Ridley Road

It's like everything 60s is shoveled into this before it happened, the dressers got carried away again?. Eddie Marsan stands out, as ever, with a great performance, the others, mostly...mabye, they were just killing time till the pub opened? It's all a bit BBC with compromise writ large, which sadly, makes the story and characters suffer at the end of the day. I'd advise getting better writers and a motivated cast. The BBC used to do this stuff so well.

Having been brought up about 500 yds from Ridley Rd, I looked forward to seeing this. Having seen the first episode, I am reminded of the wise words of Mark Twain, "The difference between truth and fiction, is that fiction has to be believable. This was not.

I am old enough to remember both Colin Jordan and Oswald Mosley, and in particular, the 1962 "visit" by the latter to Ridley Rd in 1962. This ended within minutes with Mosley receiving a police escort to get him out of the area. I'm not certain, but If that was not his last public appearance, it must have been close to it.

What I don't recall from that period, was that there was a Dalston office of Mossad operating in the area. I know that may seem harsh, but the problem I have with it, is that even as "Faction", it doesn't work for me. When it's gets as specific as naming a real place and a real date, you'd expect to see bits that you can recognise as being "based on a true story". But so far, I've seen nothing of the sort. This bears no resemblance to my recollections of Ridley Road and events in 1962.

I write to endorse the views of another reviewer of this series as to its basic unhistoricality. The BBC and major US media providers are showing an increasing tendency to disregard the actual historical events and cultural realities, in the interest of importing entirely unrealistic racial, ethnic, and cultural themes artificially into those times. Lest anyone suspect my sympathies, I also lived through the 60's and my wife is Jewish, her entire family lost to the Holocaust and other anti-Semitic atrocities of World War II.

Plainly put, there was no widespread Fascist movement in either the US or Great Britain in 1962. Does anyone seriously think that the British constabulary, less than two decades after World War II, in which many fought and had comrades died, would have any sympathy at all for a British Nazi Party? The prosaic fact is that they had none at all.

In the US, George Lincoln Rockwell, the American Nazi, had a following in the dozens. To be sure, in the American South, society clung to an increasingly outdated racial bigotry. But it was increasingly under attack by larger forces. 'To Kill a Mockingbird' won the Pulitzer Prize that year, and the Civil and Voting Rights Acts were passed just two years later.

A drama about Fascist movements that emphasized their aberrance and potential criminality might be acceptable. However, the notion that they had any widespread social appeal is not only incorrect, but slanderous, and somewhat dangerous in itself. You don't redo history simply because it's convenient,.

Very loosely based on true events, not historically accurate, and melodramatic, I nevertheless loved the PBS four-part miniseries Ridley Road to the point of getting up and cheering or yelling, "get out of there," during some of the action sequences.

Vivian Epstein, (alias Jane Carpenter), a twenty-three-year-old Jewish woman from Manchester, England sneaks off to London to follow her boyfriend James, (alias Peter Fox), when he mysteriously leaves town. She wants out of a marriage arranged by her parents and to be with the man she loves.

Vivian, who works as a hairdresser in Soho, learns that James is working undercover in the National Socialist Movement in order to inform resisters of the groups planned actions. The NSM violently targets and kills Jews. Vivian dyes her brunette hair blonde and becomes a spy in the Jewish resistance movement the 62 group, (headquartered on Ridley Road), first to find James, and then because anti-fascists DO rather than just sitting on the sidelines and talking. Vivian, who becomes fearless in her mission to save lives, gains the trust of NSM leader Colin Jordan. This gives her access to private conversations and offices in the NSM headquarters.

The series is a blend of romance, action, and political thriller. Part of the fun and impact of the series is it's unapologetic good versus bad trope, highlighting the bravery of the resistance fighters in general, and Vivian and James in particular.

Agnes O'Casey as Vivian enjoys a rollicking star turn in her first production. I will watch for her in other projects.

A mixed bag of actors. Some classy ones and some not so classy. But the script was full of cliches and this adaptation lacked credibility. The neo Nazis seemed more like a dark version of the Keystone Cops. Like Vigil this is another BBC series that promised much but failed to deliver mostly because of the storylines.