nickjg Reviews

Upstairs, Downstairs: The Swedish Tiger (1972) Season 1, Episode 11

Stagey and theatrical- not the best.

[5/10 · 1 May 2023]

This wooden performance is an oddity in the series. A very wooden script and directing by numbers- so mechanical. Acting dismal, desperately needs the other characters as these are the weakest. 'Sarah,' an understudy from pygmlian, is about as convincing as Dick van Dyke's chimney sweep but without the compensatory skills. Whole thing desperately wants to be Wilde- but fails. The valuables the characters want to steal look like charity shop repro and sets/ lighting require vibrant cast to work, which they haven't got. Repartee about pigs and spat-out cigar-butts don't make convincing Swedes, though the acting resembles the near relation.

Assassin for Hire (1951)

OK in parts but not really good

[4/10 · 23 October 2022]

First, the whole film is seriously undermined by Tafler's dreadful version of an Italian accent and wooden acting. The script is somewhat clichéd too. The settings are reasonable and the pace isn't too slow. Sadly, nothing actually makes you think "that's different!" Or "that's a new approach. " It would help if the viewer could empathise with Tafler or the sister who has little to do or say to develop a character based plot. The whole affair feels like a short story padded and tricked out to last three reels. More like watered down Edgar Wallace. A principle part for a camel-hair coat, the desideratum of the third lead has the potential to be humorous in other hands.

A Yank in Ermine (1955)

A waste of celluloid

[3/10 · 16 October 2022]

The premise is just to get a supposedly 'box-office' American or two into a film to get the finance. An American in uniform inherits a village. Lots of raucous 'jazz' music drowns any sort of emotional empathy, along with a woman who 'dances' in gold lamé, wearing what appear to be a pair of marigold washing-up gloves. It deteriorates from then on, with the likes of Wattis, Pertwee and Beckwith playing English characters, Sid James playing the Afrikaaner version of a comic and a whole string of Ealing studio clichés. Puts bums on seats- in the pub next door! The polo game with the brightly coloured balls, the Rolls that would have been ancient even then and the chauffeur in a luminous scarlet uniform seem to be quintessentially English to the directors of this mash-up. The straight actors seem to be delivering the lame script with sincerity, but I'm guessing they didn't carry clips from this time waster in their casting portfolios.

Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

Radio play done as bland movie

[3/10 · 8 September 2021]

The plot was always stage-bound, but this version is bland with otherwise well known actors phoning in most of their lines. Starting with Branagh's ludicrous joke moustache and slightly accented home counties English. Even Judy Dench and Derek Jacobi turn in forgettable performances. Though Christie's dialogue and plots tend to be full of holes, attempts to modernise them usually fail and this is typical. Adding action movie effects looks absurd.

Princes in the Tower (2005 TV Movie)

Margaret Beaufort as a witch? Much drama but little history.

[5/10 · 2 February 2013]

As a dramatic piece well performed and acted. The disgusting food was somewhat overdone- they did have professional chefs etc in 1498. The problem with revisionist history of these princes, you have to make someone else the villain- in this case Margaret Beaufort and her third husband, Lord Stafford. For the plot to have historic authenticity it would have required Thomas More (who was no stooge to Henry VIIth) the French and Spanish ambassadors (enemies), John Argentine, Provost of Cambridge at the time, all to collude. Whatever Henry VIIth did to be portrayed as a sniveling mummy's boy, obsessed with having his stars and his excrement read before he does a thing, heaven only knows. The obloquy Henry suffered was mainly because he made the rich, including Thomas More's father, pay their taxes which they hadn't for 100 years in some cases. Contra factual history but good drama.

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes: The Eligible Bachelor (1993) Season 3, Episode 2

Missing Heiress - missing plot?

