The Trial of Christine Keeler

[unique1986]

BBC drama starts 29th December 9pm

Yeah I know I'm early with this thread, but I can't wait.
I know nothing about this other than the brief articles I've read but it just looks like my kind of drama.

Still not feeling it.

I can't see the appeal of the CK character!

I think it is very well done.

It's a shame that young women didn't have many options back then, CK does mention that she would like to be a secretary but that she would need the money for the fees. She was living for the moment instead.

I can't see the appeal of the CK character!
I don't know that she's meant to be 'appealling'.

She was just an ordinary young woman who found herself in extraordinary circumstances.

I'm struggling with the timeline as well but l can see the logic of telling it in flashbacks to an extent.

"She was just an ordinary young woman who found herself in extraordinary circumstances."

Oh yes, but it doesn't make you want to watch when there's nothing about the characters to draw you in.

I think that many ordinary women of that time wouldn't have behaved as she did; particularly with the lack of birth control available.

Apparently she was abused by her step father and his circle. I feel sorry for her.

"I think that many ordinary women of that time wouldn't have behaved as she did;"

She probably thought that she was the one in control.

Pull the hair up into a pony tail. Then take the ends and make them hang like a bob. Probably held in place with loads of hair spray. I can remember trying to do it but it never worked.

Yes - a faux bob is how it's known in the fashion industry. I think!

I feel sorry for CK - she had an awful childhood - abused by her stepfather and others when babysitting, pregnant at 16 giving birth to a premature son and him dying days later then swept up by a wealthy deviant to serve priviledged men. Grim all around.

"Pull the hair up into a pony tail. Then take the ends and make them hang like a bob."

Is that how it's done?

Looks to me as if the ends are held under the hair by a ribbon that is worn as an hair band.

The film was excellent, this isn’t

Seconded. The BBC Website article is very snarky about the movie, but this is amateur stuff by comparison, and has nothing as brilliant as the "Apache" scene of Christine and Mandy making up to go out.

Anachronisms abound. Lazy research. Sliced bread came in waxed paper, not transparent plastic. Asking for a "Full English" would get you arrested for insanity. And Peter Rachman's rent collection would have been in ones and ten shilling notes. Fives and tens were not seen in public. Handing one to a waitress telling her to 'keep the change' would also get you arrested for insanity.

Etc.

The police must have had a full time job chasing after mad people.

Yes "Scandal" was an excellent film - this series is rather mediocre by comparison. John Hurt and Joanne Whalley were both perfectly cast.

I'm interested by the level of detail the series goes into compared to the previous film.

I know someone who met John Profumo in real life - some years after these events happened - she said he was immensely charming and handsome, you could see why Christine Keeler would have been attracted to him (not just because of his power & money). In the drama he is portrayed as a bit of a sleaze bag, not so in real life - although he obvs had other affairs too.

Maybe you had to be there, but going by pictures of John Profumo at the time, he wasn't my idea of immensely handsome!

There's an article in today's Times about the series. One of Stephen Ward's friends who's still alive, Tom Mangold, says that Profumo "shagged everything in sight".

All of the men in this sorry saga come across as being complete sleazes, seeing women as disposable playthings. I'd like to think things have changed since then, but sadly I'm not sure they have.

he wasn't my idea of immensely handsome!

Power does amazing things.

In 1962, the average weekly wage was £15, so handing the waitress a fiver was the equivalent of giving her over two hundred pounds today. Rachman's tenants would mostly have paid their rent in coins.

Profumo was a profligate womaniser, that's a fact. His beautiful trophy wife, Valerie, was also not quite as she has been portrayed but she had many difficulties. Enough said. Things aren't always what they seem.
The young women in Stephen Ward's coterie carried the can, especially Christine - though Stephen did commit suicide and there's nowt more final than that.

At the age of thirteen when this was the talk of every girl at school, I found it quite glamourous. I wasn't happy at home and had I been, say, seventeen at the time, I might have tried to enter into that world myself. I didn't but it was really fascinating and exciting to me and I hadn't developed 'proper morals' at that time, thought all the 'grown ups' were hypocrites.

Power does amazing things.

But if the series is to be believed, Keeler barely knew who he was when she started their 'relationship'. I doubt she was attracted to Profumo, more that sleazy Stephen Ward manipulated her into the 'relationship' for his own purposes.

I always understood Stephen Ward was homosexual - that hasn't so far been portrayed.

I also thought Stephen Ward was gay, but doesn't Christine say that he had shagged Mandy?

Yes, she said they had a one night stand. Iirc MRD also said the same in her memoir.