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NATURE BOY - EPISODE FOUR Thursday 06/03/00, BBC2 reviewed by Robin Carmody |
September
2000
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The Radio Times' launch article for Nature Boy - for which the magazine showed a perhaps overt favouritism - suggested that there is a "Britain TV forgot", a depressed, isolated world, an intensely parochial, quite aggressively inward-looking provincial Britain, especially in the North of England, which does not conform to the friendly, salt-of-the-earth southern metropolitan media image of the North, and is therefore quietly excluded from television, both in fictional and documentary representations. It is certainly true that the rural North of England is largely absent from television, with the exception of Emmerdale, which is as bad today as it was 25 years ago. In the past, this may have been related to the metropolitan bases of ITV's Northern giants, Granada and Yorkshire, and Border Television's status as the network's ultimate minnow - indeed, Granada was opposed in the 1967 franchise rounds by a group arguing that it presented an outmoded stereotype of the North, and ignored the rural parts of its coverage area. But Nature Boy was too significant and, on repeated viewings, excellent a series to be spoken of in petty terms of ITV company changes. It had an epic quality; the sense of a personal voyage that very little TV drama manages. Bryan Elsley's series was not a dramatised political tract, despite the thinly-veiled criticism of conniving, ambitious (no party given, but probably Tory) MP Tom Tyler (Andrew Woodall), and the clear sympathy with environmental campaigner Jenny Macallister (Joanne Froggatt) in her battles with the Blexco corporation in episode two, and the scenes of protesters at an airport development that dominated episode three. Nor was it out to shock, despite the disturbing nature of the sexual abuse of children in the first episode, and the sympathetic portrayal of the paedophile Fred (Mark Benton). Rather it was an evocation of a rootless, ill-defined existence, one which does not understand and has never known permanence; a world where conventional morals mean nothing, where most human experiences are inverted, and a world in which more people live than television normally wants us to believe. While the last few moments of episode two were intensely moving, episode four was the series' masterpiece. It begins more upbeat than anything that has come before, with the title character of David (Lee Ingleby) having arrived in the South-East. A brief sunlit sequence of apple-picking, set to the Stone Roses' Shoot You Down, has an air of optimism quite outwith all that came before. When David joins up with a travelling community, and is seen at its fair, it's clear that things are, at least momentarily, improving for him. The mood is of happiness and elation, and this continues to come through when we see his moments of love, in some Sussex field, with southern middle-class (it seems) girl Katy. It's as though he's relaxing, calming down, discovering himself, perhaps for the first time: but there's clearly something else waiting to come. In the hospital where Jenny Macallister is in a coma, as he resorts to sheer physical rage at his own past misjudgements, it starts to come out. His moment of realisation that his father also abandoned Katy is quietly, unbearably affecting. Every nuance of this section hits home where it matters. When he returns to his mother, few words are spoken, and those that are are utterly honest and straightforward; nothing else needs to be said. The outdoor scenes mean the most, though - all the clichés of "voyage" and "journey-to-the-self" are bypassed - we're into something far less emotionally predictable. The reoccurring flashbacks to childhood get more and more powerful. Plain white walls, bleak brutalist architecture, a sense that this is a place where the seriously, profoundly ill spend their lives. But what is it, where is it? We know David's father Steve (Paul McGann) must be around somewhere, for he is the subject of David's quest, the man he feels he must reconcile with so as to find himself. When we do see him, it's suitably undramatic, and the rudeness and starkness of Steve's first words confirms how much he has actually decayed, almost in defiance of David's will to convince himself otherwise. David's disappointment, his quiet, polite rage at the truth, has to be sated. Gradually we see him reconciling himself with his father, desperate to, at least, talk with and understand him again. Steve has clearly been isolated from life as most of us live it for so long that a return to it may well be impossible, and that's the tragedy. David is trying, somehow, to make sense of the world around him, dominated either by sheer uncontrollable rage or by quiet attempts to work out how it went wrong. The cruelties of his life seem to be taking over. Steve, who has been working with genetically modified crops, has clearly lost control of his own actions and is no longer physically his own master. The scenes of painful conversation between father and son seem to go on forever, but not in a negative, tedious or boring sense; more a sense of reinvoking the past, a desperate desire to start again, the start of a reconciliation you sense could take a lifetime. And that is more than Steve feels he can manage. With Steve's words of "seasons change" we know by now that Steve would rather it ended at this moment than continue his doomed attempts to restore himself. David so clearly knows what he has to do, and he knows it is his father's will. There is a flurry of images: underwater, brief scenes of Steve's final moments, at rest. Then David on a train, then in the midst of the countryside in a short moment of conversation, then David alone, contemplating the next stage. Then at Jenny's bedside, her first signs of consciousness, then nothing save the sounds of the countryside. An empty page. A whole other story we can only consider. I don't really want to know what follows. An attempt to expand on this might be rewarding, but more likely it would be self-defeating. What has become clear with time is that Nature Boy contains a wider emotional and geographical range in its four hours than many other dramas, and reveals itself in retrospect (however incomplete it somehow seemed on first transmission) as something intensely moving and fulfilling. |
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