Blackeyes (TV series)

Last updated

Blackeyes is a BBC television miniseries first broadcast in 1989, written and directed by Dennis Potter. It was adapted from Potter's novel of the same name.

Contents

Premise and initial broadcast

Broadcast as four 50-minute episodes, first screened weekly from 29 November 1989 to 20 December 1989 on Britain's BBC2 channel, [1] Blackeyes starred Gina Bellman as the title character, an attractive model, with Michael Gough in a key role as her uncle. Potter described the series' theme as the objectification of "young and attractive women as consumer goods in a way that brutalizes both sexes". [2]

Production

Following the successes of The Singing Detective and Christabel , the BBC awarded a budget of £2.4 million to the production of Blackeyes. It was shot on 35 mm film and took 18 months to complete. [3] Despite illness, Potter opted to direct the series, the only time he did this for TV. He had considered both Jon Amiel and Nicolas Roeg, both recent collaborators, for the job. [4] He would consider it a mistake to direct the serial himself. [5] In 2007 an article in The Guardian written by Jon Wilde revealed that the journalist had been the inspiration for the character of Mark Wilsher, "an insufferably smug hack" in episode 2. [6]

Press coverage before broadcast

The premiere of the series was eagerly anticipated. Six months before screening it was promoted on the cover of The Listener with an image of Gina Bellman in role as the title character and the caption "Potter's Dream - Beyond The Singing Detective". [7] James Saynor, the magazine's sub-editor at the time, wrote inside of Potter's ambitious desire to subvert the norms of film grammar in the series following an on-set interview with the fledgling director. [8] In the lead-up to broadcast Potter promoted the series by appearing on TV chat-show Saturday Matters with Sue Lawley and was interviewed in newspapers such as New Statesman and The Observer. Each time he made reference to "falling in love with Blackeyes", making clear how personal this project was to him. [9]

A press screening of the series on 22 November provoked negative responses in several of the journalists and reviewers present. It was described in previews as "soft porn". [10] and "a simple turn-on for male viewers". [11] Some journalists attacked Potter in their reports: in City Limits Deborah Orr described him as "unpleasant", Maria Lexton condemned him in Time Out as "a very sick man...[with a] twisted attitude to women and fucking" and in the Evening Standard he was dismissed as "a dirty old man". [12] [13] [14] The Daily Mirror created a new nickname for Potter when its front-page headline asked, "All clever stuff - Or just Dirty, Den?" [15] Sally Payne summed up the tension between Potter's intentions and their execution in the Sunday Times, "My gut feeling was distinct unease which verged on outrage the more I thought about it. I became convinced that Potter was guilty of the crime he was condemning." [16]

Reception

Initial responses

Following transmission, favourable comments were offered by the reviewers of several broadsheets. Mark Lawson applauded Potter's willingness to take risks, comparing him to novelist Martin Amis, while Christopher Tookey linked Potter to August Strindberg and Jonathan Swift and described Blackeyes as possibly "the most interesting, original and honest work he's done since Pennies from Heaven". [17] [18]

The majority of the British press reacted negatively to the series, many highlighting the amount of sex and nudity as cause for complaint. The Sunday Express called it "the world's most complicated porn film" fit for "the wastebin", the Sunday Times reasserted its antipathy to Blackeyes at the series' conclusion, summing it up as "Porno Twaddle". [19] [20] The series was also attacked for being "immensely boring" in The Daily Telegraph . [21]

Blackeyes was the subject of mocking cartoons in several tabloids, again focusing on the nudity. The Daily Mirror featured a cartoon by Charles Griffin depicting a naked Potter tapping out a script at his desk with a caricatured Bellman (also naked) sitting alongside his typewriter. The couple are being interrupted by campaigner Mary Whitehouse who is waving her fist at the writer and exclaiming, "Potter! I'll give you flamin' Blackeyes!" [22] The Daily Star presented an image of a BBC Drama department office in which all the staff were going about their business either naked or in underwear. A bank of TV screens show titles such as 'Brown Eyes', 'Square Eyes' and 'Slant Eyes' while another reads 'Blackeyes - Get em off'. A man dressed in black lingerie is sitting beside bundles of letters labelled 'Complaints' and speaking into a phone saying, "OK, so a girl walks about half-naked - is that so unusual?" [23]

