Paddington Bear doesn’t seem like the most obvious subject to be associated with the topic of censorship. But that sweet, cuddly façade hides a disgusting, sexually explicit monster. Or at least that’s what the British Board of Film Classification thought when it gave the film a PG rating for “mild sexual references”. That may be a step far for a kid’s film about a CGI ursine whose most distinctive characteristic is liking marmalade, not corrupting young minds. But it does raise the oft forgotten role that the BBFC, and censorship, has to play in our modern cinematic experience.

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The BBFC has been around since 1912, created by the film industry so it could regulate itself rather than let the government intervene. It’s the body responsible for the small screen that pops up before a film starts, reading “Classified for Viewing”, and it decides what certification films deserve. Though a film can legally be shown without a BBFC rating, there’s no example in recent memory of that happening, and local authorities almost religiously follow what their guidance says. 

So far, so ordinary. But the annals of the BBFC’s history reveal a fascinating, fractious, and often deeply controversial relationship with cinema itself. Take Ken Russell’s historical drama-horror The Devils, starring Oliver Reid as a Seventeenth Century Catholic priest who was accused of witchcraft. The film was a test case for the BBFC, as it was lobbied from all sides due to the blasphemous, sexually explicit, overtly violent, and profanity-filled nature of the production. An orgiastic dream sequence involving nuns having sex with an effigy of Christ was eventually cut, though the original edit of the film has, to this day, never been released for public consumption and the film remains unreleased on DVD in the US.

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An even better example would be the furore around the release of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 1974, which caused such controversy that the kneejerk reaction was taken by the BBFC to ban the word ‘chainsaw’ from all film titles before they would even be considered for rating.

However, the BBFC’s most notorious moment came in 1984, when it gained the additional role of rating film releases on video. This led to the infamous ‘Video Nasties’ list; a catalogue of straight-to-video, foreign, or niche exploitation films that were outright banned from release. This included such family-friendly classics as Cannibal Apocalypse, Cannibal Holocaust, Gestapo’s Last Orgy, SS Experiment Camp, and Nightmares in a Damaged Brain. Clearly, fascism and consumption of human flesh were big in the ‘80s. Campaigns by both The Times and The Daily Mail fuelled public concern over the level of obscenity in films; hence the BBFC demanded drastic cuts to the films, ranging from 19 seconds to over 11 minutes, in order for them to gain certification. 

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Though, in hindsight, that might seem to be a moment when censorship ventured into the hysterical, the BBFC has come under fire more often for its perceived lax attitude towards certifying films. In 1996, The Daily Mail, that bastion of common sense, again campaigned the BBFC, this time on the grounds that it had released David Cronenberg’s Crash without any cuts at all. Similar uproar emerged when Straw Dogs and A Clockwork Orange were released with X ratings, the backlash so severe against Clockwork that Kubrick himself withdrew the film from exhibition. 

Recent films have equally borne the heft of the BBFC’s axe. A Serbian Film had to have over four minutes cut from its running time to gain an 18 rating, whilst The Human Centipede 2 was initially banned by the BBFC from release, before 42 cuts were made for it to also be given an 18 rating.

It’s fascinating that a body which ultimately decides what films can be shown in cinemas, and in what edited form, is so subordinate in the public’s consciousness. Though it might not initially seem so, the BBFC has a fascinating history, one that charts not only many of the greatest films ever made, but also the national reaction towards them. 

I confess it now: I’m just not hipster enough. I read Cosmopolitan and buy my clothes from River Island and get ready for a night out listening to Taylor Swift and I use a Mac instead of a typewriter. It’s probably anathema to some skewed perception of the Oxford Existence, but there you go. I also thoroughly enjoy my ongoing drama (cough cough soaps cough cough). Yes, my heart belongs to glossy, gritty neo-realist high-concept post-watershed dramas — right now, the prospect of Cillian Murphy’s steely-eyed smoulder in Peaky Blinders is the only thing getting me through each week — but when term’s out, and the days back home stretch into long inky black nights and a wintry chill, nothing can ever really beat cosying up in a snuggly set of PJs, hot cocoa in hand, to indulge in the pure decadence that is willing Moira not to give up on Cain… 

Whether or not you put yourself ‘above’ the realm of the soap opera, whether or not you only deign to watch art house film forevermore, is, frankly, a bit beside the point. Soap operas aren’t really harmed by the opinions which fly about: ‘low brow’, ‘cheesy’, ‘cliched’. They remain one of the most popular — consistently popular — forms of television drama around, and have been right up there since their inception (points to Coronation Street paving the way, six decades ago). Almost every weekday evening, a high proportion of the British population tunes in to watch the everyday melodrama of the characters in Eastenders, Coronation Street and Emmerdale. Patronising soaps is futile; the ratings speak for themselves. We’re a nation of soap-lovers, generally speaking. That tells us something: whatever they’re doing, it’s working, and with such a devoted fan base to cite, anyone wanting to work in the TV industry can learn something from them. 

