In the recent BBC One drama Ten Pound Pompoms, Annie and Terry Roberts, two new British immigrants to Australia, were invited to a barbecue. Their host is an unreconstructed antipode named Dean, whose opinion of the native population of his country would make John Tyndall blush. Annie, perhaps emboldened by the beer, confronts him. “They are just people,” she says. “And they've been here long before you.
Quite right, and hopefully the home audience will cheer Annie on. Except this scene just didn't ring true.
Ten Pound Poms is set in the 1950s, but Annie's reaction was strangely felt in the 21st century. Of course, many in that generation thought racism was abhorrent, but few would express their horror in such a way. This is becoming more and more of a problem with historical dramas set in the 20th century. As we move further away from the time in which they are set, there will be fewer who can offer a genuine understanding of what we were.
Of course, this explains Ten Pound Poms oddities: lead actress Michelle Keegan's (pre-Australian) tan and verbal anachronisms (“Hello”, “I got it”, “I'm fine, thanks”, “Absolutely”). But while such things are annoying, they are not a real problem. The conversation with Dean is typical of how a TV drama betrays 20th century history. By imbuing characters from the past with images of the present, they create a false reflection of how we acted and thought.
This has been going on for a decade or more. I remember the BBC film The Hour (2011–2012) by Abi Morgan, which was set on a television news station in the 1950s and raised a red flag on issues like sexism to the point where I I almost expected the steel-core producer Romola Garai to break the fourth wall and wag a finger – not so much at the public as at our ancestors for not meeting the program.
Peter Moffat's drama The Village (2013–2014), set in Derbyshire in the early 20th century, took a similar approach, whereby we had to judge characters based solely on their affiliation. The Minister's daughter Marta, for example, is good in that she supports universal women's suffrage; Lady Allingham is rather partial to notions of the Empire and is therefore a Bad Person; shades of gray are not allowed. Worse than this binary approach to characterization is that fictional people are introduced into fictions that are otherwise entirely based on fact.
Damian Lewis and Guy Pearce in A Spy Among Friends. Photo: ITVX
A Spy Among Friends, a recent adaptation of Ben McIntyre's ITVX book, takes place in the 1960s and concerns the revelation of Kim Philby's life as a double agent. Today there is a problem with adapting such stories. It was a world of men, and a world of upper class men: there were dandies in beautiful tailored suits, giving away secrets and drinking generous amounts of whiskey. And how to stop offending those who can complain that everything is somehow masculine, pale and stale?
Enter Lily Thomas, a woman (sigh) and a working-class woman (double sigh), who cuts through all the MI5 bullshit like a hot knife through butter. Good for her, except that Lily didn't exist, just as she didn't exist in McIntyre's book, and this act of wish fulfillment – or just a way of ticking off various marketing ticks – is a hypocritical misrepresentation. This may comfort Twitter, but it's not true.
But I hear you say there are worse criminals. And what about Netflix's gleefully inauthentic Bridgerton, which, with its inclusiveness and array of pop culture references, feels as close to Regency England as an episode of Hollyoaks? Well, yes, except you could argue that Bridgerton is a fantasy anyway and is in fact so far from the truth that it acts as part of a counterfactual story. This in itself can be instructive, though counterintuitive: By emphasizing what didn't happen, you begin to deal with what actually happened.
Sometimes the drama gets it right, and the most successful ones are those that handle their historical assessment very lightly. Mad Men (a direct influence on The Hour), set in an advertising agency on Madison Avenue in the 1960s, has always been on the lookout for the misogyny and homophobia that crept through Sterling Cooper's walls but forced the viewer to make their own decisions. about the behavior of the characters.
I remember a superb episode in which Joan, the super-smart siren who has to rearrange paper clips and straighten her ties, had to temporarily take on a more creative role. She secretly enjoyed it, and her disappointment at having to return to her old job was only a faint hint. Joan internalized her pain, and it's much more real, more touching than any fiction about inequality in the workplace.
I don't mind the dramatic liberties. Since the advent of cinema, writers have never let facts get in the way of a good story. The sound of music wouldn't be the same if Maria and the von Trapps crossed the railroad tracks to escape the Nazis, as they did in real life, rather than running through the Alps. But if the story really represents the subversion of the society it portrays (as in the case of A Spy Among Friends), then there is a problem.
People always say that history is about making connections, and This is true. There's something exhilarating about finding out just how similar we are to our ancestors (which is why Jane Austen still rules the show). But equally, I would say that the purpose of the story is to explore our differences, and if you were to watch Ten Pound Pompoms, you would find very little.
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