ITV aired a remake over the last three weeks of the (for its time) shocking 1976 TV series, A Bouquet of Barbed Wire.
The character around whom all the action centres is Prue, the university-age daughter of Peter who is unhealthily obsessed with her.
Prue becomes pregnant and marries Gavin, much to the fury of Peter. Prue finds herself in the middle of a battle between them for her affections and she uses this to manipulate both of them.
Her mother, Cassie, gets dragged in and ends up having a brief fling with Gavin. Meanwhile Peter is having an affair with a co-worker.
What was shocking, and to some people thrilling, about the story, is that the characters transgressed so many moral boundaries.
The story on which the original series was based was written in 1969, as the sex revolution was hitting its stride, and by 1976, when the original series aired, it was in full stride. The sex revolution was all about transgressing moral boundaries and it still is.
But while A Bouquet of Barbed Wire at one level seems both a product of and a flag-flyer for, the sex revolution, it can also be looked at in an entirely different way, namely as a warning about what happens to people’s lives when moral boundaries are transgressed.
Peter destroys his relationships with his work colleagues, his wife and his daughter. Cassie destroys her relationship with Prue as well. Gavin destroys his relationships with everyone. In the end the lives of all the main characters end in ruins.
We think moral boundaries are there to keep us prisoner. But they’re really there to protect us from others and others from us. When you cross them, people get hurt.
However, it’s extremely unlikely that many of those watching A Bouquet of Barbed Wire will have come away from the experience with this message, quite the reverse in fact. Oh well.