With this in mind, I embarked on an amazing opportunity over the summer — a work placement in the Script Department at Lime Pictures, who produce the nation’s favourite youth-orientated soap drama, Hollyoaks. Quite frankly, I’m a screenwriting obsessive, so the chance to see a script room at work was, needless to say, one I jumped at. And, yes, I learned a lot. 

Ongoing drama is intense. I’m not talking about the story lines — although it’s soap, so of course, the genre thrives on intensity — so much as I’m talking about the effort that goes into putting together a single twenty three-minute TV programme. Of course, that’s because it’s relentless. Whereas high concept shows like Luther and Ripper Street are producing maybe eight hours’ worth of television per series, Hollyoaks and similar shows run consistently, airing around five times a week. This means that production can’t stop — storylines need to be constantly generating, cameras need to be constantly rolling. The audience might feel natural high points and suspensions and major climaxes in the show — but no matter how big the story or the production values, the next day, cast, crew and production team have to get straight back to work. A lot of people in the various departments get to work before 8AM and leave after 7PM. Between those hours, they hardly stop working. 

An entire dramatic world can be created on one set. Lime Studios is located in a very inconspicuous location, and actually inhabits an old, converted secondary school premises. Nonetheless, with the right feats of clever architectural engineering, the whole of ‘Hollyoaks village’ — including a school, a police station, a hospital, several houses, a village square of shops, and a courtroom — can be fitted into this small space. It makes for an interesting experience, going from a shop into a living room into a prison cell, but despite the fact the studios are a maze to get used to, it’s also incredible to see how much can be done with one location. 

Producing a soap opera is probably more creatively demanding than producing a high-concept TV show. Or it is, at least, easily in competition with it – albeit in a different way. To begin with, producers have to foresee several years’ worth of story lines — unlike in other TV drama, where the core of a show’s output is governed by their use of a small number of writers and producers working on the story, a soap opera requires a large team of people working across different roles, who have to come up with ideas. Four or five story lines can be seen working in one episode of a soap; but ‘backstage’ in the script room, there can be as many as twelve story lines simultaneously under discussion. And just as some of those will be in relation to next week’s episodes, others will be thinking ahead six weeks, or even six months. 

The role of the screenwriter working on an ongoing drama is not to invent the stories. Screenwriters like Neil Cross (Luther), Heidi Thomas (Call the Midwife), and Julian Fellowes (Downton Abbey) are often responsible for overseeing the entire content of their TV programmes; a lot of the time, they’ll even write (or co-write) every episode. Usually this means they get the title of ‘executive producer’ (or ‘show runner’ in the US) to go along with the title of screenwriter. Effectively, these writers also write ‘in house’. However, ongoing drama is different. The screenplays for a show like Hollyoaks are written by freelance screenwriters (as opposed to in-house), but they aren’t responsible for originating the stories they are writing; this responsibility lies with the Storyliners, and is overseen by the Series Producers and Executive Producer (for Hollyoaks, these roles are filled by Di Burrows and Ian Macleod, and Bryan Kirkwood — formerly lauded for overhauling EastEnders a few years back — as Executive Producer). Once storylines are approved — several months in advance of air date — screenwriters are then commissioned to put together a script. Their responsibilities include making sure it is properly formatted, stringing the various story threads together in a cinematic, sensible way, making sure the dialogue is character — and plot — appropriate, and ultimately producing a script which works on screen.

There can be around 4 or 5 different roles to work in if you work in a soap opera Script Department. The writing process doesn’t stop with the screenwriter’s first draft. Working under the Series Producers are the Series Editors, who will be responsible for a ‘story block’ (usually a week’s worth of episodes) and will have to ensure everything in that block goes as smoothly as possible. Ultimately, they develop their block until it’s ready to be filmed, and they go with it as editors right up until it gets to post-production and onto the screen. This involves liaising with screenwriters — usually over the phone, although Lime is a friendly place, and one or two popped in to talk over tea while I was there — and going through scripts to make edits, ensuring they all gel together as a unit and there are no overlaps or discrepancies. They also have to liaise with their colleagues who are editing the pre- and proceeding weeks’ script blocks to ensure there are no overlaps there.