[1/10 · 5 August 2012]

A full and varied cast, a Victorian melodrama, a dastardly villain, what could go wrong? A semi-detached plot. The writer seems to have a detective story of his/her own that they wish to put on television. Unfortunately, on attaching it crudely to this Sherlock Holmes story, without rhyme or reason the result is a great bloated pudding of a melodrama. Even Jeremy Brett, providing broad slices of ham acting, cannot save this. Choppy direction and lots of short, dramatic 'takes' create a sinister atmosphere, but so does a fire in a cornfield. The result appears for most of the programme to be two period dramas spliced together in error. Most of Sherlock Holmes' part could have been left on the cutting room floor and condensed to a walk-on. The real Sherlock Holmes adventure doesn't begin until 50 minutes into the film. Presumably T R Bowen has read somewhere about Conan Doyle's interest in spiritualism. Perhaps a couple of pages of the biography got stuck together - as the rationalist, Holmes, would never have indulged in setting store by visions 20 years separate the Doyle of spiritualist 'research' and Shelock Holmes. Crude references to Victorian romantic paintings merely add a hotch-potch feeling as do the frequent 'Victorian' street scenes (taken from spare footage of a production of Oliver, mixed up on the same cutting-room floor). What a disaster for an otherwise acceptable series!

Marple: Why Didn't They Ask Evans? (2009) Season 4, Episode 4

Christie the greatest victim in this one!

[1/10 · 14 June 2012]

This is so remote from Agatha Christie's original that it almost amounts to a caricature - if only it was that good! Part of the problem is one that dogs the whole series, that there is desperation to stuff the cast with celebrities, even if they have little experience of dramatic acting. Second, there is a determination to include so called 'issues' such as drug addiction, soap opera style romantics - one dimensional; relationships which are driven by plot rather than character. Then there is the overblown hysterical screeching which these people believe to be serious dramatic presentation. One difficulty for all adapters of the stories is that, whatever the quality of Christie's plotting, it works within its own world. They are locked into their period and the qualities and issues this writer has tried to foist onto them are completely anachronistic. The 'big movie' music and setting does not work- this is small village stuff. The attempt at film noire shows the limitations of the director- nothing builds or develops, the narrative thread is broken into twenty second bites which just come out as confused. this director should stick to small commercials. Last, but not least, Christie is tongue-in-cheek about her plots and they are always laced with irony and dark humour. In some of her novels she even introduces a novelist who is a send-up of herself. (Ariadne Oliver). This production has completely lost track of Christie's well developed humour and replaced it with crude and amateur posturing!

Atomic Twister (2002 TV Movie)

Adding water to the pool so the producers could take a bath!

[1/10 · 17 April 2007]

I thought it might be from the 'Airplane' stable and expected Leslie Nielson to suddenly appear to check out the reactor with his stethoscope. Admittedly, it was made for TV so we don't expect Hitchcock or Spielberg, nor do we expect quality performances but this film was sunk by cliché, incoherent direction, wooden acting and afternoon soap-opera production values. At every crisis, when we are told everything will go critical in three minutes, we are diverted to another lengthy scene with sloppy, sentimental kids and policemen overcoming their past personality disorders, termagant truckers and 'authority' being challenged. The three minutes must have been up twelve times and counting in the second reel - but this director managed to remove any potential for tension by flabby timing, irrelevant digressions and unintentional humour arising, I suspect, out of a complete lack of empathy with the subject. The cast run about like hysterical hens - even Homer Simpson makes a more convincing safety officer - the technology is plain daft - the dialogue and action is drenched in the sort of syrupy saccharine emotion which seems to dominate the American film industry - and, of course they all 'lurve' each other at the end- The house collapses but the corpse's makeup is intact and the little boy finds his crash helmet before he takes his bicycle out on the freeway! One of the cast prays at the end and so, I suspect, does the producer!

The Shadow of the Tower (1972)

Neglected and never repeated

[6/10 · 30 December 2006]

Henry Tudor was second only to his Granddaughter, Elizabeth I as a successful monarch. Unfortunately, his latter years were bitter and overshadowed by illness. Further, his son, the future Henry VIII lived in his shadow and did much to outdo and erase his father's legacy. He was also cast by wishful thinkers as the murderer of the Princes in the Tower because they want to re-invent the worthless Richard III. The problem for the BBC when they wanted to complete their coverage of the Tudors, following The Six Wives and Elizabeth R series, is that Henry VIIIth claimed many of his father's achievements as his own and did much to bury the personal history. Thus, the writers of this series had little material to flesh out Tudor's rise from obscurity to creation of a dynasty, defeating his enemies and becoming a millionaire. So, notwithstanding a good cast and, potentially, a much more exciting story, the project was dogged by wordy and worthy scripts making an under-performing prequel to the bloodier dramas. This story needs a remake! A valiant effort at portraying the least bloodthirsty of the Tudors, but somewhat bloodless!

