Tenko

[JellySlice]

Anyone remember Tenko? I was in my teens when it was first on. Mum and I were riveted by it. I would like to watch it again - would I see it differently now, with a few more decades of life experience?

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng covers life in a camp (and is an amazing book) about a POW who becomes a judge overseeing war crimes

Tenko, along with Within These Walls, was something
i was only allowed to watch at my Nan's house. My mother disapproved of both. Tenkp has stayed with all these years.

@BikeRunSki

I also watched it as a teenager, and found it fascinating. I’m sure a modern remake would be far too saccharine.

Remakes now are terrible. Tv seems to go through periods where they can do them, and periods where they can't. The difference seems to be whether they can take the core ideas and stay true to them, and no one can do that now.

Like they are doing a Lord of the Rings spin-off with sex scenes - cause that's the sort of thing Tolkien was about...

I was quite young when Tenko was on but I remember feeling angry a lot of the time when watching it, as was my mum.

It would be interesting to see it again, knowing what I know now.

I agree, I'd be surprised if a remake didn't make it more palatable.

I watched this as a teen. Would love to watch it again

I watched it with my mum - (i was born early 70s) and the one scene that really stood out for me was when the lady who was 'in charge' (Verna Johnson (Rosemary Martin)) had a cat, and she gave it a raw egg, when the other women had nothing to eat

tenkotv.com/characters/

(just downloaded the lot from Daily Motion)

@IronTeeth

I watched it with my mum - (i was born early 70s) and the one scene that really stood out for me was when the lady who was 'in charge' (Verna Johnson (Rosemary Martin)) had a cat, and she gave it a raw egg, when the other women had nothing to eat

tenkotv.com/characters/

(just downloaded the lot from Daily Motion)

Yes, that stuck with me - I saw series 2, 3 and the Reunion back in the 80s - my mum was a huge fan. I would've been too young for series 1.

Marion's friend had sold her best dress to buy an egg for her little boy (which he then kindly tried to share with another child, horrifying his mum). Then - without giving too much away - her desperation to feed her son drove her to a terrible act ... and Verna was giving her cat eggs, milk and fish.

I love cats, but I know full well they can fend for themselves if they have to!

A friend of my grandmother was interred in a Japanese POW camp, and from what little ever said about her experience, showed that Tenko was tame by comparison.

I'm not sure about remakes in general.

Like they are doing a Lord of the Rings spin-off with sex scenes - cause that's the sort of thing Tolkien was about...

That's just wrong. There's no sex in LoTR.

I don't really want remakes of other things, either, especially when they were well done first time round. It's not like we've run out of good stories.

I don't think there's any need for a Tenko remake in the sense of using the same characters and storylines. There were many women interned in Japanese camps; there must be many stories to tell, so why not just make a completely new drama series about women internees? It would inevitably be compared to Tenko, but it's no bad thing for a series to have a high standard to live up to.

I loved it . All the performances were excellent. Stephanie Beecham - later known for soap and froth nonsense- was particularly strong. So was Stephanie Cole. But they were all great. I don't know that I could watch it again. It was very harrowing but necessary to see for my generation whose parents were in the war.

@newnortherner111

A friend of my grandmother was interred in a Japanese POW camp, and from what little ever said about her experience, showed that Tenko was tame by comparison.

I'm not sure about remakes in general.

My father was a prisoner of the japanese and always said that Tenko was like a holiday camp in comparison to the real thing so I totally understand what your grandmother’s friend was saying. The problem is that the reality was far too harsh to be portrayed in any television programme or film. When my father was released he weighed under 6 stone and was seriously ill. There is no way that they would be able to find actors that skeletal or who looked that sick so we have to cut them some slack on that. For me, what is important is that programmes like Tenko have brought about an awareness that this even happened. As a child of a Far East Prisoner of War I know how hard it has been for them to get any kind of recognition so, unlike my dad, I was happy to watch Tenko and appreciate it’s impact.

Has anyone seen Paradise Road? It is based on the same book by Lavinia Warner that inspired Tenko.

I agree with pp that any remake would be largely sanitised and so PC that it wouldn’t be worth watching.