No stranger to controversy, Potter was stunned by the level of press hostility and was particularly saddened at the way he was labelled with nicknames such as "Dirty Den" and "Television's Mr Filth". [24] [25] He described himself as being "in the pit of a real depression" and upset by the personal comments made about him in City Limits and Time Out. [26] In a Radio 2 interview he suggested his writing career might be at an end. [27]

The criticisms also enabled Potter to speak directly about his own experience of child abuse, which he had attempted to address in Blackeyes, an element of the series that had seemingly been overlooked by its critics: "If you listen to the voice-over [in the last episode] you'll see it's very clear why [child abuse] strikes my heart. I've never been able to speak directly about it - no one who's had such an experience has ever been able to speak about it except obliquely. It sits there and makes me sweat even now". [28] The Sunday Telegraph acknowledged Potter's childhood experience as "the source of the harrowing scene in the last episode". [29] The sequence involves the character of Maurice Kingsley about to sexually abuse his niece Jessica until Potter's voice-over interrupts: "No, you'll have to imagine the rest if you must... the snake in his hand has become the worm in her soul. Recollections of abuse - my god - they're hard to deal with - even though I try... There are times when the pen in your hand becomes... becomes - yes - a knife in someone else's".

Later reactions

In 1993 Potter summed up the initial press reaction to Blackeyes by calling it "a tide of polemical abuse of such huge proportions in the English tabloids that it was almost proof I was stepping on the right nerves, if not totally in the right way". [30] A few years' removed from the project he admitted responsibility for some of the negative reaction, saying, "there were too many strands, and the style, which is very alienating, it was so successful it alienated every fucking person who ever saw it!" and "I did fail. If there's such universal rejection and opposition and incomprehension then it's extremely likely that it was either badly written, or badly done, or both." [31] [32]

Critical analysis

Graham Fuller describes Blackeyes as "a complex analysis of institutionalized sexism" and an "abstruse but in many ways extremely courageous post-feminist revenge thriller" in his 1993 book Potter on Potter, a collection of interviews with the writer. Acknowledging the original press reaction, he describes the series as being "condemned for feeding the very sickness it claimed to be diagnosing" and defends Potter by asserting that the programme's explicit scenes were "unintended to be titillating to viewers who would elect to see them that way". [33] Twenty years later Fuller continues to challenge the tabloid view of Blackeyes in Sight & Sound , "Advertising is the arena in which Blackeyes throws herself to the lions...auditioning in a bikini for salivating ad executives...[the scene is] intercut with fragmented moments from the history of Jessica Kingsley...as a sexual-abuse victim who eventually drowns herself - how could Potter not have been taken seriously?" [34]

Sergio Angelini calls Blackeyes "a deliberately uncomfortable, humorous, densely imagined, frequently powerful if imperfect work, one that practically vanished after its original airing but which, now that its shock value has long been superseded, needs to be re-assessed by a new generation". [35] It was repeated multiple times on the now-defunct channels UK Drama and UK Arena in the late 90s and early 00s but remains unreleased on DVD or Blu-ray.

Cast

Notes

Jeavons had previously appeared in Potter's Blue Remembered Hills , Bellman later appeared in Potter's Secret Friends while Germaine went on to star in Lipstick on Your Collar and Midnight Movie.

Related Research Articles

<i>Herald Sun</i> Australian daily tabloid

The Herald Sun is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper based in Melbourne, Australia, published by The Herald and Weekly Times, a subsidiary of News Corp Australia, itself a subsidiary of the Murdoch owned News Corp. The Herald Sun primarily serves Melbourne and the state of Victoria and shares many articles with other News Corporation daily newspapers, especially those from Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dennis Potter</span> British dramatist and screenwriter (1935–1994)

Dennis Christopher George Potter was an English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist. He is best known for his BBC television serials Pennies from Heaven (1978) and The Singing Detective (1986) as well as the BBC television plays Blue Remembered Hills (1979) and Brimstone and Treacle (1976). His television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social, and often used themes and images from popular culture. Potter is widely regarded as one of the most influential and innovative dramatists to have worked in British television.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Hurt</span> British actor (1940–2017)

