The First Churchills (1969)

The First Churchills is a lavish 1969 BBC costume drama. These productions are I guess the television equivalent of chick flicks, although in 1969 they were generally well-written well-acted and very handsomely mounted. And they were the one thing that British TV could do that American TV couldn’t.

This one has the advantage of being set in a truly fascinating period of English history which is sadly little known and since Restoration England was also a famously debauched period of history it has the added advantage (from the BBC’s point of view) of providing plenty of titillation with a kind of artsy veneer.

It is the story of John Churchill (who eventually became the 1st Duke of Marlborough and was claimed as an ancestor of by Winston Churchill) and his wife Sarah. John Churchill rose from relative obscurity to the heights of fame as a general and the Churchills also enjoyed immense prestige and influence in the court of Queen Anne. John Churchill’s success was at least partly attributable to what might charitably be called his moral flexibility. He betrayed his king but he was lucky enough to choose the winning side and became, for a time a least, a hero.

The mini-series takes up the story in the latter part of the reign of Charles II. John Churchill is an obscure courtier and junior officer. He is as debauched as the rest of Charles II’s court. He is also quite penniless and he desperately needs a rich wife. He meets Sarah Jennings, maid of honour to the Duchess of York. Sarah is also penniless and desperately needs a rich husband. To the horror of their families they fall madly in love and marry. John Churchill is so much in love he is even prepared to give up his mistresses.

It was an incredibly turbulent period of history with a series of rebellions, both unsuccessful and successful, a series of rather futile wars and endless conspiracies. The Churchills contrived to be in the thick of it all.

John Neville was in my view a very poor choice to play John Churchill. He was always an actor who contrived to combine woodenness with pomposity.

Susan Hampshire was not the first choice to play Sarah and it was apparently made clear to her by other members of the cast that they did not consider her to be good enough to play the rôle. In fact she does very well in a difficult and challenging rôle, giving a characteristically spirited performance. In contrast to John Neville, who seems to be merely declaiming speeches, she brings Sarah to life.

The other acting highlight is the criminally underrated James Villiers’ deliciously overripe performance as Charles II. In fact Villiers is by far the best thing about this series.

This is a mini-series that does definitely assume that you have a basic knowledge of the religious and constitutional crises of late 17th century English history. If you’re not familiar with the period you’d be well advised to read up on it a bit before watching the series.

The series tries to be reasonably even-handed, which isn’t easy. This is a period of English history that still generates a surprising amount of angst and ill feeling. It’s amazing how many people have an axe to grind when it comes to subjects like the Glorious Revolution and Monmouth’s Rebellion.

Charles II comes across very sympathetically, which is fairly natural. He was dealt a very bad hand by fate but played it with immense skill and it’s hard not to feel a certain admiration for him. James II is more controversial and more difficult but the series does at least take his religious motivations seriously and does portray him as a complex man with the wrong personality to be a successful king at that time. John Westbrook’s performance might seem superficially dull but it’s probably accurate - James seems to have been a man who took things very very seriously and lacked the ability to make people like him.The Prince of Orange, later William III, is interestingly enough portrayed as a rather nasty and very untrustworthy little creep.

To be honest the only entirely sympathetic character here is Charles II, and perhaps to a lesser extent Marlborough’s close friend Sidney Godolphin, a politician with at least some principles. The unsympathetic portrayals of the other characters are probably quite realistic. These were people who played the game of power. You don’t win at that game by being a nice guy (or a nice lady). You win by putting ambition first and destroying anyone who gets in your way.

One of the main themes of the series is Sarah Churchill’s friendship with Princess (later Queen) Anne. It was a friendship that gave Sarah Churchill enormous influence over Anne, and whether that was a good thing or a bad thing is a matter for historians to debate. It’s certainly a friendship that makes for good television. It’s hard enough for a friendship to bridge the gap between monarch and subject and Sarah’s legendary foul temper did not always help matters. Anne, played by Margaret Tyzack, comes across as well-meaning but not too bright.

John Churchill himself was always going to be difficult. The series gives us a slightly sanitised version of the man (in the 1960s it’s hardly likely that a British television production would have portrayed one of Winston Churchill’s ancestors unsympathetically). I’m not sure it succeeds - to me Churchill still seems ambitious and self-serving. John Neville’s performance is particularly unfortunate since rather than showing Churchill as a man facing a crisis of conscience he seems to be merely a pompous self-justifying prig.

