Dennis Potter was oftentimes a controversial author — but his telecasting spiel Brimstone and Treacle is maybe his nasty work . Banned for over 10 days by the BBC , this play about a suburban family who gets the perfect houseguest ( who is probably Satan ) is just horrible . And kind of mad . See for yourself .
Most of us only have a go at it Brimstone and Treacle as an insane 1982 movie starring Sting — but it started out as a telecasting play for the BBC . This bitterly misanthropic TV movie was write in 1974 , but the BBC stalled on filming it for a brace years , before finally shooting in 1976 — and then once it was filmed , the BBC shelved it for another decennary , not showing it until 1987 . But meanwhile , Potter ’s script was turned into a movie , which got a snatch more exposure . ( Denholm Elliott , who played the founding father in the tv set adaptation , returned to fiddle the sire again in the movie . )
And the TV movie is just brutal — witness the above view , where Martin takes Tom Bates ’ opinion about those terrible immigrant to their consistent conclusion , to Tom ’s flabbergasted horror .
In Brimstone and Treacle , a inscrutable unseasoned adult male key Martin conk out to live with the Bateses , whose daughter is paralytic and unable to speak follow a cable car fortuity . Martin ingratiates himself with the family , specially Mrs. Bates , while also pointing up the hypocrisy of their in-between - class Christian respectability . In the end , we learn that Mr. Bates was suffer sex activity with his secretarial assistant , and witnessing this unfaithfulness was the trauma that really put the daughter Pattie in a coma . After Martin canary in and knap Pattie , she recovers consciousness and accuse her father .
When the television receiver playing period was suppressed in 1976 , it was mostly on the flat coat that it might offend religious people . Leaving aside the fact that Martin is probably theorize to be Satan or some kind of demon , there are tons of pot shots at religious people who are fundamentally awful . Potter said that this and interchangeable plays he pen were “ based on the feeling that religion is not the bandage but the combat injury . ”
But now , Brimstone and Treacle has been making a comeback , with stage operation . When it was perform theatrically in London in 2012 , the anti - religion clobber was n’t about as controversial as the part where Martin rapes a quadriplegic woman , as the Guardian explains :
When the young theatre director Amelia Sears , hunting for her next output , came across a transcript of a play called Brimstone and Treacle by Dennis Potter , she had , she admits , “ no idea of the tilt there was around it . I ’d done a production of Potter ’s Blue Remembered Hills and I find this in a library and imagine : why has n’t it been done ? ” …
Recorded in 1976 , the turn was referred to the then BBC film director of television programme , Alasdair Milne . In his memoirs , Milne records that a cover made him “ almost physically sick ” . While stressing the grandeur of the writing and acting , Milne ruled that the play would be find “ repugnant ” by much of the consultation and so could not be shown … .
The most intriguing facet of this revival is that the play may be more contentious now than it was 35 years ago . Its television ban was prompted by the concern that the plot might scandalise Christians ; in 2012 , the propriety of depicting a sexual assault on a quadriplegic adult female is the more likely source of protest .
“ I ’ve had to think about this , from a woman ’s point of view , ” enjoin Sears . “ What , morally , is this suggesting ? A fair sex gets knock and she is apparently mend . So that has been a challenge . ”
So how does this barbed 1970s satire contain up today ? For a thoughtful , and in the end none too positive , persuasion , register this recent reappraisal of a Canadian theatrical output . And you may see the original 1976 versionon Youtube .
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