rumpelstiltskin wrote:
With an estimated peak viewing figure of 18 million over a 20 year run, I would suggest that once again FA you are spectacularly confused.
It would look very dated now to most of the population. It ran its course – there's no need to try and rewrite history and pretend that it wasn't popular, but tastes change, and I very much doubt that the music performed would make for high viewing figures if shown now at prime time on a Saturday evening or that many viewers would think that the blacking up was anything other, at best, an anachronism.
But given that nobody has any concrete proof of why the morris dancers in the story black up, and given that it may well not be anything whatsoever to do with race – and certainly there seem to be no suggestions that it has links to slavery etc – then it's an entirely different matter.