The Problematic Gaze

Watch our YouTube playlist to find out more aboutThe League of Gentlemen and life in 2000
Click here to watch our chosen episode of The League Of Gentlemen on I-Player
Hello, Dave? You're our wife now.
This week we're taking a local trip for local people as The Problematic Gays head to Royston Vasey for The League of Gentlemen.
We're focusing on Series 2, Episode 2 — “Lust for Royston Vasey,” first broadcast on 21 January 2000 — and asking how one of Britain's darkest, strangest and most grotesque comedies looks more than 25 years later.
We go back to the beginnings of Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith and Jeremy Dyson's creation, from Bretton Hall and the Perrier Award to BBC Radio 4 and television, and explore the influences behind Royston Vasey's peculiar mixture of Hammer Horror, The Wicker Man, British sitcom and pitch-black comedy.
Then it's time to meet the locals.
There's Herr Lipp and his deeply uncomfortable interest in Justin; Tubbs and Edward facing the horrors of the outside world; Alvin attempting to escape Sunny's increasingly elaborate sexual appetites; Pauline and Mickey at the Burger Me takeaway; the deeply unpleasant Pop and his sons; Mr Chinnery doing terrible things to another unfortunate animal; and Val and Harvey's spectacularly dysfunctional household.
And then there are two characters who have become particularly complicated.
We revisit Papa Lazarou, the grotesque circus master whose appearance became central to the controversy that saw episodes removed from Netflix in 2020, and ask what the character was intended to represent versus how that imagery reads today.
We also discuss Babs, Royston Vasey's transgender taxi driver, and how a character that could once be defended as being in on the joke becomes considerably harder to defend when the programme returned in 2017.
Over in Culture Corner, we're heading back to Britain in 2000: the Millennium Dome, New Labour optimism, devolution, changing ideas of Englishness and the arrival of a little reality show called Big Brother.
And naturally, we check the charts — because nothing captures the dawn of a new millennium quite like discovering Bob the Builder at number one.
So, was The League of Gentlemen simply pushing the boundaries of turn-of-the-millennium comedy? Which jokes and characters still work brilliantly? And which parts of Royston Vasey are now problematic for very different reasons?
Despite everything, we're both giving the series a whopping 9/10.
Because this may be a local show for local people...
…but there's still nothing else quite like it.
Next time: Dynasty!
Click here to visit our YouTube site, The Gaze Channel, where you can watch video versions of our podcast.

Our YouTube site also contains playlists for each episode with provides wider context to each episode.

Click here to follow us on all our socials

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.

Hello Gazers! Welcome to our weekly Gazette!
We're still circling Jaws (1975) this week — although apparently the most contentious part of our entire discussion isn't the shark. It's coffee ice cream.
After our latest Jaws episode, we're debating whether Spielberg's classic really counts as a horror film and tackling the important culinary questions nobody else was brave enough to ask: is coffee a legitimate ice cream flavour? Does anyone still eat rum and raisin? And whatever happened to tutti frutti?
Our Jaws adventures also lead us into the glamorous world of copyright takedowns. We reminisce about previous encounters with the social-media copyright police and discover that apparently even 50-year-old mechanical sharks have lawyers.
Then it's time for a tour of Britain's rudest place names and the surprisingly innocent history behind some extremely unfortunate-sounding villages, roads and landmarks.
There's also a glorious Les Dennis story involving someone mistaking him for Amanda Holden's father before we get thoroughly overexcited about Celebrity Traitors. Richard E. Grant accidentally announces that he's a traitor, Ross Kemp reaches previously unexplored levels of suspicion, and we pick through the latest treachery, paranoia and questionable detective work.
We also check in on Big Brother and its latest eviction drama before taking time to remember Esther Rantzen and an extraordinary broadcasting career that stretched far beyond That's Life!. We reflect on her campaigning work and the lasting importance of Childline and The Silver Line.
Plus, listener mail takes us all the way to Australia for a brilliant Jaws memory.
And next week, we're going somewhere that makes Amity Island look positively welcoming...
Welcome to Royston Vasey.
Yes, The League of Gentlemen is coming to The Problematic Gaze.
Click here to visit our YouTube site, The Gaze Channel, where you can watch video versions of our podcast.

