For somebody who despises the media and television so much,
you might wonder why I appear so obsessed with it. I've written long polemic
reviews of all the various productions I hate, for example see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/on-benefits-and-proud.html
and: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/confessions-of-alien-abductee-aftermath.html
and: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/bbc-77-conspiracy-road-trip.html.
It's true that television is a vile medium whose primary purpose is to confuse,
mislead, distort and dumb down. It's one of the most terrible weapons ever
unleashed on the human mind. However, as I've said before, the manipulators who
use TV do not control everything that appears on our screens; they influence
it, but they do not have a clean sweep. The same goes for the rest of the
media, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/some-of-them-are-on-our-side.html.
And occasionally, an artistic work appears that is unmistakably progressive.
And every once in a while you get a real gem, a work of genius. Gone to Seed is an odd title. "To
go to seed" is one of the many idioms in English; it means to decline in
appearance, status or utility due to lack of care. It's also a term gardeners
use for giving a garden a fallow period where no work is done and the growth just
rises naturally. The serial itself was first broadcast in 1992 on ITV and was
made by Central Films. It was directed by Nick Laughland and Sandy Johnson. The
writer was Tony Grounds. Gone to Seed
is a comedy drama series broadcast in six fifty -minute
episodes. It must have been made with a sizeable budget; the props are
well-designed and the cast is very much A-list. It includes the great comedian
Peter Cook in his penultimate part before his death in 1995. It also stars
veteran screen actress Hilda Fenemore in a wonderful supporting role as Miss
Pringle. There's also a bit of movie history made in Gone to Seed because it's the first ever credited role for Fred
Wood, who is probably the ultimate unsung hero of cinema and television. He was
born in 1922 in east London , where
the story is set, and started acting in 1946. His IMDB filmography is huge,
see: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0939705/?ref_=tt_cl_t15.
It includes roles in Star Wars, the
James Bond movies and Superman III,
but these are always in uncredited cameo roles; I've also seen him in several TV
adverts. Gone to Seed is the last
entry on his page and, for the first and only time ever in his fifty-one year
acting career, he has his name next to a character's. He plays
"Toothy", a supporting character who doesn't influence the plot, but
is nevertheless a brilliant piece comic relief. He's a rather dotty old man who
is The Nashville Noise's biggest groupie. He watches all their performances,
often dancing along, and says at the end: "Bloody good that, bloody good!"
I don't know where he is now, or if he's even still alive; he'd be ninety-one
if so. Gone to Seed was on so long
ago that I can't remember if I managed to watch it all on TV, but I scoured the
shelves avidly, waiting for its VHS release. I liked it a lot while watching it
on TV, but it was only when I saw the serial in full that I fell in love with
it.
At the time of writing, the entire series of Gone to Seed is available as a freebie
on YouTube, see:
Episode 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQxPzLwRxa0.
Episode 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6kZwWmQEXU.
Episode 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB5mHZnvFtU.
Episode 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CNhyZetbCE.
Episode 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKomUJEau8Q.
Episode 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kej0DTjsfo.
Highlights 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amwOA1pt02Y.
Highlights 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzPHsb_Cbsc.
Highlights 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr8aVzSIaYA.
But I ask HPANWO-readers, if you can afford it, please help
out the film-makers because it's now finally available on DVD: http://www.amazon.com/Gone-Seed-Jim-Broadbent/dp/B001D7WFAW.
Gone to Seed is
many things in many different ways. It's a comedy-drama that centres around
three adult triplets, Montgomery, Winston and Hilda Plant who are the only
children of Mag Plant, a woman who runs a garden centre in the East End of
London, as well as being a single mother to her children. The serial begins at
Mag's sixtieth birthday where the triplets are all singing her a birthday song.
