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as usual, I like old TV better
I just finished rewatching Danger UXB, the 1979 BBC mini-series about a WWII military unit responsible for defusing unexploded bombs. I first watched it when it aired in the States on PBS (our government-supported TV channel) in 1981.1
It really is awfully good. It has generally excellent writing, with intelligence, subtlety, and some character development for many members of a large-ish cast; very good acting, especially from pre-Brideshead Anthony Andrews in the lead role as Lieutenant Brian Ash and Maurice Roëves as Sergeant James; and a good, natural-feeling, non-frantic pace, with lots of nice little moments as well as nail-bitingly tense scenes of bomb disposal.
The series' main problem is its few female characters; the writers had apparently never met an adult woman and had no idea how to write dialogue for one. Ash's love interest, Susan, is frankly unbearable in her tweeness and soppiness and generally adolescent behavior: in a moment of happiness, she actually talks to the birds in the trees. Need I say more? About the only enjoyable (or recognizably human) female character is Ash's Aunt Dodo, who at fifty-something was obviously considered too ancient to be a love interest, and therefore got to be a person instead.
Moving on to the subject of my perennial interest: there's no canonical gayness, unsurprisingly for 1979, but a good deal of m/m slashiness. There's manly devotion and vibes galore between Ash and Sgt. James, and James pings my gaydar hard; I choose to ignore the single line of dialogue that possibly implies his heterosexuality. (Slander, I tell you. Slander.) Ash's friend Ivor Rodgers is camp as the proverbial row of tents, and he and Ash also have some subtext, so those so inclined can dismiss Rodgers's womanizing (which we hear a lot about but never see) as pure cover-up.
Tragically, there is no fandom for this show and virtually no fic--I found one on LJ, and none on the Pit. You must all, therefore, watch or rewatch Danger UXB immediately and write stories in which Ash ditches the appalling Susan and elopes with Sergeant James.
***
1I was 11. I think I must have watched pretty much all of UXB, because I remembered major plot points from a lot of episodes. I had weird taste for a kid.
Re-watching UXB has made me think about how much PBS meant to me, and influenced me, when I was young. I must have been about 10 when a PBS station began broadcasting to my extremely rural area. It was the station we got the best reception of, so my family watched quite a bit of it. The late 1970s and early 1980s were a particularly bleak wasteland for American TV, so the British shows I saw on PBS (Monty Python, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Brideshead Revisited) seemed especially brilliant in comparison. And incidentally, that's a set of programs that couldn't be more likely to produce a queer Anglophile if they were deliberately designed to do so. Thank you, PBS!
It really is awfully good. It has generally excellent writing, with intelligence, subtlety, and some character development for many members of a large-ish cast; very good acting, especially from pre-Brideshead Anthony Andrews in the lead role as Lieutenant Brian Ash and Maurice Roëves as Sergeant James; and a good, natural-feeling, non-frantic pace, with lots of nice little moments as well as nail-bitingly tense scenes of bomb disposal.
The series' main problem is its few female characters; the writers had apparently never met an adult woman and had no idea how to write dialogue for one. Ash's love interest, Susan, is frankly unbearable in her tweeness and soppiness and generally adolescent behavior: in a moment of happiness, she actually talks to the birds in the trees. Need I say more? About the only enjoyable (or recognizably human) female character is Ash's Aunt Dodo, who at fifty-something was obviously considered too ancient to be a love interest, and therefore got to be a person instead.
Moving on to the subject of my perennial interest: there's no canonical gayness, unsurprisingly for 1979, but a good deal of m/m slashiness. There's manly devotion and vibes galore between Ash and Sgt. James, and James pings my gaydar hard; I choose to ignore the single line of dialogue that possibly implies his heterosexuality. (Slander, I tell you. Slander.) Ash's friend Ivor Rodgers is camp as the proverbial row of tents, and he and Ash also have some subtext, so those so inclined can dismiss Rodgers's womanizing (which we hear a lot about but never see) as pure cover-up.
Tragically, there is no fandom for this show and virtually no fic--I found one on LJ, and none on the Pit. You must all, therefore, watch or rewatch Danger UXB immediately and write stories in which Ash ditches the appalling Susan and elopes with Sergeant James.
1I was 11. I think I must have watched pretty much all of UXB, because I remembered major plot points from a lot of episodes. I had weird taste for a kid.
Re-watching UXB has made me think about how much PBS meant to me, and influenced me, when I was young. I must have been about 10 when a PBS station began broadcasting to my extremely rural area. It was the station we got the best reception of, so my family watched quite a bit of it. The late 1970s and early 1980s were a particularly bleak wasteland for American TV, so the British shows I saw on PBS (Monty Python, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Brideshead Revisited) seemed especially brilliant in comparison. And incidentally, that's a set of programs that couldn't be more likely to produce a queer Anglophile if they were deliberately designed to do so. Thank you, PBS!
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Another of my most edge-of-my-seat moments (especially as I didn't remember how this one turned out) was in the episode with the naval mine, where the Australian officer drops the pin and is frantically scrabbling for it while his 17 seconds tick away.
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"Another of my most edge-of-my-seat moments (especially as I didn't remember how this one turned out) was in the episode with the naval mine, where the Australian officer drops the pin and is frantically scrabbling for it while his 17 seconds tick away."
Argh. And the one with the small town the Germans carpeted with "butterfly" bombs, and the little kid who took one home as a toy...