Review: Big Fat Gypsy Weddings

By now it’s clear that, in spite of the title, this programme is not about sneering at the stupid gypsies and their tacky weddings. It’s a grown-up documentary that gives us an insight into the lives of a group of people who are so ‘other’ to mainstream society that not only did we know nothing about their culture, but, frankly, it would never even have occurred to us to wonder until now.

However, there’s an obvious tension in this type of documentary between trying to paint a sympathetic portrait of a beleaguered community trying desperately to keep their traditions alive, and the awareness that some of those traditions are deeply and unpleasantly sexist. There’s the strictly-enforced gender roles, the entrenched purity myth and the control of young women’s sexuality, the focus on preserving their ‘reputation’, and the disturbing practice of ‘grabbing’, where girls remain passive while boys resort to rough or even violent tactics to get a kiss. Never mind mocking them for their massive dresses, these were the elements that really bothered me (although I’m sure it could be argued the dresses were connected – there’s a certain element of ‘suffer to be beautiful’ when young women are physically scarred by the weight of their clothing).*

Overall, I think the programme did a pretty good job of handling all these issues with what is really the only valid option in such cases – by editorialising as little as possible and by giving the subjects a chance to speak for themselves. And, in spite of everything, most of the participants came off as surprisingly sympathetic and normal – the 17-year-old brides in both last night's and last week’s episode seemed frank, level-headed and, above all, human. It was a reminder that, much as we might abhor aspects of a culture, any society is made up of individuals, who are worth treating with respect and an open mind.

*Although this was not the point of the documentary, it is also worth pointing out that all of these issues are merely magnified and more overt versions of ones still widespread in mainstream society today.

TV Review: This is England '86

One of the things that made the film This is England seem so sad was that – at the risk of sounding like someone’s mother – they were such a nice group of kids until that racist one came along. Before I saw it, all I knew was that it was about a boy falling in with a gang of skinheads. So I sort of assumed they’d all be a bad influence on him. Instead, Woody, Lol and the others take Shaun under their collective wing and, despite being older and something of a group of troublemakers, offer him genuine friendship. They are such an appealing, if flawed, set of characters that it’s all the more upsetting when events start to take a darker turn.

With this in mind, I was really happy to hear that director Shane Meadows had made a TV series that reunited the fantastic young cast to further develop the characters. Without (so far) the presence of white supremacist Combo (Stephen Graham) the programme focuses more on the everyday lives of the protagonists three years after the events of the film, and reflects further on the grim realities of a northern town blighted by unemployment and Thatcherism.

In the first episode, Shaun (Thomas Turgoose) had distanced himself from his old friends, feeling guilty about what happened to Milky (Andrew Shim). Last night’s second episode saw him reunited with the gang. It started as with lots of light-hearted action involving drinking and partying, with plenty of laughs, of the kind that make you really warm to the characters. However, just as in the original film, this only made the darker moments hit harder. Lol (Vicky McClure), already struggling with her relationship with Woody (Joe Gilgun), was blindsided by the return of her long-absent father. McClure plays Lol’s emotional turmoil astonishingly well, but it’s the sense of the impact her actions will have on the cast of supporting characters that helps to bring it home to the audience.

Throughout, the camera lingers over a washed out landscape of council flats, bare streets and boarded up houses, backed by a lingering piano soundtrack that contrasts strikingly with the upbeat cotemporary music that accompanies the skinheads’ exploits. It brings home the hopelessness of the characters’ environment – the dearth of opportunities to escape or change. In those bleak shots we see the explanation for everything that happens to the characters.

Natural World: The Chimpcam Project (27th January 2010, BBC2)

Chimps are alarmingly clever. Every time we humans think up some defining factor that is supposed to separate us from the animals, we discover they’ve actually been doing it all along. Using tools? Yep. Communication? Yep. Recognising themselves in the mirror and, by extension, having a concept of self versus ‘other’? Yep. Making their own films? Well, ok, maybe not quite, just yet. Despite how the programme was billed, the chimps never seem to actually understand what they are doing when they are carrying a recording video camera (in a highly durable case) around their enclosure.


But, in spite of this, scientist Betsy Herrelko’s attempts to get them to interact with the camera and screen throw up many interesting examples of their intelligence. Despite being adults who have never taken part in research before, they quickly learn how to use a touch screen, to click on and select icons in the form of large red circles. They appear deeply interested when shown footage of other chimps, and when they are given the video camera, they touch its inbuilt screen as though making the connection with the touch screens they have already experienced.

It’s all very humbling. The chimps’ deeply expressive faces clearly show their intelligence and curiosity, making it clear that we humans are not quite so special as we like to think. For me, the most telling part was when the scientists opened up the doors to the ‘research pods’, small rooms off the chimps’ impressive enclosure at Edinburgh Zoo, where they could observe them interacting with the screens and other tests. They were uncertain at first whether the chimps would actually leave their outdoor climbing frames to come into these small rooms. But as soon as they were opened, the chimps had to explore, and they seemed genuinely interested in all the games and diversions inside. It was clear that the scientists could never have got any research done at all, if it weren’t for an equally strong desire in their chimp subjects to ‘research’ every new experience they came across, including the humans themselves.