Strike!: C4’s documentary on the Miners’ Strike was entertaining. I’m not sure if a docu on the strike should have been entertaining, but there you go – as a primer it pretty much worked (I was 11 in 1984 and the strike took place at the furthest periphery of my entirely comfortable life so I came to the program knowing very little). The one thing that was really awful was the music programming – the ambience of 84-85 summoned by selected pop hits. If they’d just wanted to juxtapose the prettily produced pop of the time with the guts, misery and bloodshed onscreen it would have been crass but unobtrusive. But no! The director decided to pick songs with lyrics that ‘related’ to the action eg.
Presenter: Scargill had been elected president of the NUM in 1981..
Soundtrack: “Let’s Hear It For The Boy”
Presenter: Ian McGregor was a tough guy but he had no concept of spin…
Soundtrack: “You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)”
It just kept getting worse – especially when they used Duran Duran’s “Wild Boys” twice over scenes of police and pickets fighting. On the tiny chance that anyone involved in music commissioning ever reads our blog – DO NOT DO THIS! PLEASE!