The Newcomers – a portrait of Bristol in 1964
» OUR other excuse for interviewing ACH Smith this week is a screening next month of all six episodes of The Newcomers, a ground-breaking documentary series first shown on the new BBC2 channel in 1964.
The series – six half-hour episodes – centres on Alison and Anthony Smith, a young married couple living in a small flat at the top of one of the Georgian houses in The Paragon in Clifton.
At that stage Smith was a struggling freelance writer, while Alison was pregnant with what turned out to be twins.
“We knew that about two months before,” says Smith, “but then she had to be told on camera. Fortunately she had done a drama degree, and could convincingly go ‘Oh my goodness!’”
The series was the result of Smith meeting John Boorman, who would later become a major Hollywood director of such films as Point Blank, Hell in the Pacific, Deliverance, Excalibur, The Emerald Forest and many more. At this time, though, he was a rising star of the BBC as a documentary maker.
“He got in touch,” says Smith, “and said ‘I want to make a documentary about Bristol and I want you to script it’.
“So I started writing it with Boorman and we got it focussed in on six different areas of city life to turn it into a series of six half-hour parts. And then suddenly Alison was pregnant, and she and I were having twins…
“We were living in our little flat in the Paragon, and I was more than once woken up by cameramen coming into the bedroom to set up the lighting.
“You just got used to it after a while.
“Boorman knew the terrain and he knew the people but he just let us start doing something and see what would happen.
“Doing a film with John Boorman you found that a screenplay or script was simply an excuse to get a camera crew together, go to a location.
“I don’t think it was really scripted at all.”
The result was an extraordinary portrait of a young couple, and of Bristol, at the time, all accompanied by one of those very-much-of-its-time soundtracks of whimsical BBC jazz.
We meet the Smiths, learn of their hopes, fears and ambitions, and we meet a lot of their friends, too, notably Tom Stoppard, and the painter and photographer Derek Balmer.
To the present-day viewer, there are a number of striking things about it. First, how the Smiths and all their friends seem to have had at least a hint of elocution lessons. Everyone talks a bit posher than they would nowadays. Second, how the whole thing reeks of cigarette smoke (as one episode tells us, Bristol was producing 60 million cigarettes a day.)
While the focus is on this cultured young couple, it’s also a fascinating portrait of the wider city at the time.
We visit an evangelical church service in St Pauls, go twisting the night away at the Glen. We see dockers lining up, hoping to get a day’s work, and meet a couple of vagrant beatniks.
We also accompany the Smiths as they go in search of a house, because it’s clear that the small flat not really going to work out, especially if you have to climb up and down 80 stairs with babies and associated impedimenta.
They would love to remain in Clifton, but the house prices! An estate agent pours cold water on their dreams by explaining that even a small terrace in Clifton will cost something like £6,000 (!), while a friend says that he investigated the house he bought by breaking in one night “and found the place was full of rats and tramps”.
Another tells Alison that, “In my house, darling, even the death watch beetles have to wear parachutes.”
Another still explains how Clifton got to be the way it is today: “My good lady and I bought this place for £250. We just moved in and slept on a mattress, just slowly doing the place up, one room at a time.”
» All six episodes of The Newcomers are being screened at the Arnolfini, Bristol on Saturday, April 9, 2pm to 6.05pm. For details and booking, see tinyurl.com/2p9d5rky
The same morning also sees a guided walk through some of the series locations. Details and booking at bristolideas.co.uk/ attend/newcomers/