Re: Is it not a disgrace that the BBC changed Titty's name?


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Posted by Roger Taylor on July 27, 1998 at 12:53:43:

In Reply to: Is it not a disgrace that the BBC changed Titty's name? posted by Julien Foster on July 25, 1998 at 15:33:45:

I don't believe that political correctness was invented in 1962.

Seriously though. Whilst Titty is a quite acceptable name for a 1920's book it would certainly raise eyebrows for a 1962 childrens' tv drama. I also think that Kitty was a sensible choice given that a change had to be made. It is still obviously a pet name for her and a sensible choice in the circumstances. Today she could probably be called Titty again. I have more of a problem that Susan was changed to Sue, now that just does not suit her character.

It must be remembered that this production was made in 1961 or 1962 and has to be viewed with 1962 standards in mind. At that time childrens' drama was in its infancy and television production of that time would be regarded as amateurish by today's standards.

I was fortunate to see the screenings and was generally impressed. It suffered the usual difficulties of squeezing a novel into 170 minutes or so of screen time and parts of the story, by necessity, have to be omitted, combined, resequences, expanded or abridged but I felt that this was done reasonably well. We should be grateful that it was not produced by ITV otherwise is would have been squeezed to 140 minutes!

The sailing sequences were delightful though the conditions on the lake had the habit of changing very rapidly and the capture of the houseboat was excellent.

Two things particularly irritated me. Firstly when the Swallows first left for the island, mother asks them if they have forgotten anything, and Sue replies no and apparently they no longer forgotten the matches. The other thing was the Sam, the village bobby, was changed to an agressive town policeman. I remember village bobbies from the early 60s and they were not like that.

The storm scene at the end was very poor, I can't make up my mind whether it was badly written, or they just ran out of money or time.



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