But It’s A 5 Star TV Production If You Like That Sort of Stuff
Then Again Why Not Change The Narrative From Negative To Positive And From Carnage To Naughtiness?
Make Love. Not (Drug) Wars!
BBC 1 – 9.00pm – The Boat Story – November Sunday 21st And Monday 22nd 2023 (With Four More Episodes To Go)
Two Strangers, 1 Boat, And A Whole Lot of Dosh. But Is It Worth It?
All Episodes Available on BBC iPlayer
If You Can Stomach The Violence
Promo Photo: In Boat Story Actress Cherie Gordon Plays Anya, The Daughter of Camilla And Samuel, Who Is Deaf And Skilled In Sign Language Among Other Things bda.org.uk
A Stellar Cast But A Violent, Grisley & Gory Unwatchable Horror Fest
Veteran Shakespearean & Dickensian Classical Actor @Paterson Joseph Is Currently Appearing On BBC 1 Primetime Television Sunday Nights At 9.00pm Throughout This Month. And Frankly We Were Excited About That. He’s Playing The Lead Male Role In The Violent Grisly, Gruesome, Drug World, Modern Day, Comedy Noir Drama ‘Boat Story’. However, Whilst We Knew He Was Playing The Lead Role, Who Is Called Samuel, We Did Not Know It Was Going To Be A Violent Grisly, Gruesome, Drug World, Modern Day, Comedy Noir Drama. Alas We Tried But We Couldn’t Stomach It!
More Love (And Less Violence) Please. The World Doesn’t Need More Violence. It Needs More Love. And More Romance!
This Innocuously Named Six Parter Began On November Sunday 21st 2023 At 9.00pm And Was Broadcast On The Monday At The Same Time The Next Night. It’s Available On BBC IPlayer For Those Hungry For More In Between The Scheduled Broadcasts (Destined To Follow The Same Scheduling Pattern For The Next Two Weeks).
More Romantic And Less Psychotic, We Here At TO.P Are Recovering Between Those First Two Scheduled Broadcasts Because They Featured A Post Watershed, Bloody Horror Fest. And But For The Acting Kudos of Paterson Joseph, We Would Not Be Watching It In The First Place. Guts & Gore Are Not Our Thing. Although Writing Duo The Brothers Grim, Harry & Jack Williams, of Two Brothers Productions, Seem Disturbingly Detailed In The Display of Blood Lust, Horrific Homocidal Psychopathic Behaviours of Drug World Gangsters, And Gory Goings On In General, Including Road Traffic Accidents (RTAs) With Stomach-Turning Audio.
Viewers May Have Been Lulled Into A False Sense of Security By The Simplicity of The Title (Perhaps Expecting A Human Interest Story About Human Trafficking From The Perspective of The Humans Trafficked or An Insight Into Living A Gentle Life By The Sea Along A British Coastline As A Typical Indigenous British Coastal Resident). But Within Minutes Any Such Expectations Were Violently Dislodged By The Fraternal Frenzied Writing Team of Messers Jack & Harry As They Unleashed Their Self-Evident Obsession With Multilation, Pulverization, Maiming, Dismembering & Psychotic Retribution on Perceived Betrayers And Wrong-Uns’. They Pack Alot In Within Each Customary Sixty Minutes With No Hesitation & Barely Any Commensurate Warning. And It’s Alot. And For Some (Including Us) Too Much!
So Far There’s An Horrific Industrial Hand-Crushing Accident Resulting In A Horribly & Excruitatingly Maimed Hand & The Loss of Lots of Fingers. (The Health Safety Department Strangely Failed To Drill Home The Message About Not Putting Hands Inside Dangerous Industrial Machinery On This Ocassion.) But Literally Adding Insult To Injury, It Transpires That There Will Be No Work Place Personal Injury Compenstation For The Victim, After Lawyers Learn That She’d Downed Some Whiskey Afterwards (Offered Up By Her Shocked Boss, Who Corrupted The Situation And Facilitated The Claim She’d Been Drinking On The Job).
