Problematic TV: Not on Your Nellie
Content warning: racism and dementia
I have a couple of ideas for some posts which are experimental because out of the normal run of what I write about on this blog: this post is inspired by one of them, because I have always preferred to blog about TV shows which I like and would recommend to anyone else. I have avoided writing about the shows which I consider not to be any good, and still won't because I'm finding as I get older I'm much less willing to give time to watching and doing things I don't want to.
But apart from the shows I really like and the ones I wouldn't waste my life on, there are also the shows that I'm not sure about. They're not absolute rubbish so don't break my personal rule of not writing about rubbish (the only way Heil Honey I'm Home will appear here is to make the point that it should never have been made), but they're not shows that I would be in two minds about or ones which raise questions of production or ethics.
Not on Your Nellie is one of those shows. It is a sitcom (and I don't do sitcoms) which ran from 1974 to 1975, so within my lifetime, although for reasons I'll go into in a bit it feels much longer ago. The premise is that it is about Nellie Pickersgill who moves from Bolton to London to run her elderly father's pub in Chelsea. There are seventeen episodes, and it is some measure of its success that all three series were reduced by Network DVD before its demise. The situation in this sit com is the setting of the pub, the people who drink and work there, and Nellie and her dad.
The reason it feels much longer ago than fifty years ago to me is that the show is largely a vehicle for veteran comedian and actress Hylda Baker, and my own grandmother (born in 1901) was very fond of Hylda Baker's performance style. It carries through into Not on Your Nellie, although she isn't playing herself, and features a preponderance of catchphrases and malapropisms, some of which were used a lot by my grandmother, and my mother quoting her. This means that watching this show is like a reminiscence of my grandmother for me.
There are a couple of things I'm finding very interesting, which is that among the regulars of the pub are an Asian man, a black man and a gay couple. This is where the problems for me start, in that some of the attitudes are those of the time, and I think the racial attitudes shown are worse than the attitudes towards the gay couple. I have thought long and hard about this, and I don't think this is a show that should just be forgotten because of being plain racist (like Curry and Chips) because while there are problematic attitudes, the reality is that what is depicted is a mixed community where people are getting on with each other. This shows the real Britain, not what the gammons would want us to think the 1970s were like.
Also of the time is of course the buxom bar maid who gets her bosoms wet at various points.
There is one other thing which has made this show very sad viewing since I discovered it. By all accounts Hylda Baker was a proper fire brand and could be very difficult (exactly the personality she portrays in this show) but apparently by the time she was making this show in her sixties she had problems with her role. She couldn't remember her lines and in fact either had to have them written on cards or other members of the cast would whisper her next lines to her. She refused to attend rehearsals, and this show was the end of her career after she sued the production for an on-set injury. It turns out that in her seventies (she was born in 1905) she was diagnosed with dementia. Ultimately she went from the life of a star to dying in 1986 in a psychiatric hospital where she'd lived for two years. It sounds very much as if her inability to remember her lines was the dementia coming on, which makes this very difficult viewing when you know about her difficulty - it isn't at all apparent on viewing.
I am far from certain that Not on Your Nellie will appear here again, however it's series which brings back some very personal memories for me personally and also memories of its time.
Have a sample of what the show's like:
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