Edward the Seventh

This historical drama series was not made, as you might expect, by the BBC, but by ATV (who also made Sapphire & Steel) for showing on the ITV channel. It was first broadcast in 1975, although the copyright notice at the end of each episode implies it was made in 1973, which puts it either side of the broadcast of the BBC's Fall of Eagles.

While superficially similar series, and certainly there is a great deal of overlap in terms of the time period covered and the characters who appear, Edward the Seventh is generally lighter on dramatic incidents than Fall of Eagles - there is certainly nothing so shocking as the events of Requiem for a Crown Prince to be found here.

Edward the Seventh's strengths are to be found in showing us the functioning of international diplomacy and soft power between countries where the royal families were all related to one another by blood, marriage, or both, and also the influence the senior royals had upon the British governments throughout that period, despite supposedly being "politically neutral." It would therefore be fair to describe this series as interesting rather than thrilling, and it gives the lie to the idea that series made for commercial television are inherently more sensationalist (or lowbrow) than those made for public broadcasters.

The main character is Albert Edward, known as "Bertie" while he is the Prince of Wales (for 10 out of the 13 episodes) and Edward vii once he becomes king, and the series runs from his birth through to his death. As an adult he is played by Timothy West, although the first four parts concentrate on his childhood, where the main character is Prince Albert (Robert Hardy, once again proving that he was the prince consort king of historical dramas). Albert is shown as being an absolute cunt to his young son, and when you're watching this I expect that, like me, you'll think that his early death in 1861 (or at the end of episode four) can't come soon enough.

Queen Victoria (Annette Crosbie, if you can believe it) then dominates the series until she finally kicks the bucket at the end of part 10, and the middle of the series is about how Bertie, the heir to the throne, spends his time while he is being kept away from any real power by his mother.

The acting here is as good as in any other historical drama series I have seen (well... maybe not quite I Claudius levels) and we see various prime ministers of the era being played by distinguished actors, including Andre "Quatermass" Morell as Lord Palmerston, John Gielgud as Disraeli, Michael "Gandalf" Hordern as Gladstone, and Richard "Slartibartfast" Vernon as Lord Salisbury.

Kaiser Wilhelm (Christopher "Skagra" Neame, fresh from Colditz), is both Bertie's nephew and the closest thing the series has to an antagonist, what with the shadow of the first world war looming ever closer. However it is a storyline whose climax we never reach because the series concludes with the death of King Edward in 1910. We must therefore look to Fall of Eagles to see how Wilhelm's story ends (the clue is in the name).

The two series thus complement each other very well, with this showing the British side of some of the same events that Fall of Eagles shows from points of view on the continent. Some characters overlap, but are played with significant differences - most notably the kaiser, who Neame plays as an aloof and overbearing autocrat, because in Edward the Seventh he is an outsider and so we see only his public persona as perceived by the British royals, while Barry Foster's Wilhelm showed us the private manny.

Other characters in both series include Tsar Nicholas, here played by Michael "Paul Foster" Billington (not long after he was in UFO) in a big beard, and the kaiser's parents Fritz (Michael "not Jayston" Byrne) and Vicky (Felicity Kendall), who have a more substantial role here due to Vicky being Bertie's eldest sister.

The best episode of Edward the Seventh is part nine, Scandal, in which two scandals befall Bertie one after the other, neither of which are really his fault except through his poor choice of friends. The first concerns Colonel Gordon-Cumming (Donald "Major Grenlee in Rumours of Death" Douglas), caught cheating at cards while a guest of Bertie's (I guess some days really are better than others, mew), and then the second is Blake himself, Gareth Thomas as Lord Beresford, Bertie's former friend who threatens to beat him up, despite his status as heir apparent, for saying Avon is the best character siding against him in his own marital scandal.

(Also seen here is Peter "Saruman" Howell as Bertie's private secretary Francis Knollys.)

This episode also sees the death of Bertie's eldest son Edward, played by a very young Charles Dance. Edward dies of an illness, like several other main characters over the course of the series (eventually including the title character himself), and these deaths are inevitably accompanied by scenes of the family gathered around their loved one's bedside and waiting for them to get one last bit of acting in as they make a final speech.

