A Small Problem

 

The BBC has not always been as horrific as it is today. There was a time thirty or forty years ago when it occasionally delivered quality content. At one point the Beeb even had a great tradition in situation comedy. One part of this excellent range of sitcoms has sadly been forgotten. The only copy I could find was a poor quality conversion from an old and fuzzy home-recorded VHS, see: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ir1w4; (The subsequent five episodes will be on the recommended list.) however it is not so bad as to be unwatchable. This unknown 80's VHS user did the world a great service. A Small Problem ran for just a single season; the standard six half-hour episodes. During its brief incarnation on the screen it was enormously controversial. The BBC was inundated with complaints from viewers. I remember watching the media outrage at the time. One of the viewers was even interviewed by the media in a flood of tears. My grandmother was furious about the show and told me that I, a child at the time, should be ashamed of myself for watching it. However, even back then, I knew better. A Small Problem tells the story of Roy Pink, an ordinary middle class man from north London who one day comes home to find his house boarded up, his dog euthanized and his neighbours and former friends ostracizing him. You see, poor old Roy doesn't live in our world. He lives in a parallel universe where all people under a certain height are officially designated as second-class citizens known as "smalls". He is forced into a grotty slum in south London called Adelphi House where he lives in extreme poverty with other smalls. The smalls need special permission to leave their ghetto and have to carry a passbook around with them outside it. All police are armed with portable rulers to measure the height of members of the public to check whether or not they are smalls. Roy denies that he is a small; in fact his catchphrase throughout the series is: "I'm not a small!" Actually he never used to be because he is a touch short of five-foot-one and to be a small you have to be under five feet tall. However, with the rise of the European Union, then called the "European Economic Community", Britain switches to metric measurements and sets the small cut-off point at one metre fifty-five which when converted puts Roy just below that by a single centimetre. He is therefore reclassified as a small.
 
Roy Pink continuously appeals against the decision at the "Registry of Heights" and is constantly turned down. His brother George reluctantly disowns him, as does his sister-in-law Heather less reluctantly. He is forbidden from contacting his nephews and is subjected to constant harassment and humiliation by the police and non-small citizens. They hurl abuse at him with the epithets: "shrimpo!" and "midgeo!" The history of and the reason for this social segregation and discrimination is never revealed. Some of the smalls fight back, forming the SLF, Small Liberation Front. Their leader is a man called Howard played by the famous short actor Christopher Ryan who has starred in many comedies with Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson. The SLF carry out direct action against the establishment that oppresses them. Roy refuses to integrate with his fellow residents, insisting over and over again that he is "not a small! They've made a mistake!" One of the inhabitants of Adelphi House is an elderly man called Fred who is the chairman of the "residents association". He is a bureaucratic man who has delusions of grandeur, holding pretentious meetings where his wife Lily keeps the minutes. In truth, Fred is a kapo. He collaborates with the government that regards him as subhuman and panders to the police, social workers and officials in the hope that they will favour him above his peers. He is an informant who passes on the private information of his fellow smalls and constantly praises the authorities no matter how brutal and unjust they are. In the end, like all such toadies, he is thrown under the bus as soon as he is no longer useful. Roy tries to keep in touch with George whose loyalties are torn between his suppressed affection for Roy and his loyalty to his domineering wife who is a typical small-hater. "But he is my brother!" is George's catchphrase. For Heather, karma comes knocking when her own son stops growing before he has reaches his "coming of height" party. Naturally she blames her husband for the "small genes" in his family that produced Roy. Even as a child, I could tell that A Small Problem was a blatant satire. In many societies around the world there is such social stratification. The Uyghurs in China are currently being treated like the smalls are in the series setting, and worse. The programme was made in 1986, a few years before the end of the Apartheid system in South Africa which clearly influenced it. There are numerous other examples. A Small Problem is a parody of such institutional human subjugation. It is also a warning for the future. For example, suppose Black Lives Matter ever managed to form a government; how do you think white people would be treated by such a regime? The answer can be seen in A Small Problem. The programme could be improved. The police and other officials are portrayed as Machiavellian. They are all universally cruel and narrow-minded. None of them ever try to justify the administration they serve or rationalize their role in it. I would have preferred to have seen a few deeper and more complex antagonists, people a bit more like George. I'd like one of them to have revealed some humanity in his interaction with the smalls. I'd like to hear him explain why he was "just doing my job, sir." or something like that. Nevertheless, this is an excellent TV series, saved from destruction by somebody with a video recorder in 1986 and Dailymotion in 2014. It is sad and disheartening that so many people failed to grasp the satirical nature of the show. Are British TV viewers not capable of more than one-dimensional thinking? I have taken an active step myself in preserving A Small Problem by mirroring it on my Facebook group Interesting Videos Public, see: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2818551025092896. Feel free to join; it is open to all.
See here for more information: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2015/02/weighing-up-enemy-my-lucky-escape.html.
And: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-man-in-high-castle-updated-review.html.
And: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2020/02/good-omens.html.
And: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2017/11/ufo-academy-on-one-show.html.