There’s A Torturiously Tool-Yanked Tongue, Horribly Cut Out Tongue, An Apparently Severed Head Found By Some Kids, The Very Much Alive Owner of Which, Is Mind-Bogglingly Seen Later Holding It, And Looking Back Down, At His Own Face. Grinning. Knowingly. Somehow It Reminded Us of Tootsie Starring @Dustin Hoffman, In 1982. It’s Literally A Head F**k!!!
Unlike Tootsie There’s No Frock, No Thrills And No Gentle Comedy Viewing (Although A Man Dressing As A Woman In Order To Get An Acting Job (With The Help of A Theatrical Friend) Was Not Without Its Controversies Over Four Decades Ago In 1982.
Suffice To Say Samuel’s Associate (Played By The Always Brilliant Phil Daniels of Quadraphenia And Eastenders Fame) Has Access To Theatre Prosthetics And Comes To His Aid. This Is After Samuel Concludes The Only Way, As An Accidental, Interloping, Gambling Addict, Come Imprompt Drug Hauler, He Can Save His Own Life Is By Faking His Own Death!
Black Middle-Class Families Do Exist And They Deserve To Be More Evenly Represented
As If All This Is Not Enough, At The Very Start, There Are Two Big Bloody Fatalities In A Comparatively Rather Small Boat, Whilst It Rides The Waves At Sea In The Dead of Night, After Two Maritime Miscreants (One A Bent Copper) Fight To The Death (The Other Literally Knocking Himself Out Shortly After Victory).
Utterly Awful Is The Audible Dripping Blood From A Head Wound In An RTA – Witnessed By A Surviving Child.
And There’s A Criminal Gang Terrorist-Style Gun Massacre In A Sleepy But Steady Police Station In An Otherwise Sleepy Town, Which Also Has An Innocuous Name. ‘Applebury’.
During The First Episode We Spent So Much Time Watching Squinting Our Eyes And Sprawling Our Fingers Across Our Face Or With The TV On Mute And Looking Away, That After Monday’s Second Episode (Which We Spent Doing Largely The Same Thing) We Figured There Was No Point Watching It At All, If We Can’t Actually Enjoy It As Entertainment. It Wasn’t Fun. And It Wasn’t Funny. And There’s A Disproportionate Amount of Violence And Horror Compared To The So-Called Comedy. This Was Comedy Noir Gone Too Far! (And BTW Why Must It Be Called Comedy Noir. Film Noir or Any Noir?!).
It’s Tootsie On Coke. Tons of Coke. Starring A Handsome, Well-Spoken, Former Lawyer, Come Addicted Gambler, And The Only-Black-Bloke-In-The-Village (Filmed In Yorkshire).
He Is Married To A Black Woman. This Is A Welcome & Refreshing Representational Change – The Celluloid Acknowledgment That Black People Do Actually Love And Marry Each Other. And Live At Home With Their Families. We Thank The Brothers For That. By Which, In This Case, We Mean The Williams Brothers.
There Are Millions Dual Heritage Couples And Families In Britain And Throughout The Globe. They Are Represented In TVs, Films, Commercials And Pop Videos. Equally There Are Also Millions of Black Couples And Families Too. And We Think It Only Fair That Both Dynamics Are More Evenly Represented On Screen In TVs, Films, Commercials And Pop Videos Too. Currently They Are Under Represented (Tescos Did A Christmas Ad Featuring A Happy Black Family A Few Years Back, Getting The Christmas Dinner Ready And Drinking Champagne It Was Brilliant. But All Too Rare. We Need To See More Such Real World Representation).
Late Actress And Civil Rights Activitist Cicely Tyson, Reported That After Watching Her Oscar-Nominated Performance In Sounder, A White Woman Actually Told Her That She Never Knew Black People Could Love Each Other. (Now That Is A Shocking State of Affairs!) Come On TV Execs, Film makers And Advertisers. Every Little Helps!)
