Saturday Night Filth

Moral crusader and self-appointed media watchdog Mary Whitehouse and her National Viewers' and Listeners' Association often took issue at the violence and horror in Doctor Who.

Had she seen last night's Cluedo inspired The Unicorn and the Wasp, she would doubtless be spinning in her grave - though this time neither horror nor violence would have been the cause.

The Unicorn and the Wasp showed a gay relationship between the upper-class Roger Curbishley (Adam Rayner) and his manservant Davenport (Daniel King). Two things make this remarkable.

Doctor Who is still very much a family TV show. Children of all ages watch it. With their parents, or without. My 10-year old nephew watches it each week. My parents watch it each week.

Secondly, the relationship wasn't just hinted at. It was overt and - although the characters displayed discretion within the context of the story's era - it wasn't the subject of any judgement. It simply came over, no doubt deliberately so, as being perfectly ordinary.

Curbishley may have been killed, but this wasn't a comeuppance due to moral turpitude. Quite the contrary, it enabled Catherine Tate's sympathetic Donna Noble to voice support for the loss that Davenport wouldn't be able to mourn in public nor share with his lover's family.

Of course this shouldn't come as a surprise given that this is Russell T Davies' Doctor Who, albeit The Unicorn and the Wasp wasn't an RTD story. As such we've become accustomed to a bi-sexual Captain Jack Harkness who has already been seen giving a kiss to, showing affection for, the Doctor.

This in the context of a children's/family TV show. Impossible to imagine this happening ten years ago, maybe even five. Certainly not without a great deal of fuss.

And certainly not in the Whitehouse era.









The following scene which showed the two of them coming out from Roger's bedroom was a nice, humorous touch.



Mary Whitehouse was a foe of "alternative lifestyles". She famously brought a public prosecution against the homosexual newspaper Gay News under the Blasphemy Act of 1697. Her NVLA charged the paper with blasphemous libel after it published James Kirkup's poem The Love That Dares Speak Its Name, which glorified a Roman centurion's ardor for a crucified Jesus Christ.

Whitehouse argued that the poem was tantamount to buggering the almighty.

When the verdict fell 10-2 in the NVLA's favor, Whitehouse felt vindicated: "I'm rejoicing because I saw the possibility of Our Lord being vilified. Now it's been shown that it won't be."

It resulted in a nine-month suspended jail sentence for the editor of Gay News, Denis Lemon, who was told by the judge that he had come close to serving it. Appeals to the House of Lords and the European Court were rejected.

In 1982 she pursued a private prosecution under the Sexual Offences Act 1956 against Michael Bogdanov, the director of the National Theatre's production of Howard Brenton's The Romans in Britain for "procuring an act of gross indecency".

The play included a scene of simulated anal rape.

Julie Walters is soon to play Whitehouse in a BBC Two TV Drama - Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story.