RIP Sandy Ratcliff

Sandy Ratcliff, the former EastEnders actress and star of Ken Loach's 1971 film Family Life has died at the age of seventy.

Born in London on October 2, 1950, Sandy Ratcliff seemed destined for a troubled and turbulent life. Expelled from Grammar School at the age of 12, Ratcliff began a relationship with drugs as a teenager, smoking and eventually supplying cannabis, which earned her some time in prison. After stints as a waitress, DJ and guitarist in two rock groups, she found some acclaim as a model, touted by photographer Lord Snowden as 'The Face of the 70s'. 

However it was acting that she became famous for. She took the lead role of Janice, a schizophrenic young woman, in Ken Loach's 1971 film Family Life, and went on to appear in films like The Final Programme, Yesterday's Hero, Hussy and Radio On, as well as TV programmes such as ITV soap opera Crossroads. But her biggest role was as one of the original cast members in another soap, the BBC's EastEnders. As Sue Osman, Ratcliff appeared in the very first episode in 1985 and played the part of the cafe owner until 1989 when she was sacked due to her addiction to heroin. In her four years on the soap she took centre stage in big issue-led storylines such as cot death, adultery and mental illness. 

Ill health and personal problems were something that dogged Ratcliff after leaving EastEnders, battling both cancer and drugs and hitting the headlines for providing a false alibi for her boyfriend Michael Shorey, who was subsequently sentenced to two life sentences for the murder of two women. Acting work dried up beyond appearances in Maigret and a couple of TV plays and, at some stage, Ratcliff retrained as a counsellor but had retired by the 2010. It was also revealed by the tabloids that she was living on disability benefit of just £70 per week. In her final years Ratcliff lived in sheltered accommodation and it was here that her body was found on the morning of 7th April, 2019. An inquest at Poplar Coroner's Court has been adjourned, pending tests, until October.

RIP

A Prayer Before Dawn (2018)

"...Starring as Billy Moore is Joe Cole, a former National Youth Theatre player and Screen International Star of Tomorrow recipient. Cole has been no slouch in the past few years, notching up impressive credits from his breakout role as John Shelby in the hit BBC period crime drama Peaky Blinders to a BAFTA-nominated performance in the Black Mirror episode, Hang the DJ. He has even courted Hollywood with roles in last year’s veterans drama Thank You For Your Service and 2015’s cult horror Green Room, but it’s perhaps fair to say that for all that he still isn’t a household name. That slight anonymity actually works in A Prayer Before Dawn‘s favour, because what’s integral to this film is Billy’s foreignness. It is simply Cole’s milk-white torso, rather than the star status of an A-lister, that makes him stand out from the broiling tumult of similarly semi-naked and heavily inked Thai convicts.  As the only westerner and English speaker incarcerated there, the bewilderment and isolation he feels is key to his specific ordeal and this is palpable for the audience too, as we are forced uncomprehending down this hellhole alongside him. The danger he faces, as warders and inmates bark and threaten, is credible in a way that a bigger name with a greater baggage of roles behind him would simply be unable to pull off. We know that just around the corner the trailer is waiting for them…with the lesser known Cole, you can believe he’s actually living this nightmare. This may not be the film that affords him the mainstream commercial breakout that is surely on the horizon, but the kudos it will gain in critical and professional circles is further proof of Cole’s ability to pick his roles well...."

Read my full review at The Geek Show

The Frontline (1993)

The Frontline is the debut feature film from Boston Kickout director Paul Hills. Aged just 21 and armed with enthusiasm and naivety Hills wrote, produced, directed and edited The Frontline, a film which took three years to complete from 1990 to 1993.

