The Problematic Gaze

Our Dave and Dr Lee  welcome Gazers to The Problematic Gazette, a bonus addition to our main show. Our Dave and Dr Lee chew the fat, read out Gazer comments  and  discuss things we've seen, read and heard this week.

To watch video versions of our full episodes check out The Problematic Gaze YouTube channel here!

Click here to follow us on all our socials

Please leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. They really help to spread the word of The Problematic Gaze.
 
And if our fellow Gazers want to comment on what they've heard in our episodes, or to suggest future topics, please email us at [email protected]. We love hearing from you!

Click here to visit our YouTube site, The Gaze Channel, where you can watch video versions of our podcast.

Our YouTube site also contains playlists for each episode with provides wider context to each episode.

Click here to follow us on all our socials

And if our fellow Gazers want to comment on what they've heard in our episodes, or to suggest future topics, please email us at [email protected]. We love hearing from you!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pack your wedding dress and your ABBA mixtape, darling — this week we’re heading to Porpoise Spit.

Muriel’s Wedding made us laugh, cry, and secretly want to walk down the aisle to “I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do.” But beneath the sequins and self-tan lies a biting portrait of 1990s Australia — where success meant a white dress, a husband, and a ticket out of small-town obscurity.

Dave and Dr. Lee take a nostalgic (and occasionally uncomfortable) look at how female friendship, fat-shaming, and fame fantasies play out in this cult classic. And what does this film tell us about the LGBT small town experience?

To watch video versions of our full episodes check out The Problematic Gaze YouTube channel here!

Click here to follow us on all our socials

Please leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. They really help to spread the word of The Problematic Gaze.
 
And if our fellow Gazers want to comment on what they've heard in our episodes, or to suggest future topics, please email us at [email protected]. We love hearing from you!

GAZER HOMEWORK: Next Week we dissect an episode of notorious sitcom Mind Your Language. Click here to watch our chosen episode on YouTube

Click here to visit our YouTube site, The Gaze Channel, where you can watch video versions of our podcast.

Our YouTube site also contains playlists for each episode with provides wider context to each episode.

Click here to follow us on all our socials

And if our fellow Gazers want to comment on what they've heard in our episodes, or to suggest future topics, please email us at [email protected]. We love hearing from you!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ever watch an old TV show or film and think, “Could you get away with that today?”

Join TV writer Dave Moor and social historian Dr. Lee Arnott as they take a wry, thoughtful and lighthearted look back at six decades of television and film — from Sex and the City to Threads, The Golden Girls to Love Actually, Benny Hill to Only Fools and Horses.

Each week we revisit the shows, news headlines, and pop culture moments that shaped their eras, asking the awkward questions with humour, heart, and a splash of nostalgia. Think Top of the Pops meets Trevor McDonald.

Winner of 'Best History Podcast' at the UK Independent Podcast Awards 2025 and named by Radio Times as one of the Top 30 Podcasts to Listen to Right Now, The Problematic Gaze doesn’t cancel — it celebrates, questions, and laughs along the way.

So, pour yourself a glass, pull up a chair, and take off those nostalgia-tinted specs.
This is The Problematic Gaze!

To watch video versions of our full episodes check out The Problematic Gaze YouTube channel here!

Click here to follow us on all our socials

Please leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. They really help to spread the word of The Problematic Gaze.
 
And if our fellow Gazers want to comment on what they've heard in our episodes, or to suggest future topics, please email us at [email protected]. We love hearing from you!

Click here to follow us on all our socials

Don't forget to hit that FOLLOW button to get every episode of The Problematic Gaze downloaded and ready to listen!

Please leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. They really help to spread the word of The Problematic Gaze. 

And if our fellow Gazers want to comment on what they've heard in our episodes, or to suggest future topics, please email us at [email protected]. We love hearing from you!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fresh from winning 'Best History Podcast' at The Independent Podcast Awards, welcome Gazers to The Problematic Gazette, a bonus addition to our main show. Our Dave and Dr Lee chew the fat, read out Gazer comments  and  discuss things we've seen, read and heard this week.

