1990

This series about an authoritarian Britain very much in the model of 1984 was timely in 1978 but even more so today.

With the overwhelming presence of CCTV, attempts to control the internet and the reluctance of the UK government to abide rulings that it destroy DNA samples of innocent persons picked up by the police but never charged or found not guilty in court cases and numerous reductions in civil rights because of "terrorism" etc. the scenario at the heart of "1990" is well and truly with us.

No wonder this series is not available on DVD ...the powers that be would be terrified of it!

I found this very watchable, in fact rather more-ish. Dystopian SF thriller series made in 1977 and set in 1990. In a run-down Britain a lot like the real late 70s extrapolated, journalist Edward Woodward tries to stop a nasty and repressive government becoming a flat-out totalitarian one and has a Pimpernel-style sideline in helping people escape abroad. Parts still strike a chord and raise a cynical smile today ('to safeguard freedom' MPs are exempt from the draconian laws inflicted on the rest of the nation, for example.) Connoisseurs of retro-futurism will enjoy things like a car-phone the size of a small fruit machine but the landscape is largely grey and 70s brutalist (and the phone is in an Austin Princess.) There are some good future-shock jokes - 'Oxfam are raising funds for us in India' and we've sold off the Crown Jewels (both only a matter of time.) One thing they got vastly wrong but which must have been a daring act of lese-majeste is that there is a King on the throne only 13 years in the future.

Woodward and friends are likeable and the situations are interesting. There's wiggle-room and a vestige of due process in the repression; things are just short of Orwellian, iron fist in velvet glove, in a way that also rings true: fascism (actually extreme socialism) with a saccharine smile in a polite British face. It's how it would happen or some might say did. The hero has a Deep Throat mole in the civil service, and his would-be squeeze is a woman high up in the security apparatus who may be trying to be human or may be using him for her own ends; this could have been schlocky or camp but their relationship is an entertaining mix of the cerebral and the playfully flirtatious. It's not just them who have charm and humour and appear to like each other, something missing from the dead-eyed robots on TV now. We care about even minor characters; as a result things get awfully tense at times. Modern TV drama commissioners, please take note. (Also that there's a whole universe of untapped possibilities outside child abuse, terminal disease and serial killing.)

That said, it gets darker as it goes; Woodward has some splendid victories but is sometimes powerless to help people, and ultimately it's less an adventure series than a shrewd and at times pretty grim study of the misuse of the levers of power - often 'soft' power - all the ways that freedom can die without people actually being shot (no need to imprison people when you can stop them from working; if you don't toe the line your wife and kids will suffer too) and how people variously knuckle under, go along to get along or courageously and self-sacrificingly resist. Anyone living in communist Eastern Europe would have recognised all of it; and similar pressures are to some degree still at work here, now. There are nice touches such as the surveillance room in the baddy HQ looking like a Benthamite panopticon, or a haunting moment dramatizing how poison in the political world seeps into our private ones when a dissident neglects his child because he's obsessively watching the news.

"1990", along with "The Guardians", represents great British "political" sci fi from the 1970s. I heartily agree with the previous commentator who looked forward to a "1990" DVD reissue. Let's hope they do a double with "The Guardians".

The real innovation of the show was not the police state future conjured up, that's been done before, but the fictional dictatorship's use of "Authorised Systematic Harassment". This amounted to essentially the use of all the mundane irritating rules and regulations we are familiar with today, in a systematic, targeted and tyrannical way.

1990 was a lot more innovative and chilling than modern movie treatments like "V".

I was 16 when this was shown on the BBC,Woodward was a star after Callan but this series is not well known. I hardly saw it when it was on. So I was happy to buy the series 1 DVD. It is both very good and very obvious and clichéd. 1970s Britain was a rough place,the country was split politically,there was much talk of anti democratic behaviour from left and right. There were strikes yes but Britain was a fairer place in 1978 than 1968 but the reaction was the election of the Tories in 1979.

1990 is a sort of Daily Mail readers worst nightmare of what the Labour government was like. There are many mentions of civil servants with good pensions and government bully boys. But all governments contain a danger of oppression and the bureaucrats often do behave badly in real life,the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

This has some great writing and acting and the series hints at the truth that George Orwell revealed that bullies are bullies because they like doing it,not because of political commitment.

It is almost funny to recall that some people celebrated the victory of Mrs Thatcher in 1979 as a victory for freedom but soon miners were not allowed to drive from Kent to Yorkshire and the police were being well paid to restrict human rights during the sometimes violent miners strike.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching this series when it first graced our screens in the late 1970's. However, it seems that it is not well known, as many people I talk to who were around in those days, claim not to have heard of it. It's a pity it only lasted for 16 episodes - I would love to watch them all again, perhaps if and when they are put out on DVD.

Obviously now, with hindsight, the Great Britain of the future which we see portrayed in this series, has not (yet) eventuated. This 1990 depicts a distinct "ruling class" and an "under-class" consisting mostly of "non-citizens" as they are called. It is virtually impossible to do anything "anonymously", and society is, to all intents and purposes cashless, with currency (ie notes and coin) non-existent. Everything is paid for with "credits" (not pounds or dollars) from one's account. Transactional anonymity is only possible if one is able to pay with gold (assuming the seller is prepared to accept payment in gold). Not surprisingly, something of a black market and underground movement develops. This series is very much about "big brother", and whilst most of it has not come to fruition (yet), who knows what might happen in the future? It is for this reason that I highly recommend watching the series, if given the chance. Don't let its mere title deceive you by making you think that it lacks topicality - what it has to say may yet come to pass!