Greg Davies: Looking For Kes: Comedian makes an emotional flying visit to the world of Kes author Barry Hines

The Inbetweeners star is a lifelong fan of Hines' novel
Fan: Davies with Kes star Dai Bradley
BBC / Tom Hayward
Alastair McKay19 November 2019

Greg Davies, a comedian who used to be a teacher, knows about selling ideas. As a lifelong fan of the book Kes, he has loaned his name to this documentary, which is unbalanced, as it means there’s no room for Barry Hines, its author, who is the subject of the film.

Presumably that’s one of the compromises you have to make because someone in a commissioning meeting has never heard of Hines, but knows that Davies is famous enough to get a programme made. For a programme about a working-class writer, these are the things you need to do.

The book is A Kestrel For a Knave, published in 1968, and made into the film Kes by Ken Loach the following year. The book is a Penguin Modern Classic, and used to be on the school curriculum, but seems to have dropped off, along with class mobility. For a certain demographic Kes is one of those beautiful, dream-like movies where the voice is pure. Bill Forsyth’s Gregory’s Girl has a similar power. They spoke like us. Not like them.

Davies is genial and very tall. He gets into the spirit of Billy Casper, undermining the conventions of the literary documentary. “Here’s me, walking along local streets, just so I could be filmed walking along local streets,” he says, wandering through Hoyland, near Barnsley, looking for echoes of Hines’s imagined past.

Davies also meets filmmaker Ken Loach
BBC

Does he need to do this? Possibly, to keep the non-literary types on board. As it happens, Barnsley has changed. The mining village where Hines grew up has a different feel, though the chip shop where Billy bought fish scraps in the film is now called Caspers, and a passing urchin with a Barnsley accent confirms that he has seen Kes a hundred times as Davies meets friends, family and collaborators of the writer.

But what of Hines? The author died in 2016, having returned to Hoyland Common after a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. There’s enough here to suggest that his writing deserves a proper reappraisal. His first book, The Blinder, was a “wish-fulfilment” for a writer who had grown up aspiring to be a footballer and read no books, preferring the Dandy, the Beano and Rover (swapping Rover for the Wizard and Hotspur once he’d read it). His writing is compared with that of his idol, Hemingway, but it has a comic-book economy to it too.

TV shows to watch in 2019

1/31

Hines imagined football as a balletic means of expression, and as a teacher himself believed in finding a middle ground, while also looking for the potential of every pupil. Jarvis Cocker, a fan of the book, notes its symbolism “of flight, of escape” and the appeal of its central message, “to soar with your jesses off”, jesses being the restraints on the falcon’s legs.

There are some sudden flashes of emotion in this film, V-signs and near-tears. Davies just about gets away with it. The archived voice of Hines cuts through the sentiment. It’s about confidence, he says. “The middle class have got confidence in spades. And why not? That’s what they pay money for."

Greg Davies: Looking For Kes is on BBC Four at 9pm tonight

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in