Well where do I start???? Another good television ruined coz I threw my shoes at it!!! A few observations..........
1. When are these F----Wits gonna realise you cant cover a nearly 50 year old subculture in 1 hour???It needs more like 10 x 1 hour documentaries, shown over a period of weeks.
2. We never needed 'celebrities or showbiz names (Pete Waterman, Stringfellow, Lisa Stanfield etc) to validate our music and we dont need it now.........not now not ever! When Northern was considered the devil incarnate and Wigan was in the news for all the 'wrong' reasons, you couldnt see a celebrity trying to hang their hat on a Northern peg then! Bandwagon - Jumpers!
3. The only sense, focus, and insight came largely from those who have been there and done it.......Colin, Richard, Ian, Kev, Russ............what a goddam coincidence!! Again when are these numnuts at the BBC gonna realise that the only people who will ever be able to get a documentary on Northern right, is the people who were deeply immersed in it!
4. We've been getting a poor documentary on average about every 10 years or more, starting with England this England'I guess; the saving grace in that was our own Dave Withers; I was proud of him then and Im proud of him now, coz he tried his best to convey what its about in an intelligent and articulate way. One day some one will get this right, and do it properly.
5. The consultant to that film needs shooting........youve got 1 hour of edited-down material to present, and you think you need to use up that precious hour giving Pete Waterman, Peter Stringfellow, and Tony Blackburn etc, some of that valuable airtime, but not Chris Burton, or Butch, or Adey Croasdell, or Dave Thorley, or Johnny M or John A etc etc etc.
6. Who was the target audience supposed to be? If you knew nothing about northern you would have been well-baffled by the inclusion of the irrelevant nonsense about Wigans Ovation, and Tony Blackburn. Conversely if youre part of the northern scene you would also have been less than enlightened, coz it just didnt do any of justice. They got it wrong with England this England coz apart from Daves worthy inclusions, it was dissapointing; same scenario................why did we have to lose a precious 20 mins of a 1 hour documentary focussing on the irrelevance of industrial England Wigan. They lost the point..................the venue can be anywhere..........at that time it just happened to be Wigan, Stoke before it, and Manchester before that. They got it wrong then and they got it wrong now. Thats what you get when outsiders try and mess about with a genre they dont fully understand.
Enough...............I'd better go buy a new telly!!