New review! Way Upstream

When I was 17, it was a very good year. It was a very good year for pubs, and girls, and (as I recall) stripey shirts. It was 1987, and the world was my oyster. I was also heading towards my ‘A’ levels, which would, as it turned out, not be my finest few hours (mainly due to the pubs and the girls). Why am I telling you this? Because ’87 was also the year I saw Way Upstream, a TV movie of an Alan Ayckbourn play. I was, as are most teenagers, a tad pretentious. I also lived in the middle of fucking nowhere and couldn’t drive a car yet. So when I wasn’t in the pub, I was usually watching TV. Which meant whatever was on the four channels we had available (we didn’t even have a video recorder). And re the pretentiousness – if it was something vaguely worthy, all the better.

And lo, I didst come across Way Upstream one evening. And it had quite the effect on my impressionable young noggin. Not because of the female nudity (although that was appreciated, obvs). But because of the sudden lurch into horror in the final act. Whether such a thing happens in the stage play I have not a clue, but it was there on the telly. And it blew my mind, I can tell you. I was NOT expecting THAT.

So when my ‘A’ levels came along the next summer, one of the few things I can remember about them is that for my General Studies paper I wrote a paean to Way Upstream. No idea what I wrote, but I think it had something to do with the juxtaposition of the mundane with sudden horror, and how effective it could be. And having just written that down, it’s pretty clear that Way Upstream, through its one and only showing on British TV, had a profound effect on my future taste in books and movies, and my writing. So there you go. Said paean also netted me a B, which got me into Leicester Polytechnic (I’d completely bollocksed up all my proper ‘A’ levels). But that’s another tale for another day (spoiler alert: it didn’t go well).

Now, thanks to an unexpected appearance on Netflix, I’ve had the opportunity to revisit Way Upstream. And, in fact, write about it again. Just the 39 years after the last time I wrote about it (fucking hell).

So, begone, people who say Way Upstream “isn’t horror”. Or that it “isn’t a film”. Because there’s a good chance if there hadn’t been Way Upstream, this website would not exist at all. Imagine that.