Made by the BBC in 1967 and not, as one might expect given the title and the vintage, a series of unconnected episodic adventures about the Four Musketeers taking the characters from the books but not the plots (in a similar vein to The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, among other series of the black & white era of television), but rather this is an adaptation of the middle of the three Musketeers novels - not the most famous one where they save the honour of the queen of France by recovering her necklace (as used for the main plot of Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds), nor the final one involving the manny in the iron mask, but the one where they lol about in France and England getting involved in various civil wars.
No? Me neither.
Joss Ackland stars as DogD'Artagnan, with BRIAN BLESSED backing him up (and stealing the show as often as not) as Porthos - superb casting - and the title characters are rounded off with John "Armageddon Factor" Woodvine as Aramis and Jeremy Young (a familiar face, but I'd be hard pressed to say what he's best known for) as Athos.
The most notable in the secondary cast are Edward "As you can see, the INTERNET is extremely complicated" Brayshaw as Rochefort, Nigel "Look Around You" Lambert as Planchet, Vernon Dobtcheff as a minor antagonist Monsignor de Gondy, and - during the episodes where the Musketeers are loling about the England of 1649 (this can be dated precisely due to the actual historical execution of King Charles i being a key plot point) - Geoffrey "Masters" Palmer as Oliver Cromwell, in a surprisingly nuanced (and almost sympathetic) portrayal, even though he is an antagonist to the royalist-supporting Musketeers.
I have no idea if the depiction of Cromwell was lifted from the novel since, although I have read a few of Dumas's novels (English translations, naturally, since translations into Cat are surprisingly hard to come by) including The Count of Monte Cristo and the Marie Antoinette romances, I haven't ever read any of his D'Artagnan stories. This means I can't judge the series' quality as an adaptation either - although you can pretty much tell that it must be an adaptation because the pacing and episode structure feels different to most stories written specifically for the format of a television serial. For example, despite being 16 half-hour parts, it fair flies by with constant twists and turns, but the most dramatic moments don't often line up with the climactic moments of individual episodes.
There's an unusual format point where each episode begins with a recap of the story so far that is delivered in-character by one or more of the main characters (often including D'Artagnan, but not always) addressing the audience directly, but in a conspiratorial fashion, as if letting us in on a secret. This is done in voice-over only, with still images of the characters as the only visuals, so I wonder if this was added after the main filming of the story was complete.
Loads of swashbuckling tropes are included, as you might expect, and a lot of swordplay - plenty of which occurs out on location, so this was no studio-bound production as might have been expected from the BBC in the 1960s. Some of the duels were really well done, inclusing several between our heroes and Brayshaw's villainous Rochefort (he's no Christopher Lee, but still very good in the part), but my favourite fight was between Porthos and Rochefort and didn't involve swords - Porthos used his fists and Rochefort used whatever props and bits of scenery he could get his hands on that BRIAN BLESSED hadn't already been chewing upon.
It was directed by Christopher "First Morbius Doctor" Barry so no wonder this was a polished production for its time. That said, there was still a lot of studio-based action, and at least one scene where a door needs to be broken down and the whole wall wobbles as it is struck, lol. Also a few fluffed lines, and I think I caught one bit where Ackland seemed to forget his line entirely for a moment. None of this detracted from my enjoyment - in fact I would say it added to it, since it is fun to watch these old series warts and all.
No comments:
Post a Comment