Cuts

by Malcolm Bradbury

Looking to strike it rich with television gold, an English media tycoon enlists the help of an unassuming novelist to script his small-screen epic, to disastrous-and hilarious-effect The year is 1986, and the cuts imposed by Margaret Thatcher's government have trickled down to university life, where departments are being forced to shave their payrolls to account for reduced public funding. Meanwhile, at Eldorado Television, a different kind of cut is about to wreak havoc. Lord Mellow, head of the declining studio, watches as his last-ditch effort to produce a hit series falls to pieces. The show's star, the volatile but vaunted Sir Luke Trimingham, has just declared that he will leave the production unless the script is entirely rewritten. Desperate to save the project, Eldorado brings university lecturer and author Henry Babbacombe into the fold to write thirteen new episodes of ambitious television-something so grand that the leading man cannot possibly refuse it. But the show's production is plagued from the start, suffering endless calamities with its unpredictable actors and crew, whose behind-the-scenes drama rivals anything Babbacombe could dream up.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, British Literature

127 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Sir Malcolm Stanley Bradbury CBE was an English author and academic. He is best known to a wider public as a novelist. Although he is often compared with David Lodge, his friend and a contemporary as a British exponent of the campus novel genre, Bradbury's books are consistently darker in mood and less playful both in style and language. His best known novel The History Man, published in 1975, is a dark satire of academic life in the "glass and steel" universities—the then-fashionable newer universities of England that had followed their "redbrick" predecessors—which in 1981 was made into a successful BBC television serial. The protagonist is the hypocritical Howard Kirk, a sociology professor at the fictional University of Watermouth.

He completed his PhD in American studies at the University of Manchester in 1962, moving to the University of East Anglia (his second novel, Stepping Westward, appeared in 1965), where he became Professor of American Studies in 1970 and launched the world-renowned MA in Creative Writing course, which Ian McEwan and Kazuo Ishiguro both attended. He published Possibilities: Essays on the State of the Novel in 1973, The History Man in 1975, Who Do You Think You Are? in 1976, Rates of Exchange in 1983, Cuts: A Very Short Novel in 1987, retiring from academic life in 1995. Malcolm Bradbury became a Commander of the British Empire in 1991 for services to Literature, and was made a Knight Bachelor in the New Year Honours 2000, again for services to Literature.

Bradbury was a productive academic writer as well as a successful teacher; an expert on the modern novel, he published books on Evelyn Waugh, Saul Bellow and E. M. Forster, as well as editions of such modern classics as F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and a number of surveys and handbooks of modern fiction, both British and American.

He also wrote extensively for television, including scripting series such as Anything More Would Be Greedy, The Gravy Train, the sequel The Gravy Train Goes East (which explored life in Bradbury's fictional Slaka), and adapting novels such as Tom Sharpe's Blott on the Landscape and Porterhouse Blue, Alison Lurie's Imaginary Friends and Kingsley Amis's The Green Man. His last television script was for Dalziel and Pascoe series 5, produced by Andy Rowley. The episode 'Foreign Bodies' was screened on BBC One on July 15, 2000.

Reviews

[Tom Croskery · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5.

Funny but ultimately forgettable.

[Ana-Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Într-un interviu, Bradbury, profesor de literatură și faimos critic literar englez, povestește cum în anii optzeci a fost angajat de BBC să scrie scenariul pentru un serial de televiziune, și după ce a muncit alături de echipă și totul era aproape gata, serialul a fost anulat. Întâmplarea a fost o lecție interesantă pentru scriitor și inspirația pentru acestă carte. Am găsit-o ca pe o descriere ironică, dar fidelă despre cum funcționează corporațiile, despre echipe în care fiecare trage în altă parte sub aparența profesionalismului, despre kitsch (“Îl vreau epic. Îl vreau tragic. Îl vreau ieftin.”, declamă șeful de proiect în carte despre scenariul în jurul căruia se învârte totul). Scenaristul este angajat să scrie o poveste, dar înainte de a așterne primele rânduri află că experții de la rescrieri deja s-au apucat de tăieri, echipa de logistică deja a rezervat camerele pentru echipa de filmare în altă țară decât în cea discutată deja, actorul principal și-a definit scena în care vrea să apară înainte ca scenaristul să fie angajat și tot așa. Traducerea este excelentă, mai ales că Bradbury folosește la tot pasul jocuri de cuvinte în jurul titlului și totul merge dintr-o tăietură în alta. Întreaga harababură va suna familiar oricui a avut o minimă experiență într-o corporație, nu neapărat în media. O poveste care te face să te miri că în ciuda tuturor acestor dinamici, totuși lumea funcționează cumva.

[João Morado · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

Satirical and very funny at times, it’s both interesting and a bit scary to notice the similarities between Thatcher’s Britain and today’s western world. Things seem to have only worsened since then. I particularly liked the critique of the entertainment industry—it remains very much relevant.

[John Ingham · Rating 2 out of 5]

Started well with some nice word play, setting the scene of the social and economic background of the mid-eighties. The story and characters, however, were not funny and quite annoying. Ending raised a smile and that’s about it.

[Keith Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cuts of the eighties, cuts now - not much difference really. Very readable and shows people swimming in unknown and unfamiliar environments and the shallowness of what we commonly refer to as 'popular culture'.

[Jane · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mildly amusing but labored one-note satire.

[Ayush · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is a decent read (bonus points for being short and fast) but nothing that I will remember after I return it to the shelf. I might revisit it from time to time though.

[Ptellomey · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the unfunniest satire I've ever read.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

vermakelijk verhaal over een onbeduidende schrijver die de opdracht krijgt een televisieserie te schrijven.

[Peggymca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed. Fun look at tv miniseries making, from the point of view of a Real writer. Crazy how little has changed since it was written 25 years ago, starting with the economy, everything getting cut.

[Isobel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Slightly too over the top to be funny