Tuesday 13 September 2022

Russell T Davies: Nolly - with Helena Bonham Carter - Will We Be Watching?

Our favourite photo of Noele Gordon, giving an autograph to a young fan.

An email from 'Vera Downend':

Will you be watching the forthcoming TV drama 'Nolly', about Noele Gordon?

No. We've read the blurb, and it sounds like one of those dreadful Feminist 'Aren't Men Pigs?' type things, which makes excuses for Nolly's personality on the grounds that men are sexist towards women. It's rubbish. It's a misandrist narrative. We can't help thinking Nolly would be forthright in her views. Dramas built around ideologies are not, to our mind, enjoyable. 

Writer Russell T Davies has form - some of the worst purveyors of this type of bilge are chivalrous men. It's patronising to women and typical of the male desire to chuck its own sex under the bus and damsel women. Read this:

As well as delving into the past to find out why Noele Gordon was sacked from Crossroads without warning, this new ITV drama is also a bold exploration of how the establishment turns on women who refuse to play by the rules, the women it cannot understand and the women it fears.

Nonsense. That's rubbish - PEOPLE who don't play by the rules, are not understood and feared are usually eventually ousted, and women have always been part of the establishment. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Everything nowadays is reworked into sexism against women. Nolly was no damsel, she was a huge personality, as flawed as anybody else and brilliant, and her dismissal had nothing to do with her sex.

Every time a retro drama - 'based on facts' - is produced, we are not viewing the facts. We are viewing past events as seen through the lens of today. The 21st Century lens is as fogged and clogged with modern debris as any other.

In fact, chivalry has long encouraged a fawning 'innocent, lovely woman put down by awful men' mindset.

Women as 'done to' never 'doers'. Objects.

Noele Gordon simply got out there and did things. She lived life her way. 

If the Feminist mindset is so sheep-like its adherents imagine somebody had to leave the apparently quivering, spineless female flock to work in television before any other woman would  - and that men and women are  separate species, with men determined to 'oppress' women - they are sadly deluded.

It's a terrible view of the history of the human race, casting one sex as hideous tyrants and the other as jelly-spined nincompoops.

The whole thing reeks of Marxist style historical revisionism, victimhood culture, and narcissism.

Women as lovely, sensitive beings, men as not.

The fact that so many men go along with it, don't question - and never have - shows the truth of the situation.

We must also mention the 'glass cellar jobs' - well over 90% of workplace deaths are still male because they are still the vast majority doing those jobs. Come on, Feminists, surely representation should be more equal after all these years?

Russell has described his screenplay as a 'love letter to Noele Gordon'. Meg was not our favourite Crossroads character, although she was definitely one of them, and we adored Noele Gordon. 

But we prefer facts.

Trying to hijack Nolly's story for the purposes of the increasingly questioned Feminist ideology in all its misandrist "glory" is a terrible thing to do.

Celebrate Nolly, not nonsense.


10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree wholeheartedly. Russell T Davies is a sick individual, loaded with the PC mindset, and Helena Bonham Carter is a narcissistic Feminist liar. 'We've still got to get equal pay,' she laments. But women DO get equal pay - any disparity is down to lifestyle choices - and that's from the Office for National Statistics. Anything else is ILLEGAL. Men still do the vast majority of dangerous jobs, and are around 95% more likely to die at work because of that. And Noele was LOVED by the rest of the cast? Well, Sue Lloyd said Noele was 'very loved. I mean, she was loved by the AUDIENCE.' And Ann George certainly didn't love her. We really don't need the likes of Davies and Bonham Carter presenting skewed views like this. I think Nolly would be furious. She was not a 'trailblazer' for women. She was not a Feminist. She simply got out there and did things, which a lot of women could not be bothered to do. There were women on TV from the earliest days. Nolly was good. She was bad. She was Nolly.

Mrs T said...

My friend worked on Crossroads and she said Noele was awful. Temperamental and queenly. And yet Russell T Davies says the whole cast LOVED her! Just because HE adores old style divas. There was also an incident, relayed by cast members, in which Noele swanned into the studio one day, saying, 'I think Pamela's going to be late for work today. I've just passed her at the bus stop.' She'd passed a fellow cast member in her Rolls Royce and left her standing there! And then there was poor Ann George (Amy Turtle). Davies is severely prejudiced against straight men. I don't think Noele would have been there as long as she was if she had been a man. The mother complexes wouldn't have clicked - 'MAMMA AIN'T HAPPY, NOBODY'S HAPPY!'.

Lady Pollard said...