Where Was Spring? (1969–1970)

unfortunately forgotten two handers from the age of satire (slight spoiler)

[6/10 · 30 December 2006]

A shade of the 'Footlights Review' this series of sketches written and performed by Eleanor Bron and John Fortune coolly dissected political and social topics in the style still seen in Fortune's 'Bird and Fortune' sketches. Bron went on to give some memorable performances in films and, latterly, cameo roles such as Patsy's mother in Ab Fab. I haven't seen this series on tape or DVD so it may have been wiped: worth watching if found if only for Fortune's Single-Handed Yachtsman arriving in Portsmouth Harbour to find that his girlfriend has stowed away throughout the journey - or the original of the sketch where an old crone moans about her hard life scrubbing night and day and then reveals the step she's scrubbing belongs to her millionaire son.

Loot (1970)

The wit of spoken word and situation survive the awful music

[8/10 · 18 December 2005]

I wonder if it would be possible to re-edit this comic gem to eliminate the dreadful backing song(s). Its a play in which the absurdity of conventional attitudes is lampooned and the stirling performances by Milo O'Shea and Attenborough carry it off in the larger style required for big screen. It may mystify those hooked on two modern types of comedy film: those which mock the people who don't conform and those which don't ever rise beyond crude vaudeville. Loot sympathises with those who defy and subvert social codes. It has more in common with the intelligent humour of Harold and Maude or The Producers than with the raucous Eddie Murphy / Chevvy Chase shout-fests. Of course, its difficult. The hard of thinking may have to replay some of the one liners to appreciate the ironies - the targets are attitudes rather than personal blemishes. This is not the world of Joan Rivers either - there is no bitchy 'humour' Orton, while deliberately offending against 'good taste' never sets his sights on anything quite so grubby. The cast are all likable but absurd. Even in Orton's more bitchy plays like 'What the Butler Saw' he doesn't aim at vindictiveness - its the institution he undermines. Loot is satire, not sarcasm. The well paced direction and the crisp, non-self-indulgent acting make this a forgotten treat which should be revived, as it has been for such diverse actors as Leonard Rossiter and Kenneth Williams on stage within living memory.

One Foot in the Grave (1990–2001)

Surreal without special effects

[28 February 2005]

This series is surreal in ways which would be instantly recognizably to Jaques Tati or Laurel and Hardy. In fact, every day situations are stretched just a little bit further and you have something which strays from conventional sit-com. The reality is that unplanned retirement does make people fill in their time with pointless activities and obsessive behaviour. Victor Meldrew's relationship with the world has been fractured and, suddenly, he's out of step with everything. Gadgets defeat him, people and their activities bemuse or disgust him. There is a certain predictability just as there is with the humour of Tony Hancock whom Victor closely resembles. But Victor is more three dimensional than Hancock: he has real disappointments, the fact that he is childless, old-age hasn't brought him respect, even from his wife. Even at his last gasp there is muddle and laughter. In fact, much of the humour is very black and some of our laughter is a way of dealing with shock- Grandpa Meldrew's skull, Margaret's mother's death and the episode where Victor thinks Margaret has died - then the nurse thumps the heart monitor back to life after he has reviewed their very human life in flashback and laughter follows. This is not Terry and June or the Honeymooners, it is a post Monty Python and Fawlty Towers version of the sitcom - it resembles the old type very superficially but, despite some extravagance of plotting it is much closer to reality and, like much sophisticated humour, involves a certain amount of pain and embarrassment for its wit. There are variations on trouser-dropping farce and misunderstood comments overheard - but here it is the character which drives the comedy, not the plot. There is enough in it for the belly laugh but there is also the humour of a Jane Austen, pointing up and dealing with the absurdities of the human condition!

