Angry, Sexy and Working Class

Fridays, 22 June - 13 July 
1900-1930

Presented by Christopher Eccleston , this series is a tribute to the sexy 'angry young men', the working class heroes and anti-heroes who defined the golden age of British films from the late 50s and early 60s….films such as Room at the Top, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, A Taste of Honey, This Sporting Life and Billy Liar. The series is shot through with many film clips and soundtracks plus interviews with Rita Tushingham, Shirley-Anne Field, Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, Dora Bryan, Albert Finney, David Storey, Wendy Craig, Ken Loach, the legendary cinematographer Walter Lassally and many more.

The four episodes are titled
1. Angry Young Men
2. Up North
3. Love and Sex
4. Free at Last?

Sex and class came to the big screen around fifty years ago and changed British movie making (and British television) for ever.  John Osborne's anti- establishment movie Look Back in Anger rocked the world of traditional culture in 1957. It questioned the class structure of England. It gave a voice to the post war generation who rebelled against the 'Establishment' and the stifling snobberies and sexual hypocrisies of the 1950s. Suddenly 'kitchen sink' dramas, the stories of (outspoken, cheeky, ambitious, sexy) working class heroes and their lives revolutionized cinema in Britain. Relaxation of censorship meant audiences could see, for the first time, that characters had sex lives, money worries and social problems. Our young heroes dealt with poverty, prostitution, pregnant girlfriends, homosexuality, loneliness, racial prejudice and the marriage trap. Those subjects spawned at wonderful decade of film; not just dramas, but comedies and musicals. These four programmes deal with that decade. - the films and their musical settings .