[pressgang] Episode 6 - INTERFACE

Laura Nunn laura.nunn at gmail.com
Wed Feb 23 18:35:03 GMT 2022


Eldest and I watched Interface this evening.

She found the scene with Spike's underwear hilarious.

Other than that, this wasn't a favourite of either of ours; Eldest actually
laughed out loud at the patronising round of applause for Billy. "Why are
they doing that, Mummy? He's just a person."

This episode seems to have massive plot holes. The only way it works is if
Spike is hugely lying to Lynda and pretending he knows nothing about the
clues which he magically helps to solve. Which I think would raise more
questions for Lynda, who isn't known to let this sort of thing go.

I wrote a longer review of this a few years back for the Press Gang at 25
project - pasted below if anyone's interested!





I’m going to lay it out for you. *Interface* has never been among my
favourite episodes. So if this is in your top five, you may wish to look
away now and think about Colin in a bunny suit, whilst humming Disco Info
songs to yourself…



The Junior Gazette hears of the Roxburgh Award – an opportunity to win a
computer for the newspaper (a lovely ahead-of-its time line from Colin, who
can “almost taste the computer; in megabytes”). We see the paper’s
progression through the various stages of the award over a few weeks, via
amusing scenes of Tiddler delivering post, including to a somnambulant
Frazz. One does wonder why the Junior Gazette gets quite so much post that
they need to make mail delivery a ‘thing’, and specifically, why anyone,
ever, would want to write to Frazz.

The computer is duly won and installed with a modem (a modem, folks! In
1989!) and then the proper narrative starts in earnest. And oh boy, is
there an awful lot of earnest.

Let’s test out this modem then. Danny (clearly because every other main
character was visiting their aunt in Sherrington that day) and Miss
Hessope/Jessope (I assume it’s double-barrelled) are in the school office,
sending wind-up messages to Lynda. There is no explanation as to why the
school needs a computer with a modem in 1989. I think we can just assume Mr
Winters has an ASCII porn fetish. He looks the type.

We learn Kenny’s dad has a computer and a modem. I have a theory about
Kenny; in the first series and flashback episodes, Kenny’s house seems
quite nice, quite middle class and he lives near Lynda. In later series, he
appears to live in a very grotty council flat and no longer seems to have a
dad. I am guessing the 1980s collapsed round Kenny’s stockbroking Dad’s
ears, his parents’ marriage failed, despite Kenny’s best intentions at
peacemaking and he emigrated to Australia to get away from the
unpleasantness. Right, good, that’s canon now.

Lynda goes a bit… unbalanced next. Yes, I know she’s still getting over her
heartbreak with James Armstrong, but I’m not sure we can completely excuse
her behaviour. Seeing Colin making a ‘virtue of a necessity’ and selling
the Mystery Writer angle, Lynda suggests she’s not selling papers so much
as selling her soul. Yes Lynda. Selling the Junior Gazette to children is
selling your soul. This is especially the case when the Mystery Writer’s TV
column is about Miss Marple, which as every teenager knows, is a gateway
drug to Inspector Morse, and nothing good comes of that. I hear that’s how
Whatsisname started, on a bit of Marple, nothing serious. Before he knew
it, he was mainlining Columbo and the rest is history.

As the queue of Mystery Writers lines up (including Steven Moffat pulling a
Hitchcock* for the very sharp-eyed), Lynda continues to overreact, talking
to a blank computer screen, telling the Mystery Writer that he’s “ruining
her life”. Bit strong Lynda, bit strong. Save something for *There Are
Crocodiles*. Interestingly she seems a lot less bothered about anonymous
articles when it comes to *Friends Like These* and removing Sarah’s name
from the article. Maybe, what with her life already ruined and all, she’s
just stopped caring.

Lynda decides to pop over to Spike’s house to pick his brains about the
whole Mystery Writer situation, and a lovely scene unfolds where Spike
thrusts his dirty underwear at her (not in that way), mistaking her for his
father. Lynda’s “I can’t tell you how much this means to me” is perfectly
delivered, as is Spike’s reaction. In order to facilitate conversation,
they decide to play Trivial Pursuits. This seems to be entirely like
Trivial Pursuit, but with an extra ‘s’ on the end. Perhaps it is the
Norbridge edition.


