Lipstick On Your Collar

Posted in: General info, Related topic by weddingcometrue | February 15th 2010 | no comments

Those of you who love movies and TV series might have heard about the series entitled Lipstick on Your Collar. Those who have never heard of it should know that is a British romantic musical comedy initially broadcast on Channel 4 written by Dennis Potter. Its original runtime was between February 21 and March 28, 1993. We can say that the series is important because it was Ewan McGregor’s first major part in a film. There was only one series made, containing six episodes. The total runtime of the series is about six hours.



I know that most of the times it isn’t good to reveal the plot of a movie, but I think that in this case you will forgive me if I do.  The story is set in 1956 in a British Military Intelligence Office in Whitehall. There is working a small group of foreign affair analysts, doing their job as they should until the point when their quiet existence is disrupted by the Suez Crisis. Mick Hopper’s job (played by Ewan McGregor) is to interpret Russian documents.



We can imagine that this job isn’t the most exciting possible, so he spends some of his time daydreaming, fantasizing about himself and his colleagues breaking into the music industry interpreting hit songs. Sylvia Berry, played by Louise Germaine is the beautiful, blonde wife of Corporal Pete Berry (Douglas Henshall), who is very violent. She is secretly loved by one of Mick Hopper’s colleagues, Private Francis Francis, and a middle-aged musician called Harold Atterbow.

Francis is an intelligent and wise man, whose studies were interrupted by the fact that he had to join the army. Contrarily to him, Hopper isn’t an intellectual, he was thought by the streets.  The initial situation is changed when the niece of an American officer appears. They make up pairs, but they realize that there has been a mismatch, and find themselves the right partners.

The series also makes reference to the impact of rock and roll on British society, since to plot is set in the period when this music genre made its appearance in the United Kingdom.  It also presents the difference and the distance between the older workers of the office, who are regular army officers and the other workers. The accent is on the difference regarding the way they perceive things, how differently the same thing can be seen by two distinct categories of people.



It is said that the writer was inspired by his own life, by his own national service during the 1950’s. He placed the military life into civil conditions. The theme of the series ‘Lipstick on Your Collar’ performed by Connie Francis became a very well-known song during that period and it is debatable whether the series made the song more popular or vice versa, the song made the series more popular. If you like romantic musical comedies or the other works of Dennis Potter and you haven’t seen the movie yet you might want to watch it because it is very probable that you will enjoy it.