Oliver Twist (1999)

Will we ever see a real Oliver Twist

[28 November 2004]

Oliver Twist is a journalist's novel. The principal character has only one real purpose- as a foil for a range of villainous or inadequate or officious or bungling adults. He barely utters a thousand words in the novel, in the film he is never silent. In this version, the novel has not merely been arranged - it has been totally re-written by someone who has completely missed Dicken's intention: to show us the effects of utilitarian government in late Georgian society. Instead of using the huge range of ideas and the profound commentary- a story which contains enough for several films, the writer rifles the ideas and tries to modernise the language, at once destroying the authority of Dickens' voice and destroying some of his most memorable effects. Dickens is not so far away from us that his language needs translation and most people are literate enough to follow his ideas and arguments. The issues of the novel are as relevant today as they were then - the abuses of authority, attitudes to the destitute, exploitation of the young. Instead, Brownlow shares his sitting room with his housekeeper and asks for 'a large brandy' as though in a saloon rather than his home - this is just sheer ignorance. Fagin is politically corrected - a circus conjurer rather than Dickens' child exploiter and murderer by proxy. Fagin is based on a real person. A real moderniser might have wanted to develop those aspects of Ikey Solomons that Dickens couldn't put in print in 1836. Meanwhile, the novel is trimmed so that characters who are dead before the novel opens are brought incompetently to life and occupy large chunks of time. There is soap-opera violence instead of the real thuggery of public hangings and casual murder. Unlike David Lean, this team seem to be unable to capture Dickens' burning indignation, his contempt for self-serving officialdom. The glaring parallel between the effects of the 'respectable gentlemen' of 'the board' and of the 'merry old gentleman', Fagin on unprotected and unwanted children is missed.

This film has no more relevance to Dickens work than the Lionel Bart musical - an excellent cast and a lot of money completely wasted!

An Ideal Husband (I) (1999)

Another 'modernisation' goes wrong.

[28 November 2004]

One of the principal sources of humour in Wilde's plays comes from pricking at the inflated egos, pious humbug and ignorance of the upper classes. There is always a Wildean character to reverse a clicheed expression or invert conventional 'wisdom.' Unfortunately, by stripping most of his characters of their stiff formality and rigid social code, the writer and director have removed the butt of the joke and Wilde's comments on absurdity are left without a punchline. The attempt to work in anachronistic social relevance leaves us with a set of feeble characters who fall in love with each other for no obvious reason. Because Wilde's language has been sterilised the actors have to use mugging to express the personalities Wilde created. Result, a charmless and dated 'political' drama as credible as a Jeffery Archer novel. Gertrude is insecure and fretful where she should be smug and priggish- Mabel is arch where she should be caustic- Poor Oscar - gets no 'Oscar'!

Threads (1984 TV Movie)

Production values vs content Nuclear War and the Moneymen

[7 November 2004]

The people on this site who witter on about the production values of the film '.Threads' entirely miss the point. The big money men don't back this sort of film because there are no vested interests it will support. Gung-ho battle scenes and Steven King type special effects are OK for big box office but they have little to do with reality. Senators and politicians who make fortunes out of military contracts are not going to sponsor such work. Top notch actors and Oscar winning effects are not the main requirements of a docu-drama which, at the time, was made because of a deep sense of urgency.

A fanatical right-wing red-neck President and a fanatical red-neck Prime Minister (Regan & Thatcher) were stirring up their cartoon version of international politics. Regan believed that you can shoot a nuclear missile out of the air (it presumably vanishes in a cartoon flash without landing on anybody's country) and Thatcher was prepared to support the lunatic vision. This is the context in which Threads was made - Barry Hines sets out to explain that this sort of thinking increases the likelihood of nuclear catastrophe. He describes what the Soviets already knew- that whoever strikes whom, the Nuclear Winter would take us back to the stone age. This is the real motivation for peristroika, nothing to do with Regan's 'forthright' stance. The point is that the political posturing of the time ignores the reality- Hines is trying to bring some sense into the Star Wars debate.

Of course, we now know that no-one would dream of trying to introduce a 'Star Wars' type system. All those three thousand 20 megaton bombs the Soviet Union had have melted away in cartoon never land- no nuclear materials could possibly fall into the hands of undesirables and anyway, Tom Hanks will soon solve the Middle East terrorist problem by talking plain ornery common sense to Bin Laden and the Iranians; to a throbbing soundtrack; while thousands of CGI generated GIs head for home, mom and apple-pie.

After all, there will never be another red-neck, born-again President or a British Prime minister to play his stooge and offer nuclear bases will there... So we don't need a movie like 'Threads' do we??? Doh!!!