The Shadow of the Tower

The Shadow of the Tower is a BBC historical drama series from 1972, about the reign of king Henry vii (not to be confused with his more famous son, Henry viii). Made shortly after The Six Wives of Henry viii and Elizabeth R (1970 and 1971 respectively), this is much less well known than either of them, despite being the third part of a thematic trilogy about the Tudor kings and queens.

While the earlier series were both made up of 90-minute episodes, meaning each was the length of a film - and each could be viewed as self-contained, stand-alone films - here the series is of the more familiar form of 13 episodes of roughly 50 minutes in duration. BBC historical dramas had already used this format for The First Churchills (1969) and it would continue to be standard - not just for historical dramas, of course - throughout the 1970s and beyond.

This series is not easily available to view in the UK, having not had a UK DVD release. 11 of the 13 parts are available to watch (at time of writing) in the Yousual place, but the remaining two, episodes 9 and 10, have been blocked by BBC Studios, the rotten spoilsports.

I wouldn't object to this if there were some other way of viewing the series, whether it be via the BBC iPlayer, a proper commercial release on DVD, or on their streaming platform BritBox. Or even, Hoff forbid, repeating the series on one of their television channels, mew! But the way things are, the BBC would have in no way lost out by leaving the episodes up where they were, and by blocking them they simply deny curious cats the opportunity to learn about two-thirteenths of the reign of king Henry vii.

The main plot of the series concerns the many conspiracies and attempts to overthrow Henry vii since, contrary to popular belief (and later Tudor-era propaganda), the Wars of the Roses and the conflict between the houses of York and Lancaster didn't end the moment king Richard iii died horseless. There are multiple attempts by the Yorkist faction to find an alternative king, either from the surviving members of the house of York, or by finding someone who looks a bit like one of them and then pretending they are. The title of the series, then, is a reference to the Tower of London, where most of these pretenders end up imprisoned - sometimes only very briefly.

The only character to appear in all the episodes is king Henry vii himself, played by James Maxwell, who is well cast in the role and with a distinctive voice. His allies and enemies come and go as required, with notable appearances from Morris "Captain Dent" Perry and David "Monkey" Collings as conspiring clergy (Collings also played a conspirator in Elizabeth R, he's lucky he didn't get typecast), and a young Christopher Neame as the Earl of Warwick (one of the aforementioned Yorkist claimants). This must have been around the same time he became a major player in Colditz - his episode here also involves an attempt to escape from a prison.

Peter "Count Grendel of Gracht" Jeffrey deserves a special mention for his appearance. Of the episodes we can view, the best by far is the fifth, The Serpent and the Comforter. This takes a break from the main, conspiracy-laden storyline to tell a different sort of tale. Jeffrey plays a religious heretic who has been condemned to be burned to death for his heresy, and whose case the king takes an interest and attempts to save his soul (though not his life).

There are only five characters (excluding extras) in the whole episode, out of whom only the king appears in any of the rest of the series, and none of them are named, either on-screen or in the credits - they are credited as The King, The Prisoner, The Priest, The Guard, The Soldier. It plays out like a... well, like a play, that might not have been part of the series at all. Nevertheless it is riveting drama, and is outstanding.

The other episode I would single out is part seven, A Fly in the Ointment, albeit for quite a different reason, as here the series tries (and succeeds) at doing comedy. One group of conspirators, growing frustrated with their sides' repeated failures at deposing king Henry by way of rebellions or invading with armies from Europe, decide to try to assassinate him using magic, and set about hiring an astrologer to do the job for them.

The humour then arises from the differing levels of credulity between the various conspirators (Peter Bowles gives a good performance as a servant who is less gullible than his superiors), and the presentation to us, the viewers, of the 'magician' as an obvious con artist when we see how he behaves when his clients are not present.

As the series reaches its ending, it enters more familiar historical territory. With all the various conspiracies dealt with and his throne secure, king Henry intends for his son and heir to marry princess Catherine of Aragon, and makes arrangements with the Spanish ambassador, a recurring character played by John "Li H'sen Chang" Bennett. The only trouble is that this "son and heir" is prince Arthur, who then unexpectedly dies soon after the wedding. This leaves the younger prince Henry as the new heir, who has to marry his brother's widow. Which is the very situation that The Six Wives of Henry viii began with, so this prequel series has taken us full circle.

