The 1960s, we are never allowed to forget, was a time of experimentation, progressiveness, & modernism. The world as we know it owes it's roots to those heroic counter-culture rebels who burned their bras, hugged trees & generally stuck it to the man any which way they could. As one of a very long list of documentaries about the swinging sixties, one might wonder why Sex, Drugs & Rock 'n' Roll: The 60s Revealed, first aired on Channel 5 in 2008 is worth paying any attention to. What could it possibly have to add to a subject that has been done to the point of becoming cliché?
Well, what stands this short series apart is that, at first glance at least, it is not just another pop-sociology documentary using the 1960s as an excuse to show pictures of people high off their face while commentators talk about sexual liberation. The series was made after the discovery of over 100hours of previously unseen interviews made by the presenter Bernard Braden, himself a figure of great renown in the second half of the 1960s. Originally intended as a sort of mini time capsule concept where Braden would revisit each of his interviewees every few years, the films ended up lying forgotten for forty years. Ostensibly, 60s Revealed is the show Braden had wanted to make, with a number of interviewees being reinterviewed & shown the videos of their much younger selves.
This aspect of the programme makes for at times fascinating viewing. Seeing the interviews of a variety of celebrities, some still famous today like Tom Jones & Sean Connery, others less remembered or even forgotten entirely, speaking candidly on camera about their desires, opinions & predictions of the future offer a glimpse of the mentality of members of the 60s generation that most documentaries, relying on stock film & a few sociologist commentators, don't really convey. Watching Sean Connery apparently predict the riots of 68 is especially fascinating to hear, even if he is being less soothsayer & more haughtily opinionated when giving the interview. Hearing the interviewees forty years later is also very interesting, particularly some of the lesser known & forgotten today figures like Caroline Coons & Lulu, as they look back at their younger selves & reflect on how they & the world has changed. Unfortunately, most of the interviewees seem to say the same tired old things about how they thought they were changing the world & other platitudes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, therefore, it is the interviews from the original collection that make for more interesting viewing than those with interviewees forty years on.
As one may have been able to guess from the documentaries title, counter-culture is very much the central theme. Almost all the interviews shown are with people either identified with the counter-culture generation or who are clearly sympathetic to it. It is ironic then that the most interesting interview shown, in my opinion, is one with none other than Enoch Powell barely a few weeks after his infamous Rivers of Blood speech. The interview is fascinating for the sheer apparent candidness of Powell in talking to Braden about his opinions on the speech itself & immigration. What makes it even more interesting, is that despite Powell being an icon of the type of culture the 60s generation supposedly rebelled against, at least one of the younger interviewees, whose name annoyingly escapes me, says she is sympathetic to Powell's stance. The most interesting part of a documentary squarely focused on the counter-culture, therefore, is the brief showing of how far from uniform or all pervasive it was in the 1960s.
That the shift in tone is only brief, however, is ultimately a sign of one of this documentaries main failings. Bernard Braden produced over one hundred hours of interviews in for his project, interviewing people across the whole spectrum of late 1960s Britain's popular culture. Unfortunately, this documentary is focused firmly on the image of the 1960s as a swinging, liberated period & for the most part refuses to budge from this viewpoint. Worse, for a documentary whose centre-piece is this treasure trove of archive interviews, they are heavily edited & cut up by the usual stock images of tripping hippies & pictures of the Beatles. The commentary that appears intended to give context to the interviews ultimately takes up so much space as to turn 60s Revealed into just another sociology documentary about the 1960s counter-culture, with Bradens interviews & the ones made for this show being cut in when reinforcing a point the narrator was making. Being made for Channel 5, it is also perhaps little surprise that the vast bulk of the series is focused on the title subjects of sex, drugs & rock 'n roll instead of broader (less sexy/scandalous) issues of 1960s culture.
Ultimately, therefore, Sixties Revealed can only be seen as a disappointment. It is by no means dull viewing, & is still interesting, entertaining, & informative enough to justify watching if one is interested or even knowledgeable of the period. But one can't help but feel that the potential goldmine of material in Bernard Braden's interview collection was wasted on yet another documentary that ultimately only seeks to reinforce the same old ideas of the swinging sixties as a time of sex, drugs, & music somehow changing the world. There's no reappraisal of the period, no attempt to move beyond the caricature, & no real exploration of the content of the interviews themselves. The young generation are the ones championed as the radicals, even when the interviewees with the most radical ideas were thirty eight (Connery) & fifty six (Powell) when Braden spoke to them. It feels that the documentary tries to shoehorn Braden's interviews into the image of the sixties, rather than analysing if the image fits the interviews. This is why Sixties revealed is disappointing, but Braden's interviews themselves are still fascinating, & consequently it is worth watching for them alone.