Script Editors aren’t the only people working in the Script Department, however. For instance, in there you can also find the Continuity Editors, who are responsible for curating (and knowing) years’ and years’ worth of backstory – and sometimes that means character biographies and story-lines spanning decades. Thankfully most of this is catalogued in a computer system – but the continuity editors must know their way around this system, how to find that information, and have an inclination as to what that information is in the first place. Which, naturally, entails a lot of reading and memorising.

Scripts can be written up to six months in advance of air date; storylines can be in the pipeline for a year. It is impossible for a soap to run effectively if it doesn’t stay completely ahead of its own game. This can get especially tricky, however, when ‘top secret’ story lines — whodunnit reveals, etc — are reserved even from the team, let alone the wider audiences. And despite their original conception happening sometimes even over a month in advance, that doesn’t mean it can’t keep changing right up until the day of shooting. Editors and writers are always on call as practical things as much as thematic ones can get in the way of sticking to the original version: an actor might get ill, for instance, or a director might feel the written dialogue jars with the way they are able to shoot the scene. Either way, changes are nearly always required, and the Script Department needs to be around to make those changes.

The series producer is responsible for overseeing all content. This means they must work with every department ensuring needs are met, ideas realised and problems solved; they must be aware of what is happening all the time, from the overarching story and character arcs and the backstory to all characters, to the beat plots (that’s the scene-by-scene breakdown) of every episode. It’s one of the most demanding roles anybody in television might undertake.

Soap operas can’t survive without their research team. The characters and storylines of soap operas depend on the way they remain topical, current, and relevant to their audience. The audience of Hollyoaks has a particularly young demographic, so with this in mind — and while definitely not excluding the concerns of more mature audiences — it tries to resonate with the problems young people might potentially face. It also has a huge responsibility towards outputting that kind of content as sensitively as it can, which is why research is important (aside from making the show more authentic). Research can be wide and varied — from contacting medical professionals about certain illnesses that characters in the show have, or the kind of weapons that could be used to perform an ‘unsolvable’ murder, to a certain celebrity’s favourite brand of chewing gum — but it must be meticulous. The research team in the Hollyoaks Script Department is currently helmed by Charlotte Pattulo (a former Pembroke girl), who recently introduced a systematic way of tracking character research developments to make research / continuity crossover work more efficient.

It’s not about the draft; it’s about the redrafts. I’ve heard it said a few times that screenwriting is the unartistic or commercial writing career to pursue, because it necessitates working to the spec of other people’s ideas, and having whatever you do write interfered with by post-eds. While it’s true that writers who write for the screen generally have a bit less autonomy than, say, poets or novelists, ultimately it remains that all writing, before it is published, has to undergo editing of some kind. For the writer who thrives on collaboration, solution-finding, or just seeing a project roll through the genesis of page to screen — including all its incarnations — screenwriting is a perfect career choice. Anybody hoping to show-run needs to cut their teeth writing for a soap opera: it’s an invaluable lesson in how to run work as part of a team, self-edit, learn from criticism, develop dialogue and descriptive writing skills, and put a personal spin on an established project without trying to change or overshadow it. And there is a reason why so many writers get hooked on writing for soaps, too. Even if they envisage only starting out there, most of them stick around for life: because it’s challenging, it requires discipline and a very particular brand of mental stamina, a willingness to keep learning, and — perhaps most importantly of all — it’s bloody good fun.

One would be hard-pressed to argue that the BT Studio is suited to expansive, elaborate shows, given that it has the floor area of a broom cupboard and the technical sophistication of a child’s puppet theatre. No, the BT is ideal for less aesthetically ambitious productions. It is an intimate, atmospheric space, Oxford’s equivalent of the Bush Theatre if you will, in which audience and actors can immerse themselves in a shared experience and engage in stimulating artistic dialogue. When it’s done well, that is.

It is this intimate quality that Sam Ward, an established face in Oxford drama, hopes to finesse with his latest directorial effort, Martin Crimp’s The Country, which starts its run on Tuesday. It is hard to imagine a play more suited to the BT than Crimp’s tense, three-handed thriller. A masterfully conceived exploration of trust and deception, it presents the gradual unravelling of a couple’s bucolic dream with an engaging deftness.

Richard (Nicholas Finerty) and Corinne (Phoebe Hames) have left the city in search of a peaceful, pastoral idyll. This fragile reality is shattered when, in the middle of the night, Richard brings home a girl (Gráinne O’Mahoney) he claims to have found unconscious at the side of the road. The girl’s identity and her relationship to Richard are slowly exposed through revelation after revelation, engendering an escalating atmosphere of tension and intrigue.