Sir John Vincent Hurt was an English actor whose career spanned over five decades. Hurt was regarded as one of Britain's finest actors. Director David Lynch described him as "simply the greatest actor in the world". He possessed what was described as the "most distinctive voice in Britain". He received numerous awards including the BAFTA Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema Award in 2012 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2015 for his services to drama.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Grade</span> English television executive and businessman (born 1943)

Michael Ian Grade, Baron Grade of Yarmouth, is an English television executive and businessman. He has held a number of senior roles in television, including controller of BBC1 (1984–1986), chief executive of Channel 4 (1988–1997), chairman of the board of governors of the BBC (2004–2006), and executive chairman of ITV plc (2007–2009). He sat as a Conservative Party life peer in the House of Lords from 2011 until after his appointment as Chair of Ofcom.

<i>Daily Mirror</i> British daily tabloid newspaper

The Daily Mirror is a British national daily tabloid newspaper. Founded in 1903, it is owned by parent company Reach plc. From 1985 to 1987, and from 1997 to 2002, the title on its masthead was simply The Mirror. It had an average daily print circulation of 716,923 in December 2016, dropping to 587,803 the following year. Its Sunday sister paper is the Sunday Mirror. Unlike other major British tabloids such as The Sun and the Daily Mail, the Mirror has no separate Scottish edition; this function is performed by the Daily Record and the Sunday Mail, which incorporate certain stories from the Mirror that are of Scottish significance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Johnny Ball</span> English television personality (born 1938)

Johnny Ball is an English television personality and a populariser of mathematics. He is also the father of BBC Radio 2 DJ Zoe Ball.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Thewlis</span> English actor (born 1963)

David Wheeler, better known as David Thewlis, is an English actor and filmmaker. He is known as a character actor and has appeared in a wide variety of genres in both film and television. He has received the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor and nominations for two BAFTA Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

<i>The Wednesday Play</i> British TV drama anthology (1964–1970)

The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 for six seasons from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually original works written for television, although dramatic adaptations of fiction also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen.

<i>Pennies from Heaven</i> (TV series) BBC musical drama

Pennies from Heaven is a 1978 BBC musical drama serial written by Dennis Potter. The title is taken from the song "Pennies from Heaven" written by Johnny Burke and Arthur Johnston. It was one of several Potter serials to mix the reality of the drama with a dark fantasy content, and the earliest of his works where the characters burst into extended performances of popular songs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rick McCallum</span> American film producer

Richard McCallum is an American film producer. He is mostly known for his work on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles as well as the Star Wars Special Editions and Prequel Trilogy. He is best known for his frequent collaborations with American filmmaker George Lucas, though he was also a long-time producer for British television playwright Dennis Potter, most notably on The Singing Detective and Dreamchild.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gina Bellman</span> British actress (b. 1966)

Gina Bellman is a New Zealand-born British actress best known for her performances as grifter Sophie Devereaux in the TNT television series Leverage (2008-2012) and its Amazon Freevee revival Leverage: Redemption (2021-), as well as Jane Christie in BBC sitcom Coupling (2000-2004).

<i>Blackeyes</i> 1988 novel by Dennis Potter

Blackeyes is a multi-layered novel by British writer Dennis Potter, published in 1987 by Faber and Faber. It concerns the relationship between sexuality, exploitation, power and money. These are explored through the career of a desirable model known as "Blackeyes".

Mark Shivas was a British television producer, film producer and executive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carol Royle</span> British actress

Carol Buchanan Royle is an English actress. She is best known for playing Jenny Russell in the BBC sitcom Life Without George (1987—1989) and Lady Patricia Brewster in Heartbeat (1997—2003).

Dennis Potter was an English dramatist with a large canon of work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robbie Coltrane</span> Scottish actor (1950–2022)

Anthony Robert McMillan, known professionally as Robbie Coltrane, was a Scottish actor. He gained worldwide recognition in the 2000s for playing Rubeus Hagrid in the Harry Potter film series. He was appointed an OBE in the 2006 New Year Honours by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to drama. In 1990, Coltrane received the Evening Standard British Film Award – Peter Sellers Award for Comedy. In 2011, he was honoured for his "outstanding contribution" to film at the British Academy Scotland Awards.

