This play was seen by my wife and myself when it was shown as part of the Wednesday Play series. It has stayed with us ever since. I think it was the female character that sat in the car on the journey to the gorge of the title who read every road sign on their way in a deadpan manner. i am not sure what the actresses name was but she did it so well that whenever we go on a long drive we start to do it too for a while! I do not really remember the story,as it was so long ago,but that part of the story has been so memorable for us. If only writers could replicate that sort of thing now. Only Alan Bennett comes close to that kind of observation in his writing.
6 Reviews
The Gorge
sales-19617 February 2007
I remember watching this film when it was first aired, when I was ten years old. I think this is because the film captured the essence of the classic bank holiday day trip. We (my family) made many and various trips to West Country locations, and I wouldn't have been surprised to have seen us as inadvertent extras in a film such as this. I remember especially some of the locations, including, I think, the old bonded warehouses in Cumberland Basin, Bristol. These still exist but I am not sure of their use today. The amateurish acting, nostalgic locations, and some of the dialogue remain with me to this day. I tried to obtain a copy on DVD for my brother, who also remembers the film, but at that time it was as yet unavailable. The script could almost have been made up on the spot, one of the more memorable lines coming from the long-haired biker type aimed at the largely ignored preacher, something along the lines of - "'ere mate, ee's give I pain" delivered in the classic Bristolian accent. Lovely stuff - let's hope it is DVD'd soon.
Gorgeous
john-310913 November 2006
Christopher Morohan's (1968) television film of Peter Nichol's screenplay was first aired by the BBC as part of a contemporary drama series billed as 'The Wednesday Play'. Just to state the obvious, it was show on telly each Wednesday evening.
It was a platform for up and coming writers and directors which included early opportunities for talent of the quality of Denis Potter, Jeremy Sandford, Alan Plater.. and many more.
It's certainly a testament to the impact this film had that I labour under the delusion that I can effectively review it it some 38 years after I first saw it, on the basis that I seem to be the only person alive able to remember what it was about and what it meant to people like me, then aged 12 years old.
Ostensibly, for me, it was a play set in a well-known holiday spot in the west of England. 'The Gorge' is Cheddar Gorge. Figuratively, a combination of a very well-known cheese that survives to this day, and a geological feature of remote antiquity.
But really it was a boy and girl on holiday with their parents, who stole brief interludes together among the ferns and heather.
The dialogue of these scenes, for somebody exiled in a boys Grammar School, was priceless, because it reflected two members of the opposite sex, reeling from the unexpected hormonal effects of puberty - but able to speak frankly to one another about it.
I kid myself that I can remember part of the dialogue, in which the well-upholstered young lady is being addressed by the frank but confused young gentleman.
The subject is tits. He says, with disarming honesty, something along the lines of - If I had tits, I'd play with them all the time but she replies - Yes, I did that.. but it's like playing with your fingers...
It's hard, I suppose, for people aged 12 in 2006 to imagine a time when sex was only conspicuous by its absence. Everywhere it should have been, like everyday conversation, it was missing.
Just for perspective.. across the Atlantic.. Alfred Kinsey's 'Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male' had been published twenty years earlier in 1948. 'Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female' was published in 1953, fifteen years before I saw this film on TV.
But in England, on BBC Television, somehow.. young people like me managed to begin to grasp the differences between how men and women approach love and sex from such different angles from plays like 'The Gorge'.
I look back, aghast, and wonder how this unusual play contributed so much to a process of understanding which so often founders in everyday life.
It was a platform for up and coming writers and directors which included early opportunities for talent of the quality of Denis Potter, Jeremy Sandford, Alan Plater.. and many more.
It's certainly a testament to the impact this film had that I labour under the delusion that I can effectively review it it some 38 years after I first saw it, on the basis that I seem to be the only person alive able to remember what it was about and what it meant to people like me, then aged 12 years old.
Ostensibly, for me, it was a play set in a well-known holiday spot in the west of England. 'The Gorge' is Cheddar Gorge. Figuratively, a combination of a very well-known cheese that survives to this day, and a geological feature of remote antiquity.
But really it was a boy and girl on holiday with their parents, who stole brief interludes together among the ferns and heather.
The dialogue of these scenes, for somebody exiled in a boys Grammar School, was priceless, because it reflected two members of the opposite sex, reeling from the unexpected hormonal effects of puberty - but able to speak frankly to one another about it.
I kid myself that I can remember part of the dialogue, in which the well-upholstered young lady is being addressed by the frank but confused young gentleman.
The subject is tits. He says, with disarming honesty, something along the lines of - If I had tits, I'd play with them all the time but she replies - Yes, I did that.. but it's like playing with your fingers...
