{"id":568,"date":"2006-06-13T02:20:54","date_gmt":"2006-06-13T01:20:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=568"},"modified":"2007-11-20T15:38:30","modified_gmt":"2007-11-20T15:38:30","slug":"gangsters-on-dvd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2006\/06\/13\/gangsters-on-dvd\/","title":{"rendered":"Gangsters on DVD"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/B000E1ZAAA\/sr=1-1\/qid=1150161001\/ref=pd_bowtega_1\/026-9185263-9602067?%5Fencoding=UTF8&amp;s=dvd&amp;v=glance\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/06\/gangsters.jpg\" id=\"image567\" alt=\"gangsters.jpg\" align=\"left\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/B000E1ZAAA\/sr=1-1\/qid=1150161001\/ref=pd_bowtega_1\/026-9185263-9602067?%5Fencoding=UTF8&amp;s=dvd&amp;v=glance\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Gangsters<\/em><\/a> is arguably the most unusual series ever shown on British television. Produced by BBC Pebble Mill between 1975 and 1978, what began as a tough and uncompromising attempt to depict Birmingham&#8217;s underworld had by the end of its run become a fully fledged work of&#8230;what?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>What indeed&#8230; Along with <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Prisoner\" target=\"_blank\"><em>The Prisoner<\/em><\/a>, my favourite British TV series. Patrick MacGoohan and Rover have the edge but <em>Gangsters<\/em> was still something else, the product of a period when the BBC was actively encouraging experimentation and the pushing of dramatic boundaries. Pulpy, trashy, provocative, thrilling and, in the later episodes, downright surreal&#8230; Hard to believe now that this was primetime viewing; British television was a unique place in the 1970s.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mjnewton.demon.co.uk\/tv\/ganglist.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Episode List<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2022 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mjnewton.demon.co.uk\/tv\/gangster.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Series Overview<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2022 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mjnewton.demon.co.uk\/tv\/martin.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Interview with writer Philip Martin<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Gangsters is arguably the most unusual series ever shown on British television. Produced by BBC Pebble Mill between 1975 and 1978, what began as a tough and uncompromising attempt to depict Birmingham&#8217;s underworld had by the end of its run become a fully fledged work of&#8230;what?&#8221; What indeed&#8230; Along with The Prisoner, my favourite British &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2006\/06\/13\/gangsters-on-dvd\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Gangsters on DVD&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[38,19],"tags":[67],"class_list":["post-568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pulp","category-television","tag-the-prisoner"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-9a","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}