Rita, Sue and Bob too

[BeachBlondey]

As a Happy Valley fan, I was surprised to find out that the actors who played Nev and Clare in Happy Valley, were actually in two main roles of the Rita, Sue and Bob too film from the 80s.

It's made me think about that old film again, and I'm actually shocked that it was made at all.

There is some discussion online today about the film, and most comments are along the lines of "great film", "a British Classic", and so forth.

The plot (for those who haven't seen it), is centered around a fully grown married man, who seduces grooms two 15 year old school girls and engages in lots of sex with them, mainly in his car (iirc).

How the hell was this okay, to put this out as a comedy, even back then? And how can the majority of people who remember the film, still think it's a great British classic?

It wasn't a 'look isn't this fun and glamorous' film?!

It was an insight into attitudes and behaviours of some people, that others may well have been unaware of.

Bob... gets his kicks with these girls who are a laugh, they're easy, not just in a sexual sense but theres no real strings, there's no boring real adult life with them - it's just fun, and it gives him a huge ego boost, he can feel like the big man, like he has the power...

Rita and Sue - its exciting, its naughty, but they also feel to a certain degree that THEY have the power, over Bob anyway. It's not serious, its certainly better than being lonely, unloved, unwanted as far as they're concerned...

From the outside though, we can see that Bobs a creep, he's not big or powerful, his wife thinks he's a twat, he's immature and pathetic and grubby.

We can also see why Rita and Sue are excited by (so they think) leading this man on and messing with him, feeling mature and playing at adult behaviours. They're together in this secret, its something thats theirs not the other kids or adults around them - theres very little that is truly theirs in their lives at this moment! It's an escape.

The film shines a light on domestic violence, alcohol abuse, racism, predatory sexual behaviour, grooming, neglect, and much more.

It's a film! It is not a handbook on how people should lead their lives, and more than The Handmaid's Tale, Brighton Rock and countless other films, TV shows, dramas and theatre productions.

I was 14 in the 1970s. It was absolutely considered a good thing to have a much older boyfriend, one who could drive and take you to nice restaurants. A group of us used to hang around with some builders working on a property near the school. We weren't groomed, we actively sort them out. Should they have told us to go away, yes of course. They didn't. It was fairly tame though, flirting, no sex.

Basically - if they cut the last scene where Bob almost seems to have 'got it all' it would be a much more palatable story.

Wasn't it based on a play? I'm very much against censoring art. This new trend for 'cancelling' writers, singers, artists, etc, is appalling. It's the sort of thing you'd expect in 16th-century Puritan New England, or 1930s Russia. Even the word 'cancelling' could have been invented by Orwell.

It IS a troubling film, especially the ending. But then art should be troubling and controversial and challenging. It should pose difficult questions. If not, you're just left with bland, 'woke', politically correct garbage. I'm with Harold Bloom on this. He was outraged by the way politically-motivated critics attack the literary canon and try to replace top class writers with mediocre ones.

So many films and stories now don't mess about with ambiguity, something is either good or bad, and some people seem genuinely confounded when faced with flawed heroes or challenging concepts.

I have always seen it as a celebration of female friendship - the friendship between Rita and Sue is what enables them to survive. When they are temporarily estranged, everything goes wrong for them. By the end, it is clear that their menage with Bob will be on their terms, not his.

If anyone wants to see for themselves, it is currently on Britbox and ITVx, if you subscribe to either of those. It is described like this:

'Siobhan Finneran stars in this darkly funny drama set in Thatcher's Britain. A feckless husband finds the delights of his two teenage babysitters too much to resist'.

At least they said it was dark! I've only seen a bit of it I think, many years ago. I was put off by all the sex scenes etc which I found a bit crude and grubby, as was the Black Lace song. I must have been more puritanical in my early twenties than I thought!

I should give it another watch now though, it would be interesting to see Siobhan Finneran, who I think is great, as a young girl. Tragic about the author, Andrea Dunbar, you would think that becoming a successful writer might have saved her, but probably the damage caused by her upbringing was too great.

When I was 16 a boy in my class dated a 13 year old girl at the school. We all judged him harshly, but no one did anything.

A certain group of girls in my year would only date lads that were over 18, we were 14 at the time.

It's a film. You are under no obligation to watch it as you are under no obligation to watch any film, some which will be far worse.
Just watch peppa pig instead 😉

Andrea Dunbar, who wrote the original play, had a raw talent. If she were still alive today she could be as feted as Sally Wainright, had the circumstances not gone against her.

How many girls are still being groomed now? Just look at what happened in Rochdale.

Yes the last scene should have been cut . Disgusted with it at the time. Someone mentioned the Black Lace song We're Having a Gang Bang . Typical Benny Hill type comedy? Playing in social club with people of all ages doing the conga .
The author was not happy with the way some if the scenes were portrayed.

