Freefall

[The Masked Tulip]

Just saw a promo for a drama on the Beeb this week called 'Freefall'.

It appears to be about finance and the trailer had a bloke threatening a financial boy because he claimed the financial boy knew he could not afford the mortgage he had taken out. Another person was talking about how her mortgage had gone up £300 in a month.

From the BBC website:

In Freefall, Savage's focus is on the now imploding world of finance and its devastating impact on those at each end of the scale.

As an issue, it is destined to impact everyone in the UK in some way, and no-one yet knows when or where it will end.

Savage explores the pinnacle moment when capitalist greed went into a desperate tailspin and the excesses of more than a decade of spending came to a startling climax.

Dominic Savage comments: "This is a film essentially about greed that in many ways had got out of control.

"It is a film that reflects our obsession with wanting more, wanting everything, the desire in many of us to gain the world, but in doing so, potentially lose our souls.

"Freefall reflects those complexities, needs and conflicts that I believe exist in us all."

His characters encompass all walks of life but, with Savage, there is never a clear cut villain to the piece. All have human failings; all have their own culpability.

At its heart, viewers will no doubt come to question their own understanding of the current crisis and the way out.

David Thompson, producer, comments: "Dominic has created an extraordinary compelling scenario that throws a powerful spotlight on our radically changing world.

"With a range of striking characters he has created a film that will challenge many of our assumptions."

Gus (Aidan Gillen) is a wealthy city worker without a conscience. It appears that his sole motivation in life is the creation of wealth for him and his company, with the goal of clinching his next deal dominating his life.

Dave (Dominic Cooper) is the salesman at the other end of Gus's world. He shamelessly hard-sells mortgages to those that can ill afford them and, just like Gus, is purely motivated by the riches it will bring him.

Sam (Sarah Harding) plays the beautician girlfriend of Dave with ambitions of one day owning her own chain of beauty salons.

Anna (Rosamund Pike) works at Gus's bank and is in a relationship of sorts with him. Her conscience is leading to growing contempt for the money-obsessed industry she inhabits.

Jim (Joseph Mawle) is an old school friend of Dave's and married to Mandy (Anna Maxwell Martin). They are lured by Dave's tempting vision of an entitlement to own their own home. Ian (Alfie Allen) works with Dave.

And Amelia (Olive Supple-Still) is Gus's teenage daughter. With her parents divorced, she rarely sees her father, but she's clued up and not impressed at all by his job.

The film also stars Riz Ahmed as Gus's colleague, Gary, Emer Kenny as Dave's girlfriend, Kate, and Peter McNeil O'Connor playing Jim's boss.

Ben Stephenson comments: "Dominic Savage is a master in his field. With this film and the extraordinary cast he has assembled, he continues BBC Two's tradition of commissioning cutting-edge drama from incredible British talent."

Savage's approach to film-making is characterised by his use of improvisation with the cast.

His vision for the piece is translated by both himself and each actor and is constantly evolving within each moment of filming.

The result is gritty, real, incomparable and unique.

Freefall continues Dominic Savage's fruitful relationship with BBC Drama, all executive produced by David Thompson.

Previous commissions include Out Of Control, When I Was 12, Nice Girl and Born Equal.

Freefall is the latest BBC Two drama commission for 2009 and follows in the footsteps of Peter Bowker's Desperate Romantics which portrays the vagabond group of English painters, poets and critics known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and Moses Jones by award-winning writer Joe Penhall (Blue/Orange), a vibrant, atmospheric crime thriller set in the beating heart of London, starring Shaun Parkes.

[Sybil13]

Freefall Drama

[juvenal]

Freefall Drama

This drama is right on the HPC.co.uk button

'Did these brokers feel guilty about what they'd done, given that when the market started to go down, and interest rates to rise, as happened initially, their clients, so terrifyingly over-exposed, would have lost their homes?

"To an extent I believe that they didn't believe things could fail. They were making money but so were their clients, so long as house prices were rising. They were deliberately vague about how much repayments could go up, but then again the people they were selling to didn't want to hear the negative. They just wanted it [the dream home]. Even if they were full of doubt, their own greed would get the better of them. So the brokers were playing on other people's greed as well as their own."

Finally, with the help of Citizens Advice, he met people who had lost their homes. "They felt stupid. They considered themselves bright, but greed had got the better of them. The caution of their parents' generation had seemed so weak and pathetic. But now they regretted that they had lost it." Savage couldn't help thinking of his own father, a seaside organist in Margate, where the film director grew up. "My parents always rented, and my father used to pay in cash. He had a rent book and all the details went down in there. My parents would never have dreamed of living beyond their means. But that's gone now, that mentality. Our culture as a whole is so much more greedy. You pay for things later and that's considered completely acceptable. So, then I had my film. It just kept coming back to this: that the root of the crisis lay in the fact that mortgages, housing, the bedrock of family life, had been played around with, and gambled with, and engineered. All roads led back to this sub-prime madness. People were lent money that they couldn't ever pay back. That was the story that I wanted to tell - that this idea was... nonsense."

[Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz]

Looks good! Ta!

