First watched : 6 January 1975
After The Long Chase , I'd say this was my favourite children's serial of the seventies.
It was based on a trilogy of books by Peter Dickinson about a mysterious catastrophe hitting Britain whereby the populace suddenly turn against all the trappings of modern technology and destroy them where they can reverting to a superstitious pre-industrial society.
This scary new world is viewed through the eyes of a very plain Jane teenager Nicky ( Vicky Williams ) , a picture of lank-haired pre-punk dreariness, who becomes separated from her parents early on and has to navigate the dangerous new landscape with the aid of a family of Sikhs , a boyfriend Jonathan ( Keith Ashton ) and a self-sufficient couple.
The serial was screened in ten parts and marketed as being for older children as it had to be given the amount of violence and threat in it . At one point Nicky is sentenced to death . The chief villain Davy Gordon ( played by reliable character actor David Garfield ) is particularly terrifying as a fanatical witchfinder. It was expensive to make as it was all filmed on location and makes liberal use of Paddy Kingsland 's synthesiser. I think Squeeze's Slap And Tickle owes something to the memorable theme tune.
The story confronts many troubling issues of the time. The Sikhs are clearly in there to make a point about racial integration and the whole series is suffused with environmentalist worries and then concern about taking eco-fascism too far. There's also a side helping of early seventies Arthurian mysticism before its entombment , by the twin-pronged attack of Johnny R and Maggie T, for more than a decade. Some of its themes were resurrected ten years later in the adult thriller Edge of Darkness ; gnarly actor Jack Watson appeared in both series.
Blogger Robin Carmody has written a good eulogy for the series here . I don't think The Changes quite made it as a masterpiece. The shoehorning of the three books into one series with Nicky as the linking character ( she only appears in one book ) doesn't disguise that there are three distinct climaxes, after the first two of which the story has to reboot almost from scratch, and unfortunately the last one is the dullest. There's a definite sag after Nicky and Jonathan escape from Gordon in episode 7 with Tom Chadbon's benign hippy less a character than a mouthpiece for Dickinson's liberal middle way. At the end there's an empty feeling of irresolution; Nicky 's inarticulate, Abraham-like intercession for the world as it was before succeeds in securing its restoration but where do you go from there ? Well we know the answer now ; halfway through the series' run a certain woman won the leadership of her party and would provide ample footage of industrial dereliction and urban blight if they ever fancied remaking the series.
Still Robin's right about one thing. We won't see its like again. The series was repeated in 1976 and shown once on UK Gold. It was finally released on DVD last year hence its disappearance from YouTube.
Vicky Williams is still a jobbing actress but hasn't had a starring part since.
No comments:
Post a Comment