Behind the scenes of the director’s career
Think of Ken Loach, and for those of us who have grown up watching his films, a particular genre or style immediately springs to mind. But how can we define or describe it in simple terms? Well, his movies are usually gritty tales featuring working class characters, and there tends to be a sprinkling of humour thrown in for good measure. But perhaps, if we only had one word to sum them up, it would be ‘real.’ Loach isn’t a director who embarks on flights of fancy; instead, his works are very much down-to-earth, and involve people you might bump into while out doing your shopping – they might even be a neighbour or a relative. “You want to make a film because you want to show particular things, show particular characters and tell a particular story, describe a particular time or struggle,” explains the 80-yearold. For the past 50 years, he has been at forefront of British TV and film, and yet things might have worked out very differently if he’d followed up the law degree he gained at Oxford University by becoming a solicitor or barrister – although you imagine that he wouldn’t be sitting in swanky chambers somewhere, but instead fighting on behalf of the little man, the people whose voices would otherwise go unheard and be swallowed up by the system. After leaving university, he joined the BBC. For its Wednesday Play anthology series he directed Up the Junction and its groundbreaking drama about homelessness, Cathy Come Home – which still packs a punch today. A year later, in 1967, Loach began directing movies. Poor Cow was his first, but it’s Kes, released in 1969, that will perhaps always be regarded as his best – or at least most popular – project. Shot on location in South Yorkshire, its depiction of a boy with a hopeless future and his devotion to the kestrel he raises and trains, continues to speak to new generations of filmlovers, and probably always will. His films in the 1970s and 1980s were less successful, but he returned to form in the 1990s with the likes of Riff-Raff, Land and Freedom, Carla’s Song and My Name Is Joe. In The Life and Films of Ken Loach (Saturday, BBC2, 9.10pm), director Louise Osmond charts Loach’s career, and speaks to friends, admirers and colleagues, including Cillian Murphy, Gabriel Byrne, Alan Parker, Melvyn Bragg and Ricky Tomlinson.