Television drama is failing Jews, says Poliakoff
Playwright speaks out as new BBC Two series explores anti-Semitism during the Cold War
TELEVISION dramas are failing to represent Judaism and it is “striking” how few Jewish characters are portrayed in British works, Stephen Poliakoff has said.
Launching his BBC drama Summer of Rockets, which stars Keeley Hawes and Timothy Spall, the playwright told of his concern over the rise of antiSemitism, a theme that runs through the series.
“Anti-Semitism does recur through this piece and there is an important plot development that involves it and I wanted it to be subtle initially,” he told an audience at the BFI and Radio Times Television Festival in London.
“There are very few Jews in British drama. Since the death of the great Jack Rosenthal [the playwright] we haven’t had a lot of Jewish characters portrayed.
“It’s not often remarked on. There are statistically not many Jewish people in this country in relation to the population, but nevertheless it is striking how few Jewish characters there are in British drama.
“Also they are often portrayed in orthodox settings whereas there is a whole other strand of Jewish immigrant wanting to assimilate and still proud of their culture, and it’s rarely dramatised in British stories.”
Summer of Rockets, set in 1958 during the Cold War, draws on elements of Poliakoff ’s own childhood.
As the son of a Russian Jew, he depicts anti-Jewish sentiments directed towards his father in his six-part BBC Two series, which he both wrote and directed.
In the first episode, the central character, Samuel Petrukhin – an inventor of bespoke hearing aids played by Toby Stephens – is the target of a slur from a customer.
Poliakoff, 66, said: “Obviously anti-Semitism is a huge issue at the moment and a terribly worrying one. I never thought it would come back in my lifetime in the way that it has.
“The terrible thing about antiSemitism in the Fifties was it was so close to the revelation of the Holocaust. Given the knowledge that they had of what had happened, it was shocking now and it’s shocking then.”
Poliakoff said the series also reflects the “echoes of the Cold War” that exist now.
Although his father had fitted Winston Churchill’s hearing aids, because he was a Russian he lost out on business when Churchill served as prime minister over fears of espionage through the devices.
He said: “Even as a child I remember the fear of nuclear war was still so strong. These huge images of the Russians parading their big missiles. We have echoes of it now, slight twitches of the Cold War … after the Salisbury poisoning and maybe they interfered with democracy.
“Those shadows are maybe coming back a little bit but they were so strong at that time.” He added: “It’s a different fear now. In a sense it’s people creeping around Salisbury and doing extraordinary things and then appearing on telly and saying, ‘We were just tourists.’
“The blatant lies of the Cold War have come back and are being offered up to the world.
“As someone who is partly Russian it is a bit tragic to see them treated as an enemy again and Gavin Williamson [the Defence Secretary] saying very belligerent things about them.”