The East Anglian Film Archive, the UK's first regional film archive, offers a unique record of the East of England's social and cultural history. As part of the University of East Anglia, we continue to lead moving image heritage research and inspire audience participation through community projects and events. Our collections represent a broad range of amateur and professional creativity, from 1896 to the present day.
Mary Whitehouse Reacts to Brookside Scenes
(About Anglia)
Should Brookside attacks have been screened at family viewing time?
Mary Whitehouse explains her objections to scenes recently broadcast in Brookside, the new Channel 4 drama. These showed the schoolgirl Karen Grant attacked by her boyfriend Demon Duane, who was then assaulted by her brother Barry Grant - young characters relatable to the audience. Whitehouse points out that the programme was shown at family viewing time, and the scenes contained intense violence and bad language. The reporter was Jeremy Payne for this video made to be shown in a news story on Anglia Television early evening news / magazine programme About Anglia.
Set in Liverpool, Brookside drew attention to social problems and the drama was often provocative. The soap was first aired on Channel 4 launch night, 2 November 1982, and ran for 21 years until November 2003.
From the 1960s onwards Mary Whitehouse campaigned against aspects of the permissive society including sex, violence and bad language, and was a high profile figure, often lampooned. She founded the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association and was particularly critical of the BBC, the press and other public representation of liberal society, motivated by her Christian beliefs and experience as a teacher.
Continuing drama on the small screen: explore how TV soap has changed over the decades.
The UK is a nation of soap addicts, with programmes commanding audiences of millions every week. Since they first appeared on British television in the 1950s, British soaps have given us hundreds of memorably distinctive characters in many different settings. But while they take many forms, there are some common characteristics.
Where in the US soaps tend to favour glamour and frothy fantasy, here they typically centre on relatable communities and families and reflect life in (usually) contemporary Britain, exploring sometimes thorny social issues and attitudes to class, race, gender, sexuality and more. While originally steeped in real-life domestic conflict, soap marched into the new millennium with hard-hitting storylines, sensationalist plots and issue-driven narratives highlighting pressing matters of the day.
This collection showcases a variety of soaps; rural or urban, north or south and everything in between. Some were shortlived and are much missed, while others are longstanding favourites embedded in our collective memory.
So settle in and prepare for drama!