Vincent Phillips stars as James King, a young man newly released from a psychiatric hospital in London. Given his freedom, he hitches a ride up to Manchester, and the run down and tumultuous Moss Side area, keen to look up an old flame in the shape of local pirate radio DJ, Marion (Amanda Noar). At first she's reluctant to reignite their passion, but eventually the pair resume their love affair - an affair that runs the risk of breaking down when Marion's drug addiction becomes apparent. James makes it his mission to help Marion kick the habit and get clean and just when the future is looking rosy for them both, Marion winds up dead and her murder seems to point towards a man with some considerable power in the region; local MP, William Armstrong (Renny Krupinski).

The eponymous 'Frontline' itself refers to Moss Side and Hulme. Back in the '80s and early '90s, this was an impoverished no-go area in which gangs were profligate and danger lurked around every corner. Left more or less to fend for themselves, the residents created their own resources, including pirate radio and it was here that the tightrope between 'Madchester' and 'Gunchester' was walked. As a time capsule it's quite a worthwhile document, capturing as it does the urban decay and destruction from a decades worth of Tory rule in what proved to be the dying days of their regime, as well as attempting to highlight the cities creative and eccentric culture and the cross-over in casting Factory Records impresario Tony Wilson in his day job as a TV journalist with Granada Reports, there on the scene for the film's bloody denouement. Even John Mundy from BBC's Northwest Tonight pops up in a film that isn't blessed with familiar faces or star names. In fact reliable character actors Geoffrey Leesley (Bergerac, Casualty and Brookside) and a young Tim Dantay (Alan Partridge's builder friend) are probably the most recognisable faces for audiences, and if you're familiar with your Mancunian rock from the period, you'll see some live footage from the New Fast Automatic Daffodils performing in a club scene.

The key theme in Hills' feature is the notion of insanity being both condemned and condoned depending on your class and status; Moss Side is essentially an example of  that old adage about 'the lunatics taking over the asylum' and it is ironic that the newly released James sets up home there. But the real psychotic in the plot is Renny Krupinski's killer, the privileged William Armstrong MP, a man whose dangerous mental health is kept largely hidden and ignored.

However this is an extremely low budget debut feature and one that was extremely difficult to create, so it's not surprising that the overall result is a bit of a noble failure. Hills himself has described the three year long process as an absolute nightmare; in the film's initial stages, he was sleeping rough in Manchester Piccadilly and subsequently progressed to sleeping on the floors of cast and crew once he had assembled them, basically for no money whatsoever. Each day's filming ran the risk of running out of film at any given moment, meaning often only two takes were ever done. It makes for an amateurish, rough and ready end product and, by Hills' own admittance, he was perhaps to young and naive to attempt such a film in the first place. It's true that the essential message of 'drugs are bad, and so is the establishment' is a painfully earnest and sketchy one from a young filmmaker and he seems to struggle between a straight attempt at social realism and something more heightened (the scenes featuring the police are especially heightened and fit awkwardly around everything else). The on-the-hoof nature of the shoot means that it's sometimes hard to make sense of some sequences and I'm not sure the plot holds up to much scrutiny either, but what cannot be denied is that this is quite an impressive effort from a first time filmmaker with zero budget and a myriad of pressures. Hills' next feature, Boston Kickout, was a marked improvement that was no doubt achieved by the lessons he learnt here.

T2 Trainspotting (2017)

Choose life. And then live it. For twenty years.

Because you have to have lived a bit to appreciate what this film is trying to say. You have to have been a teen or twentysomething when Trainspotting came out to appreciate this - which is why there are some sniffy reviews in some corners of the web from numpties who were filling their nappies  back in '96. More than any other sequel I can currently recall, T2 has matured with its audience and reflects where they are likely to be at right now. Whereas Trainspotting will perhaps always appeal to teens/twentysomethings of any generation, I think you have to have a bit of experience under your belt, you have to be 35 and upwards, to appreciate this.

And yes, it's got a sombre reflective edge for times passed, but it's still a great fun ride. It's probably the most fun I've had in the cinema for some time too, with some genuinely laugh out loud moments such as the William of Orange pub scene, and the moment when Renton and an increasingly exasperated Begbie inadvertently reunite in the club toilets. And the scene where Spud watches two youths race down the road to Regent Bridge gave me actual chills.

