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MovieMail's Review
Fine actors, Tim Roth and Jim Broadbent among them, bring these four challenging films about Thatcher-era education buckling under the strain to life. High quality TV drama, says Julian Upton.
Hard to believe now that these 1982 TV films by David Leland, which look at the buckling, Thatcher-era education system (and those abandoned by it), were a product of Central Television. By poaching BBC producer Margaret Matheson, the newly-appointed ITV franchise clearly had ‘quality’ high on its drama agenda.
Shame it wasn’t to last, as these four films (they’re too kinetic to be called ‘plays’) are as startling and challenging as anything from the rival channel’s Play for Today strand.
Made in Britain features an explosive performance from Tim Roth as an unruly teenage racist barking at the system; RHINO, in contrast, depicts the enforced truancy of a black girl (Deltha McLeod); Flying Into the Wind broaches, fascinatingly, the somewhat neglected topic of home education; and Birth of a Nation is an unflinching look at institutionalised violence at a comprehensive school.
As disturbing as they are (particularly in their jarring relevance to the cash-strapped Britain of 2011), these ‘tales out of school’ are not without humour, and the acting (Jim Broadbent, Robert Stephens, Graham Crowden) is sublime.
These four television films - Made in Britain, Rhino, Birth of a Nation and Flying Into the Wind - originally screened by Channel 4 in 1983, brought the emerging writing talent of former actor David Leland to national attention. He would subsequently win a BAFTA Award for his directorial debut Wish You Were Here and an Emmy Award for his contribution to Band of Brothers, and work on screenplays for Mona Lisa and Personal Services.
Featuring early roles for Tim Roth and Jim Broadbent, the plays form a scathing portrait of British society in the early 1980s, focusing in particular on the polarisation of attitudes towards the role and methods of education in an increasingly fragmented society. Without overtly offering solutions, Leland's plays depict - often with unnerving acuity and foresight - the experience of individuals within systems that have become inadequate in dealing with the fallout of social breakdown.
Of the four plays presented here, Made in Britain, directed by Alan Clarke (Scum), inevitably aroused the strongest controversy, with Tim Roth's astonishing portrayal of a nihilistic, racist, hate-filled teenage skinhead on a self-destructive campaign. The screenplay won Leland the Prix Italia in 1983.
Birth of a Nation (Dir: Mike Newell) - Featuring Jim Broadbent, the play dramatises the conflict between old, authoritarian teaching methods and the more relaxed approach of progressive educationalists.
Flying into the Wind (Dir: Edward Bennett) - Graham Crowden stars in a play depicting the battle between parents who want to home-educate their children and the local education authority.
R.H.I.N.O. (Really Here in Name Only) (Dir: Jane Howell) - The harrowing story of Angela, a disenfranchised young black girl living in 1980s London, and her encounters with a well-meaning but often ineffectual social system.
