Must Watch review Grayson Perry’s Full English

Every week, the Must Watch podcasters review the biggest TV and streaming shows.

This week, Hayley Campbell and Scott Bryan review Grayson Perry’s Full English.

Channel 4’s new three part series shows Grayson as he travels around the country, meeting all sorts of people, as he tries to uncover what Englishness means today.

Scott says, “You’re trying to take a really big topic that I personally think is impossible and put it into a TV show”.

“What I have always admired about Grayson Perry is how open he is with people. Here he brings people in with very different views, and whilst he might disagree with them, he allows them to talk about their relationship with Englishness. And he also asks them for an object that will be used in a future exhibition.”

“So he goes to Dover and sort of speaks about somebody who is using a very kind of outdated and hardcore view against migrants and trying to protect so-called English identity” says Scott.

“He also speaks to people who are campaigning for more access to land, because there’s no right to roam in, I think 92% of England [that] has no public right of way. So he’s interviewing people who want to campaign for there to be more access.”

“It is an important time to be talking about Englishness, because of the possible breakup of the UK, the UK recently leaving the EU, and their also being a new monarch on the throne.”

“Although it contains interesting conversations, trying to sum up Englishness in a TV documentary is very hard, because in my view it means something different to every single person.”

“You’re trying to take a really big topic that I personally think is impossible to really find a cohesive, straightforward answer and put that into a TV show.”

Hayley says “it’s a celebration of how old and weird England is. It’s also funny, it’s kind, it challenges racism as well.”

Hayley says, “I thought it was really well done. He’s trying to do something huge, and I think the point of it is that you can’t boil the concept of Englishness down to a simple answer. It is this unwieldy, changeable idea that he’s trying to capture.”

“It does a few things really well – it’s a celebration of how old and weird England is. It’s also funny, it’s kind, it challenges racism as well. He actually said “In making a programme about Englishness, I am making a programme about whiteness – the myth that this is a white country needs to be challenged.”

“He speaks to all kinds of people, and disagrees with some of them when he’s with them, but he doesn’t do it in a combative way. He’s looking for answers, not fights. He speaks to the people who have taken it upon themselves to patrol the shores of Dover, and finds that for them the concept of Englishness is steeped in whiteness and a lot of WWII nostalgia. Whereas when he was speaking to (I think) one of the druids, they told him that if you landed in the country yesterday and wanted to call yourself English, they considered you as English as they are.”

Like Scott said, “I think Grayson Perry has a knack for figuring out what’s really going on with us, and he has a way of getting stories out of people, like he did with the pandemic art. This is very similar in that respect. He’s kind and he’s open and he’s not making fun of anyone, not even the druids – he gets fully involved in their ritual, he dresses up as a deer, and he says “it may look silly, but what ritual of nationalism doesn’t look silly? Look at the changing of the guards.”

“I think it’s because of his openness and willingness to meet people where they are that he gets unexpected conversations out of them.”

Grayson Perry’s Full English is available now on Channel 4.

Must Watch is released as a podcast every Monday evening from BBC Sounds and all other good podcast providers.

This week, the team also reviewed Deep Fake Neighbour Wars on ITVX and Extraordinary on Disney+

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