No Victoria Wood Xmas Special this year then??

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Victoria Wood has launched a scathing attack on her BBC paymasters, claiming she does not feel valued or trusted.
She also hit out at interfering bosses who try to tell her how to make people laugh, warning them:
 
I hope she doesn't get another Xmas show. Last years was an abysmal effort in comparison to what she was doing years ago. Strikes me as a woman who has lost it and is looking for someone else to blame.
 
Sour grapes. Her show was poor and rightfully was moved away from Christmas Day. Its nothing to do with a lack of respect but a lack of quality.
 
There is also a thread on VW's rant in the broadcast forum....

Click!

VW should improve the quality of her work before slagging the BBC off, as I personally would have dumped her awful offering onto a slow BBC4 night, not Xmas eve.
 
Nice to see The Daily Heil make their usual zero effort when it comes to reporting and lift an entire story from The Guardian's original interview with VW on Monday ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/sep/27/victoria-wood-bbc-comedy-decca-aitkenhead

:rolleyes:

I sympathise with VW about the hierarchy at the BBC which has become progressively worse over the years - but, like others, I'd be a darn sight more sympathetic if her last special hadn't been so disappointing. I'm a die-hard VW fan and was shocked by how un-funny it was - and you don't have to be vastly overpaid executive at the BBC to work that out.

I'm sure her criticisms will have filled the Daily Heil with glee as it can run yet another story slagging off the BBC (:yawn:) but they might care to study public response to that last 'special' before jumping in with both feet. Maybe they could quote some of the posters in this thread - after all, they did exactly that with Downton Abbey and called it a 'story' ... :rolleyes:
 
Blameshifting. She should think herself lucky the Beeb actually made and aired that shitty special at all. I imagine they did so out of a sense of loyalty but if so it was a very poor decision.
 
I read the article in the Guardian and was deeply sorry for her. Not because the BBC had under-rated her but because she could not see that her Xmas show was a travesty. I don't think I laughed once during it - and I used to love her stuff.

I think that the giveaway sentence in the article was "she was stunned when her husband left her" - I think it took away a lot of her self-confidence and this spilled over into her creative ability.

I hope she rediscovers her joie de vivre and produces real comedy again.
 
VW did suffer terribly when her marriage ended.

I'm a passionate fan of hers, but last year's Crimbo special wasn't terribly good. To make things worse, repeating the previous one (All The Trimmings) just underlined that she'd gone off the boil.

"Now that's better than a slap in the la-las with an antique mangle, is it not?!" :D

Dinnerladies suffered by being fiddled with by Suits, and I wonder if the last special suffered the same fate.
 
Sorry she's done some genius stuff in the past but her last 2 specials have been dire. She neds to go back to her early comedy roots and recapture some of that Acorn Antiques, 'is it on the trolley??' magic.
 
Thirty years ago she wrote three fantastic dramas in fairly quick succession - and they were all made by Granada.

I know that everyone likes to knock ITV, but they were and still are capable of doing quality TV every now and again.

When she does drama, she often finds subtle humour in banal language. She's like a female Allen Bennett (and everyone says that).
 
Unfortunately I have to agree with the sentiments expressed in the earlier posts. I've been a fan of VW since her first appearance on TV, and I have the DVDs of a lot of her work. Alas, the Xmas "special", while obviously expensively produced, just missed the mark competely. I'm afraid it just reminded me of a lot of dawn french's work.

VW doesn't need elaborate sets and a team of 50 singers/dancers. Just a stage and a look at real life from a slightly different viewpoint.
 
Those plays are out on DVD soon, along with her series Wood & Walters. I haven't seen any of these, and am v excited!




I think part of the problem is the "expensively produced" bit. A lot of comedy doesn;t look so good on swanky HD. In addition to that, it's sometimes on such a big scale that it misses the point of what makes it so successful to start with.

It's not as bad as Dawn French's work, but not VW's best by any means.
 
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