Spud is still an ugly/beautiful hapless goof, Sickboy is still a scuzzy handsome chancer, Renton is still a deeply charismatic bastard and Begbie is still the scariest urban psycho to wear a moustache since Yosser Hughes. It was good to see them again. Trainspotting was a remarkable opportunity, this thankfully is not the betrayal.

Mystery Road (2013)

"How do you sleep at night - locking up your own people all the time?"

Despite Australia enjoying a healthy film industry, there doesn't seem to be enough films made (or being successfully-distributed overseas at least) by or for the indigenous Australian people - a people who feel that their rights to citizenship, to be recognised in the population census and to be given the vote did not occur until 1967 and whose affairs, in several states, were until then handled under departments with remits for flora and fauna (and thus, it is argued, equating them to vegetables or plants of the land rather than people) - so it's encouraging to find a film like Mystery Road from indigenous filmmaker Ivan Sen that attempts to change that, and even more encouraging to hear that a sequel - Goldstone - was made this year. 

Set in outback Queensland with locations boasting such richly atmospheric names as the eponymous Mystery Road, Massacre Creek, Slaughter Hill and the Dusk Til Dawn Motel, this measured modern-day Western is actually little more than a shaggy dog story of a thriller centering around the violent death of a young indigenous girl and a mystery involving wild dogs roaming the dusty, barren landscape. Writer/director Sen's real interest lay in the evocative depiction of society through the springboard that is afforded by the central crime, and its a society that is as desiccated and in need of attention and repair as the rusted abandoned jalopies and the failing fences that line the scorched long stretches of roads.

Aaron Pedersen stars as detective Jay Swan, 'an Abbo copper' caught between two worlds and viewed with suspicion by everyone, from his colleagues on the force to his own, estranged family. With a seemingly unmoved police department, it falls to Swan to investigate the murder of a teenage aboriginal girl, discovered by the roadside, and his investigations led him close to home when he finds a link between the dead girl and his teenage daughter, Crystal. Delving further, this lone wolf soon uncovers a web of drug-dealing and exploitation that has ensnared almost everyone in the community, maybe even his colleagues such as Hugo Weaving's subtly menacing and enigmatic Johnno. Weaving is perhaps the film's biggest name, but the real star here is Pederson whose natural quiet charisma lights up the screen, making it almost impossible to take your eyes off him, his permanently knitted brow and thousand yard stare - and rightly so. I am so glad to see his character get his own series as he certainly has what it takes to carry it.

It's a beautifully shot film, imbued with the tropes of Westerns such as stetsons and Winchester rifles against such remarkable desert scenery, along with some impressive aerial photography that capture the isolation and barely civilised nature of the arid outback. The finale may explode into unexpected (and I suspect somewhat tongue-in-cheek) gunplay but its the long and winding paths it took to get to this denouement that count and are what you'll remember for long after.

Red Heat (1988)

"You think parakeet is feminine?"

So asks Arnie at one point in Red Heat. And I have to reply no, I don't actually Arnie. But I do think that opening scene to Red Heat is one of the most homoerotic ever committed to celluloid. Even watching it as a kid, I hoped my parents didn't walk in at that precise moment, for fear they'd get the wrong impression regarding my burgeoning sexuality. It's a scene that made me feel really awkward; I do not want to see Arnie's bare ass in a fight scene. And even though the scene features some naked girls on display too, it's worth pointing out that the one who positions her rather fine, large and shapely bottom under the bathing fountain has (to quote Him and Her) 'dykey hair'

In recent years Red Heat has become something of a perennial in the post pub closing time ITV schedules on a Friday night. Though I'm 99.9% sure they still edit some of the violence out in these screenings, which is weird considering we're talking gone 11pm at night.  