The year 1969 was an interesting era for British television. These were still the days when British television was shot more or less live on videotape, videotape being horrifically expensive to edit in those days. Shooting on film was becoming slightly more common in big-budget commercial TV productions and within a few years location shooting would become much more common. But The First Churchills, based on the testimony of Susan Hampshire, was apparently shot almost entirely on videotape.

The series was shot in colour. Production values are extremely high. The sets are lavish and the costumes are gorgeous. Given the subject matter you expect a visual extravaganza and by and large that’s what you get. Of course on a television budget it was not going to be possible to do full-scale battle scenes so the challenge was to try to capture the drama and the confusion and the terror whilst using only a handful of extras and spending virtually no money. That’s not easy to do but they succeeded reasonably well.

The First Churchills is like a combination of a superior domestic melodrama and a political thriller, with the emphasis on the melodrama. It’s the personalities that matter, and the personal relationships between them. The characters might not be loveable but they are intensely fascinating. As I said at the beginning it’s clearly a series made primarily with a female audience in mind. If you enjoy these costume dramas this one is more interesting than most and can be recommended.

The First Churchills is readily available on DVD in Regions 1, 2 and 4.

The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes - the Martin Hewitt episodes

Of the many late Victorian writers of detective fiction who followed in the footsteps of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle the most consistently brilliant was Arthur Morrison. His main series detective was Martin Hewitt. The first season of Thames TV's  The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes television series in 1971 featured two adaptations of Martin Hewitt stories.

Both episodes feature Peter Barkworth as Martin Hewitt.  Martin Hewitt as portrayed by Barkworth is perhaps a little more colourful and jovial than in the original stories (although Morrison’s Hewitt is amiable enough) but overall his performance is a delight.

The Case of Laker, Absconded is one of the best of Morrison’s detective stories and happily the TV adaptation is every bit as good. Hewitt has just landed a contract with an insurance company to investigate cases of fraud, embezzlement or other crimes and now the insurance company is facing a very large pay-out. A walk clerk employed by a bank, a man by the name of Laker, has absconded with no less than fifteen thousand pounds in cash. A walk clerk’s job is to go around to other banks to change securities into cash. It’s a very responsible job and such employees are usually considered to be extremely trustworthy. Laker has always had a reputation for being honest and reliable but the evidence against him is overwhelming.

What puzzles Hewitt is how such a man could have been so foolish as to make off with such a large sum of the bank’s money and then buy a tourist ticket to France in his own name.

Even more puzzling is the fact that Laker’s fiancée assures Hewitt that Laker is a clever young man.

This is a fine complex mystery with some very impressive detective work by Martin Hewitt. 

Ronald Hines appears as Hewitt’s likeable junior partner Jonathan Pryde. 

The Affair of the Tortoise involves a tortoise, in fact two tortoises although of very different types, a voodoo curse, a retired sea captain, a troublesome tenant and a beautiful heiress. It also involves a murder although the absence of a body provides something of a puzzle. It’s a delightfully baroque plot and it’s executed with great deal of style and verve.

Dan Meaden’s performance as Inspector Nettings, a bluff jovial extremely confident and entirely incompetent Sotland Yard officer, is a complete joy. 

Peter Barkworth is in fine form. Martin Hewitt makes a wonderful detective hero - he’s clever, resourceful and determined and he’s a decent and thoroughly admirable man. He’s fascinated by murder but he seems to derive as much pleasure from proving a suspect’s innocence as he does from solving a complex puzzle.

The Case of Laker, Absconded and The Affair of the Tortoise are two of the most thoroughly enjoyable episodes in a truly wonderful series. Very highly recommended.

Network have released both seasons of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes on DVD. They are essential viewing for all fans of classy television crime series, and indeed for fans of Victorian and Edwardian detective fiction.

My review of Arthur Morrison’s Martin Hewitt stories can be found at my Vintage Pop Fictions blog.

The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes - The Missing Witness Sensation

Having recently re-read, with great enjoyment, some of Ernest Bramah’s Max Carrados short stories it seemed worthwhile to also re-watch the adaptation of The Missing Witness Sensation from the superb 1971 TV series The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes.

