TV Review: Something Else — Frank Finds Out

TV Review from the January 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

One genuinely enjoyable piece of British TV — entertaining without pandering to racial prejudice or mocking traditional working class stereotypes and of particular interest for its insight into the capitalist system — was screened on October 8. The programme Frank Finds Out was part of the Something Else series, made by young people: it related the adventures of a young unemployed person, confused as to the reason for his plight, setting off to London on his bike, no less.

Frank's object is not to find work but to discover who is responsible for his life being run against his own interests — “The Guilty Ones" as he calls them. His investigation of the various institutions working to perpetuate the current system was often hilarious and sometimes very pointed. On the Prime Minister he comments: 

She won't listen to your point of view if you've only got a couple of quid; try donating £30,000 to the Party, that should get you invited in for a cup of tea and a chat. 

The Royal baby (“Who's a lucky boy then?") is shown to want for nothing while workers" children live in varying degrees of poverty.

On capitalist production and the minority ownership of land, the film was trenchant in its satire. For example there was Mr. Capitaling. derived from the advertisement character Mister Kipling, making "exceedingly large turnovers" and using his inherited capital to make a surplus from the bakers and then reinvest his profit. His workers buy back a proportion of what they have produced but are compelled to return to the ovens next week, to repeat the whole process over again. And when the warehouses are full? “Simple", says Mr. Capitaling. "I close down the works" —- and here we see the now sad-faced bakers trudging dutifully to the Job Centre.

Another character, the "Villain", the embodiment of the "criminal element" in the working class, tells us that he is regarded as a "Wrongdoer" by most of society. He proceeds to show, however, that the real crime is that the land-owning class claim divine right of possession, whereas in fact they obtained their land not through currently accepted means — "Did Henry VIII go to his nearest estate agent and negotiate for St. James Park?" — but as part of an historical process of appropriation.

The "Villain" asks whether god gave these people the land or whether they just took it and concludes with the following indictment:

As Winston Churchill almost said. "Never before in the field of human con tricks, has so much been stolen from so many by so few".

Of course the presentation of the Queen, the Prime Minister, the High Court Judges, civil servants and multinational corporations as the enemy of "the Guilty" suggests that the removal of these institutions, even if possible under capitalism. would end problems like unemployment. This is false optimism: only the establishment of a society of free access to goods and services will do that.

PR, JG