The studio-bound nature of the series, with limited sets (the Tower of London 'exterior' where characters look off screen at events that they can see, but we can't, is particularly stagy), hints that this was a lower-budget series than either of its prestigious predecessors. It is more in the vein of I Claudius (which was still four years away when this was made) in putting total reliance on the actors to make you believe in the drama. While not succeeding to quite the same extent as I Claudius (what does?), this is still a series well worth the watching.

Hopefully BBC Studios will let us do that at some point. Mew.

The Cleopatras

BBC historical costume dramas stumbled in the 1980s. The '70s triumphs of Fall of Eagles, I Claudius, and The Devil's Crown were followed by the legendarily bad The Borgias (1981) and then this series in 1983. Telling the story of the decline and fall of the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, it blatantly wants to be another I Claudius so very badly. And in this it succeeds... in doing it very badly.

At only eight episodes (as opposed to the more usual 13) I wonder if the series had a much more limited budget than its predecessors - the minimalist sets and bare studio floors could be a stylistic choice, I suppose, but I suspect one that comes from the production trying to make a virtue out of necessity.

Written by Philip Mackie, who had previously been responsible for the excellent The Caesars (1968), you could be forgiven for expecting better. The basic plot structure is quite good and there was obviously lot of potential there for another scandalous story full of intrigue and incest (the end of part four is the first time in the series when we see a pharaoh on the throne whose parents aren't closely related), but the script is full of clumsy, exposition-laden dialogue and flat, characterless characters.

We don't spend enough time with any of the main characters (except perhaps the last Cleopatra, i.e. the famous one) to see any of their hidden depths or what makes them behave the way they do. Even the last Cleopatra, who appears in the framing device for parts one to five and then the main plot for the final episodes, has nothing like the depth of motivation compared with, say, Livia or Agrippina in I Claudius. 

Once you get past the first episode or two and get used to the idiosyncratic style you can enjoy the series to a point, but only in a so-bad-it's-good kind of way. The riveting drama of I Claudius it is not, because here it is all surface.

Part of the issue lies in the names. In I Claudius, Caligula was almost always called Caligula even though it was his nickname "Little Boots" because there were at least two other characters called Gaius who appeared in the series before him, and there were several other major characters in a similar situation. I Claudius went out of its way to make these relationships easy on the audience, whereas this series seems determined to make it needlessly complicated to follow who is who and how they are all related - here we have multiple Cleopatras (hence the series title), across several generations, but they're all referred to as "Cleopatra." 

For example, in episode three there are no fewer than six characters called Cleopatra, credited respectively as:

1. Cleopatra, the queen
2. Cleopatra, the young girl
3. Cleopatra, the eldest daughter
4. Cleopatra Tryphaena
5. Cleopatra Selene
6. Cleopatra Berenike

This is far from The Cleopatras' biggest problem though. For that we must turn from the writer to the director, John Frankau. The pacing and editing of the series are all over the place and distinctly uneven, with every scene change using electronic transitions like you might have seen in that era's Top of the Pops. This is a gimmick that massively outstays its welcome because it is so obtrusive - it seemed to me that some scenes were split up just so that there could be extra transitions to another event and then back to the first.

The other thing the director liked spending time on instead of, say, directing the actors, was the topless or near-naked dancers, who appear in any and every scene they can possibly be shoehorned into. You could argue it makes the point that Egypt is a debauched and decadent civilisation when every other scene is a drunken feast where dignitaries are entertained by such, but not when it is so frequently on screen as to take time away from all other aspects of the drama.

The directorial problems don't stop there. Normally reliable character actors such as Richard Griffiths, Stephen "Travis" Greif, and Ian "Harcourt" McNeice delivered their lines as though either badly under-rehearsed or else just trying to get through them as quickly as possible so they can get away from this dreadful series.

In episodes five through seven we see Robert Hardy playing Julius Caesar. He, at least, looks like he's having fun as the civilised Roman who has had enough of the degenerate Egyptians and all of their bullshit. As a veteran of BBC historical costume dramas, not least Elizabeth R, he is the only actor in the series truly able to rise above the quality of the material he's being served.

