i started doctor who as, let's be honest, a sci-fi hater, forcing myself because i was obsessed with david tennant, and i was kind of dreading the first series because of this. but i was dead wrong.

he broadened my mind, gave me so many laughs, and so many cries, and i'm not the first to say that whenever eccleston is on the screen you just can't take your eyes off him, even when he's not supposed to be the main focus of the scene.

the way he can switch from silly goose to traumatized soldier in a matter of seconds will never cease to amaze me. or how he can play with both like he's on a swing by balancing it out with sarcasm?

i think whoever doesn't give him the title role in their shows/films is either an idiot, or they know the main character just isn't always the best.

i think it's downright idiotic and shameful that he gets rejected from ever playing some shakespeare just because of his northern accent (they're just posh elitist pos). now that he's older, and that times are evolving (i mean, i hope the world of theater is vibing with this evolution, but i'm not delusional), i hope we get to see him portray a character like leontes in winter's tale cause i know he'd be absolutely perfect for the role, and who better than shakespeare (this character especially, with his nuances and highs and lows and breakdowns and breakthroughs) to match acting like his?

saw an article where eccleston talked about how the moment he really knew he wanted to be an actor was when he had to wear mascara for a play, and had enjoyed it. i think he talks about it in his autobiography too (you should read it, btw, it's frankly affordable, and he happens to be a marvelous writer as well).

eccleston knows he is mistakenly type-cast, because of his background, as macho men and tough blokes in general. he's aware that it's kind of a big part of his culture. again, he talks about it i think in the very first chapter, how for instance he used to dress up as james bond, the pinnacle of "masculinity", which i think was a disguise in the metaphorical sense of the term, to mask his delicacy and femininity (or at least, that's my interpretation of it).

in his biography, eccleston talks about the differences between him and his dad, ronnie: he was surprised, as a child, whenever his father's affection manifested as a kiss or a hug, cause that usually wasn't his father's way of doing things. he compares it to how he, in contrast, has the habit of kissing his own son, albert, and telling him he loves him.

you can find it as well in how he talks about his anorexia, his body dysmorphia and, i think we can call it that, gender dysphoria. he's from a time when those concepts didn't even exist, they weren't a thing to the public eye. my father and my step-father, both feminine men in their own way, and both around eccleston's age, both told me about the struggle that it represented, not being the stereotype of the macho tough guy, and being surrounded by boys who didn't struggle with that issue. it made my dad a junkie, my stepdad a depressive artist, and, apparently, it made eccleston an anorexic actor.

i think it takes a lot of courage for people that age (the boomer generation as we call them), especially men, from whom we expect toxic masculinity, masculinity pushed to an extreme, to be able to openly call it out and dissect it into what it is: a ridiculous standard. but to be a PUBLIC FIGURE, in his 60s, and still find the strength to express it? damn. takes guts, i think.

most of us on this website, we're babies. most of us are at most in their thirties. the millenials and the gen z, and now the gen alpha, we take that for granted. or get offended and scandalized that being able to express oneself isn't yet a basic standard.

but then, i talk to my mum, and i realize that she had to stray from her catholic, sexist education, she had to make up her own mind about things in order for me to be born a free spirit. and that's just considering my mum's a cishet.

christopher eccleston expressed in other words that he doesn't fully consider himself to be cisgendered. i have mad respect for the way he talks about it, and for even talking about it at all.

then, there's his honesty. the more interviews i watch, the more it impresses me. he knows honesty goes hand in hand with dignity. i'm sorry but i'm tired of people who are nice all the time. you never know when they're being honest, and maybe some of them are, who knows. but i'm not stupid enough to think that so many people are just pure sunshine all the time (respect for tennant for lashing out publically about transphobia, i think he passed the test).

eccleston? he knows how to be both brutally honest and yet respectful at the same time. no ukulele apology from this man and holy fuck, it feels good!

i've seen him call russel t davies out for his lack of professionalism on the set of doctor who, and then list him amongst the great writers he's worked with. which makes me want to believe eccleston's side, because, if you're always either too polite, or too full of spite about eveything, who's to say you're not the problem? i've got way less trouble believing you if you can stay unbiased about a person you're having beef with than if suddenly everything said person does turns into shit just cause you don't like them. that's just maturity and wisdom.

one last thing i love about eccleston is that he is interested in other people's lives. there's a critic by marcus berkmann in his book that perfectly expresses my point: "you know what to expect from the autobiographies of most actors, i think: anecdotes, charm, more than mild self-satisfaction and faux-modesty by the bucketload. but christopher eccleston is not most actors".

and that's it. watch him in interviews and at convention panels, where he lets his younger co-stars speak before himself, and seizes the occasion when journalists ask him questions that are meant to make him talk about himself to praise his writers and other actors instead.

read his autobiography, which is both a love letter to his dad and a big let's-be-honest about the struggles of growing up poor and his personal struggles, because he thinks raising awareness is just as important as protecting himself.

look at his instagram posts where he unabashedly disses the monarchy and stays true and loyal to his background even after getting a taste of money. and his other posts where he shares his love for acorns and spending time with his kids.