Crazy isn’t it. Back in the 70s you would have seemed very sophisticated and confident to have such an older boyfriend, never really giving a thought to how creepy the guy actually must have been. Makes my skin crawl to think how we saw things. I remember the Mandy Smith headlines very well - absolutely baffling how it was just accepted and treated as ‘showbiz’.

You are not wrong about there only being a veneer of condemnation for male groomers. I remember that case of the teacher kidnapping the student and even on this site, the amount of women twisting themselves into pretzels pretending to not understand why he was imprisoned.
The Guardian ran article after article , even one from a no adult woman who "had an affair" with her teacher as a child and because she had come out the other side sane, how it wasn't so bad.

The Guardian's pro ephebophilia in support of the kidnapper teacher (Jeremy Forrest) was so bad that it actually culminated in a pro PAEDEOPHILE article by Simon Hattenstone which attracted a comment from one of the guys who set up the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) Tom 'O'Carroll! I couldn't believe what I was seeing in real time and I, for one am not surprised at the Current Guardian's progressive misogyny in support of male infringement upon female spaces and support of female erasure.

This country doesn't like women or children and worse, the specific hatred of working class females comes from every quarter, Left, Right, all classes and every race within and from outside.

I , for one will never forget my then school friend who "lost her virginity" at age 13 to a twenty odd year old and was engaged to him within months with her parents' approval in 1985. Or my very clever , Oxford bound middle class school friend who on losing her mother to cancer at age fifteen "sought comfort" in sex and many many six formers had sex with her and the teachers knew and not a one did anything to stop it, maybe because she remained clever enough to do AS level at fifteen so they thought everything is okay ( I'm being sarcastic).

I've always thought the same but was sexually abused myself during my childhood. During my teenage years I let lads use me for sex. Slept with 3 rugby players when I was 18. I could probably do a film about my life come to think of it. But I would be ashamed of it was.

No idea why people are saying "it's not a comedy"
The description is "a comedy" or comedy drama. The imdb photos and taglines show that it was clearly marketed as a comedy, specifically an adult one. All the reviews refer to it as a comedy.

Yes perhaps the original story wasn't supposed to be a comedy, yes some of it might be "dark humour", yes there are elements of realism/subversion to it but it's ridiculous of posters to have a go at the OP as if she's stupid for referring to it as a comedy when that was clearly what it was created/marketed as.

Its gross and depressing. Thought this when it was made and still think so. Also the one with Emily Lloyd, Wish You Were Here. Grim

I got the talk from my mum to ignore if some girls my age thought it was sophisticated to date an older man, and it was explained why it was not a good idea. When my mum was at school her father visited a man who was showing an interest in her and told to stay away or else. He did. That was about 70 years ago, so the issue is not new, and neither is some adults realising it is wrong.

This.

Whatever some posters seem to think, the climate was very different back then, and on into the 90s too. I know women who were what we would identify now as groomed by pop stars in the 80s/90s, when they were as young as 13. And friends in school in the 80s who were in relationships with much older men, including our teachers.

And films/the media did tend to normalise it - even regarding being 'seduced' by an older man (or being the seducer groomer) as in some ways aspirational. Remember it's the same climate that allowed many latterly disgraced public figures to get away with their crimes for as long as they did, and commit them in the first place.

Wish You Were Here is another film in the same vein.

I'm not suggesting that these films should be boycotted it anything. But it's worth remembering how different things were then and how, although we've come a long way, there's still a lot to do.

It's not 'woke' to think normalising this sort of thing isn't great, whether it happened 40 years ago or yesterday.

It wasnt a comedy although it used comedy to look at the reality of life for people - which from my memory it was pretty spot on especially where I grew up in a similar northern town. I remember at school grown men would wait in their cars at the school gates.
Dysfunctional familes around me often lived the way it was depicted on screen, including my own.
You could look back on a whole bunch of films, sitcoms, comedy shows, reality TV and see things that are abohorent to us now.
Personally RS&BT is one of my favourite films as it reminds me of my childhood and the 80s generally, good and bad.

Wish you were here-based on the childhood of Cynthia Payne.

I mean back then we had tits on page 3 of a national newspaper - that to me is one of the most bizarre aspects of that time. That to me alone sets the bar of that era and things have moved on, but still in today's world we are uncovering so many shady disgusting men, it feels like things have been more covered up than totally changed.

Also the other day I was chatting to my friend - we are all in our 50s and most of them (women) had lost their viginity at age 13 to 14 all with men much older. I didnt do that thankgod but still very telling of that time. Gross!

Well Sam Fox was 16 wasn't ? she and there was lots of stuff about her being "'legal" it was just grim