The Rubber-Keyed Wonder review | A detailed, affectionate documentary about the ZX Spectrum

the rubber keyed wonder
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From the makers of From Bedrooms To Billions comes The Rubber-Keyed Wonder, a documentary about the ZX Spectrum and its inventor, Sir Clive Sinclair. Our review:


There was a time when the games industry was almost alarmingly casual about its own legacy ā€“ it’s only relatively recently that the preservation of videogames, hardware, and the stories of the people that make them have been considered important enough to set down for posterity.

The latest documentary from filmmaking couple Anthony and Nicola Caulfield (From Bedrooms To Billions), The Rubber-Keyed Wonder steps in to capture the recollections of the people who developed and programmed the Sinclair ZX Spectrum ā€“ an 8-bit computer that, arguably more than any other, helped ignite the British videogaming scene back in the early 1980s.

It sadly arrives too late to interview its inventor, Sir Clive Sinclair ā€“ he passed away in 2021 ā€“ but through conversations with family members and former colleagues who worked with him, The Rubber-Keyed Wonder still captures his mercurial personality, and the extraordinary drive that led to his computer’s creation.

Because while the ZX Spectrum is a focal point for the Caulfields’ story, it also spreads its net wider, detailing the inventions that helped make Sinclair’s name in the 1970s, including his pioneering pocket calculator and a wonderful-looking yet fatally flawed digital wristwatch (easily defeated by the static from a nylon carpet). Then there are the computers: the bare-bones, build-it-yourself MK14; the futuristic, pale ZX80, which someone correctly observes looks like something that floated in from the production 2001: A Space Odyssey; and that machine’s immediate successor, the ZX81.

All of which builds to the ZX Spectrum itself ā€“ a system that, with its small form factor and squidgy little keys (which are elastomeric, not rubber, fact fans) went on to sell a staggering five million units over its lifetime. Its affordable price, emerging in an era when computers were largely the playthings of the rich, endeared it to families across the UK and parts of Europe ā€“ and despite its hardware limitations, it quickly became a go-to games machine.

All of which baffled Sir Clive himself, who expected his little computer to be used by families to sort out mundane things like bookkeeping. The Rubber-Keyed Wonder deftly explores how his drive to keep making things turned his company, soon best known as Sinclair Research after a few name changes, into a British success story ā€“ and how his restlessness eventually hastened its demise.

Read more: The Rubber-Keyed Wonder interview | Filmmakers Nicola and Anthony Caulfield on their new ZX Spectrum documentary

Indeed, the Caulfields’ documentary, aided by contributions from such figures as Nigel Searle, the company’s managing director, and several engineers who worked on the Spectrum, makes a solid case for Sir Clive being the British equivalent of Steve Jobs. Not all of his ideas worked, but they were often ahead of the curve by several years; he was at least along the right lines when he dreamed up the C5, an early electric vehicle, and it’s quite eerie, looking back from our vantage point in 2024, to note that he set up a separate company called MetaLab, partly for research into artificial intelligence. Regrettably, none of these earned Sinclair Research itself the money it needed, and after the failure of another computer, the QL, the company wound up being sold to rival firm Amstrad.

It’s a classic rise and fall tale, then, coloured by some insightful and sparky interviews. The programmers of some of the Spectrum’s best-known games share their memories (Saboteur’s creator Clive Townsend, amusingly, cops to there being a bug in his ground-breaking ninja action game that allowed players to finish it too early); Sandy White, who developed the similarly pioneering Ant-Attack, even shoots an amusing sequence for the documentary in which an MK14 kit is lovingly soldered together to the music from an adult film.

There are also some terrific anecdotes from Alison Maguire, Sinclair Research’s former software director. In a standout moment, she recalls how little interest Sir Clive took in her idea of producing a line of educational titles, at least until she somehow managed to convince former prime minister Harold MacMillan ā€“ by then aged 94 ā€“ to come to its launch event. What happened at that event, as Sir Clive got to meet one of his political heroes, is both funny and oddly disarming.

Unabashedly affectionate towards its subject, and single-minded in its effort to re-create the sensations of a more tactile era in tech, The Rubber-Keyed Wonder captures a 1980s computer scene in beguiling detail. It’s also a compelling portrait of Sir Clive Sinclair himself ā€“ one of the UK’s more unlikely celebrities of the era, and among the country’s most important inventors.

The Rubber-Keyed Wonder is in select UK cinemas now, and is also available to purchase on DVD and Blu-ray. You can find details of screenings ā€“ or purchase a disc ā€“ on Gracious Filmsā€™ website.

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