On the whole, you have to give credit to director Walter Hill for delivering a film which features an unashamedly Soviet hero when The Cold War was still, at best, lukewarm. Not for Arnie's Ivan Danko the scales falling from his eyes and the decision that America is the saviour of the world. He doesn't defect, it doesn't cross his mind for one second. Pretty impressive really. It's also fair to say that Red Heat gives Arnie one of his more credible action hero roles too; appearing in an urban America setting that actually allows him to play up to the fact that he sticks out like a sore thumb. 

Unfortunately, not all of the fish out of water stuff works and that's partly down to the fact that the buddy buddy relationship between him and Jim Belushi doesn't really fly. Indeed, Belushi had more chemistry and a more authentic buddy buddy cop partnership with the dog in K9! It's not really Belushi's fault, the character's underwritten and doesn't seem to serve the comedic purpose you'd originally imagine, after all it's Arnie who gets the best gags; "I do not want to touch his ass, I want to make him talk" and "I am not shitting on you" springs to mind. There's nothing here to suggest Belushi is, as the tagline had it, 'Chicago's craziest cop', which is a shame.

I'd really like to see what contribution Troy Kennedy Martin made to the final screenplay. Given how Hollywood mistreated many British screenwriting greats in the '80s, I imagine a lot of the man behind Z Cars, Edge of Darkness, The Italian Job and Kelly's Heroes ideas didn't make it to the screen, but I'm prepared to be surprised. 

Lastly, Gina Gershon is really pretty here, but has very little to do in accordance with the time; '80s buddy cop action movies just offered nothing for actresses really. Also, it's hard not to think of her as Larry David's hasidic Jewish dry cleaner these days!

Behind The Mask (1958)

Notable for being Vanessa Redgrave's cinematic debut, Behind The Mask is a fairly accurate and engrossing, albeit somewhat slow-moving, look at the life of a newly qualified surgeon and the old boys network that exists within the NHS.

Tony Britton stars as our hero, Philip Selwood, a freshly qualified surgical registrar on the firm of the respected but ailing consultant Sir Arthur Benson Gray, played by Michael Redgrave. Selwood is also engaged to his mentor's daughter, Pamela (Vanessa Redgrave) which makes them rather tight, until an issue of malpractice within the hospital rears its head.

Carl Möhner co-stars as Dr Carl Romek, a Polish anaesthetist who is something of an outsider from 'The Pack' (the title of the novel by John Rowan Wilson that this film is based on) whom Selwood takes pity on and becomes rather friendly with. It's clear from the off that Romek is a troubled individual; he has a tragic past thanks to his time in a concentration camp and has a habit of staring off into the distance with a faraway look in his eyes as he talks about himself, so it comes as no surprise when his former girlfriend (Brenda Bruce) reveals to Selwood that Romek is a dope-fiend, hooked on barbiturates since an accident in the camp during the war. He assures Selwood he is clean, but it's a lie and the pair enter theatre to operate on a patient, leading to devastating consequences that threaten to tear Selwood and Pamela apart...

Behind The Mask may be a trifle stiff and dated looking (not helped by the green tinge to the antiquated colour film) but its exploration of medical surgery and the old boys network/'the pack' feels suitably and worryingly authentic. It's certainly more believable and interesting than any current episode of Holby City! Of particular interest is a scene which features an example of early open-heart surgery, though quite why the observation camera prefers to concentrate on the perspiring brow of Redgrave rather than what his hands are actually doing makes a mockery of the realistic edge much of the film is striving for.

It's rather lovely to see Michael and Vanessa Redgrave playing opposite each other, replicating their real life father and daughter relationship. Indeed there's a great cast on display here overall, even though some of them have very little to do (hello, Lionel Jeffries) I especially liked Ian Bannen as a whitecoat forever cadging cigarettes off his colleagues. Oh and eagle eyed viewers will spot a certain William Roache aka Ken Barlow pacing around, pulling on cigarettes in a couple of early scenes as a young doctor. I may be wrong but I think this might be his only other credit aside from Coronation Street which he has been in since the very first episode in 1960. 