The three plant children are all forty-two years old and are very different in
appearance and personality. Hilda, played by Alison Steadman, is closest to her
mother, a shy and isolated young woman whose life consists almost entirely of
helping Mag run the garden centre. She is almost always found working there,
pushing a wheelbarrow or digging up a tulip patch; with her stringy hair, large
glasses and dungarees she looks completely institutionalized. She has little in
terms of a social life and few friends, but is still a devoted fan of Millwall
FC and expresses herself vocally in the football stand, "Saturday in Cold
Blow Lane 's a-calling!" as they say. She is a
virgin and appears to have no interest in men; her celibacy is encouraged by
her mother who at one point expresses incredulity when Hilda's nieces joke
about her lover Billy, "Don't be silly, girls." Mag has always
assumed that Hilda would never find a man and always live at home with her.
Hilda has to act as nursemaid too when her mother is feeling unwell.
Warren Clarke plays Hilda's brother Winston who is by far
the most conventional member of the family. He's married to a woman called
Faith and they have twin teenage daughters. He lives in a nearby house and is
professionally independent of the garden centre, working as a builder. He is
also a semi-professional wrestler and fights in the ring most evenings. Mag
loves the sport and always attends her son's matches to passionately cheer him
on with her friends at her side. Winston only has one eye and wears a leather
eyepatch; he brags that he lost his eye in a vicious brawl when in fact he
slipped and fell while illicitly climbing over the fence to watch a Millwall
game. He is quite pretentious and has romantic photographs of himself all over
his house. His wife Faith is a pessimistic and cynical red haired woman who
works at a private cosmetic surgery clinic, a role which becomes an important
element of the plot. She dislikes her in-laws intensely, especially Mag and
says: "You're all mad, you Plants!". She often berates her husband
for any involvement he has with them.
The third triplet is my favourite character, Montgomery ,
or Monty, Plant, played by Jim Broadbent. He works at the garden centre
alongside his sister Hilda, but also sings and plays guitar in a country and
western band called The Nashville Noise. He is very close to his two fellow
band members "Batman" and Robin (Robin is played by Cliff Parisi who
is currently acting as Minty in TavistockEnders,
see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w09HEMgfmI).
Above all, Monty is a visionary and hopeless romantic who talks in proverbs whenever
possible. He longs to take over as manager of the garden centre because he has
a dream to transform the place into what he calls "The Plantation",
which would combine the usual facilities of a garden centre with a his band
performing live music on a stage. There would also be a lemonade fountain, a
children's playground and much more. Monty is completely consumed by his vision
even to the point where he experiences hallucinations. Included in these hallucinatory
episodes is an image of his ideal lover, a young and slender woman with long
blonde hair wearing a blue cape; but in his dream he can't see her face. Hilda
is sympathetic to her brother's ideas, but the other family members laugh at
him, "Disney in Millwall! Don't make me laugh!" as Mag says. This
doesn't discourage Monty at all because he is a dedicated idealist, in fact
when Big Ron, the landlord of The Folly,
the local pub where The Nashville Noise play, tells him he's replacing the band
with a karaoke machine, Monty replies: "Decisions are being made by people
with no vision! When are they going to cotton on that it's not about the fast
buck anymore, it's about the quality, the beauty?"
The garden centre itself is a splendid sight, sitting in the
yard of a tall ancient house with a rotunda and balcony. It's rather
weather-beaten but still very elegant and it sits on the south bank of the Thames
with Tower Bridge London
to look for it once, but this was many years after the film had been made and
it had gone. The London docklands
are constantly changing and new buildings cover old ones almost every month;
and this was just a temporary film set anyway. I got chatting to some local
people during my visit and they remembered the set; they told me that it had
been there for several weeks while the location unit filmed all the outdoor
scenes. Many of the other locations where Monty and his band go on tour are
around Twickenham and Teddington in west London ,
as I discovered only a few days ago, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/eel-pie-island.html.
Synopsis (includes
spoilers)
The birthday party doesn't go at all well. Monty unveils a
giant ornament on which are written the words: Happy Retirement, Mum; and Mag retorts: "I ain't retiring!