I agree with pp that any remake would be largely sanitised

It's interesting to look at what wasn't deemed acceptable and was sanitised in the 80s. In the book I mentioned earlier, it explains in the 80s they weren't allowed to refer to 'lesbians' in the series, which is why this word is never used in relation to Nelly and Sally's almost-affair in series 1. This may well have been in keeping with 1940s values, as I can imagine gay relationships being even more 'unmentionable' in the mainstream back then.

I agree it was a brilliant programme but very upsetting - not sure I want to watch it again. I was a teenager at the time and I'm surprised my parents let me watch it. Didn't one woman who had sex with the Japanese soldiers have to have an abortion and another one who met up with British soldiers outside the camp was shot in the spine and paralysed?

I remember it well, it was riveting fascinating in an awful way. I remember really good performances and characters (but that was fairly unremarkable at the time I think).

Watched the series when it originally came out and found it very thought provoking.

I don't know if I've imagined this but I'm sure I saw an interview at the time with some of the actresses (actors?). They said the producers had asked them rather shamefacedly if for authenticity they would mind growing their underarm hair for the filming. And they hoped the request wouldn't upset their partners/husbands.

I also think I recall a resounding "if they don't like it they can jog on" response from the women.

Update on the boxset in Sainsburys: it's £20 not £14 - someone had put it on the wrong shelf.

On a tangent, I came across this last year (warning: it's horrific). Unit 731 was a Japanese army unit that carried out human experimentation during WW2, mostly on Chinese and Russian POWs. After the war it wasn't widely publicised in the West because (i) it was dismissed as communist propaganda and (ii) the USA gave the researchers immunity in exchange for the data from the research.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

I loved it as a child. I was pretty young to be watching it. I feel less guilty about letting my young teen dd watch love island this year.

I’d rather she’d watch Tenko though. It was brilliant. Not that she would.

Tenko, a town like Alice, and Brides of Christ were all strongly female aussie dramas I loved.

Must rewatch.

I watched this first time round. My DS2 was 9 years old at the time and I allowed him to stay up and watch it with me as he was fascinated by it.He could always remember every bit of the previous episodes as well!
I watched again on DVD a few years ago and throughly enjoyed it again.
I will have to ask my son if he remembers it, he is a grandfather now!.

I love Tenko and don't think there's ever been a series made with better female characters. Bea and Blanche are particular favourites. The production values are a bit shaky and I'm sure if it were made now they'd have found ways around Louise Jameson's pregnancy and filming conflicts so they didn't have to write one of the best characters out of part of series 2 and all of series 3, but I wouldn't like a remake. There was controversy about the show at the time but if it were remade now there would be accusations of colonialism, racism (even though the original was heavily sanitised, compared to what actually happened in the camps) and ignoring the Asian perspective of the war. There would be opinion pieces galore about the show concentrating on middle-class white women, even though a show so centred on women at all is a rarity. Woke critics fail to realise that a piece of fiction can only tell a story and never the whole story. I do think the original show could have done more to involve Asian women. Marion's servants were horribly underwritten, for example, and the woman who performs the abortion in series 2 was fascinating and could have been a more prominent character. Any remake would be walking a tightrope of modern sensibilities and the storytelling would suffer.

I watched the original and the rerun and felt that the story had lost none of its power in the telling or production values. I would love to see it again.

I really liked it. But it was very harrowing at times. I read it was much much worse than they depicted in the series. I wouldnt mind a remake.

EsmaCannonball, all excellent reasons to make a new show, not remake an old one.

It could be very different, but similarly good.

I don't think a modern remake would work. Firstly it would be handcuffed in political correctness and trying not to appear racist. But it was an era of inequalities, both within the Allied communities and between the Japanese and their prisoners. History is unpalatable.

The other reason I think that a modern remake would not work, is that it would likely be over-focused on the suffering. It would become misery-porn. As PPs have said, Tenko was a tame holiday camp compared to the reality. The awfulness of the women's situation does not need to be graphically portrayed - all we need is to know and understand that it was awful. Tenko was about the women's relationships, how they coped - or did not cope.