This week sees the British Film Institute (BFI) serve up a slice of childhood nostalgia on DVD in the shape of cult BBC sci-fi children’s show, The Changes.
Released as part of the BFI's forthcoming science fiction season, the 1976 after-school serial reflects a general mistrust of the technological changes that were occurring during a period of rampant modernisation in British society.
The Changes imagines a world in which machines and other forms of technology emit an overpowering wailing sound, causing all people to view them as wicked objects that must be destroyed. The effects of this are mass emigration across the English Channel and into Europe, leaving a few remaining groups of people to struggle their way through a lawless and virtually abandoned Britain.
Victoria Williams plays Nicky Gore, a teenage schoolgirl who gets left behind when her parents flee to France, only to befriend a group of Sikhs who take her under their wing. On their journey, Nicky and her newfound friends encounter a band of robbers, some hostile locals, a particularly menacing and totalitarian, evangelical minister and numerous other characters and scrapes as they seek to find the cause of and solution to the chaos engulfing Britain.
The series was released during a wave of Indian immigration into Britain, and so its sympathetic depiction of Sikhs as central characters who display a higher standard of etiquette, manners, morality and even physical strength than the white Britons they encounter, shows that even in the '70s the BBC was fulfilling its "educate, inform and entertain" mantra to the T.
Nicky befriends Ajeet, played by Rebecca Mascarenhas, a young girl of her age who is part of the Sikh group. Through her, Nicky learns to speak Punjabi and to respect the differences between the two cultures, and many sections of dialogue almost act as learning tools for the viewer to gain more insight into the Sikh way of life. These aspects of the series are a clear reminder that the show’s function was to provide young, white British kids with the knowledge to challenge and think outside the racial profiling that many Indian and other Asian families experienced upon arrival in the UK.
As the series progresses, Nicky leaves the Sikhs and travels to the Cotswolds in search of her aunt. While she is unable to locate her last remaining family member, she does make new friends in the shape of Johnathon, played by Keith Ashton, and his sister Margaret, played by Zuleika Robson. They rescue Nicky from death by stoning at the hands of a group of witch-obsessed villagers and help her escape on John’s tug boat. The latter act in the series follows Nicky and John’s investigation and revelation regarding the titular ‘changes’ and their supernatural source.
The release will please nostalgic fans of 70s and 80s BBC programming at the BBC to no end, as its suitably synth-tastic soundtrack and opening credits hark back to a simpler period of television making at the Beeb. In terms of production value, the BFI has done a fantastic job in re-mastering and cleaning up the show for a modern audience increasingly used to watching HD TV on a daily basis.
In terms of The Changes' merits as a TV programme, at times dialogue can appear a little hokey, while certain lines are so startlingly unrealistic that they would stick out like a sore thumb even on paper. There are, of course, the inevitable problems with a central cast consisting mainly of child actors, as lines are delivered flatly and often jar with the more polished aspects of the show’s production.
But ultimately, The Changes is intensely enjoyable and rewarding. The show was recommended for a teenage audience and it’s easy to see why. Its general premise alone – a young girl left behind to face a dangerous and dystopian Britain – makes it notably unsuitable for younger children, not to mention the angry racism faced by the Sikhs, the threats of murder, on-screen deaths and general downbeat feeling that the series manages to convey. For adult viewers, however, this merely raises it above the level of children's programming and makes for a genuinely enjoyable and entertaining watch. In fact, zombie fans will be familiar with the post-apocalyptic feel of the show, and it is worth remembering that The Changes, with its vacant buildings and pockets of humanity striving for survival, was released two years before George Romero’s seminal Dawn Of The Dead, yet preempts many of the themes explored in that film. Not bad for a ten-part, children’s miniseries made in England.
By Iain Todd
The Changes is out now and available at shop.bfi.org.uk
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