SINCE it's no longer acceptable for wealthy countries just to send bags of food off to disadvantaged parts of the world, foreign aid has taken on some very unusual forms, but none stranger than that depicted in East Of Eastenders. As part of a humanitarian programme paid for by the British taxpayer, a team of writers and producers from British soap-operas was sent to the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan to teach the locals how to produce their own, home-grown version for the newly privatised television service. It was a classic tale of Britons abroad, of cultural imperialism, and of the difficulties of adapting to a free-market ethos in a post-Communist society. It was very, very funny.
The Kazakh scriptwriters were typical Soviet intelligentsia - writers, poets, novelists and film-makers with sad eyes, luxuriant beards and a fondness for vodka. Their horror increased as the British imposed their rigid systems, storylines and characters on the new series. "Among these people are very few of high intellect, so there's no chance of showing the spiritual condition of society," one writer protested. Bet that's not a complaint you hear much at Fair City script meetings.
Everything in Kazakhstan looked wornout and shabby, including the people. The only exception was the Rachat Palace Hotel, a brand-new multi-storey edifice with the soaring atrium and tinkling waterfeature beloved of international hotels all over the world. In this safe space, the Brits knocked back Bacardi and Cokes and defended their methods against all comers.
"I read the script I was given today, and it was completely empty and meaningless, a total profanity," said Farkhat, a huge,bullet-headed actor who specialised in playing bandits and anti-heroes. To give the Britons a sense of the real Kazakhstan, Farkhat brought them out to meet his extended family in their homestead on the steppes. This was clearly a carefully planned opportunity for some Kazakh revenge. A boiled sheep's head was pulled, grey and dripping, from a pot. "The sheep's head is divided amongst the honoured guests, who are also given the eyes," said the cheerful host, ripping the offending orb from its socket and slapping it on the table. "It is customary for the honoured guest to finish everything on his plate," he added, leaving no room for misunderstanding. Unfortunately, the Kazakhs hadn't realised that British television producers lunch for a living. Without a flicker of emotion, the honoured guests began chomping away. The disappointment around the table was palpable - another victory for the stiff upper lip.
Meanwhile, back at the studio, most of the writers had been fired for their inability to come up with a convincing Kazakh approximation of Ricky and Tiffany. At a post-firing get-together, over copious amounts of vodka, they exercised their heartfelt but heavy-handed humour. "I believe the British rooms in the Rachat Palace cost $200 a night. A writer gets $200 a month. My small brain cannot comprehend this," said an ex-soap writer, still clearly at the beginning of his free market learning-curve. But some of his colleagues were finally beginning to figure out what soap was all about.
"The phenomenon of soap opera is absolutely political," said one (despite the fall of communism, the subtitles still made the Kazakhs sound like the less exciting bits of an old Pravda article). "It is the politics of filling people's heads with rubbish. Its function is to stultify the population."
The crash course in capitalism was a brutal experience for the Kazakhs. In a heated argument between the British and Kazakh producers, conducted through an interpreter, the local producer, Kostya, pleaded that: "The producer must understand people. He must make their interests coincide with his own." His British counterpart was having none of it. "The producer should produce - end of story," he snorted. A short while later, Kostya was dead, killed in a car crash - the impression was that the British were not tooupset.
The intro at the start of the programme told us that Crossroads (for that is what it's unpromisingly called) has now broadcast more than 150 episodes, is a great success, and is the only thing still keeping the national film studios open, providing much-needed wages for actors and technicians. At one script conference, the British expert told the Kazakhs they only had one criterion, "to write good scripts according to their own consciences". But the government wanted "ideas about economic reform to be presented through the realistic characters and stories," which sounded like good, old-fashioned agitprop. "If we don't do it, they'll just sack us," said one writer. At the party after the screening of the first episode, everyone was drinking, laughing and congratulating each other, except the chief scriptwriter, the woman whose name actually appeared on the credits. "I'm in shock," she wailed to her friends. "It's not what I wrote, it's so stupid. Can I take my name off?" Everyone tried to ignore her.
