So - - who played Maureen Maskell, then?
In a moment, when I've gone on a bit about a few other things, I'm going to show you the end credits from an episode of Juliet Bravo.
Juliet Bravo was a television police series which ran from 1980 - 1985, about a female police inspector (whose name was not Juliet Bravo, something which confused nearly everyone) in an all-male police station in Lancashire.
I really enjoyed it - both with Stephanie Turner (an old friend of my friend David Robertson's) in the leading role, and also with Anna Carteret in the later series (she used to go out with another old friend, it's a small world). It wasn't made on a huge budget: when they were filming it, they just kept changing the number plate on their one police car, so it looked as though they had several.
My friend Marcus was in it once as a teenager, playing a Bad Lad. He made a brave attempt to alter his one line.
His line was "Oh look! It's the police!"
He wanted to say "Oh fuck! It's the fuzz!" which is a line that has rather more character but it was the early Eighties and a family show and he had no chance of success.
Anyway, please have a look at the closing credits. What do you notice?
Well, I noticed that Joanne Whalley was in there, before she was ever in Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective as the pretty nurse who had to cover Michael Gambon (who played Philip Marlow who suffered from psoriasis) in cream, whilst he tried very hard to think of things that were very dull and not erotic in any way at all.
And I also noticed that the journalist was played by a Manchester actor called Malcolm Raeburn, who was in a play written by a friend of mine a few years ago.
But - as in that splendid line from that magnificent film Airplane! - that's not important right now. What is important, and what I'm getting at, is that I could read the credits.
Yes, in those far-off days you could actually read the credits, and find out who was in it, and who the director was, and even the Assistant Floor Manager, if that was what interested you.
These days, at the end of most television series, the closing credits whizz by so fast that it would be impossible to read them - and anyway, they usually cover at least half the screen in an advert for something else, so that the credits are about two millimetres high as well as going at the speed of scandal.
I think it's a real shame - and also, not fair on all the people who've worked on the programme, including the actors. Whoever it benefits, it most certainly isn't the viewers.
Juliet Bravo was a television police series which ran from 1980 - 1985, about a female police inspector (whose name was not Juliet Bravo, something which confused nearly everyone) in an all-male police station in Lancashire.
I really enjoyed it - both with Stephanie Turner (an old friend of my friend David Robertson's) in the leading role, and also with Anna Carteret in the later series (she used to go out with another old friend, it's a small world). It wasn't made on a huge budget: when they were filming it, they just kept changing the number plate on their one police car, so it looked as though they had several.
My friend Marcus was in it once as a teenager, playing a Bad Lad. He made a brave attempt to alter his one line.
His line was "Oh look! It's the police!"
He wanted to say "Oh fuck! It's the fuzz!" which is a line that has rather more character but it was the early Eighties and a family show and he had no chance of success.
Anyway, please have a look at the closing credits. What do you notice?
Well, I noticed that Joanne Whalley was in there, before she was ever in Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective as the pretty nurse who had to cover Michael Gambon (who played Philip Marlow who suffered from psoriasis) in cream, whilst he tried very hard to think of things that were very dull and not erotic in any way at all.
And I also noticed that the journalist was played by a Manchester actor called Malcolm Raeburn, who was in a play written by a friend of mine a few years ago.
But - as in that splendid line from that magnificent film Airplane! - that's not important right now. What is important, and what I'm getting at, is that I could read the credits.
Yes, in those far-off days you could actually read the credits, and find out who was in it, and who the director was, and even the Assistant Floor Manager, if that was what interested you.
These days, at the end of most television series, the closing credits whizz by so fast that it would be impossible to read them - and anyway, they usually cover at least half the screen in an advert for something else, so that the credits are about two millimetres high as well as going at the speed of scandal.
I think it's a real shame - and also, not fair on all the people who've worked on the programme, including the actors. Whoever it benefits, it most certainly isn't the viewers.
posted by Daphne at 4:41 pm
5 Comments:
Oh don't get me started on end credits ! Well actually not so much the end credits as the end music.
Some movies and tv shows have wonderful music associated with their endings (and JB was one of them) and if, for me, the ending was particularly tear jerking, then the end music usually added to my pathetic sadness and I'd love to wallow in it for another few minutes.
What we get now is some asshole telling us about upcoming 'attractions' as if we can't read a tv guide or use the remote control. I don't EVER remember going.....oh great such and such is coming next and how wonderful to be told that by voice over person !!
Damn I've just wasted a good blog rant.
Totally with you on this one. Many years ago I was buying a second hand car (bear with me). The dealer had the TV on in his office with the volume up. It was a weekday morning and the TV was tuned to C4 who happened to be showing one of the schools programmes on which I was voice over narrator. The dealer did a splendid double take as he recognised my voice on the telly. He found it hard to understand how my voice could be on a TV programme whilst I was sat in front of him. I tried to explain that I didn't do the narrations live every time and they were pre-recorded. I think he only deigned to believe me when he saw my name scroll by on the credits at the end of the programme. Wouldn't be able to read it if it was on a programme nowadays.
By the way I usually stay in a cinema to nearly the end of the credits, not least because you sometimes get an extra post credits scene but also because it's good wind down time at the end of a film.
Of course on TV, time is money. Hence the credits whizzing past, split screen and frequent annoying continuity announcements which drown out the carefully composed theme tunes.
I agree with you completely about the speed at which the credits roll by nowadays ("fly by" might be more accurate).
I'm intrigued about this "Juliet Bravo" thing. It sounds to me like the alphabet abbreviations that NATO and the military use, that begins Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot (back in WWII days it was a little different, Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog, Easy, Fox, etc.). Anyhoo, Juliet Bravo is obviously "JB" -- what that could have possibly meant, that is the question to be asking. Is it an abbreviation you Brits, er, I mean, Engles (in case Yellow Swordfish is watching) use for something in police work?
There was a play years ago called "JB" that was a re-enactment of the book of Job in a modern corporate setting. But I don't think that's it in this case.
It was just her (police) call sign.
Silverback - - I didn't even dare start on how the ending music is ruined or my post would have been double the length! Totally agree.
Ruth - I loved your car story!
Bob - yes, Silverback's correct,of course, it was the female leading character's call sign. But I don't think it was ever explained: hardly anybody seemed to understand what it meant and I remember lots of people at the time wondering why she wasn't called Juliet!
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