The Spiral Staircase (2000 TV Movie)

Dynasty meets serial killer and begets a turkey

[30 March 2004]

Another re-make disaster from a worn out industry. It is the social distance and the hermetically sealed emotional barriers between the characters which are the mainspring of the 1940s version. Sets, characterization and nuanced performance combine with eerie music and special effects to make the original movie work. In this version, there is some spooky music but the camera dwells on deep cleavages and luxury goods, suntans and landscape gardens. The performances are mediocre and the only 'electricity' produced is from a generator which mysteriously fails during a storm. The creaking woodwork gives a more convincing performance than the leads who all seem to speak their lines by numbers: "do you (2-3) want to (2-3) speak again..." There is an attempt to make a Freudian analysis of the situation which also appears to come from some sort of 'Freud for Dummies' manual. The original and the seventies re-make are both available on DVD- why not spend the time you might have wasted on this turkey going out to find a copy instead!

White Heat (1949)

A classic drama and a classic psychological study

[25 January 2004]

Cagney's ability to shock is constant and each new gangster he creates shows a new facet of the psychopathic mind. White heat is the perfect antidote to the earlier movies- the structure where good triumphs in the last reel is still there but the killer, out of control is far less romanticised- if only current directors could develop this message. Cody Jarrett is the product of an over protective mother and thug father in the classic pattern. His whole view of the world is simplistic without subtlety or shade. Like all people of his type his self-confidence betrays him because he sees other people as stereotypes and while he has insight into the sorts of people who form his support network, he, very unwisely, dismisses the intelligence of the opposition. Like all gangsters, he has very little grasp of the outside world- throughout the film he is trapped in boxes, just like the man he kills in the boot of his car. Cagney's portrayal is his greatest role- his avoidance of pathos and his refusal to bend emotionally mean that we are never invited to pity him- wherever there seems to be a point of access for the audience he delivers the lines with a flatness which denies us sympathy. His maudlin obsession with his mother invites us to loathe his infantile mental paralysis.

Not enough comments praise the real co-star: Margaret Wycherley. She is a sinister mother who can handle the police and the gang and Cody's wife. Her world-weary cynicism, her obsession with her son delivered in the same dead-pan style is such a total antithesis to the usual hollywood 'caring parent' model that she raises the character to the level of an Empress Livia or an Agrippina. The final scene works on multiple levels- the good-guy cannot easily destroy the villain- does the world blow up in Cody's face or are we being told that the Jarretts of the world will dominate until they bring the universe to destruction? A film which still demands analysis and does more to reveal the nature of criminal amorality than anything Tarrantino or Scorsese could produce- The latter types of director are too caught up in the 'romance' of the villainous life- they need to develop Raoul Walsh's objectivity and Cagney's penetration. It is Cagney's unequivocal hatred of the character he's portraying and the personal honesty which allows him to objectify both the character he is playing and himself as an actor that makes the whole thing work. The crude method actors we're stuck with today could learn a lot from his Cody Jarrett!

Theatre Night: What the Butler Saw (1987) Season 2, Episode 2

Slick one liners and mayhem in a lunatic asylum- by the inventor of bad-taste comedy!

[7/10 · 29 December 2003]

Its stage origins are sometimes too obvious but the endless succession of one-liners and absurdities define the staff of an asylum who are definitely qualified to be inmates. The philandering psychiatrist is caught trying to seduce his new secretary- who is also being pursued by the police who want to retrieve an intimate part of Winston Churchill's statue -which may have been embedded in her mother's body after a terrorist outrage. In addition, the psychiatrists' wife is pursued by a page boy who has porn pictures of her and wants a job as her husband's secretary. Enter a Government Inspector:'I represent the Department of Health, your immediate superiors in lunacy...' played with tongue-in cheek pompousness by Timothy West. The deeply embattled Psychiatrist, portrayed by the late Dinsdale Landen, persuades the various characters to cross dress to confuse the inspector- and then there is his wife- a nymphomaniac who regards her husband as a token lesbian.... Need I say more? You have to watch to appreciate this weird slant on traditional farce!

The Big Bus (1976)

Not as funny as it thinks it is

[13 November 2003]

A great many quality actors must have had tax bills to pay. The endless stream of single-entendres deliberately avoids irony. A few bitchy comments by bored wives, the vicar who doesn't believe and the driver who ate 110 people don't make comic lines worth a half hour TV show. To see the talents of Ruth Gordon etc wasted on this drivel (Gordon gets the only funny line- so she must be ad-libbing) is embarrassing. Its one of those films where everybody shouts in the belief that you can make a situation hysterically funny by simply behaving hysterically! I tried it on a nine-year old- he left by the end of reel two!

