The BBC sitcom Terry & June is available to stream unedited in full, but a warning at the start of it has left one MP demanding his country back.
Starring June Whitfield and Terry Scott, the BBC sitcom Terry & June was a big hit for the corporation, particularly in the 1980s. It debuted in 1979, ran through until 1987, and the show has been made available to stream in full via the BritBox service.
To the best of my knowledge, not a single frame of the show has been edited or altered. In spite of if being a programme very much of its time, the decision has been made to leave the material in tact, and instead just add a warning at the start.
This seems a decent way of doing things. Retrospectively censoring material to modern sensitivities is a dangerous and evolving path. Letting people wander unwarned into family-targeted viewing with material that doesn’t sit quite as easily 30-plus years later can thus be easily avoided too, without everyone having to get their knickers in a twist. Everybody seems to win.
Oddly, though, the decision to now present Terry & June with a line at the start simply advising the programme “contains discriminatory language of the period” appears to have caused a kerfuffle. Primarily, it seems too, from people who thrive on industrialising division.
Former Labour party and Conservative party member Lee Anderson, for instance, seems quite cross. Now a Reform Party MP, Anderson has taken umbrage at a show that’s not been edited and is freely available. Here is the full context of his post, so as he is not quoted selectively.
Appreciating it’s an election year and politicians need drums to bang, I didn’t particularly think that Terry & June – freely available and in tact to BritBox subscribers – would be the latest front in the culture war. But, well, there are some knickers that appear more twistable than others.
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