Five TV shows Patrick Stewart was in before Star Trek: The Next Generation

So synonymous has Patrick Stewart become with his baldy-headed English-French captain of the Starship Enterprise, who he played from 1987 until 2002 (and then recently brought out of retirement again for one last job), that it is easy to forget that he already had a long and distinguished list of film and TV credits to his name before he ever made it so.

Here are five of my personal favourites from British TV shows.

#1. Civilisation (1969)

 

Civilisation, if you’re unfamiliar with it, was Kenneth Clark (Not That One)’s 13-part BBC documentary series about the history of western civilisation from the Dark Ages to the 20th century, as seen through the lens of its art. It recently got a sequel series, almost 50 years after the original, but is probably best known today for inspiring the long-running series of computer strategy games of the same name… if not the same spelling.

By episode six, Protest and Communication, Clark’s chronological approach has reached the time of Shakespeare, and he illustrates the Swan of Avon (Not That One)’s contribution to civilisation with three scenes from his plays: King Lear, Macbeth, and Hamlet, with actors brought in specially to perform the scenes.

In the excerpt from Hamlet (act 5 scene 1), Patrick Stewart is Horatio to Ian “House of Cards” Richardson’s Hamlet and Ronald “Avon’s friend” Lacey as the Gravedigger. Horatio has by far the least lines of the three, and with the benefit of hindsight it seems a waste to get Patrick Stewart in just to say lines like

“E’en so, my lord.”

but nevertheless it is umistaikably him, and it is amazing to see how little he has physically changed over the years from how he looks in this very early TV appearance.

#2. Fall of Eagles (1974)

 

I have already discussed Fall of Eagles extensively on this blog. Here Patrick Stewart is playing Lenin, and as such is in one of the five(ish) most important roles in the series. For all that, he’s only in three of the 13 episodes, with the second of these, Absolute Beginners being one of the very best of the series largely thanks to Stewart’s amazing, powerful performance.

#3. I Claudius (1976)

 

The next time Patrick Stewart would turn up in a BBC historical costume drama it would be in a bad wig as Lucius Sejanus, the ruthlessly ambitious captain of Tiberius’s praetorian guards, in four episodes of I Claudius. He makes his first appearance in the scene after the one where Augustus dies, and helps to fill the hole left by the departure of BRIAN BLESSED’s larger-than-life character. In the following episodes we see Sejanus’s scheming gradually come to the fore, as he plans to marry his way into the imperial family and remove all those standing in the way of his rise to absolute power.

Even acting alongside the likes of George Baker, Derek “Shakespeare-denier” Jacobi, and of course Sian Phillips as Livia, Stewart makes his portrayal memorable as we see his two-faced machiavel rise and rise and then, eventually, fall. It is with Caligula’s help that Sejanus is finally brought down, paving the way for the unforgettable performance by John Hurt to dominate the next phase of the series.

#4. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) and Smiley’s People (1982)

When the BBC adapted the first and last parts of John le Carré’s ‘Karla trilogy’ they were obviously going to need somebody to play Karla, head of the Soviet Union’s “13th Directorate” and the hidden antagonist behind Gerald the mole and all the plots against George Smiley’s secret service “Circus.” Well, I wouldn’t be mentioning it in this article if they hadn’t chosen Patrick Stewart for the part.

Because Karla is seldom encountered directly, for all that his long shadow is cast over everything that occurs in both stories, the part is much smaller than you might expect for what is essentially the main baddy. (Exactly how small? Well, if you’ve seen it you’ll already know what I mean. And if you haven’t…) But that just makes it all the more remarkable how much Stewart does with so little. Alec Guinness is rarely challenged in the acting stakes throughout either series, but when he’s on screen with Patrick Stewart, it is Stewart that you have to watch – partly that’s because we see so little of Karla that his scenes stand out the more, but it’s also because Patrick Stewart steals those scenes out from under him.

#5. Playing Shakespeare (1982)

Well I began with Shakespeare, and this final entry brings us full circle. In 1982 a nine-part documentary series was shown on ITV about theatre director John Barton, with help from a bunch of actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company, giving a ‘masterclass’ with examples of how they go about preparing to put on Shakespeare plays. The list of actors involved include some very well known names, including Ben Kingsley, David Suchet, Donald Sinden, Jane Lapotaire, Judi Dench, Serena McKellen, and (of course) Patrick Stewart.

Patrick Stewart appears in five of the nine parts, but he is mainly featured in one episode in particular, Exploring a Character, which sees Barton discussing with him and David “Purrot” Suchet the similarities and differences in how they each played Shylock in The Mov. Now you might think that 50 minutes of that would be boring but, on the contrary, I found it anything but, and could happily have watched them continue for twice as long or more. Especially interesting were the bits where Stewart and Suchet would perform a scene together, then afterwards swap roles and do the same scene again in a different – sometimes only subtly different – way.

The series has moments of pretentiousness and can slip into jargon at times – it was deservedly mocked for such by Nigel Planer in his Nicholas Craig The Naked Actor series – but Barton is aware of this and so does not take himself too seriously (at one point referencing an early sketch by Fry & Laurie in which they sent up exactly this type of luvvie pretentiousness), which helps make the series fun. Shakespearean language has a reputation of being dull and difficult among mannys who were bored rigid when taught it badly in their schools, but this series makes the subject not only fascinating, but approachable and comprehensible.