08.45 The greater part of a year has passed since immersing myself in the world of John Le Carré and the opportunity to acquire the BBC broadcast plays of all the George Smiley novels as plays has provided the opportunity to engage again and yesterday I experienced the two disk 90 minute Call for the Dead and which I had previously appreciated as the 1966 film the Deadly Affair with James Mason as Smiley, Harriet Anderson as his ex wife, Simon Signoret at the wife the allegedly Foreign Office suicide Samuel Fennan and Maximillan Schell as his former spy and friend Dieter Frey. Given such an outstanding cast which also included Lynn Redgrave, Roy Kinnear and Harry Andrews as Mendal it was difficult to imagine that the BBC production could match the film where I have the 2006 produced DVD and believe I saw the original in Theatre as well as subsequently on TV. It is good especially the performance of Eleanor Bron as Mrs Fennan and Kenneth Graham as Inspector Mendal. No one can compare with the Alec Guinness interpretation of George Smiley but Simon Russell Beale does as good job as does Harry Goodman as Dieter Frey.
The story was therefore familiar rather like a classical music symphony such as the New World or the Beethoven Choral but enjoyable for a Friday night nevertheless reminding of Radio days long long ago.
George is asked to interview Fennan following receipt by his masters of a letter denouncing the civil servant as a spy. They walk in St James Park and George is impressed with the man who he likes and has no reservations about dismissing the letter without further investigation. The man is then reported to have committed suicide and his wife claims that the interview with George was the cause. George is under fire from his masters, (as usual) and when he visits the widow he takes a phone call, expecting one for himself and this sets the trail which leads to uncovering what really happened as well as to his own past as a field agent in post war and wartime Germany and the problems he had with marrying a woman who in the days of the forties to sixties would be described as free and then liberated as well as a minor aristocrat and who had the social class background that George lacked.
He enlists the help of local police man Inspector Mendal due to retire and thus commences the start of their relationship when he turns to the Inspector for refuge when an attempt is made on his life.
The story? Well Fennan was as George believed innocent and had in fact sent the letter provoking the investigation himself because he suspected that his wife was taking copies of his papers and passing them to someone. I am not sure if he tied this in with her regular visit to the local theatre company where she always sat in the same seat bringing a violin case with her and sitting with a gentleman who also occupied the same seat.
It was when George made the mistake of going for the walk that he was spotted by a former agent of his that the decision was taken for Fennan to die and for the attempt on life of George. It is the early morning alarm phone call that triggers the uncovering because Mendal establishes that it was made by the husband and not the wife as she claimed because she found it difficult to sleep and lost track of time as a consequence.
In the film we learn that Dieter was one of the men with whom his wife had an affair when he came to the UK after the War and it was one of his men Munk who had been the regular contact with the wife recruited after her experiences with the Nazi’s and who had killed her husband when they realised what was happening. Dieter had established a trading company in London as a cover for his operation. In the BBC Play I thought the closeness of the relationship between Smiley and Dieter was brought out more strongly as well as their mutual respect as the best of the best at their black art. It also brilliantly expresses the anguish felt by both men as Dieter presses Smiley to walk away than be killed and Smiley’s sense of loss and failure when it is Dieter than dies. His wife is an image in his mind throughout until the end with flashbacks in the film and as someone to talk to. A living conscience as well as memory, in his single loneliness in the radio play. In both as I assume the original book text, she contacts him saying her latest fling has not worked out and wants him back and he goes to collect her, as well as brining his career as a spook to an end and along with Mendal going to retirement of a kind. I almost forgot that he sets up a trap for the wife and Dieter at a production of a Shakespeare play in the West End during which they realise the position and the wife is killed within sight of the audience and the players.
12.05 It looked pleasant outside with sunshine and no wind and indeed when I went down the hill it was warm so I decided to prolong the outing rather than just go for a cheese and pickle £1 baguette and a pink of milk. On the way I noted that the newsagents shop on the corner as I to the grass land between the private houses on my part of the hill and the former local authority properties was closed and as I do not believe this has happened before on a Saturday morning I speculated about the possible reasons.
