The Problematic Gaze

Visit our YouTube playlist to find out more about "A Taste Of Honey" and the cultural landscape of Britain in 1961
Interracial romance. Teenage pregnancy. Homosexuality. An unmarried mother. In 1961, A Taste of Honey put subjects British cinema usually kept firmly out of sight right at the centre of the screen.
This week we're revisiting A Taste of Honey (1961), Tony Richardson's landmark British New Wave drama starring Rita Tushingham, Dora Bryan, Murray Melvin and Paul Danquah.
Adapted from Shelagh Delaney's groundbreaking play, the film follows Jo, a Salford teenager living with her neglectful mother Helen. When Jo becomes pregnant by Jimmy, a Black sailor, she forms an unconventional household with Geoffrey, her gay friend—until Helen's return threatens the little family they've created.
But to understand why A Taste of Honey caused such a stir, we're going back to the Britain that produced it.
We look at the respectable world of post-war “consensual cinema”, the arrival of the Angry Young Men, Free Cinema and kitchen-sink realism, and the changing representation of working-class life that was also appearing on television in Coronation Street.
Then there are the subjects the film dared to tackle.
We're discussing interracial relationships and racism in 1960s Britain, the stigma surrounding unmarried pregnancy and “illegitimacy”, and Geoffrey's remarkably sympathetic portrayal at a time when sex between men was still criminalised in England and Wales. We also look at the Wolfenden Report and the political debate that would eventually lead to partial decriminalisation in 1967.
We explore the film's depiction of Salford and working-class Northern England, its music and performances, its international controversy and censorship, and the major recognition it received at the BAFTA Awards.
And, more than six decades later, we ask the question at the heart of The Problematic Gaze: how does A Taste of Honey hold up today?
Is it an uncomfortable relic of 1961—or does Jo and Geoffrey's makeshift little family still feel surprisingly modern?
Grab yourself a taste of honey and join us as we head back to the beginning of the Swinging Sixties… before Britain had actually started swinging.

Click here to watch A Taste Of Honey on YouTube
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Click here to check out our new YouTube playlists, this week it accompanies our last main episode on UK sitcom 'Bread' from 1986
Click here to watch the documentary on Shelagh Delaney (writer of A Taste Of Honey from next weeks main show)
Click here to watch 'A Taste Of Honey', the topic of next weeks main episode
This week at PG Manor, we're recovering from a rather busy weekend. We've been entertaining Hungarian actress Sonya, seeing Ricky Gervais and Jack Whitehall, preparing for a mammoth upcoming recording session—and issuing an important correction after apparently relocating Aqua to Sweden. They're Danish-Norwegian. We apologise to Scandinavia.
Following our trip back to the world of Bread, the Boswell family and 1980s Liverpool, Dr Lee has also been investigating the mysterious “cotton mill whisper” and whether workers really developed a special way of communicating above the deafening machinery.
Then it's over to the Gazers.
Listener mail takes us from biodegradable bowel-screening test paper in Australia to a sanitised version of Saturday Night Fever and a spider of frankly unacceptable proportions.
There's also some actual news to discuss. We look at the BBC's tender process for the future of Doctor Who and what its emphasis on character-driven, distinctly British storytelling might tell us about the programme's next incarnation.
Then we discover why the United Nations has backed a move away from distorted world maps that make Africa appear far smaller than it really is. The UN General Assembly has encouraged the use of equal-area projections when relative size matters, following an African-led campaign against the distortions associated with the Mercator projection.
We also learn about purple poppies commemorating animals lost in war before encountering possibly the week's most horrifying story: a woman who says that while she was in a coma, she could hear the same song her family was playing to her over and over again for a month. She later described the experience as torture.
Plus, we've started creating new YouTube companion playlists to take you even further into the films, television, music and culture we're discussing each week.
And next week we're heading back to 1961 for A Taste of Honey, Tony Richardson's landmark British New Wave film starring Rita Tushingham and Dora Bryan.
Expect pregnancy, class, race, sexuality, Salford—and presumably considerably less Bread.
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Don't forget to hit that FOLLOW button to get every episode of The Problematic Gaze downloaded and ready to listen!

Please leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. They really help to spread the word of The Problematic Gaze.

And if our fellow Gazers want to comment on what they've heard in our episodes, or to suggest future topics, please email us at theproblematicgaze@gmail.com. We love hearing from you!
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Click here to watch the episode of Bread discussed in this show on YouTube
This week we're heading to Liverpool to revisit Bread, Carla Lane's hugely popular BBC sitcom about the Boswell family. First broadcast in 1986, Bread became one of the defining British sitcoms of the decade, following formidable matriarch Nellie Boswell and her Catholic, working-class Liverpool family as they navigated love, money, unemployment and an impressively creative relationship with the DHSS.
We're focusing on Series 1, Episode 6, first broadcast on 15 June 1986, and there's an extraordinary amount going on.
Joey is dealing with his father's gambling debts—and some men with a suspicious interest in fur coats—while Adrian loses his job, Jack handles stolen goods and Billy discovers that his girlfriend Julie is pregnant. Their discussions about abortion, marriage and finding somewhere to live give us a glimpse of some very real pressures facing young couples in 1980s Britain.
Meanwhile, Aveline gets her topless photographs published, Grandad struggles with depression and the Boswells continue their elaborate attempts to stay one step ahead of the benefits system.
We look at the sitcom's portrayal of working-class Liverpool, Catholicism, unemployment, benefit fraud and petty crime, and ask whether the Boswells are affectionate comic creations or part of a much less comfortable tradition of stereotypes about people living on benefits.
Has Bread aged surprisingly well—or does its politics look very different nearly 40 years later?
Then it's off to Culture Corner, and this time we're going properly 1986.
We're flicking through an original Smash Hits to discover the pop gossip, celebrity nonsense and surprisingly serious nuclear-war debate occupying British teenagers that year. We revisit the UK Top 10 singles from the week this episode aired and then take a dangerous trip into the 1986 Argos catalogue to see what Britain apparently considered the height of domestic sophistication.
Come for the Boswells, stay for the 1980s home furnishings.
On with the show, la!
GAZER HOMEWORK: Next week we focus on the film 'A Taste Of Honey' from 1961. Click here to watch on YouTube
Click here to follow us on all our socials