i've seen him nearly break down in shame and regret on television for having stolen a kid's crisps in primary school. and not trying to find lame excuses for his behaviour. no ukulele apology, just facts, just christopher eccleston showing us what masculinity in its purest, most beautiful form should be about

[zyxthstuff]

Christopher Eccleston in Our Friends in the North

[beautywithin16]

Christopher Eccleston 

Our Friends in the North: 1964

[not-sure-who-i-am-rn]

Rip George Eliot, you would have loved Our Friends in the North

[mervynbunter]

And that speaks to the incredibly fortunate timing enjoyed by Our Friends in the North, a production that started life as a stage play in 1982 then went through various attempts at TV adaptation before finally reaching the screen at exactly the right moment for a bittersweet retrospective on the Labour movement in Britain. When people wanted the nostalgia because the real thing was about to happen.

It’s now 28 years since that original broadcast, which is — gallingly — nearly as long an interval as the one covered by the show itself, which dramatises 31 years in its characters’ lives: idealistic Nicky (Christopher Ecclestone), pragmatic Mary (Gina McKee), ambitious Tosker (Mark Strong) and damaged Geordie (Daniel Craig). It’s Nicky and his father Felix (Peter Vaughan) who act out the core of the political dispute.

Felix is the old Labour movement, a Jarrow marcher who’s never recovered from the sense of being betrayed by the Labour party. Nicky is the fractious next generation, fixing his utopianism to different models which all fail him: first he commits to politics but his hopes end up strangled by corruption, then he joins a hilariously posh and ineffectual anarchist cell, then he comes back to mainstream Labour as a kind of this-is-who-Jeremy-Corbyn-wishes-he-was parliamentary candidate (he loses as a result of a Conservative smear campaign, which I probably found more outrageous on first watch, before I’d experienced the real Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the opposition).

So the brittle father-son relationship is an allegory for the sundering of labour politics from politics-politics. But it’s also a human relationship, defined in small moments of failure. I blinked back a tear in episode one when Felix — desperate for his son to go back to university rather than take a lobbying job — tries to push some cash on Nicky, even though the two have been fighting. Nicky can’t accept it, because he’s committed to changing the world through politics, so the two end up feeling rejected and misunderstood by each other thanks to a poorly articulated act of love and generosity: it’s a quiet scene that tells the story of a lifetime of grievances.

Then I really did cry in the final episode, set in 1995, when Felix has advanced dementia: Nicky tries to berate his father into remembering Jarrow, but it’s much too late. Felix can’t even feed himself. The connection Nicky longs for (but incessantly sabotages) is missed again, and he ends up futilely angry with an incapable old man. My daughter (17, so three years older than I was at first broadcast) watched some of the series with me and declared it “sad”, which it is: it’s a series about the fact that aging is a succession of losses. Lost loves, lost ideals, lost hopes.

Our Blimps in the North

[sirbogarde]

finished Our Friends in the North. i guess they went for statistical realism by not having all 4 of them end up super happy. but like bruh not really a smiles and sunshine finale! It was, much like the north of england, very depressing.

[zyxthstuff]

Christopher Eccleston in Our Friends in the North

[beautywithin16]

Christopher Eccleston

Our Friends in the North: 1966

[inky125]

Clover deserves uppies!

[craigified]

‼️

It has come to my attention from my long-haired Benoit Blanc post that some of you have been missing out on some stuff & I must rectify this immediately

Dream House (2011)

Various public appearances in 2023 and 2024 (Sept, Nov 23’ and Jan, Mar 24’).

Casino Royale screen test (2005?)

The Invasion (2007)

And probably more; this is just off the top of my head at 2am sooo yk probably missing stuff.

[faaun]

what draws you back to your country what draws you back to your land when i was a kid i told myself if i ever left iran i'd never go back 2 years into living in the UK i started looking at news on iran again 10 years in and i visited it for the first time again and today i heard an iranian mother talk in farsi to her child on the train to london the way my mother used to and i wanted to cry i wanted to ask her whether they're still cutting the mountaintops whether the lakes are still drying today i showed the person i was with pictures of waterfalls and palaces and forests and snow-white north something odd pulls me back with increasing force i can't ignore it ever again

[oifaaa]

Had my first ever cup of coffee yesterday and ngl that shit made me so damn sleepy what do you mean people use that to wake themselves up all I wanted to do was take a nap in the middle of that cafe

[ahmedaldaniss]

[kavehater]

I support girls but NAH THIS IS REACHING “if you look carefully LIKE REALLY CAREFULLY 🤓☝️”

[talesofsorrowandofruin]

PERIOD DRAMA APPRECIATION WEEK 2024

Day 2: Favourite Character(s):

Yi Bang-won, My Country: The New Age

Violet Crawley, Downton Abbey

Thomas Barrow, Downton Abbey

Esther Summerson, Bleak House

Molly Gibson, Wives and Daughters

Margaret Hale and John Thornton, North and South

Ulanara Ruyi, Legend of Ruyi

John Harmon and Bella Wilfer, Our Mutual Friend

[zyxthstuff]