[pressgang] How to Make a Killing and Both Sides of the Paper

[Katie Bird]

Thanks for your comments, Laura.

 

I actually find your point about the lack of forward planning about exams on the part of those who set up the JG a particularly interesting one – and something that has never really occurred to me before. 

 

Like you, I first watched Press Gang when I was rather younger than the characters onscreen. And perhaps it’s also because the British final school year and exam arrangements are so different to those here in Australia, but I’ve never previously connected Both Sides of the Paper to my own final year experience. Aside from the many other differences, Lynda’s combination of final year subjects would not have been unusual amongst my classmates (and I can recall that there were certainly at least some of these big exams where we were specifically told not to write on both sides of the paper.: ))

 

But thinking about it now, it is a bit odd that the issue that the JG might impact on anyone’s studies (adults included) until the exams were only 2 weeks away. Perhaps it’s the high school I attended, but the kind of time requirement that the JG (and Lynda) seems to demand would have been fairly unimaginable for most of my classmates across our final school year (let alone for their parents!) – and not just in the couple of weeks before the multiple sets of exams/assessments we had to complete that year. So I do feel more sympathy for Sarah now than I did when I first watched this episode at a far younger age – when I think I was firmly on Lynda’s side. 

 

But either way I do prefer the Press Gang model of being able to it all. And in retrospect, I do feel that being involved in the JG allows for far more career opportunities than spending a year or so enmeshed in school assessments and exam study.

 

Katie

 

 

 

From: pressgang [mailto:pressgang-bounces at lists.yoyo.org] On Behalf Of Laura Nunn
Sent: Saturday, 19 March 2022 4:26 AM
To: Press Gang Mailing List
Subject: [pressgang] How to Make a Killing and Both Sides of the Paper

 

We watched these a week apart over the last couple of weeks.

 

How to Make a Killing was never a favourite of mine as a teenager, but I appreciated it more as an adult, I think. I remember it feeling "preachy" at the time ("drugs are bad, kids") but actually, compared with children's TV these days, it's not particularly sanctimonious, and I really like the fact the focus is put on the people who shouldn't be selling the solvents rather than those who are taking them. Eldest girl felt this episode suffered from a lack of Colin, but she still liked it.

 

Both Sides of the Paper - this was a funny one for me. When I first watched it, I was too young to have experienced the horror of public exams. As an adult who still regularly has anxiety dreams about French Literature A-level revision, Sarah's dream sequences seem all too real. The plot is a bit odd - surely it's not the school children's job to plan ahead and shut down during exam time - that should have been scoped out by the adults when they set the JG up.

 

Also, Lynda is doing a really weird combination of A-levels (Maths, Physics, History, English), but that's by the by. She doesn't strike me as someone who'd be particularly good at science, given her later ineptitude with a mobile phone.

 

Eldest girl really liked this episode - plenty of Colin to amuse her - she loved that his exam kits kept getting more and more expensive.

 

I noticed that over the last few episodes, Spike and Lynda's relationship is changing from Spike propositioning Lynda and being repeatedly rebuffed (would be considered harassment these days!) to a more give-and-take friendship. It's handled nicely.

 

Paul Reynolds continues to act everyone else off screen. I'm surprised he never got a big break - there's star quality there beyond his years.

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