❉ Mark Cunliffe on a forgotten drama firmly rooted in the late ’80s .
Those that do remember Thin Air, recall it fondly and fervently. A key example of this lies in a Gareth McLean article for The Guardian in 2008, in which he ponders on why it has become so forgotten. “It’s so obscure that it doesn’t have a Wikipedia entry and there’s not a whiff of it on YouTube, ” he wrote.
Here’s a miniseries that seems to have disappeared into…well, thin air, appropriately enough. Despite being broadcast on primetime BBC1, 9:30 on Friday evenings back in 1988 (though I could have sworn it was BBC2) and capturing the zeitgeist of the day, Thin Air has been allowed to fade into obscurity, and that’s a bit of a shame really.
Thin Air tells the story of a London commercial radio station, Urban Air, and the developing enterprise zone of London’s long-decrepit docklands, Riverside. As the Thatcherite yuppies carve up the real estate and airwaves for themselves, the local communities are forced out and the local Labour authorities are rendered powerless to help. Beneath all this noise lies the corruption that powers these sweeping socioeconomic changes; bribes and bungs, industrial sabotage and a new designer drug that’s hitting the capital with links to the Hong Kong Mafia.
When Urban Air’s ace reporter Samantha Graham (the Communards’ Sarah Jane Morris) is found murdered on the station premises during its tenth anniversary celebrations, it becomes clear she got a little too close to the truth. It’s left to her junior colleague Rachel Hamilton (Kate Hardie) to take up the baton of her investigation and uncover both her killer and the rotten foundations the future of London is being built upon.
Those that do remember Thin Air, recall it fondly and fervently. A key example of this lies in a Gareth McLean article for The Guardian in 2008, in which he ponders on why it has become so forgotten. “It’s so obscure that it doesn’t have a Wikipedia entry and there’s not a whiff of it on YouTube, ” he wrote. Yet despite his championing of it, even McLean’s memory lost some of the finer points of the drama. “It was a thriller about a corruption-uncovering radio reporter played by Kate Hardie,” he explained. “Though the finer points of what precisely the corruption was (and why) escapes me. I remember bits of it vividly – most notably the sometime Communards collaborator Sarah Jane Morris lying dead in a radio studio. I also recall having a crush on Hardie but that’s less relevant here.”
Oh Gareth, everyone had crushes on Kate Hardie. Bagging the lead role at the age of just twenty, it was another step in a very successful 1980s and 1990s career peak. I suspect the role was given to her by the series director, the much-missed Antonia Bird. Even at this stage in her career, Bird had something of a rep company she liked to call upon, utilising performers she had directed in episodes of EastEnders and Casualty; Hardie, Brian Bovell, Peter Lovstrom, Andrew Johnson, James Snell, Robert Pugh, all had come from this background, and would be used again and again. Indeed, Thin Air‘s producer Caroline Oulton, would return to the BBC a year later with Bird for the feminist private detective drama South of the Border (another much loved in its day now cruelly neglected) which co-starred Bovell.
The rest of the cast was made up of Nicky Henson, with the sleeves of his designer suit rolled up to his elbows, as the radio station boss, dockland developer and ultimate yuppie, Kevin McNally as the left-wing activist thorn in his side, and Clive Merrison as a shady American business partner of Henson’s whose deadly muscle, Robert Pugh’s former Hong Kong cop, lends the series its menacing air.
Then there’s Sam Kelly as a harassed news editor who (unrealistically, given what we now know) was forced out of a promising BBC career many years ago because he was too ‘hands on’ with female colleagues, and James Aubrey sporting an embarrassing ponytail and a Patridge-esque silk bomber jacket as the station’s Mid-Atlantic breakfast DJ whose annoying pep may have something to do with the new drug, ‘Fizzies’. In contrast, Bovell’s laidback late-night DJ is a soothing, sedate wordsmith nursing a broken heart following the murder of Morris’ Samantha, who he had a scene with. You can even spot a pre-Birds of a Feather Linda Robson as one of the disenfranchised locals involved in McNally’s anarchic campaigns, and Burt Kwouk as the man from Hong Kong of course.
There’s a lot going on in Thin Air, the sole credit of its writers Peter Busby and Sarah Dunant. Does it always pay off? I’m not entirely convinced. But do you know what, I prefer something with a wealth of ideas and a passionate, urgent voice to something without ambition and no desire to frighten the horses. Thin Air certainly captured the moment. It’s so firmly rooted in the late ’80s and its concerns, yet it weirdly feels less dated than the heavily stylised Dead Head which is far more celebrated to this day. And, because it is set in the world of radio, it’s got a great soundtrack – which probably explains why it has never been released to DVD. The rights would be a bastard ton egotiate.
❉ ‘Thin Air’ was broadcast on BBC1 in the Spring of 1988 and was written by Sarah Dunant and Peter Busby.
❉ Mark Cunliffe is a regular contributor to The Geek Show and has written several collector’s booklet essays for a number of releases from Arrow Video and Arrow Academy.
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