Play for Today (TV Series) Clay, Smeddum and Greenden (1976) User Reviews

What an interesting drama.

[Sleepin_Dragon · 7/10 · 8 February 2024]

The back breaking realities of working the land back in the 1930's, and a snapshot of how tough life was back at the time.

If you're a fan of the Play for Today series, I think you'll enjoy this one. It's not exactly dramatic if fast moving, but it's a very interesting look at life back in the day.

It will make you feel tired watching that poor man ploughing a field single handedly, all with hand tools, I wanted to jump on and give him a hand.

It's quite slow moving, but each story is ultimately rewarding, a reminder of how tough life was for people, I always thought that was something Play for Today depicted beautifully.

It's very well produced as always, nobody did historical drama like The BBC, the accents can be a little challenging to pick out at times.

I am so pleased that The BBC is staring to show some of the jewels from its extensive back catalogue, The Play for Today series was definitely rich, and whilst this isn't one of the best, it's still worth seeing.

Lots of familiar faces, two comedy legends, Fulton Mackay and Bill Fraser, plus more. It instantly made we want to dig out Terror of The Zygons, Angus Lennie and that wonderful accent.

7/10.

Good ol' "Play For Today"

[vnmjdcv · 7/10 · 7 February 2024]

Just caught this on BBC4. If you like Scottish scenery blended with Scottish poetry, then this is for you. Yes, it's dated and somewhat grainy at times, but it feels like a play rather than a movie. The actors know their lines and the cinematography allows you to really enjoy the locations.

"Clay, Smeddum and Greenden" is a careful study of simply rural folk in the 1930s. Well scripted and full of character actors that you would find in the likes of Fawlty Towers, Ripping Yarns and Porridge.

The three stories revolve around farming, marriage and parenthood and capture the repressed nature of Scottish country folk at that time.

The accents are heavy and many of the words are difficult to understand. Thank goodness for the subtitles!!

Clay, Smeddum and Greenden

[Prismark10 · 6/10 · 18 March 2024]

This Play for Today is divided into three interconnecting stories. Set in the Scottish east coast farming community between the war years.

The film is adapted from the works of Scottish writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon.

The first one, Clay, deals with a farmer obsession with the land. He thinks about his crops, how best he can grow them, what fertiliser he needs to use. He works the land but neglects his ill wife and daughter.

The second story, Smeddum is the best and most life affirming. Meg Menzies is a force of nature. She has been widowed but she manages to run the farm and raise her large brood of children.

As they get older she marries them off, even if the path of true love is not a straight path for all her children. Smeddum is a Scots word for liveliness of spirit. Meg has it in spades.

Greenden is a more sorrowful story. George Simpson plays farmer George Simpson who seems to be neglecting his wife Ellen. She is lonely, abandoned and feels she is going mad.

George does not notice but fellow villager Alec Webster (Fulton Mackay) does. Can he knock sense into George in time?

All the stories have different styles. The final film is hanting and sad, the middle one is the best.

Comic relief sandwiched between two tragedies

[JamesHitchcock · 6/10 · 20 March 2024]

Most "Plays for Today" only told a single story, but "Clay, Smeddum and Greenden" is what might be called a "portmanteau", combining three stories in a single film. In this it is similar to another "Play for Today" from 1971, "Orkney". Both plays are based upon short stories by Scottish writers, Lewis Grassic Gibbon here and George Mackay Brown in the case of "Orkney". Both are set in rural parts of northern Scotland, "Orkney" as the title suggests in the Orkney Islands and "Clay, Smeddum and Greenden" in Gibbon's native Kincardineshire. In 1971 the BBC also broadcast "Sunset Song", a drama serial based upon a novel by Gibbon.

"Clay, Smeddum and Greenden" might seem like the name of a provincial firm of solicitors, but each word is the title of one of the three stories. All three are set in the same Scottish east coast farming community in the 1920s and 1930s; several characters appear in two of the stories, or sometimes all three. The same character, the local grocer Alec Webster, acts as narrator of all three parts. (He is played by Fulton MacKay, who also appeared in "Orkney").

"Clay" deals with a farmer who becomes obsessed with trying to tame an unpromising "park"- a local word for farm- consisting mostly of heavy clay soils, gorse and heather, but neglecting his wife and daughter while doing so. This story reminded me of Sheila Kaye-Smith's novel "Sussex Gorse", set at the opposite extremity of Great Britain, but which also deals with an obsessive farmer trying to wrest a living from a barren and unproductive tract of soil while neglecting the needs of his family. The difference is that Kaye-Smith's character, Reuben Backfield, eventually succeeds in his endeavour, although at great personal cost, whereas Gibbon's Rob Galt is defeated.

"Smeddum"- Scots dialect for spirit or determination- is lighter in tone, a comedy about a woman trying to run both her farm and the lives of her children after the death of their shiftless father. (I was going to say "her husband", but it is finally revealed that they were in fact never legally married, something which would have shocked her pious neighbours had it come out during his lifetime).

In "Greenden" George and Ellen Simpson, an urban couple from Glasgow, move to the countryside for the sake of George's health. ("Greenden" is the name of the farm on which they settle). George has been advised to take up farming because he has been diagnosed with tuberculosis, and his doctors think that fresh country air and hard work will do him good. George does indeed take to country life, and his health improves, but Ellen, feeling lonely and neglected, sinks into depression.

In my view "Clay" was the best of the trilogy and contains the best acting performance by Victor Carin as the obsessive Rob. He is difficult to like, particularly in the way in which he treats his wife and daughter, yet it is also difficult to avoid admiring his dogged determination. "Smeddum", by contrast, never really engaged me and suffered from being a slight piece of comic relief sandwiched between two tragedies. "Greenden" was potentially an interesting story, but I felt it would have benefitted from a longer and more expansive treatment, possibly being the subject of a full-length drama in its own right. I did not enjoy the trilogy as much as "Orkney", and certainly not as much as "Sunset Song", one of the best BBC dramas of the seventies. 6/10.

Moving, authentic and quietly immersive; simple and powerful evocations of a vanished time...

[philip-davies31 · 10/10 · 8 February 2024]

Very moving stories with a great sense of authenticity. A deceptive simplicity imbues these films with a profound sense of lived experience. The unfussy but inspired approach to ordinary lives is timeless and quietly immersive. The superb original stories by Lewis Grassic Gibbon have been lovingly respected, unlike modern filmed adaptations of literary works.

'Clay' is a haunting evocation of lives possessed by the demanding Spirit of an ancient soil, and captures the last glimmerings of peasant crofting in the relentless round of their inescapably repetitive days, servile to the land; 'Smeddum' is a robust comedy in which an unsentimentally practical mother's deep love is misunderstood by all her children except the one who scandalously ran away with an older married man; 'Greenden' portrays the tragic isolation of a neglected wife amidst alien surroundings; each of the stories also portrays the tight-knit agricultural community of this area of Scotland in a long-vanished era.

Made when the BBC set the standard for quality broadcasting.

Disappointing

[jcurrie58-1 · 3/10 · 8 February 2024]

I watched this play last night on BBC4 and must say I found it disappointing, mainly due to the inability of the mostly Glasgow based actors to totally master the Doric accent. ? It was also disconcerting that the female actresses weren't wearing any eye make up, which made their features disappear. Maybe the director was aiming for authenticity as women in the farming community at the time wouldn't be wearing make up, but a little eye make up would have been better, My family came from Aberdeenshire so I am totally familiar with the Doric accent' Nice to see a young Brian Cox in the final play, though.