For a brief moment we get maybe a glimmer of what the series could have been like, but after the assassination of Caesar, there isn't much to look forward to in the final episode unless you enjoy seeing Mark Antony's bare arse (as played by Christopher Neame's bare arse). Purr... er, I mean... Mew; Shakespeare's Antony and the Cleopatras this is not.

In conclusion: cats were supposed to have been worshiped in Ancient Egypt, but there is no sign of that here!

Avoid this series like the plague(s of Egypt), mew.

Neame

Not long after playing Curtis in the gritty WW2 drama Secret Army, Christopher Neame somehow found himself playing the baddy Skagra in the Doctor Who story Shada. If you don't know Shada, that's probably because it is the one they never finished making so it was never shown on TV.

Fortunately they did make enough of it that we can see the costume Skagra wears in it; one of the most fabulous costumes of the era - and the era was the 1970s, and the same year as Blakes 7 season two, so that's saying something!

I wonder if Christopher Neame was paid to be in Shada, or if just getting to wear the costume was enough for him? It would have been for me. You can tell Ronnie Corbett is impressed.

You can't see his bag in that first picture; it's the bag that really sets the ensemble off...

250th post

I have been watching more Shakespeare recently.

Julius Caesar is not one of my favourites; there are no cats in it. There are dogs though. Mark Antony has dogs of war and he sets them on his enemies Brutus and Cassius. In the version I saw Cassius is played by David Collings who does the voice of Monkey and he was also in Doctor Who a few times.

Cassius is a manny who doesn't like Julius Caesar, because he thinks Julius Caesar want to be king. He teams up with Brutus and other mannys and they kill Julius Caesar. But Mark Antony was Julius Caesar's friend and when he finds out he says "Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war;" then he turns the tables on Cassius and Brutus so they have to kill themselves.

The sequel to Julius Caesar is Antony and Cleopatra and I have seen it as well. I was a little bit confused because the version I saw had different mannys playing Antony and Octavius Caesar who are important characters in both stories, but not very confused because its really no different to Travis changing between seasons 1 and 2 of Blakes 7.

Mark Antony and Octavius Caesar were friends at the end of Julius Caesar, but in Antony and Cleopatra they fight each other because Antony wants to marry Queen Cleopatra so he can be a prince (I think - I'm not sure I followed all of the plot of this one), but Octavius wants Antony to marry his sister so they can be best friends.

Octavius wins the fights they have, and Antony and Cleopatra have to kill themselves, just like Cassius and Brutus did at the end of Julius Caesar.

They are both sad stories, but Antony and Cleopatra has one very funny scene. Antony comes back from Egypt and gets drunk with his friend Lepidus. Mannys always get very silly when drunk, and they are no exception. This is what they say to each other:

Lepidus: "What manner o' thing is your crocodile?"

Antony: "It is shaped, sir, like itself; and it is as broad

as it hath breadth: it is just so high as it is,

and moves with its own organs: it lives by that

which nourisheth it; and the elements once out of

it, it transmigrates."

Lepidus: "What colour is it of?"

Antony: "Of it own colour too."

Lepidus: "'Tis a strange serpent."

Antony: "'Tis so. And the tears of it are wet."

I have also been watching Colditz, which is a TV series about mannys trying to escape from a castle called Colditz. It is a bit like The Prisoner, except there are lots of prisoners trying to escape together.

Lots of famous mannys play characters in Colditz, including David McCallum, Edward Hardwicke, Robert Wagner, Paul Chapman (who was in Shakespeare) and Bernard Hepton. There are also lots of guest-stars that I recognise, including Patrick Troughton, Nigel Stock, Terence Hardiman, Kenneth Griffith (who was in The Prisoner) and Prentis Hancock.

Some of my favourite characters in Colditz are the baddys because they are played so well. In season 2 there is a new baddy, he is Major Mohn and is played by Anthony Valentine. But I don't just like the baddys, I like the goodys as well, especially Dick Player (Christopher Neame). My best episode in season 1 of Colditz is Name, Rank and Number, when we first see Dick Player. I have not seen all of season 2 yet but I hope to soon.