To watch video versions of our full episodes check out The Problematic Gaze YouTube channel here!

Click here to follow us on all our socials

Please leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. They really help to spread the word of The Problematic Gaze.
 
And if our fellow Gazers want to comment on what they've heard in our episodes, or to suggest future topics, please email us at [email protected]. We love hearing from you!

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Click here to visit our YouTube site, The Gaze Channel, where you can watch video versions of our podcast.

Our YouTube site also contains playlists for each episode with provides wider context to each episode.

Click here to follow us on all our socials

And if our fellow Gazers want to comment on what they've heard in our episodes, or to suggest future topics, please email us at [email protected]. We love hearing from you!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

👻 To celebrate Spooky Season, here's an episode from the PG Vault for our new Gazers to enjoy! 🎃

Join Lee and Dave for a lighthearted look at the world of TV,  Film and Popular Culture from yesteryear that has since been considered problematic. This week we watch the supernatural BBC 1 drama 'Ghostwatch' from 1992. Find out why it had the nation in uproar and jammed the BBC switchboard. Just who is Pipes? And dare you enter the Glory Hole?

Sadly the version of Ghostwatch we watched on YouTube has been taken down. But click here to watch a fab documentary about the Ghostwatch controversy by Shrouded Hand.

Click here to follow us on our socials

And if our fellow Gazers want to comment on what they've heard in our episodes, or to suggest future topics, please email us at [email protected]. We love hearing from you!

Click here to visit our YouTube site, The Gaze Channel, where you can watch video versions of our podcast.

Our YouTube site also contains playlists for each episode with provides wider context to each episode.

Click here to follow us on all our socials

And if our fellow Gazers want to comment on what they've heard in our episodes, or to suggest future topics, please email us at [email protected]. We love hearing from you!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

👻 To celebrate Spooky Season, here's an episode from the PG Vault for our new Gazers to enjoy! 🎃

Join Lee and Dave for a lighthearted look at the world of TV,  Film and Popular Culture from yesteryear that has since been considered problematic. This week, in celebration of Halloween, we cast our gaze on the classic film An American Werewolf In London. From the Yorkshire Moors to Piccadilly Circus, this film caused a stir upon its release in 1981. Is it a horror or a comedy? Is Jenny Agutter the poshest nurse ever? Let's take a visit to the most unwelcoming pub in England. And have you ever woken up in a wolf enclosure? Easily done.

Also, did Lee and Dave first meet on a donkey in 1981? And the side plate going for a song at £155.00!!

You can watch An American Werewolf in London on Amazon Prime in the UK.

Please leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. They really help to spread the word of The Problematic Gaze.

And if our fellow Gazers want to comment on what they've heard in our episodes, or to suggest future topics, please email us at [email protected]. We love hearing from you!

Click here to follow us on our socials

Click here to visit our YouTube site, The Gaze Channel, where you can watch video versions of our podcast.

Our YouTube site also contains playlists for each episode with provides wider context to each episode.

Click here to follow us on all our socials

And if our fellow Gazers want to comment on what they've heard in our episodes, or to suggest future topics, please email us at [email protected]. We love hearing from you!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

👻 To celebrate Spooky Season, here's an episode from the PG Vault for our new Gazers to enjoy! 🎃

Greetings from PG Towers! Join social historian Dr Lee Arnott and TV Producer Dave Moor for a lighthearted look at the world of TV,  Film and Popular Culture from yesteryear.  This week  we jump in the telly TARDIS and cast our Gaze over the seminal horror classic 'The Wicker Man' from 1973. Join Edward Woodward on a trip to the verdant Scottish island of Summerisle where all is not what it seems. Paganism, sacrifice and turquoise beans. It's all here.

Click here to follow us on all our socials

Please leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. They really help to spread the word of The Problematic Gaze.

And if our fellow Gazers want to comment on what they've heard in our episodes, or to suggest future topics, please email us at [email protected]. We love hearing from you!

Click here to visit our YouTube site, The Gaze Channel, where you can watch video versions of our podcast.

Our YouTube site also contains playlists for each episode with provides wider context to each episode.

