The ”colossal compromise” Mike Leigh needed to make for his first big hit
From the moment Mike Leigh began his career, he established himself as a master of telling the truth.
Concentrating his efforts on bringing gritty stories of working-class life to the big screen, Leigh, alongside the likes of Alan Clarke and Ken Loach, continued the British tradition of social realism into the 1980s and beyond.
But he wouldn’t have become the acclaimed filmmaker behind iconic British movies like the grim Naked or the moving family drama Secrets and Lies if not for his tenure as a writer and director of various TV plays in the ‘70s. Leigh made his film debut in 1971 with Bleak Moments, but in the decade between that and his next theatrical feature release, he predominantly dedicated himself to the BBC’s Play for Today anthology series.
TV plays were a vital playground for many young British filmmakers like Leigh and Loach, who brought affecting stories to viewers who probably got a lot more than they bargained for when switching on the telly after a long day of work… I mean, just look at how upsetting Loach’s Cathy Come Home is.
Leigh has always taken a slightly more humorous approach to social realism, though, long expressing a knack for witty writing as a way to communicate social ills or governmental failure – in Nuts in May, for example, Leigh used a deeply satirical approach to explore class tensions, ridiculing its characters with perfect believability.
The star of Nuts in May was undoubtedly Alison Steadman, whose accent alone is comedy gold. Leigh and Steadman were already in a relationship when filming began, and they continued to act as regular collaborators with one another until their split in the ‘90s. Yet, none was more iconic than her turn in Abigail’s Party. Released in 1977, the Play for Today episode is perhaps the thing that really put Leigh on the map, although he’d first devised it as a play for the stage.
Adapted for television that same year, Abigail’s Party saw Leigh delve into the world of the new middle class of the ‘70s, satirising its characters’ approach to taste and etiquette. Steadman is terrific as Beverley, the party’s flamboyant and annoying host, and it remains one of her greatest performances. Leigh made something truly extraordinary, but it wouldn’t be long until he would go on to bring this talent to the big screen.
Yet, when he was making Abigail’s Party, he found that he had to make a “colossal compromise,” something that made him realise that one of the most important skills needed when making films is that of being able to adapt. Music plays a big part in the play, representing the character’s tastes and what they consider to be refined, using it to rather humorously impress the party guests.
“For byzantine copyright reasons, the BBC insisted I change some of the live music integral to the action. Thus, Elvis was replaced by Tom Jones, and José Feliciano by Demis Roussos,” Leigh wrote for a piece in The Guardian. “This was, of course, a colossal compromise. Tom Jones just isn’t the same thing as Elvis Presley.”
Certainly, Jones isn’t remotely on par with Presley, and Leigh was surely irritated that copyright laws forced him to change what had worked so well on stage. Now, though, he doesn’t seem to mind at all. Leigh concluded, “But, replacement though he was, Demis Roussos became, after the TV broadcast, so inextricably associated with the play that I now allow stage revivals to feature him (If you’re doing so, replace Laurence’s ‘that blind Spaniard’ with ‘that fat Greek’).”
