Free The Buggers

As I’ve already mentioned, this week sees the 50th anniversary of the publication of the Wolfenden Report. Doug Ireland, over at his DIRELAND blog, has a good summary of how life was for British homosexuals 50 years ago. He mentions the BBC’s "Hidden Lives" themed programming which has been running this week on BBC Four. That has been extremely good. A whole series of dramas and documentaries, some new, but many old ones getting a well-deserved airing again (TV biographies of Joe Orton, Frankie Howard, Leigh Bowery and Joe Meek, for example – all first-class).

 

I had never seen the Face-to-Face interview of Gilbert Harding conducted by John Freeman before (it was first aired in 1960), and I must say it was a revelation. Freeman was clearly trying to get Harding say that he was homosexual, and it made for riveting, but very uncomfortable television. More on Harding himself, and that interview can be found here. It’s well worth reading. 

 

The centrepiece of the week was Julian Mitchell’s dramatisation of the people involved with, or affected by, the Wolfenden Report itself. Consenting Adults, was an excellent piece of work, beautifully played (in particular by Charles Dance as Sir John Wolfenden, Sean Biggerstaff as his (gay) son Jeremy, and Mark Gatiss as a nasty policeman), and beautifully set-dressed. The period was caught exactly. I see that someone who knew both John Wolfenden and his son Jeremy has commented on how well the actors and the drama caught the essence of the real people.

 

That comment was made on the BBC’s "Have Your Say" page devoted to the Hidden Lives week. The majority of the comments are deservedly complimentary, but I see that there’s the inevitable few denouncing the BBC for daring to devote air time to the subject. It’s very curious, and indeed very revealing in a Freudian sort of way, how every single one of these comments deplores the BBC for "shoving it down our throats". Oo-er, missus…