The joy of Essex - BBC4

Totally agree with Roger's precis.
Well worth a watch so you can spot the bits we all know and love. And some inland bits too.
 
I'm something of a fan of Jonathan Meades. His programmes are always quirky and well thought out. I've recorded it in HD and will watch it later.
 
Indeed, a great programme and there's not enough of Jonathan Meades at the moment, it's refreshing to have something on that doesn't presume the viewer has an attention span of a potato and as such can regail us with descriptive passages longer than single sentences and doesn't feel the need to bombard us with gaudy tat repeated before and after each ad break.

(He is bloody funny at times to boot)
 
tugger said:
Indeed, a great programme and there's not enough of Jonathan Meades at the moment, it's refreshing to have something on that doesn't presume the viewer has an attention span of a potato and as such can regail us with descriptive passages longer than single sentences and doesn't feel the need to bombard us with gaudy tat repeated before and after each ad break.

(He is bloody funny at times to boot)
Click to expand...
+1 :D
 
One piece to camera shot from the hard at Marconi SC with Osea in the background. Several early shots of St Peter's Chapel.
 
Great programme - I'm also a big fan of Jonathan Meades, very droll and witty. What I really liked about it about it was his obvious love of all the scruffy, un-structured bits of the county around the coast were what he calls "real poeple" live. There is a fantastic polemic about half way through against planners, what he calls the "prefects of society who tell us what we can't do".

Lots of shots around Mersea, the houseboats, Tollesbury and the Saltings, the lightship and the sail lofts. Made me all nostalgic :)
 
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Saguday said:
I'm also a big fan of Jonathan Meades,
Click to expand...

I find him a bit of a tit and rather irritating actually but worse than that was the production of the program which just irritated from start to finish. I think there was a really good argument that Essex is a much nicer place than its stereotype buried in there somewhere but it didn't need all the stupid faux radio pronouncements and Meades repeating the word "Look" in his most annoying tone to highlight it

Watched the second half with the sound off and that was MUCH better! :D
 
I can understand why people find him irritating, but in expecting him to provide a showcase for a cosy kind of Essex they are missing his point. His interest is in architecture and after disposing of the audience's expectations in the preamble, he went on to show that a utopian attitude to workers' housing has influenced building in Essex for over a hundred years.

After accepting their good intentions he then showed how ineffective they had been and then that a utopian version of modernism had taken over, sometimes with good results, as at Bata, but later with the dire corporate folkiness that we see in places like Wivenhoe. His final shots, possibly at Jaywick, showed that there is a genuine demotic style, which is fascinating and varied but far too chaotic to meet official, or even critical approval.
 
The final shot was actually taken at the West end of Wrabness beach, showing the last of the line of beach houses. He didn't say anything about them at all - possibly didn't know what to make of them!
 
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