TALKING PICTURES A SMALL FAMILY BUSINESS
IT’S one of the most remarkable and heart-warming success stories in the history of modern television. Talking Pictures TV, a family-owned, father and daughter-run station with only three members of staff, launched on Freeview less than three years ago but it already has over two million viewers. Its unashamedly nostalgic diet of mainly old black-andwhite films, documentary shorts and TV series of yesteryear has proved a huge hit with the public and – we are informed – the Queen.
If you want variety, then Channel 81 Freeview is the place to get it these days. Last Sunday’s programme schedule included the rarely seen forgotten 1949 classic The Rocking Horse Winner starring John Mills; Laurel and Hardy in Saps At Sea (1940); an episode of The Human Jungle (1965) with Herbert Lom as psychologist Dr Roger Corder; and Peter Sellers in Only Two Can Play (1962).
Alas not everyone is happy about the great service to film and vintage TV buffs that the channel is providing. Media regulator Ofcom has summoned Talking Pictures TV managing director Sarah CroninStanley and her father Noel to a meeting to discuss “compliance issues” after the channel was found in breach of rules regarding the broadcasting of “offensive language”.
THIS followed a complaint by just one member of the public about a derogatory word used by a character in the series A Family At War, which was made almost 50 years ago and which Talking Pictures TV is currently reshowing. “We would never set out to upset anyone. That’s not what we are about,” Sarah told me.
“There are some films that are too horrible to show. But our view of context is different to Ofcom’s. The word used in A Family At War is one that quite rightly we don’t use today but it was one the character – who wasn’t very likeable – would have used at the time in which the drama was set, which is why we didn’t censor it. He was in Egypt during the war and was talking to squaddies.”
It’s also worth bearing in mind that A Family At War was hugely popular when first shown on ITV in the 1970s. It’s not the first time that Talking Pictures TV has fallen foul of the media regulator. They were also found in breach of the code after they had broadcast a 1957 episode of the series Scotland Yard, in which one character used a racial term widely regarded as being offensive today. Again, there was just one complaint from the public but it was enough for the media regulator to spring into action.
The Ofcom intervention raises serious issues about censorship and attempts to rewrite history. The fact is that terms we regard as offensive today were used by people every day in the past.
It’s also true that some words we use today would shock people of our grandparents’ generation, in particular the ubiquitous use of the F-word. Times change and attitudes change too. Sarah CroninStanley believes that in respect of channels specialising in showing older programmes there should be more emphasis on the language and attitudes of the time when it comes to deciding context. Common sense tells us that she’s right.
If you decide to tune in to watch a film made in, say, 1935, you don’t expect the characters to have the same attitudes as people in 2018. I was watching a film from the 1950s the other day in which the characters seemed to be engaged in a competition to see who could fill up an ashtray the quickest. That was realistic because back then nearly everyone smoked.
But should we stop showing such films because they might encourage people to take up smoking? That would be absurd but look what’s happened to Sherlock Holmes in recent years. A 2007 BBC production featured the famous detective for the first time without his pipe. The relationship between Daily Express Friday February 23 2018 the sexes was different in days gone by too. Some would say that a male character opening doors to a woman is “sexist”. Does that mean we shouldn’t broadcast films that portray such behaviour? Then there are attitudes to homosexuality, which have changed enormously in recent decades. Should we cut out homophobic characters and anti-gay statements from old films even though such attitudes were once quite widespread?
SURELY it is better to see things as they were and not as we would like them to have been. Politically correct makeovers of old films and series should be strongly resisted as it’s about making the past conform to today’s values and beliefs. It’s also worth pointing out that films and series of the past did tackle issues such as racism and homophobia. The 1959 film Sapphire, which has been shown on Talking Pictures TV on a number of occasions, deals with the racial prejudice shown towards West Indian immigrants in London in the late 1950s.
In the worst case scenario, Talking Pictures TV could lose its licence if Ofcom continues to find it guilty of breaches of its code. What an injustice that would be considering the great work that Sarah, dad Noel and her husband Neil put into the operation.
You could say the genesis of the channel can be traced back to the 1960s when Noel Cronin started off as a humble post-boy in the giant Rank Organisation, Britain’s leading film company. He became an assistant in the cutting room and then an editor at the Central Office of Information. He later set up a film distribution company and bought up rights to a number of old British films, believing that one day there’d be a big demand for them.
Sarah, brought up among reels of film, unsurprisingly acquired her father’s interest. “It’s a real labour of love,” she says. “We had wanted to do Talking Pictures TV for years and then in 2015 we finally took the plunge.”
The launch of the channel could not really have come at a better time. The BBC had by and large stopped showing black-and-white films, except on Saturday mornings, and other film channels usually didn’t show anything made before the 1950s. So there was a gap in the market, which Sarah and her father filled.
The family also own Renown Pictures, an independent distributor, and run the Renown Film Club, which has over 10,000 members. They put on special events for film fans where stars of yesteryear attend. Don’t think that all the fans of nostalgia TV are elderly. Its younger audience is growing with viewers keen to see the films and programmes that previous generations watched and enjoyed.
Talking Pictures TV provides us with a fascinating window into the past. A window that hopefully won’t be boarded up by over-zealous state regulators.
FREDERICK FORSYTH IS AWAY