I meet Ward, Finerty and O’Mahoney in LMH’s Old Library, a spacious, columned room entirely unlike the BT, but nevertheless utilised as a rehearsal space. After witnessing some rehearsals, I ask Ward why he wanted to put on The Country.

“I saw the play six years ago at the Salisbury Playhouse”, he tells me, “and, although the acting was dire, I was struck by its potential. I remember thinking that it was a great play, but that I could have done it so much better.”

 “I reread it recently and, technically, itis one of the best play’s I have ever come across. Every line is so carefully chosen. Every scene is so carefully constructed. It’s obviously written by someone who knows how people interact and I’ve wanted to do a play like that for ages.”

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To perform a play with such vibrant humanity requires realistic characters and to achieve this, Ward has ensured the cast adopt an almost Stanislavskian approach to their roles, instructing them to discern the motivations behind their actions, and allowing them to inform their performance.

“Before we run through scenes, we establish what each character’s objective is and how it develops”, he explains. “Once these objectives have been established, we improvise the scenes based around them. I never tell them where to move or how to deliver lines.”

Convincing interaction between characters is also essential to conveying believable emotion and Ward emphasises the importance of listening, both physically and verbally, in this.

“We’ve done exercises that involve watching each other’s weight distribution and watching each others micro-movements, then making an assessment of response based on that. We’ve also done improvisations where each response is informed by a particular word in the preceding line, all to ensure that everyone is really listening to each other.”

I ask Finerty and O’Mahoney if they feel that their performances are enhanced by such a diligent, concentrated approach.

“It has been really helpful in providing a foundation to the rest of my performance”, O’Mahoney tells me. “For me, the text is key. Each word is so important. They inform what you’re going to pick up on and that feeds really well into this type of improvisation.”

“It’s really exciting”, enthuses Finerty. “Because it’s not prescriptively directed, we know there are peaks and falls in the scene, but they come in slightly different places depending on how the scene develops, and how each line is spoken and responded to. It’s different every night.”

From the rehearsals I see, the approach Ward has utilised is undoubtedly conducive to engaging, convincing performances. LMH’s Old Library is not a particularly atmospheric room, but the air is tangibly charged with emotion as Finerty and O’Mahoney go through a particularly dramatic scene. I can imagine the BT being almost electric with tension.

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But for Ward, it is not just the performances that are integral to creating this edge-of-your-seat atmosphere. The staging is also significant, as is the evocative texture of the set.

“The stage will be thrust so the audience will be on three sides”, he explains. “When the stage is thrust, the audience gets sucked in and they become part of the action. It’s especially appropriate staging here as the characters are always so conscious of being watched, and the intimacy of the audience builds on that.”

“Materials are also very important in the play. Wood and flesh are very prominent. So it’s important to get an earthy, grounded, visceral feel, which will give a real sense of rising dread.”

The strength of Ward’s vision is evident, but for the play to be genuinely memorable, it requires intense concentration and commitment from the cast. Only then will convincing character interaction be crystallised on stage, only then will justice be done to Crimp’s impactful writing, only then will the audience leave mopping tension-induced sweat from their brow, and only then will the BT’s potential for striking, intimate drama be fulfilled.

★★★☆☆

Three Stars

When snowed under with Facebook notifications, texts, and emails filled with spam, advertisements and most horrifyingly looming piles of work, it can seem like the most appealing option would be to swear off modern technology for good. In his new play, Ridley’s Choice, James P. Mannion takes this idea and runs with it. Crushed after his newest play is lambasted by critics, our protagonist, George Ridley, escapes the modern world to live a simpler life in the woods. In our modern world of smartphone wielding youths, however, this simpler state of life cannot last for long.

At times overwhelmingly pretentious and frustratingly contemplative, George Varley proves himself to be a stellar choice for Ridley. The rapport between Ridley and Archie Thomson’s hypnotically sinister Clive is enjoyable, certainly sparking more interest than Ridley’s relationship, or lack thereof, with his estranged family. The struggle between these characters travels rapidly between the dark and the farcical, and both actors are well-suited to the comedic aspect of their roles. Their dialogue, however, intermittently becomes stilted and heavy-handed, warping into overly sarcastic speech riddled with unnecessary profanity. Ridley’s Choice is not exactly subtle. Despite this, Ridley and Clive never become unwatchable, with Varley and Thomson together lending the play an infectious energy.