Don't forget to hit that FOLLOW button to get every episode of The Problematic Gaze downloaded and ready to listen!

Please leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. They really help to spread the word of The Problematic Gaze.

And if our fellow Gazers want to comment on what they've heard in our episodes, or to suggest future topics, please email us at theproblematicgaze@gmail.com. We love hearing from you!
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Welcome Gazers to this weeks Gazette! This week we're dealing with some of the social-media reaction to our Dam Busters episodes. We're also returning to The Dam Busters' extraordinary influence on Star Wars, including just how closely George Lucas's climactic Death Star attack echoes moments from the 1955 film. Once you start spotting the similarities, they're rather difficult to unsee. Click here to watch Star Wars Vs The Dam Busters on Youtube
Listener Ruth then introduces us to the world of white poppies, the Peace Pledge Union and the UK Peace Museum, which leads us into the perennial British tradition of the "poppy wars" and the arguments over what different coloured poppies actually represent.
Elsewhere, Dave encounters a director whose treatment of runners and PAs leaves rather a lot to be desired, and we somehow end up discussing the military drinking game known as the Dance of the Flaming Arseholes. We promise these two subjects seemed connected at the time.
Then comes a genuinely important public-service announcement: if that bowel cancer screening kit drops through your letterbox, do it. We discuss why the NHS test matters, what it involves and why embarrassment is a considerably worse reason for avoiding potentially life-saving screening than you might think.
We're also recommending the extraordinary Naudet brothers' 9/11 documentary, filmed alongside New York firefighters as the attacks unfolded. Click here to watch the 9/11 documentary on YouTube
Plus: a wonderfully strange story involving the Ghostbusters theme, schoolgirls who apparently didn't receive quite the credit they deserved, British weather performing its traditional overnight transition from drought to deluge, questionable vocal warm-ups and all the usual nonsense from PG Manor.

GAZER HOMEWORK: In our nest main episode we look at Bread, a UK sitcom from 1986. Click here to watch our chosen episode on YouTube
Click here to follow us on all our socials

Don't forget to hit that FOLLOW button to get every episode of The Problematic Gaze downloaded and ready to listen!

Please leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. They really help to spread the word of The Problematic Gaze.

And if our fellow Gazers want to comment on what they've heard in our episodes, or to suggest future topics, please email us at theproblematicgaze@gmail.com. We love hearing from you!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we're heading back to 1955 for bouncing bombs, stiff upper lips and one of the most famous pieces of music in British cinema as we revisit The Dam Busters.
Based on the true story of Operation Chastise, the film follows engineer Barnes Wallis as he develops his extraordinary bouncing bomb and Wing Commander Guy Gibson as he leads 617 Squadron on the daring 1943 raid against Germany's Ruhr dams. But more than 70 years after the film was released, how much of The Dam Busters is history—and how much is British myth-making?
We explore why the film became such a national institution, from its famous Dam Busters March and innovative special effects to its portrait of heroism, masculinity, class and that quintessentially British determination to face potentially catastrophic situations while displaying approximately three-and-a-half emotions.
We also look beyond the legend to the reality of Operation Chastise: the aircrew who never returned, the civilians killed by the resulting floods, and the continuing historical debate over how strategically successful the raid actually was.
And then there's the dog.
We discuss the racial slur used as the name of Guy Gibson's black Labrador, how later television broadcasts and releases have attempted to deal with it, and the difficulties it presents when showing a much-loved 1950s film to modern audiences. We also look at the long-discussed Peter Jackson remake and the extraordinary influence The Dam Busters had on later filmmakers—including some very familiar moments in Star Wars.
In Culture Corner, we're exploring Britain in 1955, a year in which Winston Churchill resigned, Anthony Eden became Prime Minister, ITV arrived to challenge the BBC, television advertising began, Dixon of Dock Green hit our screens, the first Guinness Book of Records appeared and Birdseye introduced Britain to the fish finger.
We also revisit Ruth Ellis becoming the last woman executed in Britain, the Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend controversy, the suspiciously well-timed demise of Grace Archer, Cardiff becoming the capital of Wales, and some of the biggest films of the year.
And next week we're making quite a leap: from bouncing bombs and Barnes Wallis to Bread (1986).
Now that's what we call range.

Next week we deep dive into Bread, a UK TV sitcom from 1986. Click here to watch our chosen episode on YouTube
Click here to follow us on all our socials

Don't forget to hit that FOLLOW button to get every episode of The Problematic Gaze downloaded and ready to listen!

Please leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. They really help to spread the word of The Problematic Gaze.

And if our fellow Gazers want to comment on what they've heard in our episodes, or to suggest future topics, please email us at theproblematicgaze@gmail.com. We love hearing from you!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.