Kudos too for realistically conveying the ethnic diversity inherent within the British medical world and how the NHS welcomed immigrants from the commonwealth and the like because of their talents and dedication; something which has stupidly come under threat thanks to the Brexit vote.

Amongst Barbarians (1990)

Watching Amongst Barbarians as a ten-year-old in the summer of 1990 had a profound effect on me. It sent me to bed with cold sweats and a racing mind and the bristling events of the play have remained with me to this day. Like the final episode of Blackadder Goes Forth it put my febrile imagination in the position of someone knowing they were about to meet their death - how does anyone accept this? Catching it on YouTube now marks the first time I've seen it possibly since that original broadcast (I'm not sure if it was ever repeated) and I'm pleased to report it remains a strong, highly emotive piece.

This BBC2 Screenplay film is an adaptation of a stage play that made its debut at the Royal Exchange in Manchester a year earlier in 1989. Based on true incidents, Amongst Barbarians may be set in Penang, Malaysia, far away from Margaret Thatcher's Britain, but the Thatcherite attitudes regarding the decline of the British Empire loom large throughout the piece. Two young Englishmen have been arrested for drug trafficking and are sentenced to death by hanging in 28 hours time. Their relatives have travelled to the former British colony in an attempt to come to their aid and bring about a stay or reprieve, however they soon find out there is nothing they can do. The futility of the situation, along with the oppressive heat, increases their testy and agitated behaviour, and their racism and jingiosm becomes increasingly apparent until we are left to wonder just who the real barbarians are. 

Playwright Michael Wall adapted his own play for the BBC which boasted an impressive cast; Con O'Neill and Lee Ross played the two smugglers facing the death penalty, alongside Rowena Cooper, Anne Carroll, Kathy Burke, Madhav Sharma and, in his first dramatic straight role, sitcom star David Jason. As Only Fools and Horses was a big favourite in our house I'm sure he was the big draw for watching - and whilst he, and the rest of the cast, are all fantastic, it's actually Ross and O'Neill who perhaps deserve all the accolades here; the former angry and pugnacious railing against a fate decided upon him in a land he can't even find on a map (the tragedy being that he had won the holiday to Malaysia in a newspaper competition) whilst the latter is largely cool and quick witted, resigned to his fate until the film's final stages when its revealed he isn't perhaps quite the smuggling bigshot he'd like everyone to have believed. Ross' family (Jason, Cooper and Burke) are the family from hell, with Jason cutting a truly pathetic figure as the redundant (in more ways than one) father, a man who no one - not even his own family - want to listen to who realises that the one role he has in life, to protect his son from harm, is something he has failed at. It's a tragicomic performance that builds on the pathos he had already established with the character of Del Boy, thanks to the nine years he had at that point of playing the role. Whilst O'Neill's mother, an expat from Spain may look more civilised than that brood but is in actual fact a coke snorting hard faced Thatcherite ("I don't like her as a person, but I do admire her politics") who believes anything can be solved by giving people what they want - as witnessed by her belief that selling herself to the governor could result in her son's pardon - and that its a man's world that women help oil the wheels. 

Directed by Jane Howell, the production is entirely studiobound and in keeping with its theatrical roots. It's the kind of production that just wouldn't get made now; they'd fly the cast out to Malaysia (or a similar stand in locale) at considerable expense for what amounts to simply establishing shots. Granted it would look more impressive but I actually doubt it would improve upon what we have here. The sense of claustrophobia, of increasing hysteria is actually complimented by the closed in environment a studio shoot brings about and it has the right unnerving effect upon the viewer right up until that dramatic closing scene.

Wall's play is still produced professionally and in am dram circles to this day, which makes it all the more unusual that the BBC film isn't as well known as it perhaps ought to be, leading me to wonder if the corporation is somehow ashamed of their studio based plays, for fear of them appearing 'dated'. There's actually precious little written online about the production (and no screencaps whatsoever hence the lack of them appearing here. I couldn't be arsed taking any myself, apologies!) but I did stumble upon this article from 1990 and the New Straits Times, whose reaction to the production is melodramatic, erroneous and offended - no, it wasn't shot on location, it didn't feature the Sikh guard smoking and it completely misses the point of the title.