Lynda and Spike are in detective mode, working out that from the page
number from the Roxburgh Award advert, and a film showing at the cinema,
they should be going to 26 Laurel Avenue. What a load of shit. Totally
impossible, would never happen. The unison, Famous Five, ‘Laurel Avenue’ is
enough to make you vom. Don’t. Hold onto it; you’re going to need it in
about ten minutes’ time.

Onto Laurel Avenue, and Lynda enters the house alone, despite Mr Homer’s
best serial killer impression. He looks a bit like Mr Winters and Matt
Kerr; I wonder if the casting director got a buy-two-get-one-free on
middle-aged gingers.



Anyway, Lynda finally meets Billy, and another nice line, “You’ll
understand if I don’t get up”. Moffat certainly shows the ability to bring
bathos and humour to the character. Billy doesn’t want to talk to Lynda, so
she pops off for a chat with the serial killer instead, and helps him with
the drying up. Mr Homer explains he got the computer from work, “What’s one
computer to Roxburgh’s?” Hmm, in the 1980s, I’d guess at about £1500, or to
put it another way, about 3 months’ average salary in 1989. It seems
unlikely that his boss would have OK’d this. I suspect fraud. Perhaps
something for the Junior Gazette to investigate at another time. Spike, who
evidently doesn’t believe in doorbells, appears in Mr Homer’s kitchen just
in time to hear Lynda say that he’s kind of sweet, and in another lovely
moment, we get to hear “I can’t tell you how much this means to me” thrown
back at Da Boss. It becomes clear that Spike was the man on the inside, as
an old friend of Billy’s, rather undermining all his clever ‘detective’
work earlier in the episode.

Lynda does a great job of treating Billy as she would treat any other
member of the news team – “be there or forget about the Junior Gazette
altogether”. One wonders why she’s so bothered about this, as the Mystery
Writer features is proving a boon for sales, but – as we realised before –
Lynda equates selling copies of her newspaper with selling her soul.
Perhaps she’s in the wrong job.

Anyway, fast forward to the team meeting, and it doesn’t look like Billy’s
coming, so they crack on. But oh – look, just as they’re about to start,
the newsroom doors swing open and who is it, but our favourite serial
killer/fraudster, and his disabled son. You know that vomit you were
holding onto earlier? Release it now. Spike starts to slow-hand clap. The
rest of the news team joins in. Tiddler actually gives him a standing
ovation.

If I were Billy, I’d have wheeled myself right out of the newsroom, and
would have been sure to leave massive scrape marks all along their
corridor. But he doesn’t. Lynda, at least, continues to treat him like any
other member of the team and asks for the minutes to read: “Billy Homer –
late”.


*not a euphemism



On Tue, 22 Feb 2022 at 22:38, Vince Deehan <vince.deehan at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks Claire for the kind words.
>
> Thanks Calum for the Internet background info.
>
> Vince
>
> On Tue, Feb 22, 2022 at 11:43 AM Calum Benson <scottishwildcat at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> > On 21 Feb 2022, at 17:17, Katarina Hjärpe <katarina.hjarpe at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > Den mån 21 feb. 2022 kl 14:57 skrev Vince Deehan <
>> vince.deehan at gmail.com>:
>> > The very early use of the Internet, given that it was filmed in 1988,
>> is pretty mind blowing. I guess it wasn’t called ‘The Internet’ at that
>> time. I’m no expert, but I am guessing the technology they are using had
>> been around for quite some time for use by scientists and computer boffins
>> and high tech industries, but had only recently started to be available to
>> the public?
>> >
>> > I think it was called the Internet, because when I was doing a study
>> among online fans around 2000 and asked them how many of them had been
>> around before the Internet, I got lectured about how old the Internet was.
>> I've forgotten how old it was, though! :-)
>>
>> <boring nerd stuff>
>>
>> Yep, the term "internet" was coined in 1974 [1]. The first bit of the
>> "internet", called ARPANET, was developed in the late 1960's. As Vince
>> says, though, the internet only really connected educational and government
>> institutions until well into the 1980's.
>>
>> Surprisingly, it was 1992 before the first dial-up internet services
>> became available for people to use at home. (Things like bulletin boards,
>> AOL and CompuServe existed before that, but they were standalone services
>> that weren't technically part of "the internet".)
>>
>> [1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc675
>>
>> </boring nerd stuff>
>> _______________________________________________
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