If there’s one thing the 70s did to me, it’s the way the British TV Shows Follyfoot and Black Beauty have warped my mind against upper-middle-class girls who love horses. Take this episode of Follyfoot, for example. The opening titles are meant to be whimsical and perhaps a little haunting, but to me, they’re creepy. The horse in the title graphic looks like something Dali would have painted. I’m surprised there isn’t a melting clock there and a tree covered in ants. And the opening shot? Honestly, what the hell’s going there? It’s like that version of Animal Farm we weren’t supposed to see. And there’s Dora and and the old codger, Slugger, cheerily looking on. [Edit: That video has been removed, so I've switched it out for just the opening titles. Never thought I'd see something too weird for YouTube]
Growing up in a city, where the only live horses we ever saw had coppers on them carrying sticks, Follyfoot was about as far removed from real life as you could get. Probably to my detriment, rather than consider the rural life of hanging round the stables with a cute teen who likes horses as a kind of escapist fantasy world, I saw it as a nightmare vision of dull, drawn-out pain, somewhat akin to having a tooth pulled out by a wire tied to an exceptionally strong, yet still excruciatingly slow, snail. Also, I was the son of a working-class Scottish family, who, previous to moving to London, had been living in trailer parks for the most of the 60s, whereas Dora was the daughter of a diplomat, who complained about not getting a pony for her 10th birthday and getting really expensive dresses instead.
Worth watching this until the end, though, just to discover that it was directed by a guy called Stephen Frears, who is probably best known now for directing The Queen.
