THEGAYUK

Tag: Gay Britannia

Gay Britannia is the BBC’s season of programming celebrating LGBT+ life in the UK, broadcasting in 2017 It marks the 50th year of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK.

  • TV | Storyville – Queerama, BBC 4

    Storyville – Queerama

    Programme Length: 70 mins

    Broadcaster: BBC 4

    Broadcast Date: TBC

    A BBC Storyville BFI archive film about a century of gay rights, desires and history with a soundtrack by John Grant and collaborators.

  • TV | Queers, BBC 4

    Queers

    Programme Length: 15 mins x8

    Broadcaster: BBC 4

    Broadcast Date: TBC

    Eight new and established writers respond to the 50th anniversary of The Sexual Offences Act in Queers, a series of monologues curated by Mark Gatiss.

    Focussing chiefly on the gay male experience, the monologues begin in 1917 with ‘The Man on the Platform’ – the story of a soldier returning from the trenches of the First World War and reflecting on both his attraction to another man and a very particular childhood memory. Other stories include Jackie Clune’s ‘A Perfect Gentleman’ in which we meet Bobby, a dandy with a very unexpected secret and Brian Fillis’ More Anger’ which examines the journey of a young gay actor in the 1980s.

    Taking in 1957’s Wolfenden Report, the HIV crisis and the 1967 Sexual Offences Act itself, these 15 minute monologues will mark and celebrate some of the most poignant, funny, entertaining, tragic and riotous moments before and after the ’67 Act and the very personal rites-of-passage of British gay men through the last 100 years.

    Queers is being produced in partnership with The Old Vic who will stage all eight of the monologues in July, in the run up to the television transmission.

  • TV | Gluck, BBC 4

    Gluck

    Programme Length: 60 mins

    Broadcaster: BBC Four

    Broadcast Date: TBC

    British artist Gluck (Hannah Gluckstein) was a well-known painter of the 1930s who painted aristocrats, judges, socialites and flower arrangements. The British establishment, including the Royal Family, flocked to her shows. What is perhaps surprising for the time is that Gluck also dressed as a man, had numerous female lovers and called her exhibitions ‘one man shows’. So what did 1930s upper-class society make of Gluck? This film tells the untold story of a celebrated artist who defied the gender and sexuality definitions of her time.

    From the use of the word ‘invert’ in Hall’s infamous book The Well of Loneliness to the word ‘sapphist’ used by upper-class bohemians in the 1930s, female homosexuality wasn’t clearly defined in Gluck’s time – the word ‘lesbian’ not yet widely used. As well as Gluck’s personal story, this film explores the modern British history of female homosexuality and its representation in culture, literature, fashion and art – from fashion glamorising of an androgynous look to Gluck’s most iconic painting Medallion, a double portrait of herself and her lover Nesta Obermer, which Gluck called her  ‘marriage portrait’.

    With exclusive access to part of the Gluck archive, the film will include interviews with Gluck’s relatives, official biographer Diana Souhami and leading experts in fashion, art and sexual politics alongside Gluck admirers including Sandi Toksvig.

  • TV | Prejudice and Pride: The People’s History of LGBTQ Britain, BBC 4

    Prejudice and Pride: The People’s History of LGBTQ Britain

    Programme Length: 60 mins x 2

    Broadcaster: BBC 4

    Broadcast Date: TBC

    In this unique series, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people from across the country have been digging out and sharing the mementoes and memorabilia that changed their lives over 50 years since the landmark 1967 Act decriminalised homosexuality.

    The result is a crowd-sourced collection of some of the rarest, most personal, most heartbreaking and inspiring artefacts in our history; a banned book, a nun’s habit, a passport, an original Heaven Gold card, naval discharge papers, George Michael’s autograph and the long lost panels from the AIDS memorial quilt.

    Produced by 7Wonder and presented by comedians Stephen K Amos and Susan Calman, the films chart a rollercoaster journey – from the audacity of a Gay Liberation Front commune, to the anguish of the AIDS crisis, from the struggle against Section 28 to the ecstasy of Pride ’97, from the death of friends in the Admiral Duncan bombing to the joy of a lesbian marriage – this is the story of all of us, the people we loved and the people we sometimes hated.

    From being locked up for daring to love someone, to marrying that same person 50 years on, this extraordinary history is told by ordinary people through their personal stories and most treasured possessions.

  • TV | imagine… Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures, BBC 2

    Imagine… Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures

    Programme Length: 105 mins

    Broadcaster: BBC 2

    Broadcast Date: TBC

    imagine… presents Look at the Pictures, an unflinching and uncompromising portrait of one of the 20th century’s most controversial photographers: Robert Mapplethorpe, directed by Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey. His images elevated photography to fine art and pushed social boundaries to create a body of work which includes frank depictions of nudity, sexuality and fetishism and still lives and flowers, but not without controversy. His iconic and unmistakable photographs of 1970’s New York’s underground gay scene were frank and unmediated depictions of a lifestyle at the time deplored by many Americans. In 1989, on the floor of Congress, Senator Jesse Helms implored America to “Look at the pictures,” while denouncing Mapplethorpe’s art. Since his death in 1989 from AIDS, Mapplethorpe’s work has remained as provocative as ever. Look at the Pictures delves deeply into Mapplethorpe’s life and work to reveal the man and images which ignited a culture war that rages to this day.

