#personal principle‚ only to fold under the pressure of his own professional ambition once he realises making a stand might cost him a good | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mariocki · 2 months

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Play for Today: One Bummer News Day (BBC, 1978)

"Ah, good morning to you. Peter Postgate of the Gazette, anything for us? No factory fires? No house fires? Well, what about your district agents? Not even a moggy up a tree? Wow, all right for some, isn't it. Yeah, and you."

#one bummer news day #play for today #1978 #bbc #single play #classic tv #michael darlow #andy mcsmith #simon rouse #kenneth colley #madelaine newton #alan tilvern #gordon gostelow #william maxwell #gordon hammersley #lizzie mckenzie #diana sowman #sheila grant #matthew kelly #tom cotcher #phil mccall #a short but tightly written satirical piece on regional journalism‚ the only tv credit of McSmith (later a successful political journalist)#sort of an ensemble piece but Rouse's firebrand journo is undoubtedly the centre piece: the heart of the plot is in the final ten minutes #as his piece on urban poverty gets buried and he rounds angrily on the editorial staff in a seeming burst of journalistic integrity and #personal principle‚ only to fold under the pressure of his own professional ambition once he realises making a stand might cost him a good #story that's coming up. it's a hawkish‚ sharp script underneath all the jokes about non stories and the scrabbling for material on a slow #news day: what starts as a gentle jibing at the inherent ridiculousness of a room full of people attempting to spin relevant news out of #non starter copy ends with the unmistakable whiff of moral bankruptcy and a damning sense that there really is no such thing as a free #press‚ and even if there were‚ no certainty that there's any one to go to bat for it #a young Rouse is very good as the wheeling grandiose wouldbe star reporter but it's old hand Colley that steers this play through

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