12. The Prisoner

by Allan Fish

(UK 1967-1968 850m) DVD1/2

A till tongue makes for a happy life

p  Patrick McGoohan  d  Don Chaffey, Pat Jackson, Patrick McGoohan, Peter Graham Scott, Joseph Serf, Robert Asher, David Tomblin  w  Patrick McGoohan, George Markstein, David Tomblin, Vincent Tilsley, Anthony Skene, Terence Feelyu, Joshua Adam, Gerald Kelsey, Roger Woddis, Michael Cramoy, Roger Parkes  m  Ron Grainer  art  Clough Williams-Ellis

Patrick McGoohan (Number 6), Guy Doleman (No.2), George Baker (No.2), Leo McKern (No.2), Colin Gordon (No.2), Eric Portman (No.2), Rachel Herbert (No.2), Anton Rodgers (No.2), Georgina Cookson (No.2), Mary Morris (No.2), Peter Wyngarde (No.2), Patrick Cargill (No.2), Darren Nesbitt (No.2), Andre van Gyseghem (No.2), John Sharp (No.2), Clifford Evans (No.2), David Bauer (No.2), Kenneth Griffith (No.2), Nadia Gray, Paul Eddington, Richard Wattis, Virginia Maskell, Finlay Currie, Peter Bowles, Jane Merrow, John Castle, Hilary Dwyer, Nigel Stock, Duncan Macrae, Annette Andre, Rosalie Crutchley, George Coulouris, Fenella Fielding (announcer),

It’s said that Lew Grade originally wanted more Danger Man.  More adventures of secret agent John Drake.  The star Patrick McGoohan had other ideas, of an idea formulated with George Markstein that would become the single biggest cult series in history.  Even now, in the age of the blogosphere, no series, not Twin Peaks, not Buffy, not even Doctor Who, has generated such speculation, conjecture and theorising.  When McGoohan had briefed Grade about the basic idea, he replied “it’s so crazy, it might work.”

McGoohan is a government operative who is seen speeding to his offices to hand in his resignation.  Returning to his home to pack for we know not where, he passes out when gas is fed into his flat and he wakes up in a sleepy village where the interiors are largely the same as his flat but the outside a sort of Toyland place but one from which he quickly finds he cannot leave.  At the centre of the mystery is the man who calls himself No.2, and who names McGoohan No.6, but it transpires that No.2 is an alias which many different men – and women – employ – and that the real head honcho, No.1, is the one who has the answers.

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13. Edna the Inebriate Woman

by Allan Fish

(UK 1971 91m) not on DVD

I am not the vagrant

p  Irene Shubik  d  Ted Kotcheff  w  Jeremy Sandford  ph  Peter Bartlett  ed  Peter Coulson  art  Evan Hercules

Patricia Hayes (Edna), Barbara Jefford (Josie Quinn), Cheryl Hall (Vangi), Geraldine Sherman (Trudi), Kate Williams (Teresa), Peggy Aitchison (Lil), Freda Dowie (Mother Superior), June Brown (Clara), Jenny Logan (Doris),

How is it, in this day and age, that one of the great TV plays of all time is so impossible to see?  The BFI have released DVDs of so many, from the early Ken Russell composer pieces and Ken Loach’s Cathy Come Home to the Ghost Story at Christmas series.  True, all are now deleted, but at least they were made available.  Edna, though, lies languishing in the vaults; forgotten, gathering dust.  There’s a tragic irony in that considering the subject.

Edna is a woman of around sixty.  We first see her walking along a country street trying to get a bed for the night in a country hostel.  She does so, and is washed and has her clothes fumigated, but is then sent on her way in the morning.  Such is her existence, flitting from one night rooms to sleeping in ditches and drinking water out of rivers out of her hat.  She then gets into trouble with the police for creating a disturbance and is brought up before the local magistrate.  She’s persuaded by counsel to take time in a psychiatric hospital rather than get thrown on the merciless court, but she eventually even outstays her welcome there.  Once well, she’s thrown out, and eventually gets a temporary reprieve when thrown into prison.  She likes it there, but of course her sentence is not a long one and she’s soon on her way even from there, back on the streets, shouting and wailing at the wind.  Finally she comes across a hostel where she’s taken in by an organisation known simply as Jesus Saves, looking after fallen women of all kinds; drunks, drug addicts, prostitutes, the elderly and infirm.  Edna’s never been so happy, but needless to say, it doesn’t last for long.  The hostel is ordered to close after complaints from neighbours and Edna’s on her way again, this time we know not where. 