It's hard, I suppose, for people aged 12 in 2006 to imagine a time when sex was only conspicuous by its absence. Everywhere it should have been, like everyday conversation, it was missing.
Just for perspective.. across the Atlantic.. Alfred Kinsey's 'Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male' had been published twenty years earlier in 1948. 'Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female' was published in 1953, fifteen years before I saw this film on TV.
But in England, on BBC Television, somehow.. young people like me managed to begin to grasp the differences between how men and women approach love and sex from such different angles from plays like 'The Gorge'.
I look back, aghast, and wonder how this unusual play contributed so much to a process of understanding which so often founders in everyday life.
The Gorge - my review after nearly 40 years!
willmathieson21 August 2007
Yes, I agree with what John says. This programme had an enormous effect on my brother and myself at the time, dealing frankly with what was obsessing us in a world providing absolutely no sex education except what you procured for yourself. I was 16 at the time, at an all-boys school. The Wednesday Play had by this time established itself as much more cutting edge than ITV's Saturday Night Armchair Theatre. It seemed the producers were deliberately seeking to provoke thought on major social issues, accepting scripts that pushed controversially against the limits on what was "permissible". The Wednesday Play was a front line of the Permissive Society. My brother and I were extremely lucky that Mum and Dad, both in their 40s, had started using the recently acquired first motor car to go out for 'runs' on Wednesdays (some sort of second courtship!) and usually didn't get back before the Play finished. We'd be sitting on the edge of our seats, one eye on the window in case they came back early, puffing away on our forbidden ciggies, electrified at how the plays dealt so frankly with sex compared to the rest of TV at that time. I'm fairly sure my first glimpses of female breasts and even nipples were in this series (there was enormous conservative backlash that these were obscenity, and they were always excitedly discussed at school next day, even more than the Avengers or the latest Beatles exploits.) In those days of no repeats, no videos and no commercial breaks, we might sit for an hour desperate for the toilet but unwilling to go in case we missed the few seconds everyone would be talking about tomorrow! This particular play always stuck in my mind as one which really excited me. The boy had the same problems as me and my brother, as I recall: chronic shyness (maybe even bad acne!), obsession with women but no way of finding out more about them or getting close, strict authoritarian parents who believed they were doing the right thing by forbidding everything he naturally chose for himself, belittling his self confidence and even controlling him with violence ('Good Christian parents'!) I'm sure Mary Whitehouse complained about this one - she wanted the whole series banned. I'm so grateful for the courageous enlightened avant-garde people who pushed back the barriers with this series, many of them motivated no doubt by the use of 'psychedelics' and the idea that there was a cultural revolution in progress to allow more control to the younger generation. Anyway, I'm sure this play was a major milestone at the most crucial stage in my development - and that of the Baby Boom generation. I'd love to see it again. It is more worthy of analysis and appreciation than most of the plays released in theatres during the period which are more famous. Today's kids and grand-kids would have a much better idea of where they're coming from if they saw this. It should be possible. Much of it was shot outdoors so it must be on film somewhere.
Mikes Bad Day Out.
Buzzardschoice23 December 2007
Warning: Spoilers
I was only 12 years of age, when I watched this fantastic play way back in September 1968, that's when it was first shown by the BBC. I have always loved great plays, especially if they have something I can easily relate to, and this is one I can.
Mike (Billy Hamon) an almost 17 year old young man, has to suffer a day out to 'Cheddar Gorge' with his parents, along with uncle Jack, and aunt Ivy. The family all cram into a 'Ford Zephyr' and the journey begins.
They travel across the Cumberland Basin (flyover) in Bristol, where there are some views of the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and some old tobacco bond warehouses. For anyone who lives in Bristol, this can be quite nostalgic?.
Everyone in the car is gradually getting on Mike's nerves, the sound of munching toffees, and mother reading out every road sign she sees, dad thinks he knows it all, and has a schedule to keep.Uncle Jack trying to impress with tales from his days in Canada, and aunt Ivy, well... she's just dreadful.
They get to Cheddar with all it has to offer, 'kiss me quick hats' and lots of tourists, over priced booze etc. Mike meets up with a 15 year old school friend 'Christine', and they plan to meet up again later on in the day, at a Roman Camp. Mike and family move away from Cheddar and drive to a large field (the roman camp) where they assemble the family tent. They take everything even a sink (not the kitchen one though)...
Some great music is being played in the background by 'Manfred Mann'. Anyhow Christine turns up at the Roman camp with her mum and dad, and after a while both Mike and Christine go off for a romp in the undergrowth, without anyone else knowing. Both Mike's and Christine's family, are having to put up with an invasion of rockers on noisy motor bikes, and one of those preacher men, that always used to turn up on a Sunday.
