ianlouisiana BBC's "Panorama" has yet to show an episode entitled "The Joy of Bestiality".Now that may be a matter of regret for some but I daresay most viewers are happy that censorship in some for or another is enforced at the national self - styled "centre of broadcasting excellence".Equally your children are unlikely to be confronted by CBBC transmitting "Paedophilia for Kiddies".In some small measure this circumstance prevails because a middle aged provincial schoolteacher took on the might and arrogance of the British Broadcasting Corporation nearly fifty years ago,and despite she and her family being vilified in the liberal press and of course by the BBC's coterie of in - house intellectuals who believe it is their God - given duty to shock us proles and mock our chavvish bourgeois morality. The D.G. of the BBC at the time was the megalomaniacal Sir Hugh Carleton - Greene who resisted any whiff of censorship with a rage Pavlov's Jack Russell would have been proud of. But,unbelievably,the peasants who supported Mrs Whithouse made up a significant proportion of his viewing figures and her steely determination - with the indefatigable support of her husband who was himself the victim of an appalling campaign of mockery by those oh - so - smug writers and producers who shamefully seized on the fact that he was involved(although blameless) in a fatal Traffic Accident at the height of his wife's campaign. Clearly quite mad it is a matter of shame that Carleton - Greene was able to hang onto his job for so long. But sometimes it does appear that God is on the side of the small battalions because Mrs Whitehouse won her personal war of attrition and the D.G. was forced to step down. His hatred of censorship did not extend to giving his opponents the right to reply,a nicety he did not lose any sleep over. In "Filth - the Mary Whitehouse story",Mrs Whitehouse is portrayed as a Mrs Grundy for the 1960s,the sort of woman who would place a cover over the legs of her piano. In settling for parody the producers have been fair - minded as the D.G. himself is made out to be a foul - mouthed, sexist skirt - chaser who presumably - we are meant to believe - wouldn't last ten minutes in the 21st century diversity - centred BBC.Well,maybe. Miss Julie Walters gives her considerable all in the title role,falling just the right side of caricature although her Brummie accent thickens considerably when the actress wishes to patronise. This is just an old battle in an old war now of course but,just occasionally,the Whitehouse Spirit resurrects itself when some overpaid oaf steps over the line and outrages the peasants(Viz:- Ross and Brand last year)and the Corporation is forced to rattle a few sabres. But,generally speaking we get the broadcasting media the "Guardian" readers deserve and the rest of us can either like it or lump it. I must admit that generally I choose to lump it.

davideo-2 STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning Early sixties Britain is still a fairly innocent place and Mary Whitehouse (Julie Walters), a suburban local art teacher and church-goer, lives a dainty little English existence in her quiet, dainty little Midlands village. But she becomes outraged by what she sees as declining standards on British TV, with more regular, casual bad language, sex talk and violence. The film portrays her real life crusade to 'clean up TV', bringing her into conflict with Hugh Greene (Hugh Bonneville) the new Programmes Commissioner at the BBC, who's moving with the times more and showing programmes more suited to the changing social attitudes.It's interesting to note what a puritanical society we used to be not really so long ago, especially when we comment on the Americans and their prudish standards they still have on mainstream TV. Maybe it's the age I've been raised in but I've always been one for freedom of expression and mature adults being allowed to see what they want, so Mary Whitehouse was never a character that was going to agree with me. But even if you think her campaigns were misguided, you have to admire her determination and conviction of her will, which this very well made TV drama has portrayed.The main thing that drives it is two superb lead performances. In the title role, Walters gives it her all as the quaint English lady with an unwavering moral compass who is forced to come to terms with society's changing ideals, attitudes, morals and beliefs while leading her campaign and similarly Bonneville is also great as the arrogant TV chief who bites off more than he can chew with the little guy.Both the characters are very well written too, along with the script, which really gets you involved with the story, which is engaging and enthralling but refreshingly humorous, too, although in a manner risqué enough, ironically, to get Mrs Whitehouse up in arms about. ****

