Ghostboat (2006) (TV)

Director:

Stuart Orme

Writers:

Neal R. Burger (novel)
Guy Burt (screenplay)

Release Date:

9 April 2006 (UK)

Genre:

Drama | Mystery | Thriller

Plot:

A British Sub goes missing at the end of the war leaving only one crew member surviving. Everyone believes it lost to the bottom of the ocean...

Plot Keywords:

Cold War | 1980s | WWII | Sinking | Submarine

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

David Jason	...	Jack Hardy
Ian Puleston-Davies	...	Travis
Tony Haygarth	...	Cassidy
Julian Wadham	...	Captain Byrnes
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Dean Ambridge	...	Planesman #2
Tony Bluto	...	Dockyard Engineer
Max Bollinger	...	Soviet Naval Captain
Crispin Bonham-Carter	...	Redding
Jonathan Cullen	...	Captain Basquine
Steven Elliot	...	Scientist (as Steven Elliott)
Roger Evans	...	Monroe
Robert Horwell	...	Mason
James Laurenson	...	Admiral Nealy
Victor Lindegrin	...	Soviet Political Officer
Paul Lockyer	...	Oakland Sailor
Jamie Martin	...	Tyler
David Nellist	...	1943 Crewman
Ricky Nixon	...	Langdon
Victor Sobchak	...	Soviet General
Yuri Stepanov	...	Russian Captain
Alan Stocks	...	Peterson
Ian Targett	...	Captain Lyle
Robert Whitelock	...	Spender
Lee Whitlock	...	Reeves
Tristram Wymark	...	Naval Officer

Runtime:

Japan:111 min (DVD version) | UK:180 min (including commercials) (2 parts)

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

Australia:PG

Filming Locations:

Cinecittà Studios, Cinecittà, Rome, Lazio, Italy

Company:

Yorkshire Television (YTV)

Goofs:

Anachronisms: Submarines of the WW2 era didn't have the now-familiar rotating radius on circular display.

Intriguing idea, not brilliantly executed.

A derivative but nonetheless intriguing set up; a ship (in this case a submarine) is found many years after it sank, with no sign of the crew, or what happened to them. This has been done many times, it is essentially the story of the Marie Celeste. Despite that the set up hooked me, I love these kind of vaguely supernatural / time travel plot lines, however familiar they are.

To be honest I was disappointed by what was delivered. David Jason is a fine actor but his character in this came over as terse, sullen and not especially interesting. As he is the lead, and therefore your focal point throughout the story, this was a big failing. He just wasn't interesting or unusual enough, you learned almost nothing about his character despite him being on screen for most of the 180 minutes.

The plot itself seemed to peter out rather than deliver a climax, for a thriller (or at least a war time drama) I felt there was too little tension. The actual operation of the submarine and the technical side all felt very authentic but this did not compensate for the lack of plot, or genuinely interesting characters. The officers were all a little stiff, the crew were similarly generic, all of them have been seen many times before.

Towards the end I felt the plot simply ran out of ideas and some of what happened bordered on silly. The story seemed to flirt with the premise it had created, rather than really go into it. I never felt this story got going, I appreciate it was television but there was far too much chatter. It was slow in places where it needed pace, or another twist and this was, for me at least, the other major failing; ultimately the story lacked imagination. What Ghostboat delivered was almost exactly what you expected, no more. There was no moment when I thought 'now that is interesting, I never saw that coming'.

Despite these misgivings I thought it was not bad for a TV two parter. It was ambitious and though it failed to hit the target it was at the very least something different.