Our YouTube site also contains playlists for each episode with provides wider context to each episode.

Click here to follow us on all our socials

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.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…
This week we're heading to Amity Island for Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) — the film that terrified a generation, transformed the Hollywood blockbuster and did absolutely nothing for the shark's public image.
We revisit Spielberg's troubled ocean shoot, the notoriously temperamental mechanical shark and John Williams' iconic Oscar-winning score, before diving into the moments that made Jaws one of the most effective thrillers ever made: Chrissie's terrifying opening swim, severed body parts, Ben Gardner's surprise appearance, a doomed dog, a horrifying attack on a child and, eventually, three men heading out to sea to hunt a very big fish.
But underneath the shark movie is something rather interesting.
We look at Mayor Vaughn's determination to keep Amity's beaches open, asking what Jaws has to say about money, tourism, political denial and managing a crisis when acknowledging the problem might be bad for business.
Then there's the men.
Brody, Hooper and Quint offer three very different versions of 1970s masculinity, culminating in Robert Shaw's extraordinary USS Indianapolis monologue and the increasingly claustrophobic battle aboard the Orca.
Over in Culture Corner, we cross the Atlantic to Britain in 1975, where inflation was running at extraordinary levels and everyday prices were soaring. What did the world outside the cinema look like when audiences first heard those two ominous notes?
We also examine the uncomfortable legacy of Jaws. Did Hollywood's most famous shark help turn a vulnerable animal into a monster in the public imagination? We discuss shark hunting, changing attitudes towards the species and the later reflections of author Peter Benchley and Spielberg himself.
And next week, we're off to Royston Vasey as we tackle The League of Gentlemen.
You're our wife now.
Click here to visit our YouTube site, The Gaze Channel, where you can watch video versions of our podcast.

Our YouTube site also contains playlists for each episode with provides wider context to each episode.

Click here to follow us on all our socials

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.

Hello Gazers!
The postbag is open and A Taste of Honey has got you talking.
Listener John Bishop—not that one—gives the film a whopping 9/10, remembers a Welsh stage production that relocated the story to Cardiff after the Manchester accent proved something of a stumbling block, and somehow takes us on a detour to seeing Jaws at the IMAX.
Then Johannes joins us from Norway with his thoughts on why A Taste of Honey still feels so remarkable: a British New Wave film centred on a young woman while giving unusual prominence for the period to a Black character and a gay man.
From kitchen-sink realism, we make the entirely natural transition to sequins as we discuss Strictly Come Dancing's new three-presenter line-up—and a newspaper's rather enthusiastic attempt to turn the show's ratings into a "flop" narrative.
We're also mourning the loss of Ride or Die, the Octavia Spencer and Hannah Waddingham series cancelled by Prime, before diving into our latest television recommendations.
Dr Lee's been watching Furious, the new crime thriller starring Emmy Rossum as an FBI agent hunting a female serial killer, while we also get stuck into Last Seen.
Elsewhere, apparently iPods are becoming desirable again, which is excellent news for anybody with a drawer full of obsolete Apple products and the patience to find the correct cable.
We also have a moan about the increasingly peculiar experience of paying for streaming services and then being shown adverts anyway, discuss a new version of The War Game involving politicians, and disappear down a nostalgic Blue Peter rabbit hole involving Peter Duncan, terrifying stunts and that unforgettable green-and-white checked suit.
Listener mail, television recommendations, streaming grumbles, nostalgia and several subjects that really shouldn't fit together in the same podcast.
In other words, a fairly standard week at PG Manor.
Click here to visit our YouTube site, The Gaze Channel, where you can watch video versions of our podcast.

Our YouTube site also contains playlists for each episode with provides wider context to each episode.

Click here to follow us on all our socials

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.

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
Click here to visit our YouTube site, The Gaze Channel, where you can watch video versions of our podcast.

Our YouTube site also contains playlists for each episode with provides wider context to each episode.

Click here to follow us on all our socials

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.