Well, what stands this short series apart is that, at first glance at least, it is not just another pop-sociology documentary using the 1960s as an excuse to show pictures of people high off their face while commentators talk about sexual liberation. The series was made after the discovery of over 100hours of previously unseen interviews made by the presenter Bernard Braden, himself a figure of great renown in the second half of the 1960s. Originally intended as a sort of mini time capsule concept where Braden would revisit each of his interviewees every few years, the films ended up lying forgotten for forty years. Ostensibly, 60s Revealed is the show Braden had wanted to make, with a number of interviewees being reinterviewed & shown the videos of their much younger selves.
This aspect of the programme makes for at times fascinating viewing. Seeing the interviews of a variety of celebrities, some still famous today like Tom Jones & Sean Connery, others less remembered or even forgotten entirely, speaking candidly on camera about their desires, opinions & predictions of the future offer a glimpse of the mentality of members of the 60s generation that most documentaries, relying on stock film & a few sociologist commentators, don't really convey. Watching Sean Connery apparently predict the riots of 68 is especially fascinating to hear, even if he is being less soothsayer & more haughtily opinionated when giving the interview. Hearing the interviewees forty years later is also very interesting, particularly some of the lesser known & forgotten today figures like Caroline Coons & Lulu, as they look back at their younger selves & reflect on how they & the world has changed. Unfortunately, most of the interviewees seem to say the same tired old things about how they thought they were changing the world & other platitudes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, therefore, it is the interviews from the original collection that make for more interesting viewing than those with interviewees forty years on.
As one may have been able to guess from the documentaries title, counter-culture is very much the central theme. Almost all the interviews shown are with people either identified with the counter-culture generation or who are clearly sympathetic to it. It is ironic then that the most interesting interview shown, in my opinion, is one with none other than Enoch Powell barely a few weeks after his infamous Rivers of Blood speech. The interview is fascinating for the sheer apparent candidness of Powell in talking to Braden about his opinions on the speech itself & immigration. What makes it even more interesting, is that despite Powell being an icon of the type of culture the 60s generation supposedly rebelled against, at least one of the younger interviewees, whose name annoyingly escapes me, says she is sympathetic to Powell's stance. The most interesting part of a documentary squarely focused on the counter-culture, therefore, is the brief showing of how far from uniform or all pervasive it was in the 1960s.
That the shift in tone is only brief, however, is ultimately a sign of one of this documentaries main failings. Bernard Braden produced over one hundred hours of interviews in for his project, interviewing people across the whole spectrum of late 1960s Britain's popular culture. Unfortunately, this documentary is focused firmly on the image of the 1960s as a swinging, liberated period & for the most part refuses to budge from this viewpoint. Worse, for a documentary whose centre-piece is this treasure trove of archive interviews, they are heavily edited & cut up by the usual stock images of tripping hippies & pictures of the Beatles. The commentary that appears intended to give context to the interviews ultimately takes up so much space as to turn 60s Revealed into just another sociology documentary about the 1960s counter-culture, with Bradens interviews & the ones made for this show being cut in when reinforcing a point the narrator was making. Being made for Channel 5, it is also perhaps little surprise that the vast bulk of the series is focused on the title subjects of sex, drugs & rock 'n roll instead of broader (less sexy/scandalous) issues of 1960s culture.
Ultimately, therefore, Sixties Revealed can only be seen as a disappointment. It is by no means dull viewing, & is still interesting, entertaining, & informative enough to justify watching if one is interested or even knowledgeable of the period. But one can't help but feel that the potential goldmine of material in Bernard Braden's interview collection was wasted on yet another documentary that ultimately only seeks to reinforce the same old ideas of the swinging sixties as a time of sex, drugs, & music somehow changing the world. There's no reappraisal of the period, no attempt to move beyond the caricature, & no real exploration of the content of the interviews themselves. The young generation are the ones championed as the radicals, even when the interviewees with the most radical ideas were thirty eight (Connery) & fifty six (Powell) when Braden spoke to them. It feels that the documentary tries to shoehorn Braden's interviews into the image of the sixties, rather than analysing if the image fits the interviews. This is why Sixties revealed is disappointing, but Braden's interviews themselves are still fascinating, & consequently it is worth watching for them alone.
