Description
OUT OF TOWN Volume 1
with JACK HARGREAVES
5 discs. Colour.
Running Time: approx 875 mins.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Two episodes of Southern Gold
• A Tribute to Jack Hargreaves
• Go! Learning to Fish
• Summer in Kite’s Country
Hugely popular and fondly remembered, Out of Town with Jack Hargreaves explored rural life in Britain, reflecting on its character, traditions, history and folklore. Each episode opens with Jack in his shed, pipe in hand, introducing the programme with an anecdote. Location films follow, each one an insight to life in the country: following a vet, visiting a fruit orchard or a fishing trip. Fishing was a regular feature, a favourite pastime for Jack. In one episode Michael Hordern joins him on a sea-fishing trip. Jack narrates the films, in a matter of fact, down to earth manner, as if having a chat in the snug of a charming pub. This volume contains the 35 editions that remain from 1980/1981, with the never broadcast 21st Anniversary Special plus an episode not previously released on DVD.
Jack Hargreaves OBE is remembered for appearing on How, a children’s programme about how things worked, which he conceived. His weekly magazine programme Out of Town was first broadcast in 1960 following the success of his series Gone Fishing. With a relaxed and amiable style, he offered viewers a fascinating insight into the ways of rural life of years gone by, as well as the dwindling traditions and values of the people who inhabited a world devoid of technology and who gratefully distanced themselves from the rat-race of modern life. In the introduction to his biography, Hargreaves wrote: “…I was asked to do a few television programmes about the old agrarian life. I had little hope for them because I believed people had become uninterested in the past. Anyway, the past crept up closer behind us. In 1986 the BBC, celebrating one of its customary anniversaries, put on a programme which was billed as a ‘period gem’. It was made in 1965. However, to my unending surprise, the Out of Town programmes went on for twenty-five years. I received and answered thousands of letters and met many more thousands of people, young, middle-aged and elderly. I learned that most of them in all generations think that something has gone seriously wrong with the world but can’t work out what. And I learned that for many of them the life I lived while I was growing up has become a desirable dream … the feeling of the old, small-farming life and the know-how of it.” The series was an instant hit as viewers tuned in each week to get a taste of rural life and a quickly disappearing world. By the late 1970s the English countryside had lost an area twice the size of Berkshire to urban development. “The only way to save the countryside”, said Jack “is to show people exactly what happens in it.” Out of Town presents a complete picture of country life in all its aspects. It is not a programme solely about fishing, nature or gardening, but all of these things as they affect the countryman. It remains a precious record of rural life in Britain, a nostalgic view of rural history told in a matter of fact and practical style by a man who truly understood the ways of the countryside.