I was in two minds to down to the pedestrianised junction between the High Street and Ocean Road or along by the side of the Metro station and chose the latter with the intention just to check out the two close together bakeries, on also a tea room and then to Morrison’s using the escalator into the store. However neither bakery had the required item and with a Salvation Army band playing close to the station I made my way back up the High Street where the third bakery in the chair had a good supply and I purchased and then enjoyed the baguette as I had a look at the bookstall in the market nearly purchasing a hard cover edition of Ben Pimlott’s biography of Harold Wilson for £3.
I am still considering. I then decided to take a close look at the Farmers Butchers sales vehicle which is always parked on Saturday’s at the top end of the Market place attracting a good crowd for the supposed bargains. It is all about quantity related to price and as no quantity appeared to be given it was difficult to make any assessment. Between six to nine purchasers were made of Aberdeen Angus Mince at £5 and chicken in Indian aromatic spices, Chinese and hot, possibly a fourth was being offered at £3, the usual price of a carton of wings or thigh bones in the supermarket with £5 for any two packs.
I had a leisurely walk back stopping to listen to a South American group, only two today sometimes three to five at the junction where one of the three pubs on the corners is becoming a Ladbrokes Casino. There was a Help for Heroes Marathon using two fitness machines in rotation but their effort appeared to attract little interest and their was evident disappointment at the lack of public response as there was to the other pleas for donations although the large bear outside the Heart Foundation Charity shop did attract several youngsters persuaded by parents to give money.
13.45 The computer decided to close and open to accommodate some updates without giving warning so I lost what had completed before breaking for some shell on prawns and a can of Coke. At Morrison’s I purchased two more packs of sprats, a round of wheelie bins bags and a pack of liquorice. I also checked out the number of property closes to the subsidence following on from the latest communication on the issue from the Northumbria Water Authority.
13.55 Yesterday I watched Glenn Ford in a Western with Barbara Stanwyck, well known for roles as wicked ladies. In the film The Violent Men she is married to Edward G Robinson as the big valley Cattle rancher who gained power by force twenty years previously, losing the full use of both legs as a consequence. As a former Union officer Ford has purchased land and built a ranch in the valley with other settlers much to the anger of Wilkisons but agrees to sell when his fiancée wishes to move away from the conflict. However Stanwyck has called in her husband’s brother with whom she had had an affair but chose the other brother because he owned the property. The brother, Cole, has a Spanish/ Mexican woman in the local town where the Sheriff and other notables accept the authority of the Wikisons. The situation changes when one of Cole’s hired men kills one of Ford’s ranch hands. He refuses to leave or sell the ranch and this loses him his fiancée. He clever persuades the rest of the ranch hands to return home while he deals with the man who killed their colleague in a fair gun fight.
Realising that Cole will use his force to attack him at night he uses his army knowledge and tactical skills to take his men away and mounts a trap in a canyon which he believes the killers will use on their way back as the quickest route after setting fire to his ranch. This enables him to kill and injure a substantial number of the hired men with just cause because they have attacked and burned down his home.
When he launches a successful attack on Wilkison’s house Stanwyck refuses to assist her husband down stairs and leaves him to die, going to Cole who abandons his woman for her on the promise of having control of the Valley after he has cleared out all the other settlers persuading the local lawman that they were all responsible for the attack on the Wilkison property and the death of her husband.
In fact he did not die and is rescued by his daughter from a first marriage. They go into hiding and she persuades Ford to stop the forthcoming battle between the ranchers and the men now hired by the law man who descend on Wilkison’s ranch to further protect and use as a base to clear the valley. Father and daughter then go with Ford and demand the break up of the posse and that they leave the property. This leaves Ford to fight Cole who he kills. Stanwyck attempts to escape but his killed by Cole‘s. Woman.
Wilkison attempts to establish peace by sending his daughter to ask Ford to become estate manager and after first saying he has his own spread to run, he changes his mind attracted to the daughter who is mutual and wryly commenting that her father said he would get hold of Ford’s land one way or the other.
15.11 Sunderland lead West Ham away at home 1.0 as Fletcher scores his fourth game in three starts since being transferred tot he club. (16.15) Sunderland continued to have the better of he first half but could not extend the lead despite several good opportunities and a brilliant save by the goal keeper prevent the equalizer. Understandably West Ham came out determined to change the situation and up to this point Sunderland did not have a good chance until just now when the commentators expressed concern at the performance of James McClean. (16.55) West Man draw the game in the fourth minute if extra time with a Kevin Nolan former Newcastle player goal because Sunderland failed to convert their chances and kept too close to their own goal as match ended. They have now drawn all four of their games this season.