When I'm dead you can pick through my possessions like a vulture!" The
main frustration Monty has with his mother is that she is currently holding the
reins of the garden centre and is not willing to hand them over to her
children. She loves her business as much as he does, but she doesn't approve of
the changes Monty wants to make. Then Monty has an accident that causes a fire
which burns down an outdoor office. In the chaos that ensues a letter slips out
of a drawer and is furtively picked up by Winston; it's an offer to buy the
garden centre for £300,000 from one Wesley Willis, a ruthless international businessman
and former boyfriend of Mag who lives in a penthouse apartment overlooking the
garden centre. Willis only wants the garden centre so that he can knock it down
and build a helicopter port for an American consortium. He is accompanied
everywhere by his sidekick and stepson Billy, a handsome and sophisticated
young man. Later on in the series Willis announces to the triplets that he is
in fact their father, although this fact is revealed to the viewer in the
opening scene. Winston secretly approaches Willis and offers to assist him in
his pursuit of the garden centre in the hope that his mother will then give him
a share of the money. Willis agrees and offers to pay him £5000 as a finders fee.
At the same time he sends Billy to visit the garden centre incognito. At fist
Billy is dubious: "They won't sell to you, Dad!" Willis replies:
"Don't mention my name. Smile... they'd sell to you." Once there Billy is served by Hilda who is enchanted by
him; he easily manages to feign friendship with her and wins her trust.
Simultaneously Winston hatches a plan to drive an even bigger wedge between
Monty and Mag by encouraging Monty to go on strike until he is allowed to take
over management. Monty agrees, knowing that Mag and Hilda cannot keep the place
going by themselves; however this is simply a ruse. Winston immediately offers
to replace Monty in the hope that Mag will warm to him. He also attempts to
sabotage the business by putting poison in the water tank used to irrigate the
stock. In the meantime Billy is sneakily setting up a honey trap for Hilda; he
pretends to be attracted to her and slowly she becomes besotted with him. In
one scene Billy and Willis are gloating about their cruelty. Willis says:
"Now that the Rotherhithe Cowboy is off his horse, all that remains is old
Green-Fingered Flo, or whatever her name is. Now work your way into her
soul!" They then make a bet over who lands them the garden centre first,
Winston or Hilda. Due to her relationship with Billy, Hilda has become a
changed woman, buying new clothes and having her hair done, and the hairdresser
is none other than Sandy Johnson, one of Gone
to Seed's directors. Hilda is not too loved-up to become suspicious of
Winston and find out what he did to the water tank. He reveals this to Monty
who then goes home to talk to his mother. He walks in and finds her lying there
dead.
At Mag's funeral Billy impresses Willis by kissing Hilda in
front of him, but Willis is distracted by a strange voice calling his name from
the river. Winston is convinced he is on the verge of victory, but then when
Mag's will is read they find out that she has left her entire estate to Hilda.
Hilda angrily ejects Winston from the house, Winston feels very guilty and is
later forgiven. Then she delights Monty by telling him she's going to allow him
to build The Plantation. However Billy has other ideas. He spins her a yarn
about how he is facing debts of £80,000 and that he must leave her to go on the
run. Hilda asks how she can help and Billy manipulates her into borrowing money
from a "friend of his" who is actually Wesley Willis, whom Hilda has
never met and therefore does not recognize. The "friend" asks only
for the deeds to the garden centre as a token security. When Winston and Monty
find out they are incensed with Hilda, and she is heartbroken.