Henry VIII (2003 TV Movie)

Not one for historians but fairly good entertainment for Soap fans.

[19 October 2003]

Like the film 'Elizabeth' the factual content of this film was very slim. Unlike Elizabeth it had no compensating qualities. It gave virtually no insight to the character of Henry or any of his wives, from the opening scenes where the Duke of Buckingham apparently survived his execution in 1513 to appear as a crusader for Catherine of Aragon 15 years later, to the death bed scene where Henry's family (who were actually celebrating New Year miles away) are clustered round his bed to hear his dying words. Jane gets knocked about and Henry hides round the corner during Anne Boleyn's trial-Complete nonsense! historically, once Henry had decided to lose a wife, he avoided all contact and blamed everyone else for their treatment. What is odd is that the directors chose to invent completely spurious scenes to illustrate Henry's crimes when there were plenty of real incidents which would have provided more than enough spectacle. I appreciate that Henry's court of more than 1000 people, glittering with excessive layers of sumptuous cloth and huge jewels could not be managed on a TV budget- but this Henry spent half his time in empty buildings talking to his echo, something impossible in the Tudor Court where even the King going to the toilet was surrounded by hereditary attendants. So, setting aside accuracy, we are left with the casting of Ray Winstone. Not impossible that Henry might have cracked coarse jokes, had a cockney accent and been free with his hands. Before he became a human boulder, he was also athletic, obsessed with doing all of those sports his father, fearful for the life of the only surviving son, had forbidden. But what happened to the literate defender of the faith? The king who owned dozens of pairs of reading glasses, who played a range of musical instruments and sang every day, who enjoyed disguising and dancing, who spent hours in disputes with intellectuals about faith? This film's Henry was like a soap opera character- a renaissance Dirty Den. Two dimensional and unbelievable. It was the choice to rely on spectacle rather than knowledge, assuming the audience to be dummies, incapable of following a plot, that sank this film. Another film which would not manage a release in cinema and will, I guess, be forgotten!

Warrior Queen (2003 TV Movie)

Definitely dud of the year. Imagine Lord of the rings done on home video by people off the street!

[29 September 2003]

I don't want to spoil this for any future viewer but this show will probably never be shown again. There are few facts known about Boudica, except that she burned London and Colchester and that she was whipped, her daughters raped and she took her revenge. In this feeble production, London and Colchester are a set of tent encampments- which the cast ludicrously describe as a 'big city.' The actors either shout a lot or sleepwalk through their parts. Nero is made up for a silent movie and, given the script, its a pity that it wasn't. They threw in the salacious bits - Nero fumbling with his mother's dress- poisoning and threatening, but in the language of a wide boy. At every point where you would expect some dramatic and memorable words, the script degenerates into soap opera. The battle scenes were large and animated but unengaging. The story was corrupted into another 'look how beastly they're being to the Celts' whinge with the usual dreary 'Celtic' solo singer and predictable 'magical' swords and a fey Scots magician on hand to give senseless advice. In fact, no clichee was left untouched. The high and important issues about power and oppression were treated like captions in a picture story in a teen mag.

So who was it for? Historians? hardly; Adults? only for porn value; Kids, only those who have never seen 'The Mummy' or 'Lord of the Rings'- This was like Lord of the Rings done on home video with a cast off the street. There were some talented actors involved, but this was no showcase for their abilities!

David Copperfield (1974–1975)

A first rate cast- this deserves to be released on video at least!

[10/10 · 13 October 2002]