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19. Days of Hope

by Allan Fish

(UK 1975 410m) DVD2

Know Thy Place

p  Tony Garnett  d  Ken Loach  w  Jim Allen  ph  Tony Pierce-Roberts, John Else  m  Marc Wilkinson

Paul Copley (Ben Matthews), Pamela Brighton (Sarah Hargreaves), Nikolas Simmonds (Philip Hargreaves), Melvin Thomas (Ernest Bevin), Gary Roberts (Joel Barnett), Alun Armstrong (Billy Shepherd), Helene Palmer (Martha Matthews), Hughie Turner (Tom Crisp), Jean Spence (May Barnett), Christine Anderson (Jenny Barnett), Clifford Kershaw (Tom Matthews), Brian Hayes (Stanley Baldwin), Peter Kerrigan (Peter), John Young (Ramsay MacDonald), Edward Underdown (Pritchard), Stephen Rea (reporter),

Jim Allen’s Molotov Cocktail of a series aimed at the betrayers of the working classes was advertised as “a series of Four Films from the Great War to the General Strike.”  It was Ken Loach’s return to TV after several years away and would prove the hottest potato of his entire career.  Indeed, elements of what would follow, from Land and Freedom to Hidden Agenda and to The Wind That Shakes the Barley can be glimpsed here, a generation earlier.  Or at least they could have been, had the series been available.  It was only ever shown twice, the last time in 1978, was never released on VHS and only made it to DVD in 2011 as part of a boxset.  People asked why it was never seen, but those who had seen it knew very well why.  Indeed it’s amazing in retrospect that the BBC even green-lighted the project in the first place.  It was like Charles I sponsoring the New Model Army. 

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20. Penda’s Fen

(UK 1974 88m) not on DVD

Balance of the mind

p  David Rose  d  Alan Clarke  w  David Rudkin  ph  Michael Williams  ed  Henry Fowler  art  Michael Edwards

Spencer Banks (Stephen Franklin), Georgine Anderson (Mrs Franklin), John Atkinson (Rev. Franklin), Jennie Hesslewood (Mrs Arne), Ian Hogg (Arne), Graham Leaman (Sir Edward Elgar), Geoffrey Staines (King Penda), Ray Gatenby (man), Joan Scott (lady),

Writing these entries can be a tiring business.  Some write easier than others, pieces that are drawn from within like those coloured cloths from a magician’s hat.  Others are like self-performed operations without anaesthetic, they leave you needing a couple of weeks’ recuperation in hospital.  Then there are the really difficult ones, pieces that taunt you, get inside your head and whisper ‘na, na, na, na, na’ and take off again.  Film writing like catching flies with chopsticks. 

            Take a director like Alan Clarke, Britain’s premier mirror holder to grim, angry working class Britain in the 1970s and 80s.  If one missed his name on the credits could one believe he had actually made it?  Not since Henry Hathaway made Peter Ibbetson – if indeed he really did – has a director fit less cosily with his material.  This was the man who gave us Tim Roth in Made in Britain, and while that’s the only other Clarke in this selection, his admirers would talk about Contact, Elephant and Christine.  I myself would trade all three just for one sequence in his Road, with Lesley Sharp giving one of the greatest Steadicam monologues that you will ever see (if only the drama had quite lived up to that moment).  I was close to including it just for those few minutes…

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23. Son of Man

by Allan Fish

(UK 1969 90m) not on DVD

Love your enemies

p  Graeme MacDonald  d  Gareth Davies  w  Dennis Potter  ph  Robert Wright  art  Spencer Chapman  cos  Dinah Collin

Colin Blakely (Jesus), Brian Blessed (Peter), Robert Hardy (Pilate), Edward Hardwicke (Judas), Bernard Hepton (Caiaphas), Godfrey Quigley (Roman commander), Patricia Lawrence (Procia),

Between the years of 1965 and 1969, Dennis Potter penned eight plays for the Wednesday Play strain for the BBC.  There were the two Nigel Barton pieces which helped to make his name and the well-praised Alice, detailing part of the life and influences of Lewis Carroll.  The last of his octet was undoubtedly the best, as well as being the most powerful and easily the most controversial.