The triplets decide on several schemes to try to raise the
£80,000 they owe Willis and so save the garden centre, like a clearance sale of
the stock at knock-down prices, a marathon concert with Monty's band and a
charity wrestling gala organized by Winston. They also sell as much of the contents
of their home as they can. Hilda unites with her brothers in their campaign,
but is haunted over her affair with Billy. Winston even agrees to mortgage his
house, and he doesn't tell Faith; but she finds out and during the wrestling
gala she invades the ring during his bout and attacks him, much to the
amusement of the crowd. In the meantime Wesley Willis is not enjoying his
victory; in fact he believes he's having a breakdown; he is hearing more voices
and experiencing bad dreams. At the same time Billy is suffering from a guilty
conscience over what he's done, something he's obviously never experienced
before in his life. He even approaches Hilda and offers her the original market
price for the garden centre, £300,000. She refuses angrily by telling him
simply: "It's not for sale!" The wrestling spectacular begins and the
master of ceremonies is played by Tony Grounds, not the only time that the
writer has appeared in a minor role in his own productions. After Winston is
defeated by his wife and also the real wrestler Giant Haystacks, playing
himself in a guest star appearance, there is a women wrestlers' tournament and
one of the fighters is called Lucy Lastic. She's a young blonde woman wearing a
blue cape... yes, it is indeed Monty's dream girl. The next step in their plans
is to hold a charity twenty-four hour marathon concert by The Nashville Noise
in The Folly. However this is the day
before the time limit on the loan is up, as Winston says: "The nest
twenty-fours will make or break us!" Winston has one last desperate plan,
to steal the money from Miss Pringle, an old friend of Mag's who told him she
keeps her savings in a bag of cash behind her settee. He tries to get Monty on
board; Monty refuses at first, but later on, as it becomes clearer they're not
going to reach their target, he agrees to help. At the same time Billy pays a
visit to the pub to see Hilda and it becomes clear that along with his sense of
shame he has genuine feeling for her too. When Winston and Monty reach Miss
Pringle's house and take the bag from the settee they find nothing inside but a
worthless, moth-eaten old fur coat. Willis however is having the worst night of
anybody; his nightmares and visions reach a terrifying climax and at one point
he even sees a potted cactus shedding blood. In the morning it becomes clear
that the Plants have lost. They leave the pub dejected. Wesley Willis heads
down to the garden centre grinning with glee and hammers in a SOLD sign. But
then he hears that voice from the river again and the water starts boiling;
from the maelstrom emerges a horrific phantom, and the source of Willis'
nightmares is finally revealed. It is the ghost of Mag Plant, come back to
haunt him because of what he has done to her children... their children.
The spectre of Mag then takes him on an astral journey to
see the outcome of his crimes on the triplets. The garden centre is derelict,
waiting for the bulldozers to come and raise it to the ground, but Monty is
staging a sit-in protest there despite harassment by thuggish bailiffs. Faith
has kicked Winston out of her home and Hilda is working in a book warehouse. At
the end of this the ghost drops him from a great height with the ghastly
warning: "Unless you save my family, I will destroy you!" He sustains
a broken back from the fall and ends up in hospital. In an attempt to redeem
himself he gives the triplets back the £80,000 loan. Along with defending his
home, Monty begins searching for Lucy Lastic; luckily he doesn't need to look
far because she is Miss Pringle's Goddaughter. The two immediately warm to each
other and Monty hopes he can woo her. Willis then summons the three to a
meeting and reveals to them that he is their father; this is a total shock to
them all because Mag always told her children that their father was dead.
Nevertheless he still refuses to return the garden centre to them. Monty and
Hilda are in shock at this news whereas the more materialistic Winston is
delighted and tries to claim his "seat on the board". After a while
though, Monty and Hilda think of a way to take advantage of the situation.
Willis is recovering from his injury and is booked in for a fake consultation
at the clinic where Faith works. While Willis is being detained at the clinic
by Batman, Robin and Lucy disguised as doctors, Hilda and Monty arrange a
meeting with the American businessman who wants to buy the garden centre site
off Willis and pose as a member of Willis' company. They tell him that the deal
is off and he walks out angrily. At the same time Willis has become suspicious
of his "doctors" and hobbles out on his crutches. However he is
embraced by a drunken Winston who wants his fatherly love and suffers further
injury to his spine. When the triplets visit Willis in hospital they find out
that in ruining his deal with the Americans they have bankrupted him, and the
garden centre is now just an abandoned brownfield site. Willis, still terrified
of further visitations from the ghost of Mag, allows them to use it and Monty
and Hilda finally get to build The Plantation. Monty is so overjoyed that he
asks Lucy for her hand in marriage, only to find out to his dismay that she has
started dating Winston.
