It’s all an illusion, of course, because this isn’t really the 1980s at all: it’s a TV set, a very clever, highly-detailed TV set for The Field Of Blood, the new BBC Scotland drama based on Denise Mina’s breakthrough crime novel. The set is an exact recreation of a newspaper office of the time and today Ford Kiernan, who’s playing a done-it-all reporter, is rehearsing a scene with Jayd Johnson, who plays a wants-to-do-it-all copygirl. Right down to Kiernan’s brown polyester shirt and glasses as big as dinner plates, it all looks and sounds about right. It should do: much of the look and feel was taken straight from a 1983 documentary about The Herald.
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The dramatic rescue of television in Scotland
It looks like the 1980s, it sounds like the 1980s, it even smells like the 1980s: there's cigarette smoke rising from thick glass ashtrays, the tap-tap of typewriters and the clang of filing cabinets and, in the cupboard by the door, there's a pile of garish 1980s food, including Fine Fare biscuits and a jar of Robertson's jam, complete with gollywog.
