Post by Lord Emsworth on May 25, 2022 7:17:12 GMT
Cathy Come Home, from the Play For Today archive, is scheduled to screen on BBC4 tonight (Wed 25 May 2022) at 10pm, followed by a conversation between Ken Loach and Cillian Murphy
Book your place on the chaise longue now
If you have the stamina, an hour before CCH, the beautiful documentary film, The Hermit Of Treig, the story of a decades-long off-grid modern hermit, with a quite moving backstory, is on the same channel at 9pm
More about CCH...
Ken Loach's celebrated gritty drama, which indirectly inspired the founding of housing charity Shelter. It tells the tale of Cathy, who loses her home, husband and eventually her child through the inflexibility of the British welfare system. Carol White and Ray Brooks star
*
Review
By Mark Braxton
It’s a nation of social division, overcrowding and homelessness, where families struggle to pay bills, women suffer harassment and black people are racially abused… Britain in both 1966 and 2022, in other words. So a strong reason to watch Jeremy Sandford’s gut-punch of a drama, as did 12 million on its first airing. It shows life in fast-forward, as rural Cathy (Carol White) hitchhikes to the city, meets lorry driver Reg (Ray Brooks), they marry and have children – before an accident, evictions and worse. But their eternal optimism in the face of stonewalling authority is deeply affecting…
As producer Tony Garnett told Radio Times in his preview, “What happens to them we may scarcely believe. But it is happening now, and is likely to go on happening to lots of people for a long time.”
It set a naturalistic, semi-improvised template for director Ken Loach – in many ways it’s the same soapbox he’s been standing on ever since – and led to the founding of the charity Crisis. The luminous black-and-white photography of Tony Imi, interspersed stats and hard edge only add to its authentic feel.
Certain traits root it in yesteryear: the rough editing, tots playing on the street, characters’ dialogue plagued by negatives (“He’ll never be no good to no one, not never!”). But its power and pertinence remain (it’s one of the 100 BBC TV Gamechangers), and one of its greatest tragedies is how little things have changed. A shriek of outrage down the decades.
www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-xbzix0/cathy-come-home/
