One of the best things about the 1980s is that more than a decade separated them from September 11th 2001, while they are 30 years and more back from the misery, fear, sadness and chaotic decline into who knows what that pandemic year 2020 represents. If you believe that "the past is another country - they do things differently there", well the 1980s is - self-evidently - the past, and in the end a simpler era than those represented by the two above events ... but still noticeably modern.
Indeed, this is what the makers here want you to believe - that the 1980s shaped the world of this millennium, but were not yet fully contaminated by the dirtier and dirtier (and more and more complex and unfathomable) stuff that came later. Of course, the seeds of that contamination were being sown (e.g. with Operation Cyclone running from 1979-1989 - well worth looking up); but still...
If you were around back then, and youngish (as I was), you will have noticed that by 1977 (the year of the original Star Wars and filming in progress for David Attenborough's stunning "Life on Earth") we were beginning to feel "kinda modern" (in a way that you could not have seen, say, in 1973 (the grim and truly ancient time featured in the superb, must-watch "Life on Mars")). So by the dawn of the 1980s, we felt we were truly "cutting-edge", with our Space Shuttles, AIDS, Michael J. Fox, Walkman, JR in Dallas, Princess Diana, Jane Fonda, home video, 10 new genres of popular music taking shape, Ronnie Reagan, M.Gorbachev, Maggie and Pope John Paul II, home computers and all of that stuff. None of that fit with the 70s (or at least was barely taking shape then), but in the 1980s it flowered, and there are still enough talking heads around today (many of them still iconic) to put some flesh on those increasingly old bones.
OK, so great idea for a programme from Nat Geo, but what are the risks?
Well, if you're like me, you may want to play and replay and try and live in those often-pretty-scratchy filmed images from back then, feeling more and more unsettled and unproductive, and weirder and weirder, as you do so. Nostalgia is - has always been - a dangerous enemy of all us, and boy does it get a stoking here!
Second, a decade that looked pretty chaotic (and LONG! - time passed more slowly in those days) as you were living through it is made to look rationalised and ordered and characterised by some kinds of clear trends and "progress". This "Whig interpretation of history" IS INDEED a visible danger of the 6-part series, though there are so many different aspects covered here, and we do jump between them in such a way that an element of the real-life chaos is retained, even as worthwile thoughts are being put forward. And - even if you were there - there are bound to be stories new to you, or shown in a different light, or juxtaposed or ordered in an unexpected way. So there will be learning, and a whole gamut of contrasting inputs, just as much as there will be "I remember that!" or of course "I'd forgotten that!"...
A not-insignificant role in all of this is played by the narrator, and while Americans get Rob Lowe, we over here in Europe get to enjoy the dulcit, slightly ironic tones of Richard E. Grant, who has the perfect mix of authority and distance for this job, and really sets the tone well, even as he makes things look like they are scientific and dispassionate, which is at moments questionable (if always pleasurable!)
Indeed, Jonathan Rudd's "The 80s" is trying to develop various theses, and you would not expect a history programme to do otherwise. But at various points, a viewer might easily start to feel those were ultimately (in spite of everything) better times - and what good or progress or meaning in the here-and-now can possibly come from that?
It's interesting to read other reviews here (few of them as there may be), given that a key issue for me is how the series looks for those who were not there. And in that respect the comments of reviewer "Peaceful 224" are very informative and interesting, and it is perhaps hard for most of us to avoid the same conclusion.
All of that means that "The Decade That made Us" is an unmissable, fun, sad, guilty, exhilarating, painful, unfamiliarly familiar watch, to which the only response can and must be rapid deleting of the episodes once they've been seen. With little likelihood or prospect of their being returned to...
I guess that pretty much says it all, does it not?
Indeed, this is what the makers here want you to believe - that the 1980s shaped the world of this millennium, but were not yet fully contaminated by the dirtier and dirtier (and more and more complex and unfathomable) stuff that came later. Of course, the seeds of that contamination were being sown (e.g. with Operation Cyclone running from 1979-1989 - well worth looking up); but still...
If you were around back then, and youngish (as I was), you will have noticed that by 1977 (the year of the original Star Wars and filming in progress for David Attenborough's stunning "Life on Earth") we were beginning to feel "kinda modern" (in a way that you could not have seen, say, in 1973 (the grim and truly ancient time featured in the superb, must-watch "Life on Mars")). So by the dawn of the 1980s, we felt we were truly "cutting-edge", with our Space Shuttles, AIDS, Michael J. Fox, Walkman, JR in Dallas, Princess Diana, Jane Fonda, home video, 10 new genres of popular music taking shape, Ronnie Reagan, M.Gorbachev, Maggie and Pope John Paul II, home computers and all of that stuff. None of that fit with the 70s (or at least was barely taking shape then), but in the 1980s it flowered, and there are still enough talking heads around today (many of them still iconic) to put some flesh on those increasingly old bones.
OK, so great idea for a programme from Nat Geo, but what are the risks?
Well, if you're like me, you may want to play and replay and try and live in those often-pretty-scratchy filmed images from back then, feeling more and more unsettled and unproductive, and weirder and weirder, as you do so. Nostalgia is - has always been - a dangerous enemy of all us, and boy does it get a stoking here!
Second, a decade that looked pretty chaotic (and LONG! - time passed more slowly in those days) as you were living through it is made to look rationalised and ordered and characterised by some kinds of clear trends and "progress". This "Whig interpretation of history" IS INDEED a visible danger of the 6-part series, though there are so many different aspects covered here, and we do jump between them in such a way that an element of the real-life chaos is retained, even as worthwile thoughts are being put forward. And - even if you were there - there are bound to be stories new to you, or shown in a different light, or juxtaposed or ordered in an unexpected way. So there will be learning, and a whole gamut of contrasting inputs, just as much as there will be "I remember that!" or of course "I'd forgotten that!"...
A not-insignificant role in all of this is played by the narrator, and while Americans get Rob Lowe, we over here in Europe get to enjoy the dulcit, slightly ironic tones of Richard E. Grant, who has the perfect mix of authority and distance for this job, and really sets the tone well, even as he makes things look like they are scientific and dispassionate, which is at moments questionable (if always pleasurable!)
Indeed, Jonathan Rudd's "The 80s" is trying to develop various theses, and you would not expect a history programme to do otherwise. But at various points, a viewer might easily start to feel those were ultimately (in spite of everything) better times - and what good or progress or meaning in the here-and-now can possibly come from that?
It's interesting to read other reviews here (few of them as there may be), given that a key issue for me is how the series looks for those who were not there. And in that respect the comments of reviewer "Peaceful 224" are very informative and interesting, and it is perhaps hard for most of us to avoid the same conclusion.
All of that means that "The Decade That made Us" is an unmissable, fun, sad, guilty, exhilarating, painful, unfamiliarly familiar watch, to which the only response can and must be rapid deleting of the episodes once they've been seen. With little likelihood or prospect of their being returned to...
I guess that pretty much says it all, does it not?
