Theatre 625 (TV Series) The Year of the Sex Olympics (1968) User Reviews

Flawed but Fascinating Prophetic Satire

[BJJManchester · 7/10 · 21 November 2011]

When it was first broadcast in 1968,THE YEAR OF THE SEX OLYMPICS was just regarded as another of accomplished TV playwright Nigel Kneale's imaginative sci-fi dramas,this time about television itself.'It couldn't possibly happen' was perhaps the main reaction at the time,but Kneale's somewhat grim prediction for the future direction of the medium (headed by the opening subtitle "Sooner Than You Think") has more or less come true,which has enhanced it's importance since it was produced over four decades ago,and though it's overall quality is uneven,the extraordinary prescience of Kneale's ideas eventually win the day.

Set in a future where the so-called high-drives (the TV producers,as represented by Leonard Rossiter and Brian Cox) subdue the low-drives (the TV viewers) into indifference and lethargy by broadcasting lowest common denominator programming involving pornography and crude slapstick, weaning them off sex and food.Managing to watch an uninterested public via CCTV,the low-drives greatest reaction is when a young technical crewman is killed in a fall,which provokes much laughter.One high-drive suggests the idea for another show where he,his ex-partner and young daughter attempt to live in primitive fashion on an isolated island.His colleagues agree with him,yet without his knowledge plant a violent,unstable criminal there as well to spice things up and increase viewing figures..........

If all of this sounds familiar,it certainly does now in what passes for television broadcasting in 21st Century Britain and indeed elsewhere.The predictions for mass dumbing down of TV and culture in general are uncannily and amazingly accurate, with BIG BROTHER,CASTAWAY 2000,SURVIVOR and I'M A CELEBRITY GET ME OUT OF HERE dismal examples that are very worthy of comparison.The overwrought style of presentation in such programmes is very well enacted by Vickery Turner,as is the contemptible attitudes towards TV and it's viewers by the decidedly sleazy and unlikable collection of high-drives who keep such vindictive opinions off screen.

That said,THE YEAR OF THE SEX OLYMPICS is not without it's flaws.Kneale's ideas of the characters speaking in a kind of streamlined blank verse patois,reducing the importance of words while images take over,is interesting but becomes somewhat pretentious,and several scenes would've worked better with a degree of script editing.And as to the standards of the era,the visions of the future are outlandish and garish,with elaborately patterned shirts,the men seemingly wearing togas,and the women in over-emphatic make-up;the play was originally shot in colour but now only exists as a black and white tele-recording,which is a relief in some way as this and the predictable set designs may have been a distraction,although it isn't as much in monochrome.Some of the actors struggle with the stylised dialogue;Tony Vogel performs with permanently bulging eyes in over-the-top mode,where others seem baffled and just deliver the script in flat,monotoned style.However,despite the stately pace,Kneale successfully builds to a uncomfortable,gloomy and very effective finale,with the avarice and arrogance of the high-drives sadly coming out on top.

Still,THE YEAR OF THE SEX OLYMPICS eerily dystopian vision of TV has regrettably all come true,and Nigel Kneale lived long enough to see such foreboding predictions,with trashy exaggeration and ugly sensationalism rather than intelligence and taste the main bywords.There's little scope for writers as peerless as Kneale to work in TV much today,as his predictions of Reality TV are all but there to see now,which makes THE YEAR OF THE SEX OLYMPICS somewhat hard to watch,but if you care where the direction TV is now heading,absolutely essential.

RATING:7 and a half out of 10.

Startlingly Prescient

[keith-149 · 7/10 · 13 August 2007]

That's how Nancy Banks Smith - the greatest TV reviewer ever - described this play.

I saw this play as part of a BBC archive trial. It is funny to hear one producer suggest a new idea for a programme: "I know let's put some people on a deserted island and just watch them." 32 years before Survivor or Big Brother. Of course, Nigel Kneale probably got paid £1000. John De Mol milked about Euro 1bn from the actual show.

Not all the predictions are true - the general public are shown to be lifeless drones who just watch TV all day and aside from Liverpool this has not come true.

Also, the viewer satisfaction ratings at the time were low and I think if I had seen the play in 1968 I would not have liked it as much. We like it now because of its predictive quality rather than for its artistic merits.

Finally, Banks Smith said you had to see the play in colour and only a B&W print exists.

BTW, there have been deaths from reality shows - suicide of an evictee on the first reality show - Family Robinson, the forerunner of Survivor. Suicide of an evictee on a US boxing TV show.