  • TV | Is It Safe To Be Gay In The UK?

    Is It Safe To Be Gay In The UK?

     

    Programme Length: 60 minutes

    Broadcaster: BBC 2

    Broadcast Date: TBC

    In the three months after Brexit, an LGBT anti-violence charity reported a 147% rise in homophobic attacks. In this very timely documentary, BBC 2 explores some of the stories behind the headlines from the lesbian, gay and transgender people who have been attacked as well as the perpetrators, using testimony and found footage, to ask why this rise occurred?

  • TV | What Gay Did For Art, BBC 2

    What Gay Did For Art

    Programme Length: 60 mins

    Broadcaster: BBC 2

    Broadcast date: TBC

    This film invites a stellar cast of interviewees from across the arts to reflect on the contribution of lesbian and gay people to British cultural life since the decriminalisation of male homosexuality 50 years ago.

    Ranging broadly across popular culture, the visual arts, literature, theatre and film, the programme celebrates how the British arts, before 1967 and since, have been a haven to those growing up creative and gay.

    The film considers how artists’ sexuality might have shaped their art, often giving it a unique outsider’s perspective on British life, and a sometimes subversive sense of wit and style. Artists produced sophisticated work that excited audiences with its “otherness”, bringing new types of characters to television and film, gender ambiguity to pop music, and glimpses of bohemia in the visual arts.  These have remained driving forces for British art to this day. But the film also asks whether growing acceptance has been to some extent a double-edged sword for artists themselves. Has homosexuality’s move towards the mainstream made the exploration of queer themes less urgent and less interesting? Now that there’s a wide range of gay lifestyles on show in British culture, the question of how much an artist’s sexuality really matters to their art has become inescapable.

  • TV | Man In An Orange Shirt, BBC 2

    Man In An Orange Shirt

    Programme Length: 60 minutes x 2

    Broadcaster: BBC 2

    In his first screen drama, best-selling British novelist Patrick Gale tells two gay love stories, 60 years apart – stories linked by family, and by a painting that holds a secret that echoes down the generations.

    Featuring a cast including Oscar-winning actress Vanessa Redgrave, Man in an Orange Shirt charts the challenges and huge changes to gay lives from the Second World War to the present: In 1944, British Army Captain Michael Berryman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) meets war artist Thomas March (James McArdle) in Southern Italy while chaos reigns all around them. Despite having a young fiancé, Flora (Joanna Vanderham), waiting at home for him, straight-laced Michael finds himself falling for Thomas’ bohemian charms. In 2017, an ageing Flora (Redgrave) looks on as her grandson, Adam (Julian Morris), tentatively forms a relationship with his client Steve (David Gyasi) in a more accepting world. But while the external obstacles have fallen away, a minefield of internalised issues and dangerous temptations still line the road to happiness.

    Further cast includes Laura Carmichael, Julian Sands and Angel Coulby.

    Patrick Gale says,

    “As a lifelong BBC Two animal, I’m thrilled my first original television drama will broadcast there. The wide social ramifications of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality are still being felt today and had huge implications not only for gay men (those over 21 at least) but for marriage. The two parts of my drama try to show how far reaching those ramifications were and I know the rest of the Gay Britannia season will as well. I can’t wait to watch every bit of it.”

    Diederick Santer, Executive Producer for Kudos, says: “It’s been a delight to work with Patrick and the BBC on this timely and highly original drama. I’m thrilled with the cast we assembled and the ambition of the production, and look forward to it playing at the heart of the Gay Britannia season.”

  • TV | Against The Law, BBC 2

    BBC 2’s Against The Law

    Programme length: 82 mins

    Broadcaster: BBC 2

    Daniel Mays (Line Of Duty, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Public Enemies) stars in BBC Two’s powerful factual drama as Peter Wildeblood, a thoughtful and private gay journalist whose lover Eddie McNally (played by newcomer to television, Richard Gadd), under pressure from the authorities, turned Queen’s evidence against him in one of the most explosive court cases of the 1950s – the infamous Montagu Trial.

    More than ten years before the partial decriminalisation of homosexual acts in 1967, Peter Wildeblood, and his friends Lord Montagu (Mark Edel-Hunt) and Michael Pitt-Rivers, were found guilty of homosexual offences and jailed.

    With his career in tatters and his private life painfully exposed, Wildeblood began his sentence a broken man, but he emerged from Wormwood Scrubs a year later determined to do all he could to change the way these draconian laws against homosexuality impacted on the lives of men like him.

    The drama also features Mark Gatiss (Taboo, Sherlock) as Wildeblood’s prison psychiatrist, Doctor Landers and Charlie Creed-Miles (Ripper Street, Peaky Blinders) as Superintendent Jones.

    Woven through this powerful drama is real-life testimony from a chorus of men who lived through those dark days, when homosexuals were routinely imprisoned or forced to undergo chemical aversion therapy in an attempt to cure them of their “condition”. There is also testimony from a retired police officer whose job it was to enforce these laws, and a former psychiatric nurse who administered the so-called cures. All of these accounts serve to amplify the themes of the drama and help to immerse us in the reality of a dark chapter in our recent past, a past still within the reach of living memory.