Wesley Willis is released from hospital in time for the
grand opening of The Plantation and the triplets take pity on him, and find
themselves bonding with their long lost father. They allow him to come and live
with them at the house; he's confined to a wheelchair after his two accidents.
The time that follows is a golden age for Monty and the others. The Plantation
is finally a reality, people come from miles around just for the experience,
the tills are ringing and it looks as though they will live happily ever after.
However Monty's dream is dampened by his unrequited love for Lucy and Hilda's
is also in the same way for Billy, who has disappeared from all their lives.
Willis is also deeply depressed by his disability and he fears the return of
the horrifying ghost of the triplets' mother. During this segment he speaks
mostly in poetic lines voicing his own thoughts like: "What merciful God
would incarcerate me with this Hogarth collection of lowlifes!?" However
as time goes on and Mag doesn't put in any further apparitions he begins to
hope that her soul is now at rest. He also regains the ability to walk again.
Inspired by this new lease of life he begins to hatch further plans. As the
doctor finally removes his neck brace for the last time he is telling Willis
about much he admires The Plantation and Willis casually quips: "Is there
a market price for happiness? Because you're right, Doc; all these people
should be made to pay for such
joy!" He then starts getting involved with the business more and persuades
the triplets to form a board rather than it being under the sole directorship
of Monty. One of the members is Winston, whom Willis is recruiting to his
scheme of taking over control of The Plantation. Monty's dream of The
Plantation has always been very idealistic with the objective being one of
quality and beauty, often at the expense of profit; even though this has not stopped
him making a healthy one. "This place is the jewel in the bobble hat of
east London !" he says. Willis
wants to run it as more like a conventional corporation with maximization of
profit being the last word and therefore sacrificing a lot of the ethical principles
that Monty believes in, like the free lemonade fountain and of having a live
band instead of just playing recorded music. This seems impossible at first,
because on the board Willis is non-voting chairman and Hilda and Monty always
agree and so outvote Winston. However when Winston and Lucy split up Monty is
overjoyed and invites her for a week's holiday in Paris
leaving Hilda alone. At the same time Billy returns and announces that he and
Lucy are now a couple and they're off to Hong Kong ; this
leaves both Monty and Hilda distraught. Monty goes off to Paris
by himself. Hilda is so crushed by her situation that she allows Willis and
Winston to manipulate her into making some of the changes to The Plantation
that Willis wanted, like sacking the band and charging customers an entrance
fee.
Monty comes home from Paris
in dejection to another nightmare. At the gates of the plantation he has to pay
an entrance fee to get in and then follows the sound of recorded country and
western music over to the stage where he sees that ridiculous automatons of the
band members have been placed there. He is so upset that he leaves again and
joins the other members of the band going on tour up the River Thames in
Batman's boat. "The Nashville Noise on tour! Let's leave the troubles of
the world in our wake! We are the Bermondsey nomads!" At one point they're
playing in a pub when a farmer walks in with a sheep on a lead; is this how
Londoners see the rest of us? Winston and Willis bully poor, broken Hilda into
making even more changes that "plastickify" The Plantation. However
Hilda digs her heels in when they try to get her to agree to two further
outlets of The Plantation, this includes one that will be run by Winston and
Faith, who have made up and are back together; Winston is desperate to get
Hilda to agree, thinking it is essential for saving his marriage. Then Billy
returns from Hong Kong without Lucy who had split up
with him and got herself signed up as the white heroine in a Chinese
kick-boxing movie. Willis is overjoyed because he thinks he can use Billy again
to drag Hilda back under his thumb. However Billy has changed; he is now in no
doubt that he loves Hilda and wants to be with her. This turn of events is so
ecstatic for Hilda that she develops a new found strength, opposing Winston and
Willis on everything they do. In the meantime things have not gone well for
Monty. The band's tour falls apart and the boat breaks down. Batman and Robin
go home to London while Monty continues
on by himself, unable to face going back. He busks on streets for a few pence,
but the pain of his past hangs over him. In the end he tries to commit suicide
by jumping off a bridge into the river, but he is rescued by a strange old
woman who looks exactly like his mother. This is a lady who is on an
archaeological quest to find a lost play by William Shakespeare; Monty decides
to help her because she is a visionary like him. He feels their destinies are
joined. However he soon discovers that the lady is a deluded fantasist and
something in him breaks. He decides to give up on dreams altogether and "face
reality!". He sets off for home. Winston and Willis' plot hangs in the
balance; Billy is not playing ball and when Hilda decides she wants to look at
the accounts they know their chicanery will soon be exposed; so they decide to
gaslight her. They lead her to believe that Billy is cheating on her and is
still being used by Willis to control her. This fails to begin with, but then
they succeed in making her believe he is having a secret affair with Lucy. On
the day when Winston and Faith are renewing their wedding vows in a ceremony at
the garden centre Monty arrives home and, at that very moment, Hilda takes a
gun and shoots Billy.
