Playhouse Presents (TV Series) Snodgrass (2013) User Reviews

A Day In The Life

[Lejink · 7/10 · 4 May 2013]

Imagine if John Lennon had left the Beatles just as they were poised for success...how would his life have turned out. Well, for one thing, he'd have lost the celebrity status which obviously contributed to his later murder at age 40 by an obsessed fan, so that he would have likely lived on as in this short play, which asks how a genius maverick would fit into everyday society if he or she hadn't got the breaks.

The answer of course is they can't. Here the 50 year old Lennon can't find work in John Major's bleak 1991 Britain and finds himself reduced to taking a numbingly boring desk job under the jurisdiction of jobsworth conformists who unwittingly stir up old memories of the opportunity he passed up thirty years ago.

Beatles historians will be familiar with the group turning down the safe "Tin Pan Alley" guaranteed hit song "How Do You Do It" in favour of Lennon's own edgier, more exciting "Please Please Me". From there the band took over the world and stretched musical boundaries like no other group before or since. In this alternative universe however, the group finds only middling fame - "We could have been bigger than the Hollies'" a jaded Lennon says at one point and is reduced to playing the golden oldies tour circuit.

Thus the point the writer makes is that Lennon was the necessary catalyst to spark his band-mates on their musical odyssey, a claim that supporters of George and Paul in particular might dispute but which sits pretty well with me.

I enjoyed this interesting surmise on what-might-have-been, delivered pithily interspersing some sharp original dialogue with well-known actual Lennon quotes and even some pastiche Lennon music in the background. Ian Hart, not for the first time, plays Lennon well, a man out of time, to paraphrase Elvis Costello, who comes across as a smart-alecky society misfit, with no outlet for artistic expression, forced to suppress his free-will to the dictates of jumped up Snodgrasses as he calls them.

Of course, the play misses the point that someone of Lennon's prodigious gifts would have made it anyway, but for a man who has often been portrayed on-screen big and small since his senseless death over 30 years ago, this wry, off-beat playlet with its "I knew I was right" finish, interested, intrigued and entertained me.

Alternate Lennon

[JamesHitchcock · 8/10 · 4 June 2018]

"Snodgrass" is a rare example of a film or television programme exploring what might have happened had some historical event happened differently, a concept known as "alternate history". The question being posed here is "What would have happened if John Lennon had left The Beatles in 1963?" We are informed that in this timeline John left the group of "musical differences", in other words a dispute over a particular song, and it is strongly implied that the song in question was "How Do You Do It?" In our timeline The Beatles did indeed record this song, but never released it, and it later became a big hit for Gerry and the Pacemakers.

John's leaving the group does not appear to have made a great difference to the wider world; at the time the story is set (the early nineties), for example, we learn that John Major is still Prime Minister and Neil Kinnock still Leader of the Opposition. In the world of pop music, however, there do appear to have been repercussions. The Beatles enjoyed moderate success, including having a hit with "How Do You Do It?", but never achieved superstar status and never became more than a middle-ranking group. John sardonically wonders if, under other circumstances, they might have become "bigger than The Hollies" who, it is implied, enjoy in this timeline the iconic status which The Beatles enjoy in ours, that of the supergroup of the sixties who serve to define that era's pop culture. Without John, however, The Beatles did not split up in 1970 and are still playing in the 1990s, although these days they mainly cater for the "nostalgia circuit". (One thing which is never made clear is whether a replacement was found for John after his departure or whether Paul, George and Ringo carried on as a three-man group).

The biggest changes, however, have been to John himself. After leaving The Beatles he never achieved success or fame, beyond the very limited fame which attaches to being a half-forgotten former member of a middle-ranking pop group. He never married Yoko Ono, never moved to America and was not murdered by Mark Chapman in 1980. He is still alive and well and living in Birmingham, where he has long been unemployed, although the job centre have recently found him work in the post room of a local firm, where he is required to do little more than fold letters and put them in envelopes. He still sees himself as a rebellious free spirit and looks back at his past, with all its might-have beens, in a spirit of bitter, cynical humour, His greatest fear seems to be becoming a "Snodgrass", his term for a complacent middle-class conformist.

As a piece of alternate history, this one does not strike me as altogether convincing. My main objection would be that of the previous reviewer, namely that John Lennon was a musical genius who could have achieved fame with or without The Beatles. In an alternate universe I see him as an iconic singer/songwriter, a sort of British Bob Dylan, challenging the political and cultural Establishment with a combination of ironic humour, surrealism and pointed social comment. Also, a even Lennon-less Beatles could have become something more than a middle-ranking group if they could still have called upon the song-writing talents of Paul McCartney, whose gifts in this direction rivalled Lennon's own. (We learn that, even in this alternative universe, the Beatles had hits with "Yesterday", "Mull of Kintyre" and "Yellow Submarine", although this last one rather surprised me; I always thought that John had a lot of input into it).

Psychologically, however, this portrait of an alternative Lennon rang very true. Ian Hart gives a fine performance in the leading role, reminiscent of the John Lennon we all knew, and yet marked by a disillusioned middle-aged cynicism and a sense of failure which were quite alien to the real Lennon. He stands as a symbol of thousands of men of this particular sort (and no doubt women as well, although I suspect that this syndrome is a complaint which primarily affects the male sex). Such men may not be Lennon-style geniuses, although they are generally capable of achieving much more than they actually have achieved, but are held back by a fear of becoming Snodgrasses which prevents them from becoming anything at all. They may see themselves as free spirits in revolt against the world and its wicked ways, but fail to see that their rebellion neither hurts that world nor brings them any benefits.