Westway on the radio
Forget The Bill and EastEnders - Westway was a a programme about real Londoners
The depiction of London in soap operas has been a fairly dismal one. Recently we lost Family Affairs on Channel 5, where South Londoners were played by mockneys who had the acting skills of Epping Forest. We still have the Bill on Channel 4 that never knows whether it wants to be Brookside or the Sweeney and succeeds at neither. We also have the scant delights of East Enders where a lot of strangely miserable and shouting people rub each other up the wrong way with tedious consequences.
World Service
None of these depict the real diversity or tolerance of Londoners. Few programmes, never mind soap operas, had the ability to make London feel real in the way that the early Brookside captured something seemingly authentic about life in Liverpool. There was one very honourable exception and that was tucked away in the exotic, nocturnal recesses of the BBC World Service. This exception was Westway.
This programme was broadcast at either 12.45 a.m. or 1.45 am. on Wednesday and Sunday for exactly a quarter of an hour, so locating it could be hell. Westway was centred on the Westway Clinic, a community doctor’s practice set in the very mixed Westbourne Park and Latimer Road areas of West London. The practice had three partners, the saintly working-class Margaret Sampson, the solid middle-class David Boyce and the vivacious West African, Joyce Unwokwe.
Real London issues
Westway had the courage to deal with the social issues that actually affect inner London such as racial violence, HIV and AIDS, gentrification, sexual politics and inter-racial differences. This may suggest some horribly worthy programme but the issues were dealt with in such a manner that they were simultaneously fresh and often very moving.
Multiculturalism and sexuality
For example Doctor Unwokwe was diagnosed
with AIDS, and the programme had the courage to explore Black African attitudes to
sexuality. The writing illuminated the consequences of living in a multiracial
metropolis. Yet, it also seemed to have the strength to say that
multiculturalism, though never uncomplicated ,was a very good thing.
Likewise, its dealings with issues of
sexuality were wonderfully thorough and profound. When Denny Green, the son of
the pub landlord had a relationship with David Boyce’s son, Ned, it made us
aware of both class difference and sexuality but also showed a global audience
that the only answer to urban living was understanding and tolerance. It was
this interrelationship between great acting, fine writing and plot lines that
resonated with the lives of Londoners that made it such a special and much
missed programme.
After just over eight years it was finally
dropped from the schedules in 2005 with much sadness and a vociferous campaign
to save it. The early hours of Sunday/Monday are not the same since the demise
of a little programme; the only programme that accurately reflected
contemporary London and its people.
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| Message: | 2/2 |
| Date and time: | 14/11/2007 at 22:55:55 |
| Sender: | Steve Marshall |
| Oh as a postscript I'm still involved in radio all over Europe and the US and a few other interesting places:) | |
| Message: | 1/2 |
| Date and time: | 14/11/2007 at 22:54:47 |
| Sender: | Steve Marshall |
| Such a site full of memories, something that hasn't been mentioned is the variety of radio stations that broadcast to London in years gone by I was involved with one of them..Europe's first soul station Radio Invicta 92.4fm, who incidently gave Gilles Peterson his first radio gig! Based in South London Radio Invicta broadcast soul and funk music over London every Sunday afternoon in the 1970's and 1980's... From Tower blocks scattered around London town, I even did some nightclubs too including the 100 club, Gossips in London's Dean Street, and also many great clubs in South and North London! | |
