Red Letter Day: Bag of Yeast (Seventies TV Season)
The introduction to this series of posts on 1970s TV shows can be found here:
Red Letter Day (1976) suffers from a couple of considerable handicaps which I think may account for its lack of presence in the cult TV blogosphere. The first is that it was only ever seven episodes so viewers never got time to remember the excellent episodes while forgetting the less good ones - inconsistent writing always being the lot of the anthology series. The first, Ready When You Are, Mr McGill is excellent (and in fact won an academy award). It's worth seeking out the series for that play alone. On the other hand, Amazing Stories is barking mad. It may be that I was distracted by the stuffed ?wolfhound which dominates most of the scenes but try as I might I found it difficult to detect the plot which is supposed to be a family being taken over by vegetables.
The other handicap, in my opinion, and remember it was devised by the legendary Jack Rosenthal so I'm punching well above my weight here, is that I think it is misnamed. Strictly speaking a red letter day is a special day in the calendar (and in fact goes back to Roman antiquity when that was how feasts were displayed in the calendar). In Britain this convention has also been used to show feasts in successive liturgical calendars and the illustration shows two red letter days shown in the 1549 Book of Common Prayer.
But that's not really the way the phrase is used in the show, where it is more a day of significance for the characters. So rather than have a line of festivals, we have days of significance, such as getting a role in a film, the death of a spouse, meeting your hero at a sci-fi convention. Of course not all these are going to be happy events, and since we've been set up to expect red letter days it's bound to be a bit of a let-down at getting something else, in fact significant life events including bereavements and all sorts of other things.
Bag of Yeast is the final play in the series; it stars and is based on a story by Neville Smith about Tony Scannell, a young man who suddenly decides to become a Roman Catholic priest, and the effect this decision has on his family, him and his fiancee. If you look up Neville Smith on IMDB he has a long list of credits of writing the sort of plays that tend to be a bit more high brow than the stuff I normally watch. Bag of yeast is Cockney rhyming slang for beast or priest, and I only found this out because I looked it up: if this is the reason for the name it's strange, given the play's setting in Liverpool. Once again I'm aware that I'm subjecting a TV show intended for one showing nearly fifty years ago to an intense scrutiny prompted by repeat viewings which it wouldn't have had at the time.
The play doesn't hesitate to invite us to reflect on the ripples of this decision in all aspects of his life, and untimately doesn't tend to give easy decisions but tends to provoke thought.
We are invited to think about Tony's motivations for becoming a priest. These are cleverly teased out by the natural plot device of his family and others asking him why he's decided to become a priest. The play also interestingly gives a variety of responses to this: notably his Marxist father who disapproves of this every step of the way. We also see an interesting interview he has with the bishop where he describes that he wants to be involved as a priest in the social change which is coming: the bishop, rightly, points out that Tony hasn't mentioned Christ once in his description of why he wants to be a priest, but nonetheless goes on to ordain him. Bizarrely, during the interview the bishop comments that many of the students he started seminary with have left, yet would have made better priests that the ones who remain: surely an odd thing to say to a seminarian. Tony is clear that his vision of church and priesthood is more political and prophetic than used to be the case. This somewhat nebulous sense of vocation is contrasted with a scene in which he discusses it with a priest who tells him he is overly sure but does encourage him to think about what effect his actions will have on his family and others. This show doesn't give easy answers to this but encourages us to think.
We are particularly invited to think about what the hell Tony thinks he is playing at as regards celibacy. His decision is actually portrayed as quite selfish because he abruptly breaks off with his fiancee who has no idea that he has been thinking about it: it is clear that even if they're not currently having sex they're not a million miles away from it. His fiancee of course wonders whether it's something she has done and is utterly mystified. The way I describe this sounds a bit wooden: however again this represents the way in which this show doesn't give pat answers.
Ultimately Tony's mother tells him that he is selfish, however for me the ultimate effect is complete mystification. His motivation and ideals are very clear but I honestly think aren't ones that would automatically make you think of priesthood. So ultimately I suppose we are also invited to think about what would have happened to Tony in the years to come. I'm not a gambling man but even in the heady decade following Vatican 2 I can see him definitely going head to head with the bishop and losing. In fact one of the main questions this play brings up is what the hell the bishop is thinking, ordaining someone whose motivations he clearly thinks questionable.
As with all these seventies TV shows, the passage of fifty years has meant that we would of course react to them differently now from when they were first broadcast. Obviously we would now reflect on the sheer volume of priests who've been ordained who clearly shouldn't have been, and the role of the bishops in ordaining clearly unsuitable men. This isn't even hinted but I think we would tend to question the motivations of a school teacher becoming a priest and expect them to be probed quite thoroughly.
On the other hand I get the impression that this show was completely filmed on location and the seventies interiors are marvellous. There isn't one scene in this play which doesn't contain several huge crimes against interior design: clashing massive patterns, fake leather sofas that would give you a rash, and so on. It contains wonderful contemporary street scenes of Liverpool of the time. Even if you weren't interested in the plot you could turn down the volume and wallow in the scenes. My nursery school was painted in the exact shade of orange that the fiancee's classroom is!
There are a few problems with this that I feel rather bad saying, because this is an excellent drama.
The first is that it can't honestly he said to fit into the red letter day theme of the series. Even though it returns again and again to Tony's ordination day, which is obviously the red letter day, it isn't about that day. It's about him telling people his decision and road to ordination. It isn't made explicit in the show but it actually takes six years to train as a priest so the events of this show are actually spread over six years, mostly taking place before the six years start. Putting this in writing it feels a bit nit-picky, though.
The second is that Tony lives at home in his parents' house at the time he announces he is going to be a priest. Are we seriously supposed to believe that he has either been accepted as a priest without a time of habitual church going or else that he hasn't at least had a good time of being religious such that his family would notice? If someone gets accepted for ordained ministry you would expect them to at least have been religiously involved anyway, and that doesn't seem to be the case here.
Finally there is a difficulty is that Tony's character is supposed to be mid twenties at the start of the show but Neville Smith (born 1940) was 36 and it shows.
Despite my insistence that this show is not easy viewing and raises more questions than it answers, I think there is a possible synthesis to be made of this which could lead to a happy outcome. This is that even though his dad disapproves of the church, it is apparent that Tony's motivations aren't that different from his dad's really. There is also a scene after the ordination where we see the dad getting on like a house on fire with the bishop. There is a suggestion that all the varied elements in Tony's circle could actually be reconciled if they would just let themselves be. Although of course the fiancee is noticeably absent from this possible reconciliation.
This is a very interesting and unusual drama in a rather mixed anthology series which doesn't get enough mention.
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