Not quite a documentary and not quite a drama for today’s effort.
Delia Derbyshire: The Myths And Legendary Tapes
Dir. Caroline Catz / Dur. 98 mins
Strand:- Create
In A Nutshell:- A docudrama detailing the life of sound pioneer Delia Derbyshire
The Good:- Alright, full disclosure, I was always going to be drawn into this one for its Doctor Who link. Delia Derbyshire is, after all, the person responsible for the distinctive sound of one of the most iconic TV themes of all time - the Doctor Who theme tune. Ron Grainer was the composer but it was Derbyshire who gave it the wheezing, groaning feel that made it such an unusual sound. This is what she’s best known for but the film does a good job of showing that was just one part of her work and career and delves more into the impact she had on the Radiophonic Workshop as a whole, breaking through as the only female member of the team in a time when it was still very much a man’s world in television anywhere outside of the secretarial pool. It does a good job of highlighting Delia as the non-conformist, struggling to try and do something new in an emerging medium. This is clearly a passion project for Catz who writes and stars as Delia as well as directing. It’s an interesting mix of interviews with surviving colleagues, friends and lovers (with some overlap for those descriptions) as well as recordings of Delia herself alongside the dramatised excerpts of her life.
The Bad:- It veers close to pretension a few times and also feels like it glosses over some key areas of her life, largely some of the more negative aspects which are briefly mentioned towards the end.
The Verdict:- Derbyshire is an interesting figure - someone who has rightly albeit retrospectively been acknowledged as the first pioneer of what would ultimately become electronic music - and this does a good job of trying to paint the portrait of someone who was more than just the person who gave the Doctor Who theme.
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