Shortly before Christmas, the eminent British critic and broadcaster Matthew Sweet embarked on a sponsored, round-the-clock watch of a new DVD set of “Crossroads,” the dogged ITV soap that first ran between 1964 and 1988. The prevailing idea was that negotiating the boxset’s 700 episodes might be as arduous — perhaps even as deadly — as any cross-Channel swim or Himalayan hike; that impression was soon confirmed by Sweet’s running Twitter commentary, which vacillated between the amused, the bemused and the increasingly discombobulated.
A clumsily aspirational, shot-as-live serial set around a motel in the British Midlands — some distance removed from the working-class, Northern grit of ITV’s better known, Bob Dylan-approved “Coronation Street” — “Crossroads” became notorious for its combination of wobbly sets, inexplicable plot shanks and stretches of dead air deployed to trick out the U.K.’s yawning schedules. One argument goes it could only have been a ratings success in...
A clumsily aspirational, shot-as-live serial set around a motel in the British Midlands — some distance removed from the working-class, Northern grit of ITV’s better known, Bob Dylan-approved “Coronation Street” — “Crossroads” became notorious for its combination of wobbly sets, inexplicable plot shanks and stretches of dead air deployed to trick out the U.K.’s yawning schedules. One argument goes it could only have been a ratings success in...
- 2/3/2023
- by Mike McCahill
- Variety Film + TV
Soap operas are microcosms of life. Streets and squares, farms and motels; all the triumph and despair of human existence compressed into a few houses, a few lives. It’s no surprise then, that Russell T Davies – on a hot streak afterA Very British Scandal and It’s a Sin – has turned his attention to the Golden Age of the British soap opera. His three-part drama, Nolly, streaming now on Itvx, has a similarly telescopic scale: a portrait of a woman, and a portrait of a nation.
Nolly is the story of Noele Gordon (Helena Bonham Carter), the star and matriarch of Crossroads – the Midlands-based soap opera that ran from the 1960s through to the end of the Eighties. Nolly, as everyone calls her, is a legend: loved by co-stars, adored by the public, tolerated by directors. But a new era is approaching, and executives at Atv (one of the broadcasters...
Nolly is the story of Noele Gordon (Helena Bonham Carter), the star and matriarch of Crossroads – the Midlands-based soap opera that ran from the 1960s through to the end of the Eighties. Nolly, as everyone calls her, is a legend: loved by co-stars, adored by the public, tolerated by directors. But a new era is approaching, and executives at Atv (one of the broadcasters...
- 2/2/2023
- by Nick Hilton
- The Independent - TV
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