In Sir David Hare’s previous BBC drama series ‘Collateral’ we find that UK human-trafficking, supposedly, is orchestrated not by shady foreign mafias but by quintessentially British businessmen and ex-military types. Illegal immigrants are mostly nice people whereas it is hard to find any decent and sane white people in Britain apart from a few who have the courage to spout some much needed left/liberal outrage at the state of this “nasty little country”. And as for decent and likeable people; these are most likely to be found in the ‘lgbt community’. That’s David Hare and that’s the BBC all over.
Yes, a wonderful word which has the supreme advantage of being abbreviated to ‘oik’, unlike its alternatives. Well done!
William Cameron
3 years ago
Roadkill -I had high hopes because of the excellent Hugh Laurie. But sadly Hare has just written an anti Tory polemic. Wicked Tory minister, threats of privatising the NHS , over powerful special advisors, Tory minister infidelity, – etc etc . Its a sort of Hatchet job set at the intellectual level of middle school. Shows just how dim the BBC is at time when it needs to build bridges rather than offend half the country.
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
And no rational person can bear any David Hare. Whatever….90% of these of these dramas are garbage, and 100% of any political dramas the BBC produces will be garbage. Hare has always been a colossal bore.
Jim Richards
3 years ago
I thought it was dreadful. You can guess whether a character will be good or bad according to skin colour and sexuality. And the plot device that Laurie’s character has a daughter he didn’t know about would not be a potential career ending disaster – look at the PM – it would be spun to give the character a human dimension. As for the Tories selling off the NHS, they’ve been in power for 45 years of the NHS’ existence and it hasn’t happened yet. In fact NHS worship has reached new heights under Johnson and Hancock
There are good political dramas to be written but not by a playwright whose view of politics is about as subtle as a Xmas pantomime
david bewick
3 years ago
I watched the first episode and in all honesty it’s a formulaic and very ordinary drama. All the usual suspects are there and where would we be without a slippery conservative minister getting a bashing and a set of SPAD’s roaming freely. Rather poor fare and the BBC really needs to up its game.
peterdebarra
3 years ago
… Hare ” a name from the past, which we associate, for whatever reason, with the classist/colourist/racialist/sexist/marxist NT/RSC/Old Vic/BBC output ” all at their dying embers stage, all with audiences in free fall after previous enthusiasts fled pre-covid … and continue to flee …
Geoffrey Simon Hicking
3 years ago
The Bodyguard could be weirdly pro-conservative. Heck even Moffatt-era Dr Who had its moments.
Mark Gourley
3 years ago
I don’t think I shall bother with this series given my distrust of David Hare and the BBC. On the other hand I must say “A Very English Scandal” was a triumph in terms of script and performances, especially Hugh Grant as Thorpe.
Off course “A very English scandal” was by Davies, and the equally excellent “The Night Manager” by Farr. Mr Laurie playing an ‘out of character’ villain in the later rather than his normal buffoon. No sign of the oikophobe Hare in either.
simon taylor
3 years ago
BBC political drama always manage to bore, offend, and patronise me.
Ben
3 years ago
Simply awful – I HAD to turn off – was it fifteen minutes in? And I normally love political dramas. This had no nuance, no depth, no interesting characters, no balance, just one long diatribe. David Hare ranting at the entire nation – again.
cbarclay
3 years ago
Hare has a nerve claiming that writers need to show imagination. Even in his prime, watching his plays felt like speed-reading a year’s collection of the Guardian. The mogul in Pravda was clearly based on Murdoch and yet Hare expressed disbelief that anyone could think so.
Many previous political dramas left the party of the politicians unstated. None suffered because even in the days when Labour had some working class MPs audiences understood that there was a lot of similarity between the people leading the two parties.
Rob Alka
3 years ago
David Hare is now 73 years old. Sadly his great plays were decades ago was when he was in his thirties. I’m thinking of plays like Plenty, Murmuring Judges, Absence of War, Pravda. Once he became older he seemed to become a paid-up member of the establishment. Naturally he remained a left wing/Champagne Socialism, like the majority of those making it in the arts and media. Nonetheless, the years have clearly affected the way he handled the same range of topics, which drifted away from passion or hard-edged satire to highlight the loss of ideals and principles to a more mundane naive treatment of the same old topics of disapproval but where Mr Hare now seems to have no emotional skin in the game.
I don’t know how good an actor Hugh Laurie can be. The storylines and script were first rate in the early seasons of “House”, from which Hugh Laurie created a mesmerising character. But in later seasons “House” ran out of ideas and the plots and situations became childishly surreal and no actor, however good, can rescue that.
I can only imagine Hugh Laurie read David Hare’s script and decided that, even with what he must have earnt on “House”, saying yes to the BBC’s Roadkill was better than gardening.