Entertaining and interestingly predictive

[jamesrupert2014 · 8/10 · 29 March 2022]

On a future overly-crowded Earth, the masses are distracted by televised sex and entertained by ridiculous plot-less programming but, when then the 'media elites' discover that their flaccid viewers are more entertained when watching pain, they debut a cruel new show where forgotten emotions such as "fear and anger, worry and pain and ... grief" are put on display. Written by Nigel Kneale, who had penned a screen treatment of Orwell's '1984' for the BBC (there are similarities between the stories, notably in keeping the masses content and in the simplification of language) and the well-received 'Quatermass' sci-fi series in the 1950s, the film is often lauded for predicting the rise of 'reality TV' in the 2000s. This may be the first film to touch on the premise of people's 'real' lives (suffering or otherwise) being used for entertainment although the concept has been around in sci-fi books for some time. The budget BBC production is entertaining in a retro way, notably the future fashions which extend the 'paisley and flower-power' look of the 60s to the extreme. The truncated language takes some getting used to and the sound and images on the B/W survivor I watched on-line is a bit rough (the BBC, in their lack of wisdom, wiped the original colour prints), but otherwise this is a fascinating throw-back and Kneale deserves acknowledgement for making some of the more fulfilled predications in TV sci-fi (but the media was as ripe for this kind of satire then as it is now). Too bad we got crappy TV instead of flying cars.

Prescient doesn't begin to describe it

[djdaedalus · 15 April 2003]

Time : the near future. Or far. Or now.

A small minority of "high drive" people manufacture the entertainment and drugs that keep the majority of "low drive" people happy. TV is two way - they can see the audience reacting. And the news is bad - the Low Drives are getting bored, even with the "S=x Olympics" on the horizon.

Not all the High Drives are happy either. Some want "real art" on TV, others just have consciences. One "real art" advocate cracks, puts on an unscheduled demonstration during a TV show and is killed in a fall.

The audience laps it up, even as it laughs it up. The High Drives realize that the Low Drives want surprise, tragedy, even horror. They devise the "Live Life Show", with a High Drive family stranded on a windswept Scottish island, and lots of cameras around to follow their movements....and there's a surprise...your friendly neighborhood psychopath.

Britain's top actors, including the incomparable Leonard Rossiter, showed the way to where we are now, with Reality TV and Fear Factor lining the sewer of the public mind. At least they haven't killed anybody...yet.

Incredibly Prescient

[tom_prendergast · 10/10 · 16 April 2005]

I first saw this in the early 70's, it was considered then to be nothing more than science fiction. Intended to be a glimpse of a world where anything goes in the name of entertainment, as well as a warning. It was meant to be an extreme satirical extrapolation, alluding to a future time, in the hope that it might not happen. Spooky really!!

This theme has been done to death many times since, but it was still fresh and original back then. I also remember a TV programme around about the same time called 'The Machine Stops', based on a short story by E M Forster. Although somewhat dated and naive now, bear in mind that it was written in 1909. Its main theme is that humans eventually become alienated and remote from their surroundings, preferring to communicate via TV screens, referred to as Cinematophote. This happened, in the fictional world, because the Earth was contaminated and the inhabitants had to go underground. Obviously the Internet, TV or email was not known then, but it predicted all three, it is strange how fact has 'triumphed' over fiction.

We haven't got to the next stage yet, whereby humans are entirely isolated from their surroundings, but who can say what the future portends?

The era of reality television

[Prismark10 · 6/10 · 1 June 2018]

Nigel Kneale's play The Year of the Sex Olympics is prophetic but if the original colour episode existed it would been very garish. As it is the black and white drama is dated and rather stilted.

Based in a near future where the masses are fed low brow entertainment ranging from custard pie fights to wall to wall pronography. This is in order keep them disengaged from eating and having sex with each other.

The television executives have found that the audience are uninterested with what they have to watch. Probably desensitised with all the sex on tv.

One executive as an idea to commission a new type of programme. The Live Life Show, Nat Mender (Tony Vogel) his partner Deanie (Suzanne Neve) and their daughter Keten are stranded on a remote Scottish island learning to cope on their own. A reality television show.

However Mender's colleague, Lasar Opie (Brian Cox) has ideas to spice up the show by introducing hidden dangers and other people on the island, total disregarding the show's original brief. Opie knows that the audience will be interested as the show descends into violence.

Kneale wrote a satire on sensational television and took it to its logical conclusion. It is hampered by its futuristic fashion, make up and language. Vogel's acting verges on the awful with his bug eyed stares. It also felt too long and could had done with being snappier.

Good ideas still hold up but dated in execution

[dbborroughs · 5/10 · 26 January 2009]

Dated BBC production about a time in the future where sex and violence are spectator sports(and a precursor to Big Brother). Much more violent, bloody and revealing then most things that come from the BBC this is an interesting meditation of the state of mass media and where we maybe going (among other things). Set in a not too far off time the film, which was written by Nigel Kneale (The Quatermass films and TV shows), suffers from the odd 1960's style designs for the future. I'm sure in the 60's the film played better since the look of the film wasn't that far removed from the look that was happening then, however, now it seems out of place. Other bits, such as some dialog, seem dated to the point that it all feels quaint (wasn't it quaint that we viewed things that way sort of quaint). The quaintness makes getting at the ideas Kneale is trying to express harder to get at. I was kind of interested and kind of bored and at some point just got distracted. I'll try it again at some point but I'm in no hurry.