Where Adam Stood is a television play by Dennis Potter, first broadcast on BBC 2 in 1976. It is a free adaptation, wholly shot on film, of Edmund Gosse's autobiographical book Father and Son (1907).

The Nigel Barton plays are two semi-autobiographical television dramas by Dennis Potter, first broadcast on BBC1 on 8 and 15 December 1965 as part of The Wednesday Play strand. The first play, Stand Up, Nigel Barton, follows the eponymous character's journey from his childhood in a small mining community to winning a scholarship for Oxford, while the second play, Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton, sees him standing for Parliament as the Labour Party candidate in a by-election. Both plays develop themes and use dramatic devices that became hallmarks of Potter's later plays for television.

Kenith Trodd is a British television producer best known for his professional association with television playwright Dennis Potter.

<i>Moonlight on the Highway</i> 1969 British TV series or programme

Moonlight on the Highway is a television play by Dennis Potter, first broadcast in the United Kingdom on 12 April 1969 as part of ITV's Saturday Night Theatre strand. The tale of a young Al Bowlly fanatic attempting to blot out memories of sexual abuse via his fixation with the singer, the play was the first of Potter's works to use popular music as a dramatic device and strongly anticipated Potter's later 'serials with songs' Pennies from Heaven (1978), The Singing Detective (1986) and Lipstick on Your Collar (1993).

References

  1. ↑ British Film Institute SIFT database.
  2. ↑ Graham Fuller, Dennis Potter (interview), American Film, March 1989, p.55.
  3. ↑ Graham Fuller, Potter on Potter, Faber and Faber 1993, p.125.
  4. ↑ "BFI Screenonline Blackeyes". screenonline.org.uk.
  5. ↑ "The Daily Telegraph obituary". The Daily Telegraph. 8 June 1994. Archived from the original on 20 February 2011.
  6. ↑ Wilde, Jon (12 December 2007). "How I became a character in Dennis Potter's Blackeyes". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 December 2007.
  7. ↑ "The Listener Magazine June 1989". The Guardian. theguardian.com. 30 March 2011.
  8. ↑ The Listener 1 June 1989
  9. ↑ New Statesman 24 November 1989
  10. ↑ Daily Star 23 November 1989
  11. ↑ Sunday Times 26 November 1989
  12. ↑ City Limits Magazine, 30 November 1989
  13. ↑ Time Out Magazine, 22 November 1989
  14. ↑ Evening Standard 23 November 1989
  15. ↑ Daily Mirror 29 November 1989
  16. ↑ Sunday Times 26 November 1989
  17. ↑ Independent 30 November 1989
  18. ↑ Daily Telegraph 30 November 1989
  19. ↑ Sunday Express 3 December 1989
  20. ↑ Sunday Times 24 December 1989
  21. ↑ Daily Telegraph 7 December 1989
  22. ↑ Griffin's Eye, Daily Mirror, 30 November 1989 (reproduced in Dennis Potter - A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter, Faber and Faber 1998, image no. 36)
  23. ↑ Bill Caldwell, Daily Star, 1 December 1989, reproduced "British Cartoons Archive". cartoons.ac.uk.
  24. ↑ Interview with Gina Bellman, quoted in Dennis Potter - A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter, Faber and Faber 1998, p.504
  25. ↑ Interview with Martina Devlin, Edingburgh Evening News, 10 February 1990
  26. ↑ Independent 21 December 1989
  27. ↑ Dennis Potter interview on The John Dunn Show, BBC Radio 2, 13 December 1989
  28. ↑ Independent 21 December 1989
  29. ↑ Sunday Telegraph 31 December 1989
  30. ↑ Quoted in Graham Fuller, Potter on Potter, Faber and Faber 1993, p.133.
  31. ↑ Quoted in Graham Fuller, Potter on Potter, Faber and Faber 1993, p.132.
  32. ↑ Quoted in Graham Fuller, Potter on Potter, Faber and Faber 1993, p.134.
  33. ↑ Graham Fuller, Potter on Potter, Faber and Faber 1993, p.126.
  34. ↑ Graham Fuller, Angels and Devils: The Dark Dreams of Dennis Potter, Sight & Sound Magazine, July 2014, p.41.
  35. ↑ "BFI Screenonline Blackeyes". screenonline.org.uk.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.