Russell T Davies is nuts. Women being removed 'on the whims of men'? What about Julia Smith of EastEnders, happily axing anybody she pleased? What about Susi Hush of Coronation Street - ditto? What about the male axings on Crossroads - including Anthony Moreton as Carlos Rafael, John Bentley as Hugh Mortimer and Edward Clayton as Stan Harvey? It's a producer's job to do what he/she thinks is best for a show. We might think they were potty to get rid of Noele Gordon, but apparently Noele had been thinking of going anyway (she had spoken to Lew Grade), there were problems with her behind the scenes, and the whole show had been threatened by Lady Plowden and the IBA in 1979. Yes, LADY Plowden. Grow up, Russell and Helena Bonham Carter. Your anti-male nonsense is no longer meekly accepted. You speak like fascists - picking on one particular group and trying to throw sand in our eyes to back up your hateful behaviour.

Rusty Alexander said...

I see what you mean about the Marxist Feminist oppressed/oppressor nonsense - that comes with the territory when it comes to privileged, misandrist idiots like Russell T Davies and Helena Bonham Carter, who wouldn't know a glass cellar job if they fell over it, and gleefully cast slurs on all our forefathers - just as bigots like them have picked on various groups over the ages. I just blanked it. But the main thing that rankled with me is that Bonham Carter looks nothing like Noele Gordon.

Anonymous said...

It's lousy, with or without the Feminist rubbish. Mind you, I think Russell T Davies wouldn't have been successful years ago. We expect so much less and are so brainwashed now. His original Doctor Who era just struck me as rather good fan fiction. He couldn't hold a candle to the original, and had to draw on it so much it wasn't, in any way, original work. So sorry he's come back to it.

Unknown said...

Helena Bonham Carter is a one trick pony. She excels at playing the spoilt, ageing, badly behaved aristocrat, but can't really play her parts any other way. Whilst that made her perfect as Princess Margaret in The Crown, her depiction of Noele Gordon as a red haired Princess Margaret was pretty ridiculous. Noele was kind, gentle and dignified at all times in public (if not always on set). Just watch old interviews on Youtube...she had a beautiful smooth voice, a million miles from Bonham Carter's horrible jarring jolly hockey sticks depiction of her voice. And there's no way she would wander around the streets swearing her head off saying f*** this f*** that in front of the general public. The tabloids would have had a field day. Noele was not a spoilt aristocrat, she was the perfectly mannered middle class midlands girl from quite humble origins who had learnt to speak beautifully. All in all I thought it was a bit of a travesty. But that's hardly a surprise as all these docupics are like that.

Drew said...

That's why I wouldn't watch it. Using Nolly to indoctrinate people into believing such a skewed and hateful view of history is not something I like.

Chris Bell said...

It was an awful play, and very badly written. The other thing it's done is bring out the bitchery, misandry and hate in the Crossroads fan community and certain people who worked on the show, who all seem to want to vilify one particular man. Add to that Russell T Davies's well-known trendy misandrist agenda against straight men and you get something really ugly. I thought it was horrible - and I agree: Noele Gordon would of hated it.

Wendy said...

Actually, Russell T Davies is all the things he claims to hate. For a start, he is a confirmed 'Little Walesean' who put anti-English material in Dr Who during its first run. I need hardly remind viewers that England, even proportionally, is by far the most multi-ethnic country of the UK, and underfunded by the racist Barnett Formula and under-represented as a country via asymmetric national devolution. He discriminates against straight men simply because they are straight men and throws around misandry left, right and centre. Even his choice of Ncuti Gawata as the new doctor is not without problems. Rwandan-born Ncuti proclaims himself Scottish, not British. This makes three Doctor Whos in recent years who come from an area of the UK comprised of five million people. Just say we'd had three Doctor Whos from Essex in recent years - which has a larger population. Wouldn't that seem odd? This all fits in with RTD's fake 'Celtic Nations' bias. The man is poison and Ncuti is not the inclusive choice you think. the problems go way beyond Nolly. Wake up, people!

Anonymous said...

This from an 'actor' called Augustus Prew, who apparently played Tony Adams in 'Nolly'.

Augustus was born in 1987, and although he isn't old enough to remember anything he talks of, has clearly adopted the airheaded vacuous approach to gender history:

'It’s a powerful woman fighting the patriarchy [feminist hate theory], man! She’s a matriarch, she looked after everyone [Ann George?], and she stuck it to the man [which man? She made it difficult behind the scenes for a number of people]. It’s about people [women? when men are around 95% of workplace deaths and VAWG ignores men and boys?] who are overlooked and downtrodden [Noele Gordon?!!], standing up against the powers that be.'

Without an original thought in his head, this dreadful man quotes chunks from the feminist hate handbook and then licks Russell T Davies's botty - who also just quotes chunks from the feminists' hate handbook and is constantly writing fan fiction about other people's characters and scenarios. Like Doctor Who.

'Nolly' was like spitting and stamping on Noele's grave - the feminist agenda is now widely questioned and Nolly would never have pinned her flag to its mast. The likes of Augustus Prew should hang their heads for backing an ideology, feminism, that was never about equality, not even in the 1800s - and still isn't.