Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Helena Bonham Carter, Con O’Neill, Augustus Prew, Mark Gatiss, Antonia Bernath, Chloe Harris, Lloyd Griffiths, Richard Lintern, Bethany Antonia, Clare Foster, Emily Butcher, Matt Crosby, Emily Langham, Adele Taylor, Adam Morris, Kerry Washington, Sophie Lucas, Philip Gascoyne, Max Brown, Paulo Braghetto, Tim Wallers.
For anybody who had not yet opened their eyes and stared at the fuzzy images of life at a time when even five terrestrial stations seemed excessive, to find out that there were simple homegrown programmes that could command such loyalty of viewers that over 15 million people would tune in and watch convoluted plots and the now famous ‘wonky sets’, they would consider it a preposterous notion, absurd nostalgia that could not be true.
Yet there it was, in black and white, viewing figures that cannot lie, nor does the appreciation, even love, adoring, consuming, unbelievable, love for one of Britian’s soap operas most vibrant characters and actors. For Noele Gordon and Meg Richardson/Mortimer/Ryder can be seen as one and the same, the hard-hitting Midland’s motel owner and the queen of British soaps, all flame haired, full of acting muscle, a history that seems unfathomable, and rightly and about time, the subject of a three-part drama by Russell T. Davies…simply Nolly.
There was nothing simple about Noele Gordon’s life, the first person to be filmed in the world in colour, and by no less a prestigious name as John Logie Baird, the first woman to interview a British Prime Minister – Harold Macmillan, and then the grand dame, a name synonymous with soap opera, and arguably one of two women, along with the indisputable Pat Pheonix, to whom the camera and the audience loved to the point of obsession.
A life of drama, and in her firing from her position as Meg Mortimer from Crossroads started the type of campaign that today would have organisers rubbing their hands, not so much in glee, but overwhelming elation.
Even though Noele Gordon left the great stage set almost 40 years on, her name remains, her mystique and demeanour, her presence, remain as a loving embrace, as a warning, that nobody is bigger than the show.
Russell T. Davies gives each scene dramatic style, as his want, but to work with the chameleon like Helena Bonham Carter in the titular role, to have a stylish support in actors such as Augustus Prew as Tony Adams, the excellent Con O’ Neill as writer Jack Barton, Mark Gatiss as Larry Grayson, and Chloe Harris, this is the reflection in the mirror that the soap supplied and which the three part series dutifully adds in various colours and flair.
Nolly, Noele Gordon, Meg Richardson, the same woman, but as Mr. Davies shows, a woman of such substance that it is impossible to separate the many facets, airs, and graces on show. A cracking series, a land of fantasy inhabited by a regal queen of British television.
Ian D. Hall