MovieChat Forums > Spender (1991) Discussion > Not a criticism, but oddly dated.

Not a criticism, but oddly dated.

posted 16 years ago by andyg35
13 replies | jump to latest

I was watching the first episode of this last night, first shown in 1991 and was struck by how oddly dated it seemed...the clothes, the cars, the dialogue etc....nothing too strange in that, after all its 17 years old. Strange thing was I'd previously watched an episode of Shoestring (1979) and that seemed curiously more contemporary than Spender. Not sure why, but I think a few late seventies/early eighties programmes seem to have aged a bit better than stuff from the nineties.

What do you reckon ?

AndyG

[–] 16 years ago

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[–] gb901 15 years ago

i couldnt agree more. Another reason could also be down to the fact that series such as Shoestring, Hill Street Blues et al were a class apart from the likes of run of the mill stuff such as Spender?

[–] 15 years ago

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[–] 15 years ago

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[–] spotlightne 14 years ago

LOL. I was an extra on the first show and I thought it was dated when we filmed it in September 1990!!

[–] Prismark10 13 years ago

These things go in and out of fashion.

It becomes dated and then some years later oddly feels less dated.

Its that man again!!

[–] huddersfieldtown5 13 years ago

Which character did you play mate? I'm keen to know as I ama big fan of Spender.

[–] missapril75 13 years ago

Funnily enough I've just been working my way through the series and I actually commented to my wife that it was surprisingly NOT dated.

A couple of Spender's shirts actually looked 10 years earlier than the early 90s but I've also seen people wearing shirts like it in the early 2000s.

I can imagine people interested in cars might notice older models but I didn't.

I reckon that if it wasn't for the mobile phone monstrosities a lot of viewers might have difficulty placing it.

[–] 13 years ago

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[–] pablo-taylor 12 years ago

Thing was with Spender that it seemed to be setting itself up as one thing (gritty, tough, contemporary cop drama) but was in fact another (light-weight, regional detective series) in that, despite the credentials of Le Frenais and Nailer and it's post-industrial, urban setting it was much closer to shows like Bergerac and Shoestring than the 'Sweeney for the nineties' it was often sold as (or the forerunner to Murphy's Law it perhaps should have been).

The Newcastle locations are used to good effect and Nailer and Sammy Johnson make engaging leads but judged twenty years on it seems cliched, far too light and rather inconsequential - Spender must also rank televisions least convincing undercover cop with some of the surveilance sequences being laughably bad.

[–] 12 years ago

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[–] 13 years ago

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