The controversial tale of forbidden love that gripped 6 million viewers
BLAST FROM THE PAST ORANGES ARE NOT THE ONLY FRUIT ( 1990)
Michael Hogan picks the TV classics that you can now rediscover
This week marks the 30th anniversary of Jeanette Winterson’s triple Bafta-winning BBC adaptation of her semi-autobiographical debut novel. As a tragicomic tale of forbidden love and religious rebellion, it has held up beautifully. Clocking in at less than three hours, the three-part series is well worth revisiting – whether or not you were among the six million who tuned in at the time.
The bold and blackly witty drama follows the early life of Jess, being raised by her Bible-bashing adoptive mother (Geraldine McEwan) in the Lancashire mill town of Accrington during the Sixties and Seventies.
Young Jess, played by Emily Aston, is adorable. She’s forever asking awkward questions, often getting a clip around the ear for her trouble. When their next-door neighbours start loudly “fornicating” (“What’s fornicating?” asks Jess), Mother bellows hymns to drown out the noise, explaining to her friends from the
Pentecostal church: “I don’t even let her watch wildlife programmes.”
It’s when Charlotte Coleman takes over as teenage Jess that things really take off. She falls in love with another girl, and Mother, suspecting Satan is within, subjects Jess to a harrowing exorcism by their fire-and-brimstone preacher (Kenneth Cranham).
There are shades of Dennis Potter in the dreamlike sequences, and taboo-busting sex scenes (Mary Whitehouse protested before the programme even aired), but it’s also far funnier than you might remember. Winterson’s ear for whimsical turns of phrase is reminiscent of Alan Bennett or Victoria Wood.
Above all, the series stands as a poignant memorial to Coleman’s talents. The gifted comic actress would go on to star in Four Weddings and a Funeral and underrated sitcom How Do You Want Me? before dying from an asthma attack, aged just 33.
What the critics said: “Television tends to be notoriously silly when dealing with lesbianism. This is anything but silly. It’s fresh, challenging and memorable”
– The New York Times.
Did you know? Beeban Kidron, the director, recalls screening it for Alan Yentob, then controller of BBC Two: “He sat silently through episode one, grumpily through episode two, and midway through episode three said: ‘Not very BBC, is it?’”