Back to the '80s
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 20 September 2019
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Matthew Sweet is joined by guests including comedian Alexei Sayle, TV presenter Janet Ellis and film critics Adam Mars Jones and New Generation Thinker Iain Smith to look at remakes and new interpretations of the '80s from Stephen King's 1986 horror novel IT - now in cinemas as It Chapter Two, Rambo - first seen on screen in 1982 and now the inspiration for Last Blood and My Beautiful Launderette, which Hanif Kureishi has adapted for a UK theatre tour this Autumn - to TV series like Stranger Things.
Second Sight The Selected Film Writing of Adam Mars-Jones is out now.
The Film of My Beautiful Launderette has been reissued on DVD by the BFI and a theatrical version by Hanif Kureishi opens at the Curve Leicester Sept 20th and travels to Cheltenham, Leeds, Coventry, Birmingham.
Alexei Sayle's books include Thatcher Stole My Trousers. During the 1980s he performed with the Comic Strip, in the Secret Policeman's Other Ball, The Young Ones and various other TV series and movies including Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Revelation Of The Daleks. Doctor Who and Whoops Apocalypse. His series Alexei Sayle's Imaginary Sandwich Bar can currently be heard on BBC Radio 4.
Janet Ellis presented TV series Blue Peter and Jigsaw between 1979 and 1987. Her second novel How It Was is out now.
Dr Iain Smith teaches film at Kings College, London and is the author of The Hollywood Meme: Transnational Adaptations in World Cinema.
Producer: Craig Templeton Smith
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's |
| 0:27.5 | out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:33.3 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:36.9 | So, you've succumbed. |
| 0:38.9 | You heard the Arts and Ideas podcast calling to you, like that pie in the fridge. |
| 0:44.3 | Well, my name's Matthew Sweet, and I'm here to tell you that really there's no need to feel guilty. |
| 0:50.0 | Give in to your desires. |
| 0:51.7 | We all need ideas. |
| 0:53.0 | We all need the arts. And you're going to get them right here, right now, after this short message. |
| 1:04.9 | Communism versus capitalism. Scargill versus Thatcher. Crystal versus Alexis, Jimmy Tarbuck versus the young ones. |
| 1:13.6 | The 1980s were a battleground. On this free-thinking, we're going to do a bit of battlefield archaeology, |
| 1:19.7 | because 30 years on, the decade is exerting its influence. A new Rambo film opens this week. |
| 1:26.3 | Margaret Atwood has produced a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale. |
| 1:29.6 | Hanif Koreshi is reviving My Beautiful Laundrette for the stage. |
| 1:34.1 | Stranger Things has taken that atmosphere familiar from films many of us saw first on VHS and made it zeitgeisty. |
| 1:42.7 | The 80s are the subject of nostalgia, and as we know, |
| 1:46.4 | nostalgia was once considered a terminal condition. So what kind of relationship should we have |
| 1:52.1 | with the decade that saw the end of the Cold War and fixed commissions on share trades, |
| 1:57.0 | and the start of Channel 4, The Independent, EastEnders, and the careers of some of our guests tonight. |
| 2:03.5 | Can we judge its significance or is it still too early to tell? |
... |
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