Also 15.15 Over the previous hour I have watered plants and further reorganised the back before contacting someone one for an estimate. I then went to the loft for six more boxes for the rest of the transferred development files and the recently completed and registered volumes. I have also prepared for the high tea of sprats, possibly after a cuppa soup and a carton of grapes. Sunday lunch tomorrow will be lamb cutlets and vegetables and a pink salmon salad for tea.
15.20 I have previously mentioned the first episode of the latest season of George Gently the Northumbria based police detective and where the series is now filmed in the region with previously Belfast and Northern Island being used. 16, 20 After listening to the game, playing some games I returned to the TV series while listening to the rest of the second half.
I have commented before on the second episode Gently with Class which was in fact the weakest of the four as the writer gives vent to his class prejudices. A young woman is found dead in un upturned car partially submerged in the river. She was trapped but the passenger had walked away. The car is one of a dozen on the estate of a local aristocrat whose son has a Bullingdon Club experience of Oxford followed by the Army which he has left with a problem with drink which has continued. He is the prime suspect.
In fact the young man was a friend of the deceased since childhood and she had persuaded him to travel to London to get away from his controlling and possessive mother and where she had established a growing career as a folk singer with a boy friend. There is the suggestion that the young man is gay. He commits suicide which for a time appeared to confirm his guilt as the vehicle passenger.
The girl’s father works on the estate after being unable to work further in one of the local Pits and is a class embattled socialist with his daughter having been more radical feeding into the crude prejudices of Sergeant John Bacchus played over the top as usual by Lee Bacchus. The cause of their barbs is not in fact the Lord of the Manor who appears down to earth and genuinely interested and concerned about the estate and those who work it as well as the local community, but his wife who is a caricature of a snobby noble woman although I have no doubt such individuals did and may even still exist. (I will review the first the new Downton Abbey series after the second episode tomorrow).
A complication for a time is the son of a local who has made it and become an estate manager who is having a sexual affair with her Ladyship and is being groomed for Tory stardom as her political protégé. The truth is that her Ladyship prevented her son from driving the girl to the station and going with her to London and she had set off on foot, followed by his Lordship in the car and after stopping an talking with her about life and their positions he had driven too fast and been unable to rescue the girl when it over turned staying with her until she died and then getting his wife to help with the alibi for the sake of the family. The aristocrat and therefore all destroyed because of the attempted cover up. He realised that he had never stopped loving his first wife and that he boy was his wife’s child and not his own.
17.45 I enjoyed an early tea of cuppa soup, sprats in batter and bread crumbs and carton of grapes followed by a short nap as I came over tired.
I was more impressed by The Lost Child, the third of he four George Gently’s which deals with adoption and parenthood and where I have knowledge of the position of Adoption Agencies at this time, dominated in the North East by those managed for the Church of England and the Catholic Church in the North East, both locked in tradition but nevertheless providing a high quality service.
In this episode a child is snatched from its home while cared for by the father turns out to have been adopted thus focussing on a society which appears to have run by one woman (Mrs Dunwoody played by the excellent Alison Steadman) without the usual committee and other controlling influences although in fairness the organising sector/ director could be a powerful person if they were long standing and respected member of the community. The child is eventually recovered but returned to its single parent mother and not the couple.
For a time suspicion about the fate of the baby had focussed on the adopting father because he had not wanted a child so late in their married lives and had insisted on the girl rather than a twin brother because a girl would mean his role would less than that with a son. Suspicion then rightly falls on the young man who had been meeting his wife in secret but he turns out to be the first child of the woman, a son who she had placed for adoption when the father, the subsequent husband had gone to war and it appeared would not be returning. The odd aspect here is how the young man was able to trace his mother because it was not until 1975 that adopted people when aged 18 years could commence to locate their natural parents.
The young man had wanted to be introduced to his father but the mother played by the brilliant actress Helen Baxendale had been worried at the implications of her decision. The young man is accidentally killed from a blow struck by the Sergeant when attempting to arrest him and rescue the baby.