[juvenal]

I've got Freefall listed as BBC2 TUESDAY 14TH JULY. That is, the week after next

[Lord D'arcy Pew]

Does anyone here remember a BBC drama called starlings? It was about with a man who was made redundant at a factory in the north and how he talked/conned his way into a job in the City. This must have been on during the last recession.

[right_freds_dead]

Does anyone here remember a BBC drama called starlings? It was about with a man who was made redundant at a factory in the north and how he talked/conned his way into a job in the City. This must have been on during the last recession.

i remember that but i think your thinking of ITVs 'The Widows' where the wives of an ex london gang whos husbands are killed on a raid complete the robbery in their memory.

[Lord D'arcy Pew]

Found only this.

STARLINGS (BBC)

Director: David Wheatley

Producer: Brenda Reid

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096165/

Edit to add link

Edited July 5, 2009 by Lord D'arcy Pew

[ronpember]

Olive Supple-Still

Gotta love that name!!

[kingsgate]

Does anyone here remember a BBC drama called starlings? It was about with a man who was made redundant at a factory in the north and how he talked/conned his way into a job in the City. This must have been on during the last recession.

I remember this. And also "Brick is Beautiful" possibly by the same author.

Are these available anywhere to buy or download?

[Cogs]

Does anyone here remember a BBC drama called starlings? It was about with a man who was made redundant at a factory in the north and how he talked/conned his way into a job in the City. This must have been on during the last recession.

This won't be it but there was this ITV kids thing about couriers called "Streetwise".

I remember very clearly one of them was a ruined stock broker. But he eventually got his money back when someone asked him to wash their Porsche for them. As I recall, he put his suit on, went back to his old offices and did some handbrake turns in the car park so eveyone would look out of the window.

He then shorted a load of stocks and cleaned up (had to settle his account by close of business shenanigans).

A fable for Thatcher's children.

Edited July 5, 2009 by Cogs

[Sybil13]

Thought this was worth a bump Tuesday 14th July at 9:00pm on BBC2

[eric pebble]

This drama is right on the HPC.co.uk button

It most CERTAINLY is!!

LIAR LOANS = TOXIC LOANS = WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION....

"....down the chain [were the] mortgage brokers. He was particularly interested in the door-to-door salesmen who sold dodgy mortgages to families who couldn't afford them. "They are ghastly but there is also something attractive about them. The broker is selling dreams, and we want to believe him. They told me their tricks. One of them told me that as soon as he felt he was close to selling a mortgage - and it would be the one that made him the most money rather than the one which was best for the client - he would start clicking the top of his ball-point pen. It was that clicking noise that got the deal signed, and in my film the character who is a broker does it, too."

Did these brokers feel guilty about what they'd done, given that when the market started to go down, and interest rates to rise, as happened initially, their clients, so terrifyingly over-exposed, would have lost their homes?

"To an extent I believe that they didn't believe things could fail. They were making money but so were their clients, so long as house prices were rising. They were deliberately vague about how much repayments could go up, but then again the people they were selling to didn't want to hear the negative. They just wanted it [the dream home]. Even if they were full of doubt, their own greed would get the better of them. So the brokers were playing on other people's greed as well as their own."

Finally, with the help of Citizens Advice, he met people who had lost their homes. "They felt stupid. They considered themselves bright, but greed had got the better of them".

Edited July 12, 2009 by eric pebble

[Frank Hovis]

Found only this.

STARLINGS (BBC)

Director: David Wheatley

Producer: Brenda Reid

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096165/

Edit to add link

It was ok.

As I remember it (anybody feel free to correct):

Title "starlings" referred to the birds' adpatability and ability to blend in with changed circumstances.

Northern bloke lost his job and went down to London to train as a butler. On the course was one posh bloke who was going to get a well paid butlering job in the US.

He became a butler for a northern businessman with a country house, got off with the housemaid (?cook) and they formed a couple.

One day he decided he had enough and at a formal dinner asked the assembled company if the soup tasted ok, the businessman asked why he was asking and he said because he had pissed in the soup. Then walked out.

The couple met up in again in London with the intention of doing several scams.

Either it stopped there or I went to bed as I can't remember any more.

[Dave Spart]

I'm waiting for the sequel : Brownfall.

[Mrs Bear]

In case anyone had forgotten...

Review from today's Times:

'Any new film by Dominic Savage is an event. His latest drama follows different people caught up in the credit crunch - a self-centred City financier fuelled by the adrenalin of power, sex and money; a sickeningly plausible salesman who would flog a discount mortgage to his dying grandmother; and the real victims of all this amorality and greed, a hapless couple with two kids who want nothing more than a shot at improving heir lives. More vividly than any amount of economic analysis, Freefall tells the human story of boom and bust and how everyone is willing to believe only what they want to believe. With actors improvising alongside real people in real locations, the story is driven along by superb performances and a compelling authenticity. It is unmissable.'

[Sybil13]

BUMP MAKE A NOTE ITS ON TODAY

[Sybil13]

Bump again thought people might comment later

[Moley]

Bump again thought people might comment later

Thanks for that - I missed it in the paper.