Let’s Put It This Way For Example, Just One Example. Only Recently Did A Re-‘Trumplican’ Say In The House of Representatives That Black People Don’t Believe In Families. Happily A Black Democrat Dealt With Him Tout Suite In No Uncertain Terms! Nonetheless The Point Is Celluloid Representation Has Real World Consequences. Okay He’s A Full On Racist And Needs Not Much of An Excuse, But Companies Pay Millions of Pounds And Dollars For Advertising For A Reason. Words And Imagery Matter And Make A Difference. So We Need To Change The Narrative If We Want Better Outcomes For Society.
Joseph’s Character, Samuel, Had No Intention of Landing In The Middle of A Messed Up Drug Deal. But He Does. Along With A Blonde Stranger And Fellow Dog-Walker Played By @DaisyHaggard. They Both Have The Staggerringly Horrific Misfortune of Stumbling Across A Psychotic’s Narcotics Transportation Arrangements Which Are Suddenly All At Sea. But Like Tootsie There’s A Helpful Connection With Someone Who Works In Film & Theatre Industry And Has A Gift For Extreme Makeovers. That’s Pretty Much Where The Similarity Ends.
Samuel Is One Half of A Middle-Class Black Couple Who Have A Daughter. She Is Deaf. She’s Also Pretty No Nonsense. Skilled In Sign Language, She Has Alot To Say – Especially When It Comes To Her Parents. She Is Played By Actress Cherie Gordon Who Is Represented By The Advocacy Agency Which Prides Itself on “Authenticity” And “Diversity”. It’s Good To See Such Positive Representation of The Black Deaf Community, Something Which We Wrote About Recently In Black British Theatre Awards Review (In Last Month’s Black History Month October 2023 Issue). The British Deaf Association Performs A Lot of Great Work Supporting The Deaf Community Generally And Is Online At bda.org.uk
Suffice To Say No Couple Is Immune From Divorce of Course And A Gambling Addiction Never Helps. GamblersAnonymous.Org.Uk
This Drama Is Overwhelmingly Horrific With An Exceptionally High Volumne of Sub-Humanity Crammed Into A One Hour Episode. And Then Another Hour of The Same. And At This Point There’s Four More Hours To Go. But After Struggling With The First Two Episodes We’d Seen Enough. Actually A Bit Too Much. But For Those Who Like That Sort of Thing (And Shockingly & Disturbingly Some People Actually Do) It’s Well Written, Well Acted (By An All Star Cast Including Former French Dectective ‘Baptiste’ – Now Turned Torturing Tailor – French Actor, Tcheky Karyo – And Another Former EastEnder – @Craig Fairbrass – Who Is On The Opposite Side of The Aformentioned Fellow Former EastEnder Phil Daniels).
It’s Fast-Paced, Insightful & Smoothly Done. But Way Too Gruesome For Our Blood. It Is After All Made By The Same Blood Lust Brothers Who Made The Tourist Starring Jamie Dornan. (He of Fifty Shades of Grey Notoriety. Now You’re Talking!). E.L James Writing We Can Deal With. Although Can We Please Move On. How About A Middle-Aged Man & An Actual Real Life Sexy Middle-Aged Woman. And Hello! Reality Calling Two Seniors? Too Much? We Think Not. But Okay, Back To Boat Story…)
We Love What We’re Calling ‘The No Sex Seen Sex Scene’ Featuring Award-Winning Actress Joanna Scalon, Who Plays Pat, Mother of Local Dopey Policeman (The Clip Below Is Later On. And To Be Fair, Dopey Is Right In His Protestations. No Matter Who It Is, There’s A Time & A Place For Everything…).
The Over Fifties And Sixties Are Living Longer And Still Being Saucy & Naughty
~ And ~
Regular Decent Human Beings Can To Relate To Other Regular Decent Human Beings Irrespective of Origins
Whoever Decreed That Audiences Are Not Interested In Seeing Mature Women On Screen Was Probably A Jurrasic Man, Who Was Part of A Group of Jurrasic Men, With Certain Jurrassic Self Interests! Karyo And Scanlon Are Brilliant Among The Best Things About This Programme. Who Knew?