Both Prophetic And Dated But Most Of All Disappointing

[Theo Robertson · 5/10 · 5 January 2011]

There's no doubt in my mind the most influential dramatist in the history of British television is Nigel Kneale . He was the script writer who defined that television drama should be as ambitious as cinema while remaining as intimate as theater . He will always be synonymous with his QUATERMASS serials but has also contributed other great pieces of drama over the decades . One of them THE YEAR OF THE SEXUAL OLYMPICS has steadily become something of a legend in itself in that it predicts a future obsession with what is now described as " reality TV " , so does the teleplay live up to its legendary status ?

In my opinion not really . OLYMPICS does have some very clever concepts but somewhere along the line the ideas seem somewhat badly executed . The story itself seems to owe a lot to Orwell's 1984 telescreens aren't used to spy on people but to rather control them . People are natural voyeurs and if you give them what they want via the telescreen they'll eventually become desensitized to their desires . You can understand the point behind Kneale's logic but you're also left with the feeling that Kneale has failed to bring a bigger subtext to his subject . Certainly in his 1979 QUATERMASS serial you recognise a wonderful subtext of science vs faith with science at its most dangerous and destructive eventually saving the human race but there's a spark of genius missing from this 1968 drama

The production values do not help either . I for one am grateful that it's preserved on monochrome . Can you imagine how garish and gaudy everything would have looked in colour ? It's a constant problem of late60s/early 70s film and television where the future tends to look too futuristic to remain credible . Kneale doesn't help his cause either by having everyone talk in a trans-Atlantic " Newspeak " . Again you can understand the thinking behind this - the World has become assimilated by American pop culture - but combined with Michael Elliot's rather weak direction it's like listening to a parody of American film moguls and makes for a rather ridiculous acting style not helped by deliberately written idiosyncratic speech patterns where

" Does he know what he's saying ? " becoming

" He know what he say ? which soon becomes irritating . It's not helped either by the casting of Leonard Rossiter and Brian Cox whose future well known roles become more of a hindrance than an advantage

All told THE YEAR OF THE SEX OLYMPICS is a massive disappointment . As many people here have said it shows sign of prophecy but this is heavily negated by rather poor production values , weak directing but most of all a lack of streamlined storytelling on the part of the writer . One can't help thinking how well this drama would have been remembered if it wasn't for the birth of reality TV at the turn of the century

not easy viewing

[didi-5 · 29 August 2010]

Imagine a world where 'high drive' people with no souls push the boundaries of entertainment for the 'low drive' people - the watching, inert masses, dead at 35. The masses who do not 'do', only 'watch'. A world where a show called 'Sport Sex' puts forwards participants for the Sex Olympics. A world where art is suppressed and tension of any kind is not allowed.

By the time laughter comes from the masses not because of a custard pie fight, but because of a bloody death, you can see how the experiment of 'The Live Life Show', starring a high drive couple and their underachieving child, transported to an island where they have to fend for themselves as in the old days, away from Output, will end.

In a cast who are uniformly effective, Tony Vogel, Suzanne Neve, Brian Cox and Leonard Rossiter stands out. As a look into a future dominated by reality TV, it is quite shocking to stop and realize how far along the road we are, and where it could end. Kneale's play certainly makes its point, although it takes a while for the story to get into its stride.

Originally made in colour but now only existing in black and white, the sets and costumes definitely get lost in the version we now have available. But as an indication of edgy sci-fix drama of the kind which wouldn't get commissioned now (they'd be too busy commissioning The Live Life Show), it still pulls no punches.

Pushing the boundaries of the time

[comment-50465 · 5/10 · 5 February 2017]

The production certainly deserves a place in television history. It was made during BBC Television's so-called Golden Years. It had new studios, lots of fresh creative talent and a strong desire to push the boundaries. Unfortunately those boundaries got stretched just a little too far on this production even for all the new technology the BBC had at its disposal. You can have some of the best writers and actors (as this production did) but unless that is matched by production and direction that, above all, realises the limitations of the system things can look very tacky. Even for those heady days, The Year of the Sex Olympics production values were below par though some might excuse it as a "creative production" and experimental. Television back then simply could not match the values of the movie industry.

Historic value yes, but not much else other than a record of just how daring and brave the BBC was at the time.

Royalties from Endemol

[mariegriffiths · 3 November 2004]

I hope that Nigel Kneale is receiving royalties from Endemol, producers of "Big Brother". Incidentally a death has occurred on a reality TV show. A contestant was killed during the making of "Noel Edmond's House Party". Plus there have been many deaths caused by the conflicts created on the "Jerry Springer Show". This is a must see film. It's a pity that the lessons of it were not headed. Leonard Rossieter went on to do "The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin" that also challenged the idea of the rat race. Nigel Kneale worked on the wonderful 1984 BBC adaption of 1984 and Quatemass. It is a shame that thought provoking science fiction like this is not being made, due to the dumbing down of television that Kneale predicted in this play.