To get the BBC to consider repeating some of these classic plays please sign the petition I started here

RIP Howard Marks

He went from Oxford graduate to one of the world's most wanted men but sadly, Mr Nice himself Howard Marks, took the final journey in his adventurous roller-coaster life yesterday, following a battle with inoperable bowel cancer. He was 70 years old. 

One of the world's most infamous cannabis smugglers, Welshman Marks began his 'career' after graduating from his physics degree at Oxford and was imprisoned twice; first in the UK, only to be acquitted at the Old Bailey in 1980, and again following an arrest by the DEA in Spain in 1988 which saw him extradited  to Florida and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment in the US. He was released for good behaviour in 1995 and stood for parliament in the UK General Election of 1997 as a single-ticket independent candidate intent on reforming cannabis laws. Having gone straight, Marks extensively toured with one-man shows detailing his life and experiences as well as writing his memoirs, in the shape of the bestseller Mr Nice, which was later turned into a film of the same name starring Rhys Ifans.

RIP

The Organization (1971)

It's actually a real shame that the first sequel that put In The Heat of the Night's fish out of water detective Virgil Tibbs back into the water was the insipid They Call Me Mr Tibbs! as this concluding chapter in the loose trilogy of films, The Organization, is a much stronger piece that actually feels more in keeping with the Tibbs character of the original film.

Sidney Poitier's Virgil Tibbs is back in San Francisco for this second sequel but crucially he's back in fine maverick form, determined to bring down an international narcotics ring supplying drugs into the Bay Area through a dummy company called Century Furniture, and he's not particularly bothered about bending a few laws and keeping his colleagues in the police department in the dark either. In a briskly efficient audacious heist in the opening scene, we see a gang of activists (including a Charles Manson look-a-like preacher, a Japanese member of a girl's track team, a pole vaulter and a young Raul Julia) break into Century Furniture, with its kidnapped CEO and make off with an enormous $4 million shipment of heroin from the companies vaults. It's an impressive opening to the movie which has no dialogue (indeed, no sound at all beyond footsteps and grunts) until a little over seven minutes in when Raul Julia utters the film's first line and Gill Melle's score (an improvement on Quincy Jones' offering for They Call Me Mister Tibbs!) kicks in.

Immediately after the heist and the opening credits fade, the plot kicks in and things start to get complex. Our activist gang make their getaway determined to break the heroin supply chain in the city, but when Tibbs and the team show up they find the CEO they left behind full of bullets. Someone else - representatives of the shadowy eponymous 'Organization' - arrived after their robbery and executed the guy as punishment. Terrified that they have a murder rap hanging over their heads, the gang contact Tibbs and let them in on their secret, telling them their part in the robbery.  From there Tibbs agrees to investigate 'The Organization', whilst keeping the activists names out of it - but, 'The Organization' are out for revenge and it isn't long before they start picking off the gang one by one.

The only real issue with The Organization is that it is unnecessarily complicated. Even now after watching I'm still not totally sure where all the jigsaw pieces fitted, but overall it's an efficient runaround featuring an unflappable Poitier as Tibbs and, thankfully, much less of his domestic life away from the job. The real joy here is seeing his loyalty being divided between cops and the gang who turn to become his informers and if you can follow all the red herrings being thrown into the mix then I'm sure there's much to enjoy in this rattling cop drama. It's no French Connection (what is?) but it's streets ahead of They Call Me Mister Tibbs! and is an overlooked entry in the solid crime thrillers of 70s cinema.

Look out too for one Danny Travanty as Tibbs' driver - he would go on to become Daniel J Travanti and star as Lt Frank Furrilo in Hill Street Blues in the subsequent decade.

