The Gorge
- Episode aired Sep 4, 1968
- 1h 15m
IMDb RATING
8.3/10
36
YOUR RATING
A teenage boy reluctantly accompanies his ghastly family on a coarse bank-holiday day out to local beauty spot and tourist trap, the Cheddar Gorge.A teenage boy reluctantly accompanies his ghastly family on a coarse bank-holiday day out to local beauty spot and tourist trap, the Cheddar Gorge.A teenage boy reluctantly accompanies his ghastly family on a coarse bank-holiday day out to local beauty spot and tourist trap, the Cheddar Gorge.
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- ConnectionsFeatured in The Car's the Star: Ford Zephyr (1994)
Featured review
Gorgeous
Christopher Morohan's (1968) television film of Peter Nichol's screenplay was first aired by the BBC as part of a contemporary drama series billed as 'The Wednesday Play'. Just to state the obvious, it was show on telly each Wednesday evening.
It was a platform for up and coming writers and directors which included early opportunities for talent of the quality of Denis Potter, Jeremy Sandford, Alan Plater.. and many more.
It's certainly a testament to the impact this film had that I labour under the delusion that I can effectively review it it some 38 years after I first saw it, on the basis that I seem to be the only person alive able to remember what it was about and what it meant to people like me, then aged 12 years old.
Ostensibly, for me, it was a play set in a well-known holiday spot in the west of England. 'The Gorge' is Cheddar Gorge. Figuratively, a combination of a very well-known cheese that survives to this day, and a geological feature of remote antiquity.
But really it was a boy and girl on holiday with their parents, who stole brief interludes together among the ferns and heather.
The dialogue of these scenes, for somebody exiled in a boys Grammar School, was priceless, because it reflected two members of the opposite sex, reeling from the unexpected hormonal effects of puberty - but able to speak frankly to one another about it.
I kid myself that I can remember part of the dialogue, in which the well-upholstered young lady is being addressed by the frank but confused young gentleman.
The subject is tits. He says, with disarming honesty, something along the lines of - If I had tits, I'd play with them all the time but she replies - Yes, I did that.. but it's like playing with your fingers...
It's hard, I suppose, for people aged 12 in 2006 to imagine a time when sex was only conspicuous by its absence. Everywhere it should have been, like everyday conversation, it was missing.
Just for perspective.. across the Atlantic.. Alfred Kinsey's 'Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male' had been published twenty years earlier in 1948. 'Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female' was published in 1953, fifteen years before I saw this film on TV.
But in England, on BBC Television, somehow.. young people like me managed to begin to grasp the differences between how men and women approach love and sex from such different angles from plays like 'The Gorge'.
I look back, aghast, and wonder how this unusual play contributed so much to a process of understanding which so often founders in everyday life.
It was a platform for up and coming writers and directors which included early opportunities for talent of the quality of Denis Potter, Jeremy Sandford, Alan Plater.. and many more.
It's certainly a testament to the impact this film had that I labour under the delusion that I can effectively review it it some 38 years after I first saw it, on the basis that I seem to be the only person alive able to remember what it was about and what it meant to people like me, then aged 12 years old.
Ostensibly, for me, it was a play set in a well-known holiday spot in the west of England. 'The Gorge' is Cheddar Gorge. Figuratively, a combination of a very well-known cheese that survives to this day, and a geological feature of remote antiquity.
But really it was a boy and girl on holiday with their parents, who stole brief interludes together among the ferns and heather.
The dialogue of these scenes, for somebody exiled in a boys Grammar School, was priceless, because it reflected two members of the opposite sex, reeling from the unexpected hormonal effects of puberty - but able to speak frankly to one another about it.
I kid myself that I can remember part of the dialogue, in which the well-upholstered young lady is being addressed by the frank but confused young gentleman.
The subject is tits. He says, with disarming honesty, something along the lines of - If I had tits, I'd play with them all the time but she replies - Yes, I did that.. but it's like playing with your fingers...
It's hard, I suppose, for people aged 12 in 2006 to imagine a time when sex was only conspicuous by its absence. Everywhere it should have been, like everyday conversation, it was missing.
Just for perspective.. across the Atlantic.. Alfred Kinsey's 'Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male' had been published twenty years earlier in 1948. 'Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female' was published in 1953, fifteen years before I saw this film on TV.
But in England, on BBC Television, somehow.. young people like me managed to begin to grasp the differences between how men and women approach love and sex from such different angles from plays like 'The Gorge'.
I look back, aghast, and wonder how this unusual play contributed so much to a process of understanding which so often founders in everyday life.
helpful•50
- john-3109
- Nov 12, 2006
Details
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content