Friday 28 April 2017

Fake News, Fake Drama

"`Guerrilla` on Sky Atlantic is a serious contender for best TV drama of 2017" ...so says a headline on `Digital Spy`.
Really?

I've just sat through the first episode and have to say, as one who was a police officer living and working at the time and in the areas portrayed, I recognised very little, apart from a few Triumph Heralds and Ford Cortina's.

Actors portraying uniformed police officers were wearing helmets that would have been more suited to the London Fire Brigade, with chinstraps* worn horribly wrong (*nothing new there) and on demo duty they were issued with baseball bats - oh really? Where was that? Portraying officers indecently assaulting a lead female character during a search on the street, after first having punched her in the face for swearing at him, but then walking off? Such casual police violence I never did see. Maybe this happened to someone who heard it from someone who was told it happened to someone else.

I am aware of the phenomenon known as looking through rose-tinted glasses and I did encounter officers, during my 32 years service, who clearly had anger management problems, had a tendency to bully, who liked to invade the personal space of females (which workplace doesn't have such people?) and some who used excessive force but, from my perspective, widespread this most definitely was not; quite the opposite, it was rare. It must also be borne in mind that a past viewed through black tinted lenses can be equally distorted and in the case of this drama and probably for dramatic effect, deliberately so.

I was disappointed to see lead actors, whose talents I have great respect for, going along with this. But I suppose a job's a job. I've seen enough.