Martin Bradley I never did have much truck with Mary Whitehouse. In the early days her heart was probably in the right place, bless her. She saw the onslaught of the permissive society as a catastrophe for the moral fibre of the nation while homosexuality and pre-martial sex were the start of the slippery slope to hellfire and damnation. She was right, to the teeniest, weeniest degree, about what our children should or should not be exposed to and that full frontal nudity and sodomy might do more than frighten the horses when we are about to sit down to our evening meal. But she was also a bigot, the narrowness of whose vision would have been awesome were it not so awesomely worrying. And she never listened; never took on board the opinion of anyone but herself."Filth" starts off portraying her as a sympathetic, matronly type, a school mistress with a genuine affection for her students, and a caring wife and mother, quite prepared to enjoy a bit of the old heave-ho herself in the sanctity of the marriage bed. But the moment television started to reflect the real world as it was in the early sixties, (heaving and ho-ing outside the marriage bed, cussing and swearing on every street corner), Mary had apoplexy and demanded that Sir Hugh Carleton Greene, Director General of the BBC, call a halt to it.Now I am not knocking morality. There is right and there is wrong and there is the expression of both but there is also freedom of speech; there are often two sides of almost every story and there's nowt as queer as folk, as they say. Mary simply didn't see it that way. She didn't so much quote the Bible as rewrite it in her own words. Interestingly, "Filth" began by making her sympathetic, (as I've said, her heart was in the right place), and making Carleton Greene the villain of the piece, (sexist, patronizing, condescending, arrogant, you name it), but as Mary's fame grew, (she came to love the limelight, the attention and above all, the power she wielded), our sympathies shifted to the poor, put-upon Greene, driven close to bonkers by this needling, insidious little woman.Were it not for the fact that she strove to silence all forms of expression with which she didn't agree, destroying reputations and careers as she went, she might just have been considered another eccentric and I worried that Julie Walters would play her as an extension of her eccentric persona's such as Mrs Overall. However, I really ought to have had more faith in Walters who is one of our finest actresses and who is outstanding here. (The fact that she made me almost like Mary is testimony to that). Hugh Bonneville, too, had a lot to do with making Greene change from arrogant snob to crusader to victim in the space of ninety minutes. (The film only concentrates on the period of the 'feud' between Whitehouse and Greene).Perhaps the writing could have been sharper at times, though the period was beautifully delineated from the outset. This was indeed a vanished England of simplicity and innocence that made you wonder, at least initially, if Mrs. W might not have been right about the tide of 'filth' that was coming down the tube to change it all. But as you watched her change from village school-ma-rm to Mussolini in a twin-set and pearls, you realized it wasn't the 'filth' was was the problem but the knight in very tarnished armour.

richard-338 It is a strange experience, seeing family members being portrayed by actors, and events for which one has a well-established store of mental pictures being re-presented through the director's eyes. It was never going to be entertaining. It was hard to see Ernest's trauma (he never fully recovered) of the road suicide being played out for a casual audience. After a lifetime of watching vitriolic attacks on Mary, we inevitably found ourselves watching and waiting for the 'catch'. But in general, the play was kind to Mary and hard on Greene, and I can see that the tussle between them is a perfect dramatic vehicle for a romp through the prejudices of the baby boomer generation, given spice by the addition of a relatively serious take on Mary's aims which the BBC was so reluctant to afford her at the time. I can't comment on the production values, which had at the start a bit of an 'acorn antiques' flavour. The bicycle-riding, dowdy, local gossipy lady is a Walters 'character' which bears little relationship to Mary's life or character. Her moment of snapping and snarling at the kissing couple in the car was absolutely unlike her. The portrayal of the three abstentious sons at the party (the eldest was married and had long left home by then, and wasn't there) was an irritating but unimportant misrepresentation. Mary's seriousness of intention, however, does emerge when portrayed on the platform, and some of her 'charisma' also is conveyed. The main flaw is the total omission of the fact that Mary was portrayed as an art teacher. Yes, she was an art teacher, but had been given responsibility for moral and sex education in the school, at a time when such an activity had no road map. It was a pioneering role which she had been asked to play. It was concerns arising from serious, timetabled discussion which drove her to deal with pressures on the kids from the outside world, rather than a personal, (Intrusive?) interest in the lives of her pupils. This has the effect of emphasising the common perception that she was a self-appointed moral guardian; at the start, she was not!