The Veteran (2011)

The Veteran is a 2001 film starring Toby Kebell as Robert Miller, a soldier returning home from Afghanistan and unable to fit back into society. Living on a violent, run-down council estate, he finds work in undercover surveillance and becomes obsessed with taking down a group of local gangsters who may be linked to a suspected terrorist call.

I feel miss-sold with this one. I kind of expected it to be him taking the fight to the drug dealers on his run down council estate. When Ashley 'Bashy' Thomas relates to Toby Kebell how the war he has just fought was basically just a way to keep the supply chain open for drugs to arrive in the West I thought 'yes, this is interesting' But the plot never really seems sure what it wants to be and we're quickly diverted from that to one long malaise of an espionage thriller - minus the thrills. The majority of The Veteran seems to be Kebbell following people, and then reporting back to Tony Curran and Brian Cox - both sleepwalking through roles they've done a dozen times or more in better fare.

I truly believe that Toby Kebbell can carry a film, but this isn't his opportunity. No one could carry a film which fails so spectacularly in keeping the audience's attention and in knowing what it actually wants. The dialogue is also a disappointment, with characters ultimately spouting diatribes to convey a sense of this film actually having the message it teasingly promises us all along. 

Come the final reel, all guns are a blazing. This sudden spurt of action does manage to jolt the film back into something lively, but in being such a long time in coming it ultimately feels rather wrong and misplaced. It is not, however much the film makers want it to be, Taxi Driver.

Overall this is really disappointing. This could have said something about the state of the nation in an interesting political way, but instead it opts for the last gasp of a Call of Duty style sensationalism it had spent the previous 80 minutes scorning.

Ill Manors (2012)

I tried to watch Ill Manors, Plan B's directorial debut inspired by the song of the same name, not long after it first came out but failed. It's the kind of film that requires real commitment. You have to be in the mood to sit through this harrowing, bleak multi-stranded crime story of contemporary, multi-cultural London.

Using a mix of professional and non-professional actors, Plan B aka Ben Drew has created something of real power and flair; gritty action set to his uncompromising, haunting lyrics and excellent, flowing cinematography from Gary Shaw. It's a drama of genuine despair which is all the more affecting because you know it is something of a reality, a way of life for many in a society which no longer offers up a community spirit or sense of identity beyond a singular selfish aggression and a preoccupation with mobile phones, binge drinking, drug use, easy sex and casual violence. 

The individuals stories proceed like a domino effect of depravity, all seemingly riffing on the notion of saving face, male pride, ruthlessness and fear. Awestruck and naive pre-teen Jake (Ryan de la Cruz Indiana) is swept under the wing of local dealer Marcel (Nick Sagar) offering him the highs of the gangsta lifestyles as well as the harsh, sobering lows in the space of just one day. Meanwhile ageing drug dealer and ex-con Kirby (Keith Coggins) humiliates Marcel and is in turn is himself humiliated by his former protegé Chris (Lee Allen). Then there's hard nut Ed (Ed Skrein) who terrorises crack-addicted Michelle (Anouska Mond) into having sex with a string of fast food workers to pay back for the phone he believes she stole from him. Only his friend Aaron (Riz Ahmed) has the sense and morality top feel disgusted, decent attributes that mark him out as the exception in this urban jungle full of animals, especially when immigrant Katya (Natalie Press) abandons her baby in his care testing his character to the limit.

It's fair to say the Broken Britain crime genre has been rather overflowing in recent years, but Drew's debut stands apart in attempting to take a moral stance against the action he depicts as opposed to glorifying or being in thrall to criminality and the crime genre itself. It's clear that Drew believes that many of his characters are victims of their environment, consigned to the rubbish heap of life before they have even effectively lived it - and especially so in poor Jake's case. With its bleak 'no future' sentiment, it's a very punk piece in that respect and it's therefore no surprise to see the great punk performance poet John Cooper Clarke, the Bard of Salford, in a cameo role; reciting his poetry in a rough-house London boozer. It's just a shame, though perhaps hardly surprising for a novice film maker, that he doesn't manage to save the film from sinking occasionally into the melodrama of soap operatics. 

