Aziraphale615 "Filth" just happen to come on after another show - I didn't intend to watch it, but the opening song contrasting with the prim-looking lady on the bicycle so intrigued me that I ended up watching, and I'm glad I did.This is a story about Mary Whitehouse, a mother, wife and school teacher, who is outraged by the Director General of the BBC's (Sir Hugh Carleton Greene)new programming. It's the beginning of the Age of Aquarius, and the "new morality," is making its way onto TV during teatime, and Mary Whitehouse will have none of it.This is a very successful television movie in that every main character was three-dimensional. Mary starts out as a sympathetic character who eventually turns into a Master Censor as she sends letters to the beleaguered Sir Hugh complaining about two unkind characters in a children's television program. Sir Hugh also takes a turn, as he starts out an arrogant elitist who won't even meet with Mary (a "nutter") to a defender of free speech who simply can't withstand her repeated assaults.Beautifully told, acted and cleverly directed, "Filth" is well worth a watch.

Enoch Sneed This is a very well-made, well-acted film which gives an enjoyable introduction to the Mary Whitehouse phenomenon. While showing her point of view it also manages to satirise her blinkered self-righteousness. Her pretty little English village, nestling in green pastures, is home to at least one wife-beater and a gay teenage couple; Mrs W is so concerned with the evils of television she fails to see the real world around her, possibly a comment on what TV does to us all.I have to admit that after over thirty years of being told what I should and should not see on TV and films (she started a Rambo scare in the 80's, the world would be filled with young men programmed to become indiscriminate killers after watching Sly Stallone) I was actually relieved when the woman finally left us in 2001. For me, she epitomised all I detest about petty-minded interference in other people's lives. Her main target - the BBC - is funded by *all* tax-payers and licence holders, it does not exist to serve the favoured few who know what is best for everyone else.Note also the argument these people always use: the effect on other people, never themselves; they are right-thinking and incorruptible but the rest of us are depraved children who cannot be trusted to be exposed to adult issues and behaviour; freedom of expression must be reserved for enlightened members of society.In the event Whitehouse had no influence at all on the development of popular culture in Britain. All she did was stoke a debate which could be trotted out every so often and give her some media exposure (Julie Walters gets her sweet condescending smile off to a T). On the evidence of this film, all she achieved was the destruction of a dynamic and creative head of the BBC who, for all his faults, had what Whitehouse totally lacked - a zest for life - whether it took the form of a game of cricket or a pretty secretary.

Philby-3 This account of the transformation of an ordinary suburban mum and art teacher into a controversial national figure is a lot better than it might have been. Julie Walters as Mary captures her ordinariness and her determination. She is much helped by Alun Armstrong's subtle performance as Mary's supportive if sometime baffled husband Ernest. Hugh Bonneville though at times rather Basil Fawlty-ish as the progressive but arrogant BBC director-general Hugh Greene provides an admirable foil (they never actually meet).Mary Whitehouse started her campaign to clean up television (originally unfortunately named "Clean Up National Television") after seeing a rather dull discussion program on pre-marital sex broadcast by the BBC in the early evening. Despite widespread opposition she developed a taste for being in the public eye, and was an active promoter of TV censorship for the next 30 years. The film credits her with forcing Greene's resignation, though others claim the real issue was Greene's failure to get along with Lord Hill, the oleaginous BBC chairman after 1967. Certainly Greene's philosophy on broadcasting was completely opposed to Mary's, and it has to be said that it was partly due to her that the BBC became less adventurous in the face of her attacks, some of which were downright silly, the attacks on "Dr Who" and the Beatles's lyrics for example. With all respect to her son Richard, who has a review on this page, she may have been serious and sincere, but she represented and aroused the forces of bigotry, ignorance and prejudice. The worst that can be said of Greene is that he did not handle her very well. Later directors-general, including his immediate successor Charles Curran were better at it. Even so she had a chilling effect on British television.This program goes fairly easy on Mary and does not fail to point out that Greene and other opponents often over-reacted. She had imitators elsewhere, Patricia Bartlett in New Zealand and Fred Nile in Australia for example, and of course the US is full of anti-smut crusaders. Unlike the US, Britain's media is rather centralized – the BBC had a monopoly in TV until 1956 and there was a duopoly with ITV until the 1980s – and this gave someone like Mary unwonted influence. The atmosphere of the sixties is wonderfully re-created and the BBC has to be congratulated for its even-handed telling of a story very painful to some broadcasters.

davideo-2 STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning Early sixties Britain is still a fairly innocent place and Mary Whitehouse (Julie Walters), a suburban local art teacher and church-goer, lives a dainty little English existence in her quiet, dainty little Midlands village. But she becomes outraged by what she sees as declining standards on British TV, with more regular, casual bad language, sex talk and violence. The film portrays her real life crusade to 'clean up TV', bringing her into conflict with Hugh Greene (Hugh Bonneville) the new Programmes Commissioner at the BBC, who's moving with the times more and showing programmes more suited to the changing social attitudes.It's interesting to note what a puritanical society we used to be not really so long ago, especially when we comment on the Americans and their prudish standards they still have on mainstream TV. Maybe it's the age I've been raised in but I've always been one for freedom of expression and mature adults being allowed to see what they want, so Mary Whitehouse was never a character that was going to agree with me. But even if you think her campaigns were misguided, you have to admire her determination and conviction of her will, which this very well made TV drama has portrayed.The main thing that drives it is two superb lead performances. In the title role, Walters gives it her all as the quaint English lady with an unwavering moral compass who is forced to come to terms with society's changing ideals, attitudes, morals and beliefs while leading her campaign and similarly Bonneville is also great as the arrogant TV chief who bites off more than he can chew with the little guy.Both the characters are very well written too, along with the script, which really gets you involved with the story, which is engaging and enthralling but refreshingly humorous, too, although in a manner risqué enough, ironically, to get Mrs Whitehouse up in arms about. ****