These Same Discriminatory Aged And Yet Ageist Men, of The Kind That Ruled Hollywood For Years, Are Highly Like To Be of The Same Jurrasic Men With Certain Jurrasic Self-Interests Who Also Said White People Would Not Be Able To Relate To Black People When It Came To Watching TV & Movies. Something Which Has Been Disproved.
Firstly, Other Black People Relate To Other Black People, Sometimes But Not All The Time, As We Are Not All The Same, No More or Less Than White People Relate To Other White People And Are Not All The Same. Secondly, Just As Black People Can Relate To White People, White People Can Relate To Black People. Thirdly And Most Importantly, Most Human Beings Can Relate To Other Human Beings On A Human Level!
And To The Shame of Those Lying TV & Movie Gatekeepers, ‘Black Panther: Wakander Forever’ Was The Most Successful Marvel Film Ever. So Film & TV Execs’ Can We All Please Move On And See More Progressive, Imaginative, Positive Programming With Less Violence (Oh – And The Black Middle Class Is Real And Does Exist! Again, We Know About Drug Dealers, ‘Waste’ Men And ‘Waste’ Woman And So On And So Forth, But Can We Please See More Balanced Represention of Different Members of The Black Community On Screen In Both TV Shows And Movies. It’s Long Overdue.).
As Is Typical of This Torture Thriller The Pre-Coital Sword Metaphor Alongside The Tailor’s Recital of Recurring French Prowse Was Deeply Disturbing And Tense-Making. But The Post-Coital Attitude of His Impromptu Lover Was Really Refreshing As Was The ‘Shocking Not So Shocking’ Revelation That Middle-Aged Humans Beings Still Get Up To Sexual Shennanigins. Sometimes Casual Sex Shennanigins At That. And Such Antics Are Not Just The Preserve of Teenagers, Twenty-Somethings & Thirty-Somethings.
Indeed, Make Love, Not (Drug) Wars! That’s More Our TV Viewing Preference. And We Love The Twist In This Saucy Segment That Sees The Son (The Local Dopey Policeman) Came Home Unexpectedy And Discover His Mum Has Been Rather Naughty. And Not The More Commonplace Scenario of A Parent Unexpectedly Making Such An Unwanted Discovery And The Situation Being The Other Way Round.
Mind You, We Can’t Help Feeling That This Encounter With The Tailor Will Be Revisted Again At Some Stage Without Such A Happy Ending…
‘We Had A Deliberately Plain Title.
Boat Story is one of most original shows I’ve ever been in or watched. It’s skill is in using actors in roles that are unusual for us and we all revelled in the chance to show a different side of humanity Than Is Our Normal Lot.
The Body Count Is Admittedly High, But There Are Consequences For The Violence That Will Hopefully Satisfy Those of Us Who Like Our Shoot-Em Ups To Have A Good Deal of Truth To Them.
Actor Paterson Joseph Talking Exclusively To TheOrator.Press November 2023
Before The Broadcast of Boat Story, Paterson Presented A Personal Reading From His Novel The Secret Diaries of Ignatius Sancho On Wednesday November 8 2023 At The Tate Brixton Library. And We, Fans of Noughts & Crosses, Cold Feet And William & Mary (All of Which He’s Been In) Went Along To See Him. Check Out Our Education Feature On This Month’s Education Page. (That’s What Got Us Excited About Watching Boat Story In The First Place. Little Did We Know And Did He Reveal!). Interestingly, Boat Story, The Secret Diaries of Ignatius Sancho And Vigil (Series One) Which He Also Starred In And Which Returns Next Month For A New Series (Without Him) All Involve Maritime Voyage.
Seems That’s An Real Interest of His.
Whatever Floats Your Boat!
TheOrator.Press ~ A New, Monthly, Online, Independent Magazine 