TIME has not been kind to the women interviewed in Molls, Inside Story's programme about the wives and girlfriends of violent criminals. The occupational hazards of molldom include black eyes and broken noses if you're lucky, nitric acid thrown in your face if you're not. The women interviewed in Ian Studdard's disappointingly disjointed and over-anecdotal film all had photographs of themselves in their prime - heavily made-up and bottle-blonded, teetering on stilettos and squeezed into soft-porn lingerie. But decades of violence, alcohol and drug abuse had left their mark, although many of the women still affected a coquettish girlishness, which jarred with their ravaged features. Georgina Ellis, whose boyfriends included Great Train Robber turned drug smuggler Charlie Wilson, recalled smuggling thousands of Irish banknotes for laundering, stuffed under her baby's buggy (one wonders to whom they belonged). Georgina's main claim to fame is as the daughter of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain - as with male criminals, being a moll seems to run in the family.
Women like Georgina live in the greyand seedy interstices between modelling, pornography and prostitution, but Rene Wisbey, wife of another Great Train Robber, seemed a jolly Cockney housewife. The London gangsters of the 1960s have been romanticised over the years, and they were capable of just as much nastiness as the modern sort, but Rene seemed by far the most level-headed and likeable of the women interviewed.
Jenny Pinto represented a new generation, glorifying the exploits of her thuggishlooking boyfriend Dave Courtney through her gangsta rap songs. Courtney, an old associate of the Kray brothers, has been acquitted on charges ranging from cocainedealing to murder and Pinto has a knuckleduster, his favourite weapon, shaved into the back of her head as a tribute. It seemed a long way from the Dusty Springfield hairdos of the Train Robbers' wives.
NO matter how much one tries to understand them, some popular phenomena remain inexplicable. Take Robson and Jerome, the charisma-free acting-singing duo, who rose to fame with the dim squaddie drama Soldier, Soldier and went on to inflict grievous bodily harm on a clutch of inoffensive 1960s pop classics . . . The two have been trying to make their mark with their own shows over the last year, but are re-united for Ain't Misbehavin', which seemed to me like dreadful old rubbish, but will probably turn out to be the biggest hit of the year. Set in London during the Blitz, Bob Larbey's three-part comedy series has our heroes as musicians in a jazz big band. Jerome (the fair-haired one) is the reluctant invalid who wants to fight for his country, while Robson is a nylon-dealing spiv. Their love-hate relationship is suspiciously similar to the one in Soldier, Soldier, except this time the plot revolves around black marketeers and Scottish gangsters, and there's a powerhouse cast the gag-free script certainly doesn't deserve, including Warren Mitchell, Jim Carter, Graham Stark and even the venerable George Melly as the band's singer. ITV has been criticised for the quality of its drama in recent years, and this tired old stuff is hardly going to remedy that.
ON the other hand, what do I know? The supposed joys of This Life have evaded me up to now, but in the last few months the show seems to have moved up several notches in popular esteem. Trying to watch the penultimate episode of the current series with an open mind, it was possible to see what the enthusiasm was about - the characterisation and acting are excellent, and the show does present a more recognisably accurate portrait of young urban life than you'll get anywhere else. But the five housemates still look like a bunch of charmless oafs, and I still don't care what happens to them in next week's heavily hyped denouement (which could be the last ever; British newspapers have reported that the cast members are reluctant to sign new contracts).
Thursday's episode had selfish Miles getting out of his face at his stag night (This Life's depiction of drink and drug-taking is certainly more realistic than any other TV drama we've seen) and confessing his love to uptight Anna. Meanwhile, Milly's affair with her boss (boo, hiss) continues getting even further out of hand, Ferdy's having trouble committing to his boyfriend, and everyone, as usual, seems deeply miserable.
Comparisons between Friends and This Life are ridiculous - both programmes may nominally be about carefree twentysomethings living together in the big city, but Friends is pure American sitcom, dedicated to the gag above all else, while This Life is much closer to soap and is deeply British. The two shows do have some things in common - in particular a certain cynicism about the notion of a career, and a more complex depiction of sexual orientation than might have been seen 10 years ago. Along with the haircuts, clothes and music (the This Life crowd win hands down - you wouldn't catch them dead at a Hootie and the Blowfish concert), these traits will make them both essential viewing when the 1990s revival comes around.