The episode provides the opportunity to explore Bacchus the parent now that his wife had divorced him and living with a new partner and the relationship that he has with his father, with the brutal and telling sentence (You were never much of as a son, but you are a spectacularly useless dad). However after the death he is able to turn to his father for solace.
For Gently his attention is on the adoption society and the way it is run forcing the mothers to agree to adoption and taking sums from prospective couples as voluntary charitable donations. An earlier sub story is that the husband had an affair and nearly, left his wife at one point and the role of an assistant at the hone who had been a young mother forced to give up a child and now lives with the mother of the twins placed for adoption and who blows the whistle on her employer.
The fourth and possible the last of Gently series, although having moved the filming to Northumbria it is difficult to accept this is so. In Gently in the Cathedral his history within the Metropolitan Police comes back to haunt him when he left having accused several colleagues of being career criminals. This is now well documented and covered particularly in the series Our Friends in the North. I became aware of the situation through a young former constable I knew who moved to the North East because of the situation in London. However it is the fact that he has put away a Northern based criminal for ten years that is the catalyst which leads to a young policeman being murdered and dressed as suicide because of alleged corruption because he came across the getting rid of a London based detective who had come north to investigate a criminal racket with ties between London and the North East.
The imprisoned man gains his freedom when evidence is first provided that Gently had falsified evidence to convict and that he is corrupt and then implicated in the death of the London detective when a weapon found at his home is that used to kill the undercover man and there is also a link between the constable who is said to have committed suicide and Gently. The case is so strong that Gently is placed in prison and then an attempt made on his life after his release achieved by the female Defence Counsel who got the villain released who then provides a refuge for Gently after he is wounded and it is her factotum who perishes to the assassins bullet. There is the suggestion of a serious relationship between her and Gently if he survives the challenges facing him
What of Sergeant Bacchus in all this? He is already on his way to the Met as he thinks when he is invited to attend an interview. He is told that Gently stopped his previous efforts by a reference which said he was too impressionable, fearing he would become corrupted by the evil forces there.
When he goes to London he finds that there is no job yet and that they wanted him to be the inside man on the team to get Gently. The episode provides an opportunity for the former Morse Detective Sergeant Lewis, now Inspector Lewes, and Kevin Whately to have an important role as a man forced out of the Met into retirement because of his alleged concerns about corruption and who now also lives in the North in retirement. He calls on Gently to give support and leave him a gun for self protection. He is therefore the man to fit him for the murder and for corruption Gently realises he has misjudged the man when he visits and finds that he is living in a palatial home with staff. Later he learns it is Wheatley who the man pulling all the strings once he realised the London detective is on to him.
Gently goes on the run and the London team press Bacchus who although begins to have doubts about the situation into revealing where Gently could be hiding out. This is with his former wife and her family and his suspicion and that that of the London team appears confirmed when they find she is leaving her home with lots of food and other supplies. The family are in fact going on holiday to rented property. The second idea is the widow of the framed policeman who had discovered the disposing of the body of the London detective. Gently has been camping rough nearby and coming to her home in Northumberland for supplies.
It is here there the first of two confrontations when Bacchus and one of the London team realise that their leader and another are the villains and responsible for the murder of their colleagues as well as framing George. There is a shoot out in which the London men are all killed and Gently leaves Bacchus unarmed to clear up the mess while he goes off after the villain who framed him, still concerned at the loyalty and potential behaviour of his sergeant.
Calling at the hotel where the man he is staying who he believes is in charge of developments he is given a message to meet in the Cathedral in Durham City. Bacchus also arrives at the hotel unarmed and both his arrival alone and unarmed is a possible flaw in the storyline although another view is that he wants to make amends for his previous doubts and giving assistance to villains within the police force. He checks the room and finds the villain shot in the end. We the audience know that the real villain, the boss, is the former Detective who posed as his friend and ally, something I suspected early on, especially when having said he would walk all the way with George he was immediately absent when his trap was sprung.
There is an extraordinary finale in which Whately uses a high power riffle to shoot at George in the Cathedral with bullets sprayed into objects of art and religious icons. The episodes and series ends with all three appearing mortally wounded with Bacchus telling George he was on his side and George apologising for leaving him without a gun.
No comments:
Post a Comment