The cinema seems to be producing lengthy epics at the moment, and right on trend arrives 'Deadline Gallipoli' to the small screen. We're served this in two great dollops of two hours over a weekend - including the Drama channel's ad breaks - and this is something of a fresh take on WWI in that we in the UK don't see all that much about the Dardanelles campaign, nor from the perspective of the war correspondents.
The slaughter that took place among the outer edges of the crumbling Ottoman Empire saw nearly 400,000 Allied casualties in less than nine months and almost cost one Winston Churchill his career. While the subject is interesting, however, the production is rather on the nose. We have the usual stereotypes of effete English dilettantes, upper-class brutes of officers and the odd dedicated war correspondent from England and Australia whose growing awareness of the horrifying realities of mechanised warfare is at odds with the censorship of the press by the government back home. Morale must be kept up, and women must continue to be empty-headed unless the silly things decide to take up nursing. We wanted to like this and there were some good scenes but the endless wordy scenes were unenlivened by good dialogue as they laboured to make the points, which are, of-course, the same as those made by most other WWI dramas regardless of the geographical field of conflict. In a word, sadly: dull.
The best-selling mystery novel of all time, apparently. A rather hoary old stage chestnut is now brought to the Boxing Day table with its revised PC title, but most of its other thirties prejudices intact. A group of disparates are summoned to 'Soldier Island' off the Devon coast for a rendezvous billed as a dinner party. In the comfortable but eerily deserted environs of the island's hotel, they hear a recorded broadcast accusing them all of committing (separate) murders. By the end of the hour there were eight of the ten remaining alive.
Just about as perfect a holiday drama as you could wish for, following in the wake of this year's successful play adaptations of classics. Rather darker somehow than the Poirots or Marples, and went down very well with a tipple.
Forget what you learned at school. A bit of plague and Pudding Lane were rather dull anyway, weren't they? No, ITV have given this particular history lesson a 21st Century make-over. The baker is hunky Andrew Buchan, married to a comely wench (Rose Leslie) and unwittingly involved in intrigue at the highest levels. In 1666 this of-course means randy Merry Monarch Charles II (William Houston), his secretly Papist brother James and, err, Charles Dance in full sinister mode and a terrible wig. Joining him in the hirsute syrup stakes is Daniel Mays as lusty Samuel Pepys, who proves his acting chops with a convincing performance away from his usual Cockney chappies. Nonetheless, a scene where he plays posh opposite Andrew Buchan playing Cockney, with rather less success, is bizarre.
The Fire itself gets going about 40 minutes into episode 1, which gives rise to a rather unlikely Hollywood action movie sequence where Buchan rescues his daughters from their burning bakery. Here again things depart from school history, or for that matter fire awareness courses, since the Great Fire is the Slowest Fire Ever To Get Going. Even our overstuffed sofas can cause fatal conflagrations in a couple of minutes, but the incendiary bundle of naked flame, straw and timber smoulders away and kindles into the sort of flames seen in gas fire ads.
While the fire is thinking about getting going, the drama plods along in soap-like fashion. Charles has his eye on fresh young meat; a Catholic skulks about the court with a knife and the sort of sly glances that would in reality have caused his head to be parted from his torso in a flash; baker Farriner pleads with Pepys to help him out of debt; Mrs. Pepys overcomes her lack of children by learning to dance.... etc. With no spoilers necessary in any direction, we can only hope it whips up the pace before viewers start wishing the fire had been even greater, or perhaps hadn't started at all and left the characters all to succumb to the Black Death.
Apparently "very loosely based on" 'A Very British Coup', a book previously dramatised with the late Ray McAnally in 1988. This seems to have more in common, on the strength of the first episode, with a 1985 film also starring a young Gabriel Byrne, albeit as poacher rather than nominal gamekeeper, 'Defence of the Realm'. One of those stodgy, ponderous, chase-the-zeitgeist conspiracy thrillers that thrive on shots of the scared and sinister in the corridors of power and dingy back-alley rendezvous. This has the usual cast of characters. Gabriel Byrne is Tom Dawkins, Deputy Prime Minister who finds himself in very deep, dark waters after an explosion at the Petrofex chemical plant and the death of the Prime Minister, Charles Flyte (Tobias Menzies) in a mysterious plane crash. Yes, nice mix of Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte to represent the establishment. A host of known faces portray the other usual characters: Charles Dance, Sylvestra Le Touzel, Lia Williams and Rupert Graves as shadowy, power-hungry ministers; Gina McKee as the journalist investigating corruption and cover-ups; Douglas Hodge as the jaded, alcoholic ex-MI5er.
Tom has a a history as a soldier in Bosnia and a self-possessed, bruised ex-wife (Sophie Ward). After faltering faith in the government, a new poll suggests that he is a popular new leader, which makes his colleagues wary and even more distrustful of him. Unknown to him, GCHQ are listening in to his every conversation with both the press and the pathologist, who has found high levels of toxicity in the explosion victims, and ends up hanging from the ceiling of his lab.
Worth watching just for Byrne's craggy face, which holds such gravitas it wouldn't be out of place on Mount Rushmore. Also great to see Ruth Negga back onscreen after her revelatory tour-de-force as Shirley Bassey. As for the story, you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to be sure that greed and self-interest frequently outweigh any nobler and compassionate concerns where global corporations and elements of government are concerned. It's just a wonder that after having been a cliche for so long, it's still in the news as well as drama, and accepted by a voting public.
