Category: tv

I caught this on Talking Pictures TV last night, a wonderful cable channel that unearths all kinds of forgotten wonders.

“The Death of Adolf Hitler” is a 1973 British television play, an episode of ITV Sunday Night Theatre. It stars Frank Finlay as Adolf Hitler and Caroline Mortimer as Eva Braun. First aired on 7 January 1973, the drama details the last 10 days of Hitler’s life as World War II comes to an end and Allied troops close in on the Führerbunker. Michael Sheard (who played Himmler) and Tony Steedman (who played Gen. Jodl) would play the same roles in the American television film The Bunker in 1981. The play depicts Hitler as a tragic antihero tormented by both the past and present, unable to reconcile his hopes and dreams with the reality of the nightmare of his own making.

Finlay won a British Academy Television Award as Best Actor for his performance.

FInlay was around the same height as Hitler: I was struck by a couple of scenes where he appears a good deal shