Contains Three Clear Sundays, Up the Junction, The End of Arthur's Marriage, Cathy Come Home, In Two Minds, The Big Flame, The Rank and File, Days of Hope and The Price of Coal.
This huge box set doesn't span Ken Loach's entire BBC output, but it's nonetheless an essential collection spanning bona fide classics and rarities barely seen since their original broadcast, collectively showing Loach's singular style developing over a dozen years.
The oldest play is Three Clear Sundays (1965), a moving study of a man condemned to death whose writer, James O'Connor, had been in a similar situation prior to a last-minute reprieve. Acclaimed at the time, it was nonetheless eclipsed by Up the Junction (1965) and Cathy Come Home (1966), two of the most memorable examples of how high-profile television plays once helped shape popular debate - in this case attitudes towards abortion (then wholly illegal) and homelessness.
One of the most-requested DVD releases ever, Days of Hope (1975) was Loach's most ambitious television project, a four-part series (his first period drama) tracing the lives of the members of a working-class family from the end of World War I to the General Strike eight years later. The sequences in early 1920s Ireland, highly controversial at the time, anticipate The Wind That Shakes The Barley thirty years later. It was written by Jim Allen, who a few years earlier had scripted The Big Flame (1969) and The Rank and File (1971), fictionalised dramas about industrial disputes at the Liverpool docks and the Pilkington glassworks. Mary Whitehouse was one of many outraged critics of the former, describing it as 'a communist blueprint'.
A blueprint of a different kind comes with In Two Minds (1967), a harrowing David Mercer-scripted and R.D. Laing-inspired study of schizophrenia that Loach would revisit as his second feature Family Life (1971). The Price of Coal (1977) reunited Loach with Barry Hines (Kes) for this two-part drama set in a Yorkshire mining village: the first part overtly comic, the second decidedly tragic. All the above are recognisable as Ken Loach productions from a synopsis alone, but an exception is The End of Arthur's Marriage (1965), a Christopher Logue-scripted musical (!) scored by Stanley Myers. It's fascinating to watch, though it's safe to say that Loach didn't miss his true vocation.
Ken Loach is one of Britain’s most respected film directors with a career spanning over 40 years. From his pioneering days with the BBC, scripting and directing Cathy Come Home in 1966, to the Palme d’Or winning The Wind That Shakes the Barley, Loach has stayed to his filmmaking style and socially conscious subject matter.
Contains: Three Clear Sundays (1965), Up the Junction (1965), The End of Arthur's Marriage (1965), Cathy Come Home (1966), In Two Minds (1967), The Big Flame (1969), The Rank and File (1971), Days of Hope (1975), The Price of Coal (1977).
'The Big Flame' (1967) and 'Rank and File' (1971) are trademark Loach dramas, detailing with sympathy the plight of workers caught up in industrial disputes at the Liverpool docks and the Pilkington glassworks, respectively. 'Three Clear Sundays' (1965) tells the story of Danny (Tony Selby), a young man facing up to the death penalty after an attempt to help reduce the sentence of two other prison inmates goes badly wrong. 'Days of Hope' (1975) is an epic four-part series starring Paul Copley, Pamela Brighton and Nikolas Simmonds as members of a working class family whose fortunes are depicted from the end of WWI to the what they perceive as their betrayal in the General Strike of 1926. 'The End of Arthur's Marriage' (1965) offers something of a departure from Loach's conventional films, an adaptation of a musical scripted by Christopher Logue. 'In Two Minds' (1967) stars Anna Cropper and examines the plight of those suffering from schizophrenia. 'Up the Junction' (1965) raised the issue of abortion, at the time illegal, and played a major role in shaping public debate on the issue. Its influence in this regard was possibly only surpassed by Loach's most famous TV drama 'Cathy Come Home' (1966), which follows the struggles of young bride Cathy (Carol White) as she struggles to keep a roof over herself and her children in housing system that seems constantly to be working against her. 'The Price of Coal' is a two part drama set in a Yorkshire mining village which contrasts the humour of the working men (many played by actual comedians including Duggie Brown) with the dangerous conditions in which they are forced to earn a living.
Anybody who looks at a box set of Ken Loach films must already be identified as a left leaning individual. And as such I am clearly identified.
I am now in my 60's and have the courage to dentify my communist upbringing and trotskyist leanings that left me confused and bewildered.
I am now a home owner with 4 children and 4 grandchildren and look upon the recent riots with bewilderment.
But I remember days of hope. In writing this review I have just ordered it and not seen yet. I doubt I will look at it for some time. I will need to put myself into a zone. One that takes me back. After all it is over 30 years ago. And in all that time there was no video or dvd release, or re-run on any bbc channel. No mention. Silence.
I came across a web site that asked for petitions to be raised to the BFI to re-issue, but no response.
And now it is contained in the middle of a ken loach box set! I would have paid the asking price just for days of hope, and now consider all the rest to be a bonus.
I also note that one of the plays is by David Mercer, another forgotten hero.
I recently bought high wind in Jamaica and sat with my grandchildren and watched. I was transfixed and taken back, but they grew bored and went away. I don't know why, but all my pleadings went nowhere. Is this the fate of grandparents?
How am I going to get them and sit and watch days of hope?
Instead of promoting cathy come home and up the junction which are good, but we have seen on re-runs. Promote days of hope, in my memory probably the greatest television set of films ever made. that is my impression after 30 odd years. I still see the image of the man tied to the stake being shot at by the enemy. Tied to the stake by his own people. Damned by all at the time, but since proven.
I watched the wire over the last few years, and sadly that is the nearest we have got to good television since. So little. So few.
I can't say come the revolution any more, because I don't believe any more. But if I am asked what my politics is, I say proudly I am a communist I truly believe. I just don't believe in the politicians < less
