In Which I Combine A Very English Scandal, The TV Effects Of Old Age And Why An Elderly Dubliner Could Be Angry At Bridgend Town

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

So it's Bank Holiday Monday as normal nothing I want to watch. Until that is the wife suddenly said:

"Shall we watch A Very English Scandal"? (She had recorded both episodes currently shown)

Now I've posted before that wife and I find it very difficult to find things that we could watch together, but this Russell T Davies drama based on the true life events between then Liberal party (now the Liberal Democrats after mergers and acquisitions) leader Jeremy Thorpe and his lover Norman Scott fitted the bill.

Why? Because wife and I are old enough (as children) to remember the moment all of this culminated in a trial. So we could recall when all of this was made public.

What this means of course is that we have come to an age where figures real to us at the time have now become historical actors in TV dramas. We are that old. Before the only TV effects of our age were the digital channels showing programmes we remembered when younger. With a few exceptions they were always disappointing. Starsky and Hutch for example. Two detectives fighting crime with the inconspicuous sports car with a white lightening strike and a loud wheels. Loved it at the time. Laughable now.This however took our geriocracy to a whole new depth.

I'm not normally one to write about TV dramas in this blog. And after seeing the first episode we are going to view episode two sometime. But the thing that makes me want to chat about it are the scenes where the friend of Thorpe goes to Dublin in an attempt to stop Scott blackmailing the leader of the Liberals.

Because apparently the place in Britain that could pass for Dublin in the nineteen sixties was Bridgend Town. That's right the urban tragedy that is Bridgend Town was considered as the perfect substitute for the Irish capital!

Now I have never been to Dublin (I'd like to one day) and I have no idea what it was like in the sixties. But I'd be willing to guess that anybody who's lived there at that time would have been insulted. Or perhaps will be. Because those of us aware about the state of Bridgend Town in the present day will know that whilst television "Irished up" the scenery (phonebox for example) there was no real attempt to hide the closed down shops that blight the place arguably more than any town in South Wales.

Consequently in terms of the scenery (as opposed to what happens to Norman Scott there. Which I won't spoil) Dublin is shown as a rather dull and dreary place. Whereas what it's actually showing is the Bridgend Town of today.

Of course the odds of someone knowing Dublin in the sixties and Bridgend Town of today are extremely thin. But if you know of an Irish person angry after seeing this episode that's why. Trust me.

Until the next time.