Coming in the year that gave us the Olympics and the Jubilee, events that managed to whip the nation into a frenzy of jingoistic pride, Drew reminds us, like the spectre at the feast, that it was only a year earlier that our streets were looted, ravaged and burned in the 2011 riots that started in London following the shooting of Mark Duggan and swept across the nation literally like wildfire.

The Fall of the Essex Boys (2012)

On a wintry December night in Rettendon, Essex back in 1995, three Southend based gangsters and drug dealers were murdered in a Range Rover on a remote country lane.  It was a shocking gangland slaying whose reverberations were instantly felt in the press and media and, with a total of FIVE films exploring the incident, it has since become something of a regular crime cinema staple for the British film industry in the same way that the St Valentine's Day Massacre has been told time and time again by Hollywood.

At least Essex Boys, Jeff Pope and Terry Winsor's dramatised account of the murders, took Goodfellas as its inspiration. The director of  Fall Of The Essex Boys - the latest in a long line of 'Essex Boys' movies - Paul Tanter seems more in awe of the films of Nick Love which is hardly a great movie maker to be emulating now is it?

If you thought the world didn't need another film exploring the events leading up to the gangland slaying of Tony Tucker, Patrick Tucker and Craig Rolfe and its subsequent fall out, then you'd be right. The Fall of the Essex Boys, the fourth dramatisation, is completely redundant and barely watchable despite featuring two capable actors in the shape of Robert Cavanah and Kierston Wareing (I feel like I should worry for their respective careers, especially Wareing who has now appeared in three of the five existing Essex Boys movies) and sticking closely to the established facts - unlike Essex Boys which fictionalised the story and changed names to protect the, um, guilty - by drawing a link between the death of teenager Leah Betts and the subsequent murders, though they changed the name of the tragic teenager presumably out of respect for the family.

There's more than enough bad actors on display, actors who seem to make a career out of appearing in these straight to DVD Brit crime exploitation flicks, and chief amongst them are Peter Barrett, Jay Brown and Simon Phillips as the trio who end up full of lead in a Range Rover on a winter's morning by the close of the film. There is not an ounce of talent or charisma between these players that I can see. Then there is Nick Nevern. An intriguing presence in GBH which I saw recently, he does little here to capitalise on my interest and fails to impress especially in his delivery of one of the very worst voice over narrations I have ever heard. Think Danny Dyer's shouty, too many E numbers, I've-a-hard-on-for-this-scum narration in The Football Factory and then triple the irritation levels of that already deeply irritating device and you have what's on display here. It actually sets the standard for the film; brash, obnoxious, loud and totally unsubtle. 

Nevern isn't the only link to GBH by the way; there's also the appearance of the blonde, heavily made up and porcelain pretty Charlie Bond playing yet another totally unbelievable WPC. Why?! She has more lines here, and it's utterly cringeworthy and once again you feel like you're watching a kiss-o-gram fantasy WPC, helping to sink any believability and good intentions this film may kid itself in having.

Do yourself a favour and watch Essex Boys, because this one is for completists and masochists only.

Jane Asher in Rumpole of the Bailey, 1978

Screencaps of Jane's guest appearance in the Rumpole of the Bailey episode, Rumpole and the Alternative Society, first broadcast on 10th April, 1978. The episode sees Rumpole journey to the west of England to defend Jane's character, Kathy Trelawney, a hippy schoolteacher who is charged with selling cannabis to a police agent provocateur. Like her appearance in the debut episode of Hazell also that year - shown just three months earlier in fact - Jane's role came relatively early in what was the second episode in what was the first ever series of Rumpole. It shows that Jane was quite a pull at the time, a star name that ITV felt would be able to attract viewers to their new productions.

I especially liked her court outfit seen in the last few pics. That, combined with how she wore her hair, made her look rather Pre-Raphaelite. Lizzie Siddal would have been proud!