Peter Viney's Blog

Six episodes

BBC TV series, 1999

Written by Debbie Horsfield

Directed by John Wood

CAST:

Gillian Kearney- Eloise Brookes
Emma Cooke – Arden Brookes
Sue Johnston – Irma Brookes
David Threfall- Norman Kershawe
Nicholas Farrell- Howard Brookes
Phil Valentine – Larry Valentine
James Callis – The Wolf, drummer The Ice-Cubes
Julian Kerridge – Tex, bass guitarist, The Ice Cubes
Joseph McFadden – Dallas McCabe – guitarist and lead singer, The Ice Cubes
Michelle Abrahams – Hayley
Dermot Kerrigan – Shane, record executive
Jim Hooper- Clifford
Brian Poyser- Alphonse

I’m not going to review the plot, it’s too delicious a tale to spoil. It’s a case of ordering the DVD and enjoying it.

It’s set in 1965, and takes place in Eccles, part of Salford in Greater Manchester. I will describe the characters.

THE BROOKES FAMILY

Arden and Eloise are twin sisters. A little suspension of disbelief on appearance. They’re both eighteen and finishing the Sixth Form as it begins. They’re both first-rate singers.

Eloise is dark-haired, likes reading and poetry. She has the ability to be a songwriter.

Arden is bottle-blonde, and wants to be a singer. Not as intellectually-biased as Eloise, and also more overtly interested in sex. We first see the girls at school, with Arden emerging from the bike shed with a tousled lad.

The opening scene with the careers office sets out the attitude to girls and higher education in 1965: secretarial course. Arden has mentioned Swinging London and Carnaby Street, Eloise has mentioned university …

CAREERS OFFICER: This is a careers office, not cloud cuckoo land.

Accurate. It’s just at the point universities had expanded, so that anyone who’d completed Sixth Form reasonably well would have been able to get a tertiary education place. My school directed swathes of 18 year olds towards banks. Karen’s neighbouring school directed large swathes to secretarial. In defence of the Careers Officer, I owe my place at university to a very sympathetic and excellent one in Bournemouth.

Howard is their father. His wife is long gone. He’s a waiter at the ultra-posh Belvedere Hotel when it begins, though he will end up as “tour manager” for the Ice-Cubes. OK, we cheerfully admitted to being “roadies” back in my day rather than claiming to be ‘tour managers’. He manages to move from dinner jacket and bow tie to leather-jacketed roadie.

Howard and the twins live with his mother, Irma. Irma pines after the long-departed concert pianist father of Howard. She’s known as Grandma to the girls. She’s snobbish and tries to speak and dress nicely. Most careful with the lippy. Authoritarian. Her catch-phrase is ‘I want doesn’t get’ which Eloise turns into a song.

Norman is a cousin … Howard’s cousin judging by his age, thirty-nine. He is the third Brookes who has a long-departed partner. There may be a unifying reason here. In his case because he’s extremely creepy, and has decided he wants to marry (or perhaps groom?) the pure and innocent 18-year old Eloise. Norman is known as ‘Cousin Norman’ and owns a chip shop and flats. He calls Irma ‘Mother Brookes’ and has his meals at their house, so functions as an uncle or older brother which makes his infatuation with Eloise even creepier. Arden and Eloise work in the chip shop part-time.Irma is an investor in Norman’s chippie ambition.

The girls enter a (rigged) talent contest and meet and sing with The Ice-Cubes.

THE ICE-CUBES

Dallas – Lead singer and guitarist, love interest for both girls. He’s Irish.
The Wolf – Foppish aristocratic drummer, a Right Honourable, Irma is very impressed with him as a suitor for Eloise
Tex – bass guitarist

Norman owns the flat they’re renting over the chip shop.

OTHERS

Larry Valentine – Singer as Larry B. Cool who models himself on a 1957 Teddy Boy. The Ice Cubes are his backing group. He becomes their manager. The Ice-Cubes got stuck with the name as his backing group. They loathe Larry (who wouldn’t?) and demonstrate their feelings while playing backing to his ten years out-of-date act.

Hayley – the singer Larry is promoting

Shane Riordan is the record executive they all want to impress. Shades of Epstein, Andrew Loog Oldham or Simon Napier-Bell.

They get 1965 almost entirely right. A minor anachronism isthat Joseph McFadden’s hair is too well-cut and expensively layered for 1965. In the band, The Wolf is dressed like Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen, with very long hair. I can see the character starting to grow it that long in 1964 or 65, but mainly, most would have taken till 1967 to get it that long … just in growing time. It took me from 1966 to 1970 to get mine that long. The casting and costume definitely echoed Llewellyn-Bowen, a man who has never got sweaty and messy running for a bus. His Changing Rooms TV programme started in 1996, so I would be sure he inspired the look. Tex as the bass player picks up a different girl every time he appears (shades of Bill Wyman).

