Mr Pastry Time

Diana Dors my fave woman and worked with her when I was a kid in 1977 on Just William. A great lady and mother to all the children in it. Although I have few episodes it would be nice to see a DVD of the series out one day.

penfold

Oh don't get me wrong, it's not power - the commissioning editors wield that - but he has gained respect, which means that any ideas he has may well get a hearing. The same applied to Paul Merton with his Silent Comedy series a couple of years back....people had been trying for years to get something like that on the BBC, but it took someone of Merton's standing plus the advent of BBC4 to get it green lit....not that even he could get a fifth programme made.... on Arbuckle ....

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

charliekane

See the various posts over the past few days, but as one small example there was the claim that the chief of Croydon poloce allowed filming of Konga on the High Street only when he had been offered a colour television set - this was 1960, at least 7 years before colour tv came to Britain.

CaptainWaggett

I've looked through the various posts and some people seem to have misunderstood what Sweet said but I haven't seen any mistakes exposed - certainly he didn't say that the film industry closed down in 1939 and was only revived with Henry V. As for the colour tv, we all know when colour broadcasting started but maybe the police officer didn't? Maybe he was assured that his tv would pick up colour signals?

julian_craster

I welcome Matthew Sweet's film documentaries and for raising the profile of neglected areas of British film, but this does not mean that I think he should be given a 'free reign' by the BBC as the British film 'authority' to be creative with the facts !

He does need firm editorial control, and an older, wiser colleague to vet his scripts for inaccuracies......

CaptainWaggett

Perhaps the same older, wiser editors who ensured that the Encyclopaedia of British Film is completely free of errors...? Everyone makes mistakes but I've yet to see any evidence that Sweet is any worse than anyone else on that score.

julian_craster

<< Everyone makes mistakes....>>

Very true, but they are likely to be different ones, so the overall result will be improved.....

narabdela

Too true! I noticed him saying that the train in "The Last Journey" was travelling to MANchester That's just plain sloppy!

(As an aside though, it was great to see him using the Glasgow Museum of Transport as the setting for the program. That Regal Cinema actually functions for the showing of Glasgow related documentaries)

julian_craster

There is some good feedback on the Matthew Sweet documentary at the BBC4 website:
BBC - BBC Four - Have Your Say

penfold

There's one there from a Bayswater chap which seems vaguely familiar....

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

Ray Timms

Hi There this is my first time. I feel like a virgin. I found this site by looking for British B movie classics, the badder they are the more I love them. The recent three nights on Channel 9 showing clips and whole movies was just great and fuelled my interest. :
I look forward to learning a lot more about British films on this site. In particular the quickies and the cheapies. Anyone got any advice on real crappy movies I need to get?
May the false be with you

orpheum

if you say what decade and what genre you are interested in then i make some suggestions.

Welcome To Highbury The Home Of Football

DB7

I've no idea why you'd want to sit through them unless you're a cinema masochist but The Body Stealers and The Terrornaults are really dire with unfathomable plots and spectacularly shoddy sfx.

Joe Fraguela

Having returned from my Holidays on Saturday I was really pleased to see that BBC4 had begun their british b-film season and very glad that I returned that day or I would have missed Matthew Sweet's documentary.

All in all I was very pleased with his documentary and it was enjoyable to see clips of some b-films even I'd never heard of. I also enjoyed seeing Patricia Laffan and discussing her memories of The Devil Girl from Mars from 1954.

The only real disappointment for me was that they could not have extended the run of british b films shown. Additionally, they could have lengthened the documenatry to say 5 or 6 episodes focusing on the different eras. As there are so many b-films from the 1930's to the 1970's. I guess beggars can't be choosers.

I just hope that now that BBC4 have dipped their toes into the waters so to speak they will regularly screen some rarely seen and much missed british b-films

earlb

So do I but I can't find one anywhere. Do they exist?

I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.