This production attempts to efface the Hollywood version of more than thirty years before. Arthur Lowe and Martin Jarvis are wonderfully effective as Wilkins Micawber and Uriah Heep - avoiding too close a resemblance to W.C. Fields and Roland Young. Mrs Micawber is hilariously overblown, played by Patricia Routledge, and Patience Collier, the battily eccentric Aunt Betsey Trotwood, seems to live the part. In fact Patience Collier seems to have stepped straight out of the 19th century. Her magnificent impatience with Heep and her stoicism in the face of adversity are beautifully modulated. Not to be forgotten, Liz Smith as Mrs Heep. Though she and Steerforth's mother are socially poles apart, they both have the same obsessive and overindulgent relationships with their sons, which Diskens identifies as a source of evil. While Mrs Heep is more venal in simply being overborne by her son's dishonesty, Mrs Steerfoth has covered up a truly nast piece of domestic violence and pays the penalty daily by having the scourge of Rosa Dartle at her elbow. This Dickens portrait of family life is seldom seen in dramatisations. Mrs Steerforth (Sheila Keith) and Rosa Dartle (Jacqueline Pearce)- brought out a feature of the book which is often glossed over in productions because studios want to make it family viewing. This series didn't make that mistake although it was designed for Sunday teatime viewing. The sado-masochistic relationship between Rosa Dartle and Steerforth (and, to some extent his mother) and the suggestion of prepubescent homosexual attachment of David to Steerforth are implied. In fact, the scenes between Rosa and Steerforth/Mrs Steerforth, and between David and James Steerforth are where both the book and this production rwally talk to adults. A BBC dramatisation that ought to be better remembered.

The Bed Sitting Room (1969)

Plot, visuals, script all equally disrupted by nuclear war- but an oddly touching black comedy!

[23 September 2001]

Buried in the sheer oddity and downright perversity of the humour there is a deep pathos. People of all classes from Lord to lunatic try through activities and language to cling to a civilization represented by heaps of objects. The horrors of holocaust are tempered by humour arising mainly from the ridiculous pretensions of the cast. Every mainstay of British middle and upper class culture has been made absurd - some of the characters are busy mutating into absurd objects - a bed sitting room, a wardrobe, a parrot. The humour is zany, the one-liners often mixing double entendre, understatement and naievity with real pathos. Arthur Lowe as the pompous father, Mona Washbourne as the all-sympathetic mother can bring a lump to the throat.

The nearest rival to Milligan's and Antrobus' satire is to be found in Swift. Lampooning society after it has endured the very worst of tragedies and demonstrating through a torrent of absurdities, that human decency survives is something difficult to sustain in text, but this Fellini-like panorama could never be contained by the pages of a book. It almost defines one of the things which film can do best.

It is ragged and patchy - but a film which includes Harry Seacombe as a 'regional seat of government' defies conventional criticism!

Cold Comfort Farm (1995 TV Movie)

A satisfying response to the novel with Sheila Burrel taking the honours.

[8/10 · 22 September 2001]

So often satire works in the narrative part of a novel and it was never more so than in Stella Gibbons pastiche of the cosy country novels which proliferated in her day. This isn't often one-liner comedy, its more a Beverly Hillbillies for thinking people. City sophisticates meet with inbred country cousins and produce wry, often dark humour. Honours go to Sheila Burrell, a veteran actress who looks like the Red Queen from Tenniel's pictures for Alice in Wonderland, and has a voice and tongue to match. Great Aunt Ada Doom is at the core of their lives even when not present.

Kate Beckinsale's Flora Poste is possibly too wordly wise and unflappable, which tends to blunt the sharpness of the impact of the story, causing many subtleties of the original to be lost. Too much has been done to make it into Sunday teatime TV viewing. It might be useful to compare it with earlier versions if they can be found. There was a very good version in which Alistair Sim played Amos which was much bleaker in tone than this one. This being said, the production values here are more appropriate to film and the general casting is excellent. I thought it was worth staying in to watch.

Stage 2: The Duchess of Malfi (1972) Season Unknown, Episode Unknown

The intensity of the performances, particularly from Atkins and Bryant, defies the stagebound production

[10/10 · 13 September 2001]

***SLIGHT SPOILER*** Webster's bloodthirsty tragedy of the Duchess, caged and murdered by her psychopathic brothers is made into an absorbing study of incest, corruption, gothic horror by the intensity of performances from Eileen Atkins and Michael Bryant. The Duchess, a 'young widow' marries her steward in defiance of the threats of her brothers, the violent Ferdinand of Aragon and the slimy Cardinal. She is murdered in the middle of the play by Daniel Bosola, a double agent. The murder and the brothers' ingratitude lead Bosola to change sides but everyone he tries to help or who befriends him meets with violent death. The body count at the end of the play makes modern film look anaemic but Bosola and Ferdinand's delivery of Webster's violent language, the economy of the staging and the stylised production raise this above any horror story. There are phrases that roll off the tongue and images that evoke all the horror of renaissance Italy, delivered in the best traditions of the Royal Shakespeare Company.