In the aftermath of the shooting, as Billy is rushed to
hospital by ambulance, Willis tries to cover up the fact that Hilda shot Billy
and makes out that it was an accident. Hilda by now knows that the stories
about Billy were lies and is overcome with remorse; she agrees to help Willis
cover up. Billy has an operation to remove the bullet and then recovers. Hilda
tells Monty everything that had been happening while he was away, including
Winston and Willis' deception, and Monty goes home and confronts Winston who is
sick with shame. Willis then blackmails the triplets into agreeing to his plans
for The Plantation by threatening to reveal the truth about Hilda's guilt. They
reluctantly agree until Monty sees a way out; he confesses to the crime himself
and is arrested. Lucy in the meantime decides she loves Monty because she
thinks he shot somebody for her in a crime
passionnel. Willis is furious about Monty's bluff, but knows he can do
nothing about it. But then he's watching one of the wedding videos made before
the shooting and in the background you can see into one of the house's windows;
Hilda is clearly visible brandishing the gun. He has proof that Hilda did it!
He snatches the video tape, puts it in a bag and jumps on his motorbike to take
it to the police station, pursued by Winston in his builders' van. Willis
evades Winston and arrives at the police station, but as he opens the bag he
sees the face on Mag's ghost staring up at him. He screams with terror and runs
back out into the street. Mag takes him on a second astral journey, this time
to the future; what life would be like for him in three years time if he hands
the video over to the police. Hilda is in jail and on the verge of a breakdown,
Winston and Faith are plotting his murder and Monty jumps off a bridge into the
river again, and this time he succeeds. Wesley is shocked by what he has been
shown and, like Scrooge, on which the scene is based, changes his ways
instantly. He tries to make amends by destroying the tape in front of Winston
but the latter doesn't believe him, nor do Hilda and Monty. It is only when he
holds Hilda hostage and in doing so makes an irrefutable fake confession to the
shooting of Billy, only then does Hilda know the truth. The police surround
them and order Wesley to come out and put down the gun. Wesley is about to obey
when one of the police marksmen misjudges his action and shoots him. He dies
and as his body lies on the ground his spirit rises out of him and Mag's ghost
comes and takes him away. At the end of the story Winston and his family go off
to America to
become a famous family of wrestlers. Monty and Lucy have triplets and paint
pictures of London 's famous sites
while Hilda and Billy also have triplets... fancy that! And they run the garden
centre together with Miss Pringle. And watching over them all is the ghost of
their mother, with Wesley Willis' ghost stranding beside her.
End of synposis
When Gone to Seed
was first broadcast I was a very different person to whom I am today. I was far
less confident and feared almost everything and everyone around me. My personal
life was farcically complicated and unsuccessful and I had few friends. There
were many people in my life who described themselves to me as "your
friend, Ben", but their behaviour was nothing of the sort; on the contrary
they exploited and abused me for profit, self-glorification and entertainment.
