Last night i watched the BBC telecast of Rodney Ackland's play Absolute Hell, which I found amazing for its boldness both as a play produced in 1950 and as a telecast. The cable stations wouldn't balk at it, but NBC, CBS, and ABC would have heebie jeebies at the frank discussions about sex in all shapes and sizes in a 1945 Lonson "club-gay bar." It was great fun seeing a lot of BBC actors like Francesca Annis letting go of her corsets and playing a woman on the fringe of British films kept by one man and carrying on an affair with a soldier, Charles Grey as a British film producer using his power to pick up young men, or a young Bill Nighy, whom I first saw as the father in I Capture the Castle playing a young gay novelist picking up soldiers and throwing rocks at (usual) comedienne Betty Marsden's bull dyke book critic.
My beloved Judi Dench played Christine, the horny and blowsy owner of the club, and she was quite wonderful. So, I had several dreams in which Miss Dench appeared last night.