Like Thomson and Varley, Ali Ackland-Snow shines in her performance as an almost Machiavellian newspaper editor, the harbinger of the encroaching influence of the media. Although quieter than the exchanges between Ridley and Clive, the interaction between Ackland-Snow’s Polly and the isolated Ridley are almost equally captivating. The intimacy of the half-thrust stage set up of the Burton Taylor works well for a play so focused on the intrusion of technology and the media; the audience is aware of the invasion upon Ridley’s life and private feelings, and yet remains intrusive, fascinated with a figure made increasingly public.

Despite the convincing performances of the whole cast, the play can at times feel laboured, too wrapped up in allegorising the evils of our media-driven age to focus on what this all means for human relationships, other than the rather extreme reaction of cutting off all contact and staring again alone in the woods. The media is an easy scapegoat, the newspaper editor an easy villain, particularly in the post-Leveson era. The accusatory finger at times points to the smartphone-wielding youth, or the ignoramus preferring his phone to the Nobel Peace Prize Awards Ceremony, but for the most part is directed squarely at the immoral journalists and editors, sacrificing humanity for the scoop. You almost expect Polly to rub her hands together and announce her plan to the audience like a pantomime villain, while the naïve Ridley gazes off into the distance, mentally embarking on his imaginary romance.

Overall, this was a pleasure to watch. The production as a whole is commendable, with a thought-provoking script. Subtlety may have been sacrificed, but the charged dialogue meant an enthralled and amused audience. Funny, fascinating, and well-written, seeing Ridley’s Choice is not a choice that any audience member would regret choosing. 

The Oxford Imps have been performing hilarious and spontaneous comedy at the Wheatsheaf for over ten years, making frequent forays to the Edinburgh Fringe where they receive universally rave reviews. To maintain an improvised comedy troupe for such a long period of time, an occasional influx of new members is of course extremely important, and Cherwell were lucky enough to have the opportunity to meet this year’s nine new Imps, ahead of their debut performance at the Wheatsheaf at 7.20pm on Monday 1^st December.

There are always a lot of current and former Oxford students in the Imps, and so it’s easy to make the mistake of assuming they’re affiliated to the University. They’re not – as I discover to my embarrassment when I ask my interviewees what year they’re in, only to be informed by new Imp Dawn Parsonage-Kent, that she’s in her thirties and has, like, a proper job. The others are from a mixture of years, subjects and backgrounds, with Chesca Forristal, a first year at Wadham and the youngest of the Imps, performing alongside post-grads Kevin Pinkoski, Adam Mastroianni and Lydia Allegranza France, who were all involved in improv at their previous universities in Canada, the USA, and, erm, Brighton.

Getting into the Imps is no mean feat. One hundred and ten people auditioned this year, with the auditions taking three hours and the recalls another three on top of that. Although undoubtedly intense, the audition process is also reportedly a lot of fun, and Harry Houseman tells me he unsuccessfully auditioned last year, but decided to give it another go this year purely because the experience was so enjoyable. It seems the journey into performing was a natural one for Harry, as he’s a long-time fan of watching comedy, having been to see his first show when he was nine, and going to over three hundred shows since. By contrast, Chesca has never done comedy before.

“My friends always tell me I’m not funny,” she laughs, but after she was inspired by seeing the current Imps perform at Wadham in Freshers’ Week decided to have a go herself. She credits her success as an Imp to “foot-in-mouth disease,” her suffering of which she believes to be illustrated by her audition, one part of which concluded with her slithering onstage in character as a sea cucumber, before declaring “Eat me if you dare.”

Whilst a tendency towards the surreal and the unexpected is certainly a key aspect of Imphood, the Imps also rehearse key skills to help them in their performances, such as punning and working with new pianists, Josh James and Sam Davies Una, to practice making comic musical masterpieces extempore. Although, Kevin tells me, rehearsals are key in getting to know the way the Imps work and in getting to know the other newbies better, it’s clear from what the Imps tell me about their process that there are no tricks – they really are that good.

When I ask what the Imps have been doing to prepare for their first show, Oliver Mills explains that the nine new Imps have been attending the weekly performances at the Wheatsheaf and staying behind for notes afterwards, so they can see the more experienced Imps in action. Other less obvious methods of preparation include rapping whilst cycling, belting out rock ballads, and, in the case of pianist Josh, only finding out the “Big Debut” was a thing at a previous interview, and then wondering whether to be concerned or not.

The Imps’ shows are a brilliant mixture of natural comedic talent and games that are carefully designed to showcase and focus this innate gift for humour. If my brief chat with the nine newbs is anything to go by, these Imps seem well-prepared to continue the legacy of the troupe’s shows as one of the funniest nights you could hope to have, not just in Oxford, but pretty much anywhere.