Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years is an eight-part ITV political drama series from 1981 that starred Robert Hardy as Winston Churchill and featured a host of recognisable actors as his various family, friends, allies and enemies.
It covers the years in between 1928 and 1939. When we first see him Churchill is the Chancellor, but then the Conservatives (his party) lose the 1929 general election - so the "wilderness years" of the title refers to the period he spent as still an MP but without a ministerial post.
The first half of the series is mainly about how Churchill sets himself against the other senior Conservatives when he opposes the bipartisan policy to start India on the road to self governance. Churchill's allies to begin with are his friends Professor Lindemann (David Swift, Henry from
Drop the Dead Donkey) the intellectual, and Brendan Bracken (Tim
"Captain Harker" Pigott-Smith).
Opposing Churchill are most of the political heavyweights of the time, including the likes of Stanley Baldwin (Peter
"Power Game" Barkworth), Neville Chamberlain (Eric "Moriarty" Porter) and Samuel Hoare.
Hoare, played by Ewar Woowar, is portrayed as Churchill's main antagonist throughout the series. In a succession of senior cabinet posts (Minster for India, then Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary), he represents the political positions Churchill opposes, and is portrayed as the moral opposite to Churchill with his use of underhanded tactics such as nobbling parliamentary select committees.
The series contrasts Churchill's political battles with scenes and sub plots about his family life, including his arguments and reconciliations with his wife Clementine (Sian
"Livia" Phillips) and son Randolph (Nigel Havers), and his financial problems. I found it difficult to find any interest or feel any sympathy for the character in this latter plotline - his family is so privileged that when he gets into debts and loses his newspaper column, the Old Boy Network solves both his problems for him trivially - the political drama equivalent of "...and with one bound he was free."
At the opposite end of the scale in terms of being sympathy-inducing, we have the bit where Churchill gets run over by a car when visiting New York at the end of episode two, putting him in a wheelchair for months. The scene where this accident occurs is genuinely shocking, coming out of nowhere, and if this wasn't a biographical account you would have to accuse the writers of just putting it in for the sake of a cheap and easy cliffhanger.
After his defeat over India, the second (and superior) half of the series turns to Churchill's attempts to make the government take Hitler's Nazi Germany seriously as a future threat and enemy, at a time when Germany was building up its armed forces secretly. Churchill gathers a number of informers in the British civil service and military, including Ralph Wigram of the FO (Paul Freeman, Belloq from Raiders of the Lost Ark, who is here able to keep his accent straight for once) and Major Morton (Moray Watson, George Frobisher in Rumpole of the Bailey), who pass information to him secretly for him to use in his campaign.
This has the effect of making the series feel quite a lot like an espionage drama, helped no doubt by the fact that this was made around the same time as the BBC's
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) and
Smiley's People (1982), which share a similar look common to filmed TV series of that era. They even share Sian Phillips playing the protagonist's wife, although Clementine Churchill gives Phillips a larger role than she ever had as Ann Smiley.
As Churchill is increasingly proved to be right about Hitler's ambitions, support for his side grows and the opposition to him recedes, but unfortunately the main holdouts are the new Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, and his head of the civil service Sir Horace Wilson (Clive "Jobel" Swift), both utterly committed to their doomed policy of "Appeasement."
They are supported right to the end by Lord Halifax (played as a doddery old manny by Richard Murdoch, in a not dissimilar way to his portrayal of Uncle Tom in Rumpole) and Samuel Hoare, until the invasion of Poland when even they can see that the policy has failed utterly, and the moment in the final episode where Hoare comes to align himself with Churchill over Chamberlain serves as the climax to the series arc and a moment of utter vindication for Churchill.
This is a fine political drama series with some top-tier actors and acting, and presents an interesting take on a lesser-known (at least to me) part of Churchill's life and career. Others may be more qualified than I am to say just how much this cleaned up his character traits to make him into the heroic protagonist, but it certainly cannot be said to have whitewashed him completely. While Churchill is centre-stage throughout, making this undeniably Robert Hardy's show, I personally found more interest in the secondary characters, some of whom (such as Samuel Hoare) I knew next to nothing about prior to watching the series. I was educated as well as entertained.