The preacher man is getting on everyones nerves, and the rockers set about playing him up. Mike tears his jeans on a thorn, Christine looses her trousers and everything gets embarrassing for all concerned. Mum and Dad go off for a walk in the bushes, and Mike finds them both cuddling together.
Christine's parents go off to try to find her, and an innocent potholer gets a bloody nose. When everyone has been reassembled back at the site, they get in their cars and head back home to Bristol, via a diversion by the AA.
The preacher man weaves in and out of the congested traffic on his bicycle, congestion being caused by an accident with two cars (guess which 2 cars are involved)?
Mike's dad (fat Stan) films their day out with a cine camera, and the play starts with Mike having to watch the whole thing, bringing back those dreadful moments, of a day he will never forget.
Great closing scenes of the Cumberland Basin, and some more wonderful music from Manfred Mann.
I wonder if 'Mike Leigh' based a small part of his play 'Nuts in May' on this? well maybe, especially with the turn up of those rockers?
If anyone would like a copy of this play on DVD? please contact: midforda@yahoo.com and I will be happy to oblige for a small fee. The picture and sound quality is really very good (black and white)
Thanks for reading my review.
Mike (Billy Hamon) an almost 17 year old young man, has to suffer a day out to 'Cheddar Gorge' with his parents, along with uncle Jack, and aunt Ivy. The family all cram into a 'Ford Zephyr' and the journey begins.
They travel across the Cumberland Basin (flyover) in Bristol, where there are some views of the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and some old tobacco bond warehouses. For anyone who lives in Bristol, this can be quite nostalgic?.
Everyone in the car is gradually getting on Mike's nerves, the sound of munching toffees, and mother reading out every road sign she sees, dad thinks he knows it all, and has a schedule to keep.Uncle Jack trying to impress with tales from his days in Canada, and aunt Ivy, well... she's just dreadful.
They get to Cheddar with all it has to offer, 'kiss me quick hats' and lots of tourists, over priced booze etc. Mike meets up with a 15 year old school friend 'Christine', and they plan to meet up again later on in the day, at a Roman Camp. Mike and family move away from Cheddar and drive to a large field (the roman camp) where they assemble the family tent. They take everything even a sink (not the kitchen one though)...
Some great music is being played in the background by 'Manfred Mann'. Anyhow Christine turns up at the Roman camp with her mum and dad, and after a while both Mike and Christine go off for a romp in the undergrowth, without anyone else knowing. Both Mike's and Christine's family, are having to put up with an invasion of rockers on noisy motor bikes, and one of those preacher men, that always used to turn up on a Sunday.
The preacher man is getting on everyones nerves, and the rockers set about playing him up. Mike tears his jeans on a thorn, Christine looses her trousers and everything gets embarrassing for all concerned. Mum and Dad go off for a walk in the bushes, and Mike finds them both cuddling together.
Christine's parents go off to try to find her, and an innocent potholer gets a bloody nose. When everyone has been reassembled back at the site, they get in their cars and head back home to Bristol, via a diversion by the AA.
The preacher man weaves in and out of the congested traffic on his bicycle, congestion being caused by an accident with two cars (guess which 2 cars are involved)?
Mike's dad (fat Stan) films their day out with a cine camera, and the play starts with Mike having to watch the whole thing, bringing back those dreadful moments, of a day he will never forget.
Great closing scenes of the Cumberland Basin, and some more wonderful music from Manfred Mann.
I wonder if 'Mike Leigh' based a small part of his play 'Nuts in May' on this? well maybe, especially with the turn up of those rockers?
If anyone would like a copy of this play on DVD? please contact: midforda@yahoo.com and I will be happy to oblige for a small fee. The picture and sound quality is really very good (black and white)
Thanks for reading my review.
a very funny day out
a-fawcett61610 December 2011
My wife and I had been married for about three months when we saw this film. We thought it was absolutely hilarious. There were two families, each awful in their own way. The "lower class" family took absolutely everything with them on their picnic, even a kind of "portaloo". One line that sticks is the man in that family saying that "The French always fall down in their toilets," in a broad Bristolian accent. The other man, (who doesn't agree with him) is a prissy middle class man. The middle class man has a daughter, the lower class man has a son. The two youngsters separate themselves from their parents and go off, ending in a bit of a cuddle, in which the girl loses her trousers. When they are found, the prissy man gives the girl his own trousers for the drive home. He then manages to get stopped by the police and have to get out of the car........ We have never forgotten this film, and its succession of hilarious lines.
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