TELEVISION Not one of the boys


Moving On: Losing My Religion BBC1


ho watches television during the day? The BBC’s commissioning guidelines tell us that “ideas must play equally well with a retired postman and a stay-at-home mum”. Then there are the unemployed, shift workers and, rumour has it, freelance journalists bereft of inspiration. Whoever they are, the BBC clearly thinks


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they are worth spending money on. It’s not all property, antiques and cooking shows. There is also new drama. Moving On is a series of 45-minute single dramas shown at 2.15 p.m. every weekday, whose writers were chosen – and tutored – by the executive pro- ducer Jimmy McGovern. Losing My Religion (BBC1, 10 November), by Shaun Duggan, told the story of a 15-year-old Catholic schoolboy being bullied. Despite the title, however, no one lost their faith. The play began with Jamie (Nico


Mirallegro) attending a First Communion Mass with his family. But he was thinking of the torment he had recently endured in the changing rooms at his all-boys’ school. The next day we saw him attacked in the play- ground and running away. That night his mother picked up a message on his telephone


comedians more or less unintelligible: when, in the early days of television, the BBC won- dered about a series featuring Tommy Morgan, there was serious talk of subtitles. Fyffe’s solution was to spruce up his patois, enhance the aspects of “Scottishness” that appealed to southern tastes (communality, drinking songs) and develop his considerable gift for character portraits. Some of these – notably the Glasgow drunk – were stereo- types. Others, such as the 94-year-old avid to get married to spite his heirs, were more subtle. There was an entertaining double- act with Harry Gordon, set in Gordon’s mythical Scots village of “Inversnecky”. Significantly, Fyffe also forged a lucrative career in films, a medium in which Scottish comedians rarely performed to advantage. Here he played a succession of solid, working- class types who, as one film historian put it, worked as caricatures but still carried conviction. He died in 1947, plagued by ear trouble that had pursued him since a childhood diving accident. If the subject himself was never quite differentiated enough from the world that sustained him (this may have been due to a lack of archive material) then the atmos- phere of interwar era light entertainment was winningly conveyed. Radio 4 ought to com- mission Ricky Ross to make a multi-part “History of Variety” forthwith. D.J. Taylor


and discovered the bullying and the reason for it. “You can’t run away forever, gay boy,” said the caller, while a chorus of Jamie’s class- mates jeered in the background. The play reminded us of the way technology has made bullying inescapable. A death threat arrived by text in the middle of the night; a picture message showed him cowering in the showers as his classmates tormented him. Jamie naturally denied being bullied, but his mother, Joanne (Ruth Gemmell), was deter- mined to confront the school. It was not a productive dialogue. Mr Georgeson (George Irving) said that boys often have a period of confusion about their sexuality, but that it was “something that the vast majority of them will grow out of”. Yes, she responded, but “what about the ones who don’t?” The head reminded her of the school’s Catholic tradition and told her it would act in a sensitive manner “which is in accordance with the Catholic faith”.


At home, Joanne searched on the internet


for “Homosexuality and Catholic schools”. Later, she sat up in bed reading the Bible and found the passage in Corinthians that lists homosexuals among those who will not inherit the kingdom of God. Jamie’s father, Dave (Hugo Speer), admitted he would be “gutted” if Jamie turned out to be gay. Unfortunately, Jamie was listening outside the door. The next day, he tried to kill himself. At the hos- pital, Joanne asked him if he was gay. He fell into her arms and sobbed. Joanne and Dave had another heart-to-heart. She had, she said, always known, but chose to ignore it: “And to top it all we put him in a school that believes being gay is a sin.”


Back in the headmaster’s study, Mr


Georgeson promised to act on the bullying, but was less reassuring on the matter of what is taught about homosexuality. The school could never be seen to be “advocating” homo- sexuality, he said, adding that the Bible was very clear about the consequences for those who “choose a homosexual lifestyle”. Joanne was enraged. “You don’t choose your sexuality,” she stormed. “The only thing you might choose is to hide it.” Her parish priest, though, proved less doc- trinaire. She told him she was worried about whether Jamie would still have a place in heaven if he was gay. Telling her that “me and Rome don’t exactly see eye to eye on this one”, Fr Dwyer (Tom Mannion) offered the view that God would never reject someone “for being true to themselves”. At home, Jamie told Joanne that almost


Nico Mirallegro as Jamie in Losing My Religion


everyone in the school had been involved in the bullying, and that the teachers knew about it and did nothing. Joanne confronted the headmaster one last time. They both spoke about faith, but she told him she was not con- vinced that they worshipped the same God, “because my God


would never turn his back on anyone. His love is not conditional, it’s not based on prej- udice and hatred.” She vowed never to send Jamie back. This was a quietly moving little play, with


fine performances and believable dialogue. The scenes between husband and wife, in which Dave revealed that he had been involved in homophobic bullying at the same school, 20 years earlier, were all too plausible. But its handling of the main issue was stark and heavy-handed. The difficulties for a traditional Catholic school in dealing with homosexuality are interesting enough: it really wasn’t necessary to suggest that homophobic bully - ing would be tolerated by the staff, nor to make the headmaster so stiff-necked and unsympathetic. John Morrish


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13 November 2010 | THE TABLET | 29


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