As Seen on TV: Portrayals of London and its People Peter Raynard After managing a betting shop, I studied International Politics (BA), then African Studies (MA), and worked as an advisor and writer on organisational accountability for a charity. For the past six years I have been a stay-at-home father of two ever-expanding sons, as well as a freelance writer and editor. Just completed an MA in Creative Writing: Writing the City.
From Black and White to Colour The London scene up to the early 1960s was a dour black and grey, to the point where the city branded itself as foggy, the setting for Sherlock Holmes to investigate, his distinctive profile recognisable through the haze. The reality, however, was deadly smog that killed some 4,000 in 1952, and even in 1962 consigned 750 Londoners to their death. The Clean Air Acts of the ‘50s and ‘60s took the grey miasma out of London’s air and put colour in the cheeks of its residents. The streets were quiet by today’s standards: small cars, small shops, even the people looked smaller. But, by the end of the decade, London was said to be swinging, replete with sweetshop colours, free love and ban the bomb. London even changed shape, growing in size to become Greater London, although greater than what was unclear. The programmes of that time also started out grey, both in vision and theme. Hancock’s Half Hour was an unlikely groundbreaking show, centred on the tribulations of an out-of-work comedian with intellectual pretensions but riven by class anxiety. It mostly showed him sitting on his sofa in a bedsit (a recurrent setting for London programmes) failing to make headway with philosophers such as Bertrand Russell. “Work?” he says, “Well, not at the moment. Just so happens I don’t agree with the social system. As it is I’ve contracted out. I just sit here and contemplate.” Set in Cheam, a down-at-heel suburb in the south-western borderlands of what was to become Greater London, it was one of the first programmes to make the successful journey from radio to TV in the late fifties. It grew in popularity over the next decade and set the trend for sitcoms featuring feckless, male cynics who saw London as a failed opportunity to flex their cerebral powers. But more importantly, the show premiered an important characteristic of London life: the misfit, and lonely individual – from Bedsit Girl in the 1960s (starring the young Sheila Hancock) to the flat-sharing of Bottom, Crapston 70