What I like about the music is that the three piece band ARE a three piece. No ghostly keyboards, horns or strings. What you see is what you hear (except they are miming). When they require a piano for the song at the wedding, Clifford, an older friend of Howard’s walks over and joins them. The music is well-chosen, and the performances are given time and air. There are a number of great 60s classics as well as the band’s originals. The Hollies get major exposure with Look Through Any Window and Just One Look (sung by Arden and Eloise, so taking it closer to Doris Troy’s original version) – later we see on a poster that The Ice Cubes are supporting The Hollies. Dave Berry’s The Crying Game plays just about in full over oneset of credits.

Larry Valentine and his protégée, Hayley, are adept at sounding enthusiastic in front of Shane, but not very good … that’s a really hard one to carry off.

The band are credible, though they’re just ahead of the curve for a three-piece (Hendrix, The Cream) to be taking off. They’re not a power trio either, except for a nod at The Kinks with one song. They’re more vocal harmony. Dallas is the talent, the singer and heartthrob. He can write music but not lyrics … which is where Eloise comes in. The Wolf is told by Dallas that he was only in the band because he could afford a drum kit (not uncommon as bands formed). The internal tensions feel real, The Wolf jealous of Dallas and also keen on Eloise. Tex outside the battle, cheerfully pulling on a regular basis.

They look as if they’re playing, and they all sing. McFadden as Dallas is actually good. It was industry standard that groups got three shots at a hit single, then disappeared. The Ice-Cubes are on Parlophone, so might have had a better chance

The two baddies, Norman (David Threfall) and Larry (Phil Daniels) are both brilliant creations. Sue Johnstone is superb. It covers what it says on the box: sex, chips, rock and roll.

The vehicles are important. Norman has a billious green Vauxhall Victor with all the extras. The model was made from 1957 to 1961, and looks perfect (though I think Norman with his chip shop empire might have had a later but less-iconic model). Larry Valentine, the old Teddy Boy has a white and yellow Ford Zodiac or Zephyr convertible … again a 1961 model. Looks perfect, but again almost a previous pop era.

The group van is a Commer with side windows. Absolutely correct – the Commer was the rock band vehicle of choice until the Ford Transit took over. In O! Lucky Man The Alan Price Set are in one. While the Transit arrived in 1965, no band bought new and it was 1967 or 1968 before it became the standard transport. If you stopped at Watford Gap or Leicester Forest East motorway services at 2 or 3 a.m. on a Sunday morning in 1969, you’d see a dozen Ford Transits lined up … bands returning to London from Northern and Midlands university and college Saturday night gigs. They were all dark blue too.

I loved it as a view of the mid 60s. Better than nearly anything on TV today. A mild negative … Episode 6 veers to the sentimental at the end. Never mind, we are into the characters enough to go with it by then. The whole is great. We didn’t binge watch it either, but savoured it at one episode per night.

I’m slightly surprised the cast didn’t go on to more high profile careers, but then they seem to have stayed solidly in work in TV soap operas ever since. I spent ten minutes in IMDB following the links from Sex, Chips and Rock ‘n; Roll. Joseph McFadden is typical … Heartbeat (48 episodes), Casualty (11 episodes), Holby City (144 episodes, 2014 to 2020). Then Gillian Kearney was Forsythe Saga (10 episodes), Casualty (94 episodes), Emmerdale (378 episodes). Sue Johnston is unforgettable as Barbara from The Royle Family, but as well as excellent roles in Little Dorritt and Jam & Jerusalem, she still chalked up 92 episodes of Waking The Dead and 172 of Coronation Street. David Threfall has had a more varied career but still did 139 episodes of Shameless. So did Phil Daniels do more varied material, but still did 208 episodes of Eastenders. So I suppose they became the acting backbone of mainstream British TV.

Soundtrack – 2 CD set

As a collection of 52 1960s songs, it’s a bargain. But I had all of them anyway. You get the three Ice Cubes songs credited to Joseph McFadden: I Want Doesn’t Get, Words in My Mouth and Everything Changed.

The Boy Next Door doesn’t get an artist credit, but like the three above was written by Mike Moran & Debbie Horsfield.

As we might have guessed, Joe McFadden does his own vocal. None of The Ice Cubes actually play … drums are Brett Morgan and Ralph Salmine. Bass is Steve Pearce. The guitar is James Nisbet. Mike Moran adds piano himself, and the sax is Andy Mackintosh.

No, sadly Gillian Kearney and Emma Brooks are miming. Vocals are credited to Phil Daniels, Joseph McFadden (as on screen) but then Madeleine Bell, Sam Blue, Mary Carewe, Sylvia James, Muck Mullins, Keith Murell, Miriam Stockley. I thought Arden’s lead vocal was brilliant, but it will be Madeleine Bell.

It is a pity. I thought Just One Look on the OST beat the Hollies version.