Max Carrados is a rather unusual fictional detective, being quite blind. His blindness proves to be only the mildest of inconveniences in his work as a detective. Max’s other senses have become abnormally sensitive and he has trained himself to do many things purely by touch or by sound. In fact some of Max’s abilities do perhaps stretch credibility just a little. Nonetheless he’s an intriguingly unusual detective and the stories are generally excellent.

The television version of The Missing Witness Sensation stars Robert Stephens as Carrados. For my tastes his performance is just a little too mannered and he plays Max as just a bit too much of an Oscar Wilde-style exquisite. On the other hand the point of the story is that Max is almost undone by his own vanity so perhaps that influenced the actor’s performance.

A member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood is on trial for his part in a post office robbery. During the robbery a woman was shot and it is feared that she may die - if she does die the charge will no longer be robbery with violence but willful murder. The prosecution had what they thought was a very strong case until the defence produced a surprise witness who provided the accused with an apparently watertight alibi. By pure chance Max Carrados is in a position to break that alibi and the Irish Republican Brotherhood is determined to prevent him from doing that. Max is kidnapped, mostly as a result of his overweening vanity - he loves to show off his ability to do things that no-one would expect a blind man to be able to do.

You might think that a blind man would have little chance of escaping from captivity but Max is undismayed. An entertaining battle of wits follows. This episode is more of a suspense story than a mystery and it’s executed with considerable skill. We have already seen evidence of Max’s resourcefulness and determination but his position seems hopeless, and yet he remains sublimely confident.

This series was made at a time when British television was still shot mostly in the studio on videotape although there is some location shooting in this episode. Thames TV did a fine job with the costumes and sets for this series and by TV standards it looks fairly sumptuous.

My review of the Max Carrados short stories can be at my Vintage Pop Fictions blog.

My reviews of a couple of other episodes of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, The Case of the Mirror of Portugal and The Duchess of Wiltshire's Diamonds, might also be of some interest.

I have to confess that The Missing Witness Sensation is not one of my absolute favourite episodes from this series but it’s still worth seeing.

Rivals of Sherlock Holmes - The Case of the Mirror of Portugal

I posted recently about the Rivals of Sherlock Holmes episode The Duchess of Wiltshire's Diamonds dealing with a delightfully colourful rogue. The series featured a couple of episodes dealing with an even more dastardly rogue and swindler - Horace Dorrington, the hero (or rather anti-hero) of Arthur Morrison’s superb 1897 short story collection The Dorrington Deed-Box. The Case of the Mirror of Portugal (first screened in October 1971) shows Dorrington at his villainous best (or worst).

Horace Dorrington (Peter Vaughan) is a private detective, the principal of the Dorrington and Hicks agency (although we never actually hear anything of Hicks and we suspect he may not exist). An impoverished French charcoal-burner, Jacques Bouvier (Michael Forrest) enlists Dorrington’s help to retrieve an item that was stolen from him by his cousin Leon Bouvier (Oscar Quitak). The item is a diamond. A very large diamond. A very large and very valuable diamond known as the Mirror of Portugal that was once part of the French Crown Jewels. It might seem very unlikely that a humble French charcoal-burner would have possessed this fabulous jewel but Dorrington finds his story to be strangely plausible. In fact Dorrington is convinced that the story is true.

The first order of business for Dorrington is to rid himself of Jacques Bouvier as a client. Dorrington intends to retrieve the diamond but he also intends to keep all the proceeds to himself. Dorrington is a very competent private detective but he is also, alas, a very dishonest one. He is in point of fact a thorough scoundrel.

Actually getting hold of the diamond should be child’s play for Dorrington. He’s up against rank amateurs who have foolish ideas about fair play. Or at least that’s what the villainous private detective thinks.

Julian Bond did a fine job with the adaptation. It’s a wonderfully clever little tale with some very nice plot twists. Mike Vardy’s direction is very competent. 

As I mentioned in my piece on The Duchess of Wiltshire's Diamonds this 1971 series was made in the style of British television of the 60s, in other words shot almost entirely in the studio, although this particular episode does include a very brief sequence shot on location (a very unusual feature for this series). 

Paul Eddington is almost unrecognisable at first as a diamond merchant with very flexible ethics. Eddington is remembered for his roles in sitcoms like The Good Life and Yes, Minister but he was actually quite a versatile actor. He was memorably slimy and sinister as Strand in Special Branch and The Case of the Mirror of Portugal gives him a chance to be rather shady and sneaky, which he does rather well.