I felt lonely and ostracized. I was as much an oddball back then as I am now,
but my perception of myself was crucially different because I regarded my
eccentricity in a negative light rather than a positive one. Back then I felt I
was a crank, today I am a maverick. My heath was suffering too; I was seriously
underweight because I was hardly eating. I also had allergic eczema and
hayfever. I powerfully identified with the plight of the characters,
particularly Monty and Hilda. I also understood that Gone to Seed was a tribute to nonconformism, although at the time I
didn't have the vocabulary to put it into those words. In the mainstream media
this is extremely rare indeed. I took great hope and comfort from that; it's no
exaggeration to say that Gone to Seed
helped get me through some of the toughest days of my life. Since that time I
have studied the media and the way it is used to mould the human mind and culture
to the will of our rulers, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/grimlys.html.
Now I identify less with the characters' situation, but in a strange way the
series is more precious to me than ever. After watching it over a hundred times
for twenty-two years, I find Gone to Seed
all the more poignant, as we see the long term effects of that psychological
warfare agenda on our lives. It's interesting to compare Gone to Seed with TavistockEnders;
see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/tavistockenders-scoops-soap-awards.html.
They are so different they are virtually antitheses; in fact I'd call Gone to Seed the perfect antidote to the
venom of TavistockEnders. Everything
between the two is inverted. There's a welcome opposition to social Darwinism
in Gone to Seed; the viewer is left
in no doubt that what Willis and Billy do to Hilda is immoral even though Hilda
is so easily maltreated by them; Hilda's sweetness and amiability are
celebrated, not scorned. Monty's is also held in deep veneration for his
romantic and idealistic nature when in almost all other TV shows he would be
ridiculed and portrayed as a cipher of contempt. In Gone to Seed he is a heroic figure for his seeing of visions and his
pursuit of dreams, his creative passion. Monty's dream sequences are my
favourite scenes; it takes a great spirit to imagine "an island of beauty
amidst a sea of grey"; I find myself sharing Monty's hope for a world of sunflowers,
butterflies and ivy-clad gazeboes. There's an almost Teletubbies-like feelgood factor to Monty's dream (See: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/i-like-watching-teletubbies.html).
These sequences are always accompanied by the programme's beautiful score. The
antagonists are portrayed as spoilsports of all that, to
"plastickify" all that is noble and profound in the world; what a
fantastic word that is! In the end Monty finally caves in under the pressure of
life and abandons his dreams; in a conventional piece of drama this would be
seen as an admirable development and there would be a golf clap all round for
him. However when he returns home a changed man, ready to embrace the so-called
"real world" it is just before the disastrous show-down of Billy's
shooting. He speaks the line: "You all live in the real world, I've come
to join you." the moment before we hear the gunshot. To me this signifies
that Monty has made a terrible mistake.
The score of Gone to
Seed is composed and performed by The Gutter Brothers, see: http://www.gutterbrothers.co.uk/.
