Nolly - ITVX, Just excellent 👏👏

[Netaporter]

Anyone else watched it yet? I’d Highly recommend. 3 parts, all available now. I’m old enough to remember Crossroads and Noele Gordon playing Meg. Wonderful drama about her sacking created by Russell T Davis and starring Helena BC who is just perfect casting.

Join in after you’ve watched it!

Thanks for the review! I missed it and then thought maybe I wont bother.

But have to say I find a lost of what Russell T Davis writes just a bit too cloying.

Anyhow, that's my evening sorted ...

I've been reading about her incredible life and career in preparation to watch this!

Looking forward to joining in.

I’ve watched the first episode and enjoyed it, particularly the recreation of some old Crossroads episodes. But I’m unsure about Helena Bonham-Carter in this. I just don’t buy her as Noele.

@Southeastdweller ooh I thought she had NG’s very haughty character spot on!

Noele was much more haughty than she seems in this.

As a teenager I worked Saturdays at the local co-op and Noele used to come in shopping with her mum. Don't know why, it wasn't her nearest supermarket and it was a bit grotty in a grotty area. They'd be like royalty visiting with the Rolls outside.

Looking forward to this! I wasn't "allowed" to watch Crossroads at home as it was on ITV (we were a BBC household) so had to watch at my auntie's.

Remember the sacking of Noelle well! And the shaky cardboard sets😂

My mom just told me that Noelle’s lunchtime show, Lunchbox came to do a show at the factory she worked in and she bunked off in her lunch hour to go and watch. She said she was very glamorous!

I remember seeing her in Rackhams in Birmingham - it was Birmingham's posh department store in those days. She was with an entourage and was wearing a glamorous looking fur coat. I remember her being very loud so it was impossible not to notice her.

Have watched episode 1. Very disappointed. Maybe it works for anyone who has a clearer memory of here. But coming to it cold it seemed a bit superficial. Or not getting the meaning of in jokes.

But may well watch more as the actual story seems really bad.

Or was it in fact because she was getting too big for her boots.

Would a lead male actor have been treated like that?

I have watched the first episode only and thought it was quite disappointing too. HBC hasn’t caught her at all I don’t think. Noelle was deep, rather gravelly voiced, proper matriarchal, commanding and rather fearsome. HBC just seems like HBC wearing a red wig (which looks nothing like NG).

I quite liked the one doing Ronald Allen (David Hunt) and seeing the old sets recreated was ace. But I felt most of the acting and dialogue was dodgier than the original Crossroads tbh.

will try again with ep 2, but I’m not impressed so far.

I felt the standard was a tribute to the Crossroads standard which made me laugh. She hasn't got Noelle's voice at all I agree with that. I did quite like spotting people, there's Miss Diane, there's Benny etc. I'd stopped watching it years before it came to an end though so some characters meant nothing to me.

It's awkward when you know places, I kept thinking things like, "Opposite Rackhams was nothing like that." The block of flats where she lived was nothing like the one they used. Of course most people aren't even going to register that sort of thing.

The fur coat and Rolls were just what I remembered.

Didn’t think much of it either - if you don’t remember crossroads it would be very confusing. Hated Mark Rylance as Larry Grayson. The whole thing felt very disjointed.

Oh yes, he was a very poor Larry Grayson.

she lived not far from me a lovely house came to open a local school fete and when dad used to drive by in his lorry she always would wave if she was in the garden.

I loved it! I am old enough to remember Crossroads and the sacking etc. I thought HBC was wonderful in getting Noele Gordon's sense of inflated self-importance, yet ever so slightly playing it for comic effect. In many ways, Noele Gordon was a ridiculous woman, but you have to hand it to her, she operated successfully in that misogynist industry (until she didn't, of course) I've really been liking HBC's work over the last decade and she also evoked sympathy for her subject, I thought.

I thought this was a good article about it
www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-64375326.amp

I'm old enough to remember Crossroads and I love HBC, so I was really looking forward to this. I watched the first two episodes last night. No subtitles available. In 2023. Really? I'm hard of hearing and listen to tele through v good head phones, but I miss words here and there, so I need subtitle s too.

I gave up on it 🙁

Have another look at your settings @user1471453601 I too am hard of hearing and I watched with subtitles - I've just checked incase I misremembered but yes, definitely subtitles.

@barbrahunter thanks I'll try again tomorrow and check (get my daughter to check 😁) my settings. I get sub titles on everything else with current settings so didn't think to check (get daughter to check).

i never really watched Crossroads but only remember Benny, Miss Diane, and the grey haired man.
who is the man friends with her
who is the man she loved?

I watched it all and didn’t think much of it. There wasn’t much of a story. Like Hugo Rifkind says today in The Times, the series was essentially that ‘she was in the show then she wasn’t’. The writing never captured the hurt she felt when she was sacked and I thought the general tone was too light. I can’t say I was moved at the end. And HBC was doing HBC yet again, which didn’t help.

Agree with this. ^ I was quite disappointed in it. I would give it say, 5 out of 10. Just average. I have been excited for this series since I saw it advertised in a magazine back in the Autumn. 'NOLLY, coming soon to the new streaming platform ITVX!' the headline cried out. I was looking for it for about 4 months, and was excited when I saw all 3 episodes were available on the 2nd of February.

Watched them all over the past few days, and I have to say I feel quite let down after watching it. I was expecting more. It was done quite badly IMO, and was fairly boring. I found it hard to stay with it, and found myself looking to see how much more time was left.

Apart from many of the cast looking quite a lot like the original actors and actresses, not much else impressed me.

Going straight in with her sacking quite early on in the first episode, and then just having what happened after it for the rest of the series was not what I was expecting, and not how they should have done it (IMO.)

It should have gone like....... have the sacking in the first 10 minutes of the first episode, and then have a '20 years ago' scenario, where you see the build up to it over the 3 episodes, and then return to the aftermath of the sacking in the third episode...

Also, there were too many drawn out scenes, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't see, or 'get' Helena Bonham Carter as Noele Gordon. It just simply didn't work for me. And as a pp said, the hurt and devastation caused by her sacking wasn't really emphasised as much as it should have been.

I don't regret watching it, or feel like 'that's 3 hours of my life I'll never get back' but I will never watch it again, and probably wouldn't recommend it.

I watched the complete series tonight. I moved from laughter to tears and thoroughly enjoyed it. I was young when Crossroads was on TV and my family were avid viewers. As soon as Poppy entered the room I could tell which actor was which character..Just wish they had had an Amy Turtle. I thought HBC made a decent Noel.

I've just started this, I've been looking forward to it so much. We were a hardcore Crossroads family in the 60s and 70s. I think that's how I caught the Neighbours bug so easily as it replaced CR in my life. Much as I love HBC, I don't think she's right for the part. Too pretty and delicate

I cut my soap teeth on Crossroads.

I bloody loved it.

I enjoyed this and the wee documentary about her. I’d forgotten how bloody striking she was.

Loved the scene on the bus.

Mark Gattis didn’t hit LG for me but when you remember and grew up with them all, then it is a big ask. Likewise with HBC.

But it was a fine couple of hours spent.