Click here to follow us on all our socials

And if our fellow Gazers want to comment on what they've heard in our episodes, or to suggest future topics, please email us at [email protected]. We love hearing from you!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this special Halloween episode, The Problematic Gaze dives into Robert Hiltzik’s Sleepaway Camp (1983), a cult classic slasher that mixes lakeside gore with one of the most infamous twists in horror history. What begins as a standard teen body count film turns into a messy collision of gender anxiety, repression, and moral panic.

We unpack how Sleepaway Camp reflects (and distorts) early ’80s fears around gender nonconformity, the portrayal of trauma and queerness in horror, and how its shocking ending continues to haunt trans and queer representation decades later. Is Sleepaway Camp an accidental critique of heteronormative horror, or just another relic of exploitation cinema gone wrong?

Join us as we navigate the murky waters between camp and cruelty — with a few screams along the way.

Click here to watch Sleepaway Camp from 1983 on YouTube

To watch video versions of our full episodes check out The Problematic Gaze YouTube channel here!

Click here to follow us on all our socials

Please leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. They really help to spread the word of The Problematic Gaze.
 
And if our fellow Gazers want to comment on what they've heard in our episodes, or to suggest future topics, please email us at [email protected]. We love hearing from you!

Click here to visit our YouTube site, The Gaze Channel, where you can watch video versions of our podcast.

Our YouTube site also contains playlists for each episode with provides wider context to each episode.

Click here to follow us on all our socials

And if our fellow Gazers want to comment on what they've heard in our episodes, or to suggest future topics, please email us at [email protected]. We love hearing from you!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fresh from winning 'Best History Podcast' at The Independent Podcast Awards, welcome Gazers to The Problematic Gazette, a bonus addition to our main show. Our Dave and Dr Lee chew the fat, read out Gazer comments  and  discuss things we've seen, read and heard this week.

To watch video versions of our full episodes check out The Problematic Gaze YouTube channel here!

Click here to follow us on all our socials

Please leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. They really help to spread the word of The Problematic Gaze.
 
And if our fellow Gazers want to comment on what they've heard in our episodes, or to suggest future topics, please email us at [email protected]. We love hearing from you!

Click here to visit our YouTube site, The Gaze Channel, where you can watch video versions of our podcast.

Our YouTube site also contains playlists for each episode with provides wider context to each episode.

Click here to follow us on all our socials

And if our fellow Gazers want to comment on what they've heard in our episodes, or to suggest future topics, please email us at [email protected]. We love hearing from you!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of The Problematic Gaze, we hop into the telly TARDIS back to January 8th, 1975 — and land smack in the middle of The Benny Hill Show at the height of its powers: ratings through the roof, international fame, and a cast of women who seemed contractually obligated to wear only lingerie and smiles.

Benny Hill was a comedy genius, no doubt — a master of physical timing, quick-cut gags, and musical parodies. But beneath the laughs (and above the hemlines) lies a cultural artifact full of questionable accents, endless ogling, and punchlines that raise more eyebrows than laughs today.

We break down the sketches, the innuendos, and the saxophone-fueled sprinting. Light-hearted but clear-eyed, this episode is a cheeky look at a show that made millions laugh — and now makes many ask, “Wait… did he just say that?!”

Click here to watch our chosen episode of 'The Benny Hill Show' from 1975

To watch video versions of our full episodes check out The Problematic Gaze YouTube channel here!

Click here to follow us on all our socials

Please leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. They really help to spread the word of The Problematic Gaze.
 
And if our fellow Gazers want to comment on what they've heard in our episodes, or to suggest future topics, please email us at [email protected]. We love hearing from you!

GAZER HOMEWORK: Next week our Halloween Special will feature the horror movie Sleepaway Camp from 1983. Click here to watch on YouTube

Click here to visit our YouTube site, The Gaze Channel, where you can watch video versions of our podcast.

Our YouTube site also contains playlists for each episode with provides wider context to each episode.

Click here to follow us on all our socials

And if our fellow Gazers want to comment on what they've heard in our episodes, or to suggest future topics, please email us at [email protected]. We love hearing from you!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.