This is very contemporary! It’s about an influencer?
These restored TV shows have an interesting visual thing going on — everything’s been over-sharpened (probably because one of the generations is on video tape), so there’s these pre-shadows and post-shadows on all the sharp angles…
I really thought I’d got further than 1974 in this box set…
Yes, I’ve fired up the Dissent & Disruption box set again.
So this is another movie set in a retirement home… it feels like Clarke was specialising in doing TV shows about institutions? Jails, hospitals, boarding schools…
This one feels very artificial. Like it’s written by somebody who’s never actually been around an old person.
This is kinda similar to the previous one about insane asylums… there doesn’t seem to be much of a traditional plot here, but instead we just drop in on these various characters apparently at random…
I mean…
Brown sauce!
None of these lines are believable. It’s incredible. It’s like an eighteen-year-old was tasked with writing a play about old people.
But Brian Clark was born in 1932, so he was over 40 when he wrote this.
You’d think a programme about an institution like this would be A Harrowing Portrait Of A Horrible Place, but no — like the one about the insane asylum, it shows the place as being pretty nice: Well-run by well-intentioned people.
Heh, he just said the thing I was typing up there.
I quite liked this one. It’s so straightforward and undramatic that you think it’s going to be about… something, but then it’s not.
A Follower for Emily. Alan Clarke. 1974. ⚃