Son of Man was a hot potato from the moment it first broadcast on 16^th April 1969.  Coming hard fast on the heels of Easter probably didn’t help, but it’s safe to say that, with the exception of Ken Russell’s Dance of the Seven Veils, no more incendiary play was ever made for the BBC.  Like Russell’s piece it now stands tall as a masterpiece of small screen drama and one of the most revolutionary TV plays ever written.  I don’t use the word lightly, for one must bear in mind the date; man’s first steps on the moon were imminent, the students riots in Paris were still fresh in the memory and the free love hippies so frowned on by Daily Mail readers were starting to proliferate society.  Into this boiling cauldron of public opinion – that old gorgon Mary Whitehouse was taking legal steps against the BBC for showing the play – Dennis Potter put the feline well and truly amongst the pigeons. 

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25. The Strange World of Gurney Slade

by Allan Fish

(UK 1960 150m) DVD2

Follow…proceed…

p/d  Alan Tarrant  w  Sid Green, Dick Hills  m  Max Harris

Anthony Newley (Gurney Slade), Una Stubbs, Bernie Winters, Douglas Wilmer, Charles Lloyd Pack, Moyra Fraser, Dilys Laye, Anneke Wills, James Villiers, Geoffrey Palmer,

Was there ever a TV series more completely out of its time and place?  If the Timelord from Gallifrey had landed his Tardis in Spielberg’s Jurassic Park – imagine Tom Baker’s scarf as he legs it from a T-Rex – he would have been more in his comfort zone.  For fifty years it was whispered of as something of myth, a cult before the term was even invented.  Did it really happen?  Was there really such a show?  One would have been forgiven for thinking it a dream.

It all came about at old ATV in the glory days of ITV when they actually had ambition to make decent programmes.  The BBC had Hancock and dominated the world of TV sitcoms, while American imports from Bilko to Lucy were still going strong on re-runs.  Gurney Slade was never meant to be a long runner, however.  It was like a comet flashing past TV screens only to disappear as quickly as it came.

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Les Misérables – 1925, Henri Fescourt

by Allan Fish

(France 1925 160m (orig.369m)) not on DVD

A great imagist with words

p  Louis Nalpas, Jean Sapene, Henri Fescourt  d  Henri Fescourt  w  Arthur Bernède, Henri Fescourt  novel  Victor Hugo  ph  Raoul Aubourdier, Léon Donnot, George Lafont, Karémine Mérobian  ed  Jean-Louis Bouquet  art  Mme Castiaux, Louis Nalpas  cos  Mme Castiaux

Gabriel Gabrio (Jean Valjean), Jean Toulout (Javért), Paul Jorge (Monsigneur Myriel), Sandra Milovanoff (Fantine/Cosette), Andrée Rolane (Cosette as a child), Georges Saillard (Thénardier), Charles Badiole (Gavroche), François Rozet (Marius), Suzanne Nivette (Éponine), Henri Maillard (Gillenormand), Clara Darcey-Roche (Mlle.Baptistine), Paul Guide (Enjolras), Renée Carl (Mme.Thénardier), Victor Dujeu (Fauchelevent), Jeanne Marie-Laurent (Mme.Magloire), Luc Dartagnan (Pontmercy), Émilien Richard (Barnatabois),

It wasn’t the earliest version of Victor Hugo’s tale.  There had been a 1912 version by Alberto Cappellani which, despite only being two hours long and little more than a series of tableaux, was feted in its time.  But it’s Fescourt’s version which was adopted as the benchmark by French film historians.  Georges Sadoul was one of many who compared it favourably with the Raymond Bernard masterpiece on the succeeding page.  There was just one problem; it has never been released for home viewing even in its native France, and the only version circulating on the internet, and thus the only one I have seen as I write in January 2013, is a 160m version prepared for American audiences.  Originally, it ran for over six hours and was in four parts.  One may be forgiven for thinking of it with the same sense of loss as one thinks of certain films by Von Stroheim and Welles, but Fescourt’s full film isn’t lost.  The Forum des Images in Paris has a copy, and for several years there have been rumours that Pathé (the original makers of the film) and Gaumont were teaming up to restore the film for DVD.  We’re still waiting, but even in this mutilated state, it’s still an hour longer than the best Hollywood version from 1935.

