Jess Bravin, writing in the Wall Street Journal:
“Filth” recounts the story of a British precursor of the Parents Television Council, the present-day American social conservative group that helped orchestrate the Bush administration’s war on profanity. As the stodgy BBC opened up with edgy programming during the 1960s, housewife and teacher Mary Whitehouse led the reaction with her Clean Up TV Campaign, a descendant of which, Mediawatch-UK, still keeps a scolding eye on British television. According to the program, Ms. Whitehouse was appalled by such indecency as the use of the colloquial British intensifier “bloody” 44 times in a sitcom.
