Befitting a show about engineers, this season builds greatly on that which came before it, and follows on from the events of season one as seamlessly as though they were planned together from the start. I have no idea if that was in fact the case, or if the writers were just that good at their job.
The main cast of The Power Game (the ones considered important enough to appear in the title sequence) all carry on from the first season, but there is significant turnover in the semi-regular and guest actors, necessitating a number of new recurring and one-off characters.
Before seeing him in this, Robin Bailey was best known to me as Judge Graves, a recurring nemesis for Rumpole. He takes over the void left by the (off-screen) departure of Ian Holm's Sefton Kemp as Charles Grainger, a senior civil servant. There is more than a little of Sir Humphrey Appleby in Grainger, and he proves to be a far more formidable opponent to Sir John Wilder than Kemp was. At one point he even gives a very Humphrey-esque speech where he claims true power lies with the Civil Service, not with the politicians or the businessmen. And the events at the conclusion of the series would appear to bear this out.
Roger Delgado is sadly only in the one episode, playing an opportunistic businessman from the Middle East called Farid Salem whom Sir John Wilder outwits. The show once again transcends its '60s origins by showing racist attitudes of its time that are confined to the characters - the show itself does not espouse them, as dialogue between Wilder and Salem indicates: Wilder accuses Salem of being crooked by making the common generalisation about thieves in his country having their hands cut off. Salem responds that they have abolished amputation just as the British have abolished capital punishment. "Progress is universal," he concludes, in a very Masterful way.
Then you will give your power to me?
It was seeing this performance of Delgado's that inspired Big Gay Longcat to write his article on actors who should have played Number 2 in The Prisoner.
Coming off less well is Alan McNaughtan. He reminds me of the Bargain Basement Frank Finlay I took him for before I saw him give a great performance in The Sandbaggers, as here he plays a Dutch banker whose accent wanders around Europe like he's Belloq from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
The middle of the season is chock-a-block with faces familiar to me from other British shows, including Kevin Stoney, George Pravda, John Barron, and even Ray Lonnen (the first two both playing foreigners, the latter two both Englishmen abroad in the made up African country of Magalia).
Finally we get our third Number 2 to appear in the series as Guy Doleman, the very first Number 2 encountered by Number 6 in Arrival, guests as a rival for the attentions of Sir John Wilder's mistress Susan Weldon.
Wilder's relationships are again at the heart of the series, and while it is of course the business ones that are usually the main focus of the various plots, his romantic entanglements take centre stage more frequently in this season than in the first: the collapse of his marriage is more or less the point on which the season's arc pivots, with Pamela leaving him representing a change in his fortunes. After a run of successes, it seems his wife is the one person Wilder cannot out-manipulate - and after that we see a gradual loss of control spreading into his business life as well.
Wilder reconciles with his wife by the end, but his relationship with Miss Weldon falls apart for good after declining over the course of the season. While she may or may not end up marrying Guy Doleman's character - the series is ambiguous about whether he is using her just as Wilder did - we are clearly supposed to feel she is better off away from Wilder. His most unlikable characteristic is his hypocritical jealousy - in season one we saw this when his wife also had an affair, this time it is when Miss Weldon sees other men, including Doleman and Patrick Allen. Presumably she didn't stay with Allen because he kept reminding her of the possibility of imminent nuclear war.
There's little to criticise about this superb drama series, but I can't let pass the new title music which has been... funked up... for the second season. If the season two titles had been my first exposure to the series, I would never have been able to take it seriously.
Here, judge for yourselves. Compare this first season title sequence:
to this second season version:
The funk kicks in after about 12 seconds (with thanks to ZillakYT for uploading them to YT).
At the end of the series Wilder finally loses his position at Bligh's, with Caswell Bligh finally "winning" over Sir John. But with Wilder walking away with £330,000 in 1966 money (multiple millions in today's money) as a final move, and Caswell's family torn apart by his manipulations, it is far from being as simple as that.
It does suggest that there will be big changes for the third season, with the status quo not looking like an option. I'm looking forward to it - this is an outstanding series.
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