Today, comparing David Hare with Aaron Sorkin was always like comparing chalk and cheese, and that remains true to this day as evidenced by the scripts of Roadkill and The Trial of Chicago 7
In Sir David Hare’s previous BBC drama series ‘Collateral’ we find that UK human-trafficking, supposedly, is orchestrated not by shady foreign mafias but by quintessentially British businessmen and ex-military types. Illegal immigrants are mostly nice people whereas it is hard to find any decent and sane white people in Britain apart from a few who have the courage to spout some much needed left/liberal outrage at the state of this “nasty little country”. And as for decent and likeable people; these are most likely to be found in the ‘lgbt community’. That’s David Hare and that’s the BBC all over.
… a living definition of Oikophobia ” the obsessive hatred of one’s native land and one’s native culture … the word is increasingly useful …
Yes, a wonderful word which has the supreme advantage of being abbreviated to ‘oik’, unlike its alternatives. Well done!
Roadkill -I had high hopes because of the excellent Hugh Laurie. But sadly Hare has just written an anti Tory polemic. Wicked Tory minister, threats of privatising the NHS , over powerful special advisors, Tory minister infidelity, – etc etc . Its a sort of Hatchet job set at the intellectual level of middle school. Shows just how dim the BBC is at time when it needs to build bridges rather than offend half the country.
And no rational person can bear any David Hare. Whatever….90% of these of these dramas are garbage, and 100% of any political dramas the BBC produces will be garbage. Hare has always been a colossal bore.
I thought it was dreadful. You can guess whether a character will be good or bad according to skin colour and sexuality. And the plot device that Laurie’s character has a daughter he didn’t know about would not be a potential career ending disaster – look at the PM – it would be spun to give the character a human dimension. As for the Tories selling off the NHS, they’ve been in power for 45 years of the NHS’ existence and it hasn’t happened yet. In fact NHS worship has reached new heights under Johnson and Hancock
There are good political dramas to be written but not by a playwright whose view of politics is about as subtle as a Xmas pantomime
I watched the first episode and in all honesty it’s a formulaic and very ordinary drama. All the usual suspects are there and where would we be without a slippery conservative minister getting a bashing and a set of SPAD’s roaming freely. Rather poor fare and the BBC really needs to up its game.
… Hare ” a name from the past, which we associate, for whatever reason, with the classist/colourist/racialist/sexist/marxist NT/RSC/Old Vic/BBC output ” all at their dying embers stage, all with audiences in free fall after previous enthusiasts fled pre-covid … and continue to flee …
The Bodyguard could be weirdly pro-conservative. Heck even Moffatt-era Dr Who had its moments.
I don’t think I shall bother with this series given my distrust of David Hare and the BBC. On the other hand I must say “A Very English Scandal” was a triumph in terms of script and performances, especially Hugh Grant as Thorpe.
Off course “A very English scandal” was by Davies, and the equally excellent “The Night Manager” by Farr.
Mr Laurie playing an ‘out of character’ villain in the later rather than his normal buffoon.
No sign of the oikophobe Hare in either.
BBC political drama always manage to bore, offend, and patronise me.
Simply awful – I HAD to turn off – was it fifteen minutes in? And I normally love political dramas. This had no nuance, no depth, no interesting characters, no balance, just one long diatribe. David Hare ranting at the entire nation – again.
Hare has a nerve claiming that writers need to show imagination. Even in his prime, watching his plays felt like speed-reading a year’s collection of the Guardian. The mogul in Pravda was clearly based on Murdoch and yet Hare expressed disbelief that anyone could think so.
Many previous political dramas left the party of the politicians unstated. None suffered because even in the days when Labour had some working class MPs audiences understood that there was a lot of similarity between the people leading the two parties.
David Hare is now 73 years old. Sadly his great plays were decades ago was when he was in his thirties. I’m thinking of plays like Plenty, Murmuring Judges, Absence of War, Pravda. Once he became older he seemed to become a paid-up member of the establishment. Naturally he remained a left wing/Champagne Socialism, like the majority of those making it in the arts and media. Nonetheless, the years have clearly affected the way he handled the same range of topics, which drifted away from passion or hard-edged satire to highlight the loss of ideals and principles to a more mundane naive treatment of the same old topics of disapproval but where Mr Hare now seems to have no emotional skin in the game.
I don’t know how good an actor Hugh Laurie can be. The storylines and script were first rate in the early seasons of “House”, from which Hugh Laurie created a mesmerising character. But in later seasons “House” ran out of ideas and the plots and situations became childishly surreal and no actor, however good, can rescue that.
I can only imagine Hugh Laurie read David Hare’s script and decided that, even with what he must have earnt on “House”, saying yes to the BBC’s Roadkill was better than gardening.
Today, comparing David Hare with Aaron Sorkin was always like comparing chalk and cheese, and that remains true to this day as evidenced by the scripts of Roadkill and The Trial of Chicago 7