It is best described as a kind of psychedelic country and western, especially what
I call "The Plantation theme", which repeats throughout the serial,
most often during Monty's visions, and doubles up for the closing credits song,
which uses the metaphor of seeds growing into flowers. There are many different
styles of music used though, for example "Wesley Willis' theme" which
is very jazzy; and "Winston's march", which is just a few bars long,
takes the form of a slow and dour brass solo. At the end of the last episode
The Plantation theme is reworked into a ballad with a slower tempo and single Hammond
organ melody. If you ever hear me humming to myself, it will probably be one of
these tunes you're hearing! The camerawork is very groundbreaking and creative
too as if the director thought he was in competition with Monty. There are some
split-screen scenes and well-thought out visual devices. For example, during
the band marathon, the passing of time is gauged by a shrinking pile of sausage
rolls. There's another shot in which images in a scene are reflected off
Hilda's spectacles. In fact almost every shot is well-executed and fascinating
to behold. The colours are rich pastels and the costumes eye-catching,
especially Monty's band jacket, Winston's wrestling leotards and Lucy Lastic's
dresses. There are a few flashback scenes to the characters' childhoods in
which the same actors play their younger selves. This method can sometimes be
very lame and obtrusive, like in the film adaptation of Peter Shaffer's Equus, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tsx5wNyzmRo,
however in Gone to Seed the result is
hilarious. Although this series has affected me so deeply and has such a
powerful message, it is essentially a very light-hearted production, with no
graphic sex or violence; it is perfectly suitable for all the family. The
serious and blithe elements of the style are skilfully balanced. In the
climactic scene where Wesley Willis dies the film-makers work hard to prevent
the atmosphere from becoming too sombre, inserting comic touches. This is
helped by their employment of another well-known actor who stars in the last
episode only, Anthony Newly. He plays Chief Inspector Keet, the policeman who
investigates the shooting of Billy. I'm not claiming that Gone to Seed is technically perfect; in fact it sports some major
gaffs. In episode 3 we see Faith kicking Winston out of their house, yet later
in the series they both behave as if it was Winston who initiated their
separation. Also the development of Billy's character from nasty to nice is
rather clumsy; coming in fits and starts and even total regression. There's an
element of this contradiction when it comes to Wesley Willis' personality too.
There are also a few cliches and habit words in it like "tip up"
instead of "turn up", the constant repetition of "dupe" and
colloquialisms like "fluffy", meaning "girlfriend"; maybe
this is just how Londoners talk. But an artistic masterpiece has never been
dependent on technical perfection; if Grounds had ironed out these little wrinkles
I would not have loved his series one bit more. There are also some wonderfully
quotable phrases and I used to drive my friends and family mad by always
saying: "I'll leave it all in your capable hands... Australian". Interestingly
Jed Mercurio, the writer of The Grimleys,
see above link, mentions Tony Grounds in this article; I knew those two would
be kindred spirits, see: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/mar/17/janeausten.fiction.
A recurring theme in several of Grounds' works are the dead
returning as ghosts to influence the living; this also took place in his movie Last Christmas, in which a young boy is grieving
over the death of his father, and he has encounters with his father's ghost;
see: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0223623/combined.
The influence of Charles Dickens is very apparent in these storylines and, as a
Londoner, Grounds is manifestly fond of his city's illustrious literary
forebear. The ghostly goings on in Gone
to Seed are straight out of A
Christmas Carol with Mag Plant taking on the role of both Jacob Marley and
all Scrooge's visitations. All in all, the entire overall setting of Gone to Seed is rather surreal, even
leaving aside the supernatural element. I can easily imagine it being set in
some closely-related but still distinct parallel universe. Blended with this is
an almost hyperrealism of the everyday, references to pop culture and household
celebrities like Esther Rantzen etc. I found it immensely absorbing, as if I
were a part of the story. There is a slight pantomime element present too; or maybe
music hall, another style pioneered in London .
At the start of all the episodes after the opening one, a character addresses
the viewer and gives a recap of the story so far; and at the end Mag's ghost
does as well, smiling slyly and saying: "Well what did you want, a
miserable ending?" Am I just imagining the spiritual journey Gone to Seed is? Did Grounds intend his
serial to be so? As I said, it's a gentle family comedy-drama, but within its
softy-spoken words can be heard a rebel yell. There are many films and TV
programmes that are very prudential and perceptive satires. As I've said, the
manipulators don't control everything, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/some-of-them-are-on-our-side.html,
but the themes I've found in Gone to Seed
are the most subversive of any. A truly free and happy world will never be
achieved by merely voting for somebody different, or even demanding the head of
George Soros on a plate, it's dependent on an internal transformation. We
cannot create a better world with physical action and activism unless this is
accompanied by a quest for inner peace and enlightenment. It means wanting to
build The Plantation. Gone to Seed
has inspired and strengthened me like no other film I've ever seen. I urge all
HPANWO-readers to watch it too; I hope you gain as much joy and hope out of it
as I have. I'll end this review with the words of Miss Pringle, the only person
who truly loved Wesley Willis for who he was: "...and we shall be happy
again."
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