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34., The Spongers 1978

by Allan Fish

(UK 1978 90m) not on DVD

It’s nothing to do with us

p  Tony Garnett  d  Roland Joffé  w  Jim Allen  ph  Nat Crosby  ed  Bill Shapter

Christine Hargreaves (Pauline Crosby), Bernard Hill (Sullivan), Peter Kerrigan (Peter), Paula McDonagh (Paula), Gertie Almond (Gertie), Elaine Lindsay (Mrs Johnson),

As I write it’s only a month or two after the riots that spread from London to other British cities, in which people saw the chance to loot and pillage in the way they flock to a cash machine once news gets out that it’s overpaying those who stand in line.  The copycat acts that took place were shameful, and yet opened up that old cancer at the heart of modern Britain.  Watching The Spongers now in the aftermath of these events only makes any piece one can write about it seem like Anton Walbrook in Colonel Blimp when he teaches about the lessons not being learned and the school fees coming round again.  And you’d better pay those debts, or else you may lose your furniture. 

            Pauline is a single mother, abandoned by her husband, with four children, her eldest, Paula, suffering from Down’s Syndrome and attending a special care centre.  She owes over £250 rent and the bailiffs have come round with an order to take her furniture for non-payment.  She gets a week’s delay while she tries desperately for a contingency one off payment from social services, but they and the council are only interested in making their budget deficits and to hell with the consequences.

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53. The Signalman 1976

by Allan Fish

(UK 1976 42m) DVD2

Hello, below there

p  Rosemary Hill  d  Lawrence Gordon Clark  w  Andrew Davies  story  Charles Dickens  ph  David Whitson  ed  Peter Evans  m  Stephen Deutsch

Denholm Elliott (the signalman), Bernard Lloyd (the traveller), Reginald Jessup (engine driver), Carina Wyeth,

It was in Cardiffin 1869, if memory serves, when Christopher Eccleston’s 9^th Timelord hailed a coach only to find that its passenger was one Charles Dickens, esq.  Amid the usual pleasantries, The Doctor admits to being a huge fan, that he’s read ‘em all, paying special attention when observing “what was that ghost one?”  “’A Christmas Carol’” nodded Simon Callow’s Dickens, only to be told “no, the one with the trains…’The Signalman’.  The best short story ever written.”  Sadly I remember from my eager reading of Dickens’ works in the old Penguin classics series that only his Christmas Ghost Tales were included; a pity, for when I eventually did get to read it, I found myself concurring with the Timelord.

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84. England, My England 1995

by Allan Fish

(UK 1995 152m) DVD1/2

A nation of babbling backseat cab drivers

p  Mike Bluett  d  Tony Palmer  w  John Osborne, Charles Wood  ph  Nic Knowland  m  Henry Purcell  md  John Eliot Gardiner  art  Nigel Talano  cos  John Gibbs

Michael Ball (Henry Purcell), Simon Callow (Charles II), Lucy Speed (Nell Gwyn), Robert Stephens (Sir John Dryden), John Shrapnel (Samuel Pepys), Rebecca Front (Mary II), Corin Redgrave (William III), Letitia Dean (Portsmouth), Terence Rigby (Capt Cooke), Murray Melvin (Shaftesbury), John Fortune (Edward Hyde),

When I first saw Tony Palmer’s film of Henry Purcell’s life it was in its maiden TV broadcast, Christmas Day 1995.  If nudged into thinking what Purcell meant to me then, it would have probably been as the composer of the piece reworked electronically for the opening to Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, a film I still was yet to see due to its withdrawal by the director.  But I’d seen clips, I’d got the CD score.  I was enamoured. 

            I could be forgiven for my ignorance, in part because of my youth but largely because so little is known of him, except that he wrote nearly a piece a week for the last fourteen years of his life and died at the same meagre age as Mozart a century later.  When John Osborne, the great playwright of the fifties and sixties, came to write his piece in Purcell he was approaching his own end, and what he created would amount to three requiems in one.  A requiem not only to himself and his first love, the theatre, not only to Purcell and his too long neglected genius, but to England itself.

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