Simon Schama’s Story of Us BBC series
Episode 1: Who We Are Now?
Are you a patriot? Do you love your country? What is it, exactly, about this country that you love? This might be the ghost question haunting the first of, presumably, a series by Simon Schama (it’s not clear if this is a first episode or an only episode).
He takes us from The Festival of Great Britain that celebrated the country’s ‘experimental bravery’, exemplified by the Skylon sculpture, a sharp, Kubrick-y structure suspended over waltzing couples in cheap shoes, as over 8 million Britons visited the sci-fi spectacular which was built by a Labour government and scrapped by the incoming Tories the year after.
If the festival was a ‘united act of reassessment’, as the Festival brochure claimed, then possibly it was also the first manifestation of modern distraction that has kept the UK establishment firmly established since it became unfashionable to be a filthy rich landowning royal after World War Two.
The latest version was, perhaps, the Olympics opening ceremony in 2012 which Schama seems to approve of. He speaks to one of the creators, writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce who, after talking about how, in essence the ceremony was about juxtaposing a bunch of essentially British cultural cliches (royalty/Jarrow marches for instance) and ‘seeing what happened’ he’s surprised that he is sometimes heckled by people who believe the NHS sequence was an anticipation of the ‘plandemic’, wherein Covid was part of an establishment plot to increase control over us all.
That, 13 years on there are crazy people with more interesting imaginations than those in slippers with words ‘job for life’ crocheted across the toes seems to be a surprise to both Schama and Mr Cottrell-Boyce.
Elsewhere, Shama has his own moments of juxtaposition as he pits the ‘I don’t give a shit attitude’ of punk (and Britpop, apparently!!!) against Cliff Richard and co’s Festival of Light crusades against, well fun, really. Some fresh to my eyes footage of Cliff attending a Billy Graham rally to sing something goddy creates a strange tension in my stomach as he looks impossibly cool.
The pop artist Pauline Boty is another icon Schama chooses to represent something or other in his pick n mix, along with Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night, Sunday Morning, and in particular, the main character played by Albert Finney who Jarvis Cocker touchingly still seems afraid of as he looked like the lads who bullied poor skinny wee Jarvis when he were a lad.
Over all, this is worth watching for the archival footage alone. Mr Schama fails to tell us who we are, but I think we all know that, don’t we? I’m me and you’re you and no amount of cultural commentary will change that. Do you love your country, though? And the answer to that, from me is, no, not even in the slightly irreverent, yes, I am better than you but you can still call me Si, Oxbridge, taking the piss but let’s not upset things too much way that is, once again being flung at us in received pronunciation with a tang of a regional accent.
Essential Information
Main image, Pauline Boty
The Story of Us on the BBC iPlayer here