Kenneth Colley as Farrish and Petronella Barker as Miss Parrot, Dorrington’s two long-suffering assistants, provide competent support.

It’s Peter Vaughan’s performance however that dominates this episode. Vaughan was a marvelous actor who could really go over-the-top when required to do so. In this episode he does so to spectacular effect. He plays Dorrington as a moustache-twirling villain straight out of Victorian melodrama. It’s absolutely the right approach.

It’s not just Vaughan’s acting that brings to mind classic Victorian melodrama - everything about this episode is done in that style and it works to perfection.

It’s the combination of an excellent adaptation of a terrific story and Peter Vaughan’s epic scenery-chewing as Dorrington that makes this a superbly entertaining piece of television. Highly recommended.

In fact both seasons of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (available on Region 2 DVD from Network) can be very warmly recommended.

The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes - The Duchess of Wiltshire's Diamonds

Everyone loves a good villain. The best villains of all (for entertainment value) are either diabolical criminal masterminds or brilliant swindlers. Swindlers are fun because they’re clever and they can appeal to us on two other levels - either as glamorous rebels or as dastardly cads. Guy Boothby (1867-1905) was an Australian writer who created both a memorable diabolical criminal mastermind (Dr Nikola) and an equally memorable swindler (Simon Carne). It is Simon Carne we are concerned with at the moment, or more specifically the 1971 television adaptation of The Duchess of Wiltshire's Diamonds which was the fourth episode of the first season of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes.

The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, made by Thames Television in Britain between 1971 and 1973, included adaptations of many of the superb stories written by late Victorian and Edwardian authors who were contemporaries of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The Duchess of Wiltshire's Diamonds was adapted by Anthony Stevens and directed by Kim Mills, a reliable and prolific TV director during the 60s and early 70s.

Wealthy socialite Simon Carne (Roy Dotrice) has just returned to England after an extended stay in foreign climes. Simon seems to have everything a man could want - wealth, breeding, education, a ready wit and a good deal of charm. He is a charismatic and fascinating figure with an entrée into the world of fashionable high society. He does however suffer from one slight social disadvantage - he is a hunchback.

You might think that his disfigurement would make him bitter. He is bitter, but for other reasons. Simon Carne is not quite what he appears to be.

He arrives back in England to find that the latest sensation in fashionable circles is a mysterious private detective known as Klimo. There has been a disturbing rash of daring jewel robberies which have baffled all the attempts of Scotland Yard to bring the perpetrator to justice. Klimo has been enjoying great success by solving these crimes. Although he does not exactly solve them, not does he catch the criminals. What he does, for a large fee, is to explain to the wealthy victims precisely how the crimes were carried out. This has caused much humiliation for Scotland Yard since Klimo’s explanations are invariably not merely plausible but quite watertight.

There is much trepidation at the Yard at the approach of the glittering ball about to take place at the home of the Duke and Duchess of Wiltshire. The duchess will be wearing the fabulous, and enormously valuable, Wiltshire Diamonds. It seems almost certain that the daring jewel thief who has caused them so much trouble will try to steal the diamonds. The Duke has decided there is only one way to prevent such a calamity - rather than waiting until after the robbery he will hire Klimo to prevent such an eventuality. This turns out to be not such a simple thing.

What does all this have to do with Simon Carne? You’ll have to watch this episode to find that out. It’s a clever story and it’s extremely well executed.

Roy Dotrice is a fine actor and he gives a suitably mesmerising performance. THe supporting cast is exceptionally strong, with John Nettleton as Carne’s butler Belton being particularly outstanding.

The mid-70s saw a dramatic sea change in British television drama, with the old shot-in-the-studio-on-videotape style giving way to the new shot-on-location-entirely-on-film style. The emphasis was on greater realism and more action. The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes was made in the older style and it does have that characteristic studio-bound feel. On the other hand the sets and costumes are generally impressive and it was made in colour and on the whole it looks rather splendid.

The Duchess of Wiltshire's Diamonds was not the only episode of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes to feature a dastardly cad and unmitigated bounder and I’ll be posting a review of some of those other episodes in the near future.

Both seasons of this wonderful show are available on Region 2 DVD from Network. Great viewing and highly recommended.