“I got enemies in Bourton-on-the-Water.”

March 3, 2018 8:31 AM

Guardian: "From This Country to Reservoir 13, a new breed of TV dramas and novels are exposing tensions in England’s hidden corners." This Country: BBC iPlayer, trailer, Wikipedia. Daily Telegraph: "Is BBC Three 'mockumentary' This Country the best British comedy since The Office?" Guardian review: "This Country: perfect, horrifying TV for anyone who grew up in a village." Independent: "Not, that is, the Cotswolds the tourist folk like to portray..." Radio Times: "Pursuits chronicled in the first series included the chaos of a scarecrow festival, the ill-fated homecoming of an incarcerated uncle, and the search for a boy they bullied in their Year Six woodwork class." Bourton-on-the-Water: Cotswold TV promotional video, Wikipedia, Flickr.
posted by Wordshore (18 comments total)

Like rather a lot of this show, it's often too close to reality for those of us "from them parts" to laugh out loud. For example, from that piece in the Radio Times:

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“See this house here?” says Kerry in a knock-off tracksuit, walking up a hill and pointing to a run-down looking semi. “The bloke that used to live in there, right, kept hearing strange noises coming out of the attic at night. And he goes to the fridge, and food was missing from the fridge, so he thought ‘I’m just going to go to the attic and check this out.’ And he found an entire family of Peruvian panpipe buskers just living up there. And he thought ‘I’m just gonna leave them to it because they’re not really doing me any harm.’” After elaborating on their terrible fate, she concludes, “He doesn’t live here anymore. He lives in Stroud because it’s closer to his work.”

+ + + + +

Two villages away from where I grew up (which is about 20 miles northeast of where the show is set), one of our farmshop customers was a retired widow who heard noises from her attic. She initially thought it was vermin getting in and pottering around, and she had other more pressing concerns, like why her electric bill was weirdly so high. It turned out that someone from the next village along had gotten into the vacant adjoining property (a holiday let), and set up a cannabis farm in the attic there. He was doing good business selling his wares over in the "big city" (Worcester), and eventually took down the attic partition wall. This extended his farm into her attic, and he tapped into her electricity supply as these things apparently need a lot of power.

He was found out because he got over-confident about the "little old lady" underneath him, and popped down into her kitchen one night in search of food. Where he came across her, by which time she had figured out what was going on (helped by his crucial mistake of boasting to his mates and, it being rural England, nothing stays secret). He got his ear burnt with a poker she always keeps red hot in her coal fire "just in case", and also got five years in jail.

This kind of thing happens all of the time.

(Also bucolic Bourton-on-the-Water is hell in smmer. You have to see the number of large and full coaches that disgorge day trippers to believe it. Only a small number of extremely seasonal businesses and locals benefit; friends who lived there of a similar age were bored mindless all year round as the entire place is structured for this extreme tourism).
posted by Wordshore at 8:32 AM on March 3, 2018 [11 favorites]

"I hope Wordshore sees this post." [sees "posted by Wordshore" at the bottom] "Ah."
posted by fedward at 8:39 AM on March 3, 2018 [5 favorites]

Is Bourton-on-the-Water still like that, then? I first went there probably fifty years ago, and it was already... whatever it is. What the hell is it? How on earth did it end up like that? I've often wondered. I mean, who decided one day that they were going to fill this otherwise unexceptional Cotswold village with stunningly tacky tourist attractions?

I trace my terror of creepy crawlies to a visit to the insect zoo there in about 1973.

I'm sure it's a fun programme, but I want a documentary about Bourton-on-the-Water now. Is there one among your links?
posted by Grangousier at 9:10 AM on March 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

I trace my terror of creepy crawlies to a visit to the insect zoo there...

And that's how I know your comment is genuine. Rite of passage for youngsters; I hated that place because of a few of the insects I had to endure while the adults laughed.

...but I want a documentary about Bourton-on-the-Water now. Is there one among your links?

No, because the ones I did find online were eye-rolling, vomit-inducing treacly tourist promotional dirge. Maybe there is a good documentary out there, made by a resident who is subtly locked-out of all of the funding and business "opportunities" in the village because they are not a part of the very small, and often related, network of business folk and councillors who effectively run the place.
posted by Wordshore at 9:16 AM on March 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

It was the cockroaches that did it for me, I think. Of the ones I haven't blotted from my memory.

The dark history of Bourton-on-the-Water. The public must be told.

Cotswold TV is... something. I suspect from the way she's over-pronouncing the words, the woman presenting the CTV promotional video on Vimeo is more literate than the person who wrote the script.
posted by Grangousier at 9:32 AM on March 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

because they are not a part of the very small, and often related, network of business folk and councillors who effectively run the place.

Hey, I saw that movie: Hot Fuzz.
posted by sjswitzer at 9:42 AM on March 3, 2018 [4 favorites]

Cotswold TV is... something.

Yes. Just watched the food one from Broadway, where I went to school from age 5 to 12 (Kirtlands and, after I was "asked to leave", St Mary's). The buildings are all immediately recognisable; perhaps because if you dared so much as paint a window frame in a slightly unusual colour, then the local parish council would be banging on your door within the hour.

I wonder (this is going back a few decades now) what happened to the old man who lived near the junction of Leamington Road and the High Street, and who absolutely hated tourists. He sometimes stood in his bedroom window, naked, angrily gesticulating at any passing groups of them. Don't blame him.

The one thing I did really like about Broadway was the public library and the librarian who nudged me towards books that working class farming nerd children such as me wouldn't usually get access to, or even be aware of. Without her, I'd probably still be there and uncomfortably too much like one of the characters from This Country.
posted by Wordshore at 10:12 AM on March 3, 2018 [4 favorites]

If you grew up in a small town or village, starved of any stimulus whatsoever, the threadbare thrills of The Inbetweeners would have seemed impossibly luxurious.

Yep.

The village I grew up in had a moderately famous historical place in, it was having some sort of celebration (anniversary of something or other). It was suggested that it would be nice to give all the children of the village free entry for a year. The Parish Council agreed, except that the children from the 'estate' shouldn't be included, as they weren't 'real villagers'. So for the sake of letting maybe 6 poorer children in (one being me), no child got to go for free.

They also attempted to get the council estate itself classified as separate from the village- I have wondered whether JK Rowling heard of this and borrowed it for the Casual Vacancy plot, coming from nearby Gloucestershire.
posted by threetwentytwo at 11:31 AM on March 3, 2018 [6 favorites]

I meant to add as well that I think the episode where Kerry gets involved in an MLM scheme (something like Juiceplus) is the most succinct description of how people get involved in that nonsense possible. It's a really well observed show.
posted by threetwentytwo at 11:34 AM on March 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

This stuff is only funny if you can escape.

Hahaha..
posted by srboisvert at 12:09 PM on March 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

A country horror story.

I went to the Cotswolds once. On the Saturday morning I walked through the village. The local shop had whitewashed its windows so I walked out of town to the petrol station. They didn't have what I wanted. I asked at the counter. 'The Guardian? We don't stock that.'
posted by biffa at 1:03 PM on March 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

I grew up in a little insular village in New York, and I found myself nodding along to both Father Ted and The League of Gentlemen more than 90% of American TV. I expect it'll be the same with this.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:42 PM on March 3, 2018 [4 favorites]

I watched the first three episodes yesterday. They're very funny and ingenious. I particularly enjoyed the extensive elaboration of the nobody-recalls-Robert-Robinson joke.

The only complaint I have -- and this is probably churlish of me -- is that it illustrates how the mockumentary has become stultified, with a very familiar tone, comic timing, photography, and editing. They do this flawlessly and hilariously, but I'm finding this formula very stale at this point, especially as the focus of these mockumentaries is almost always a folksy banality. I grew up in a small farming town, so I really get that this is such a rich target. But I think at this point I'd like to see a fresh approach.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 8:25 AM on March 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

In the last few years rural England has been having a cinematic resurgence, but with a particularly grim and elegiac tone: Countryfile - The New Wave of Rural British Movies. It's interesting how the same landscape can be read as bleakly hilarious or just bloody bleak at the same time.
posted by Gin and Broadband at 3:53 PM on March 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

To my eyes, the landscape in This Country is absolutely gorgeous. But I've lived most of my life in semi-arid environments, so that sort of profligate pastoral greenery short-circuits my brain.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 4:04 PM on March 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

This stuff is only funny if you can escape.

I did escape* and I still find it highly uncomfortable viewing. In many respects its the same idea as People Just Do Nothing (also BBC3) which I'd previously enjoyed as an entertaining caricature but I really can't enjoy it as much, for me having grown up in a similar environment it's way too close to the bone. (And has given me some pause for thought as to whether I should be enjoying People Just Do Nothing either).

*I grew up in a very small rural English village and but was able to leave pretty easily at 18 due to economic & class privilege. As I get older I find I appreciate the countryside more but still couldn't countenance moving back to live there.
posted by *becca* at 6:15 AM on March 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

Hey you Cotswolds people--don't you all have Roman villas buried in your backyards? I'm surprised you're not all amateur archaeologists.
posted by orrnyereg at 8:36 AM on March 6, 2018 [2 favorites]

Something I noticed watching an episode tonight - the clothes are spot on and the builder's clothes, in particular, look like they've been worked in, not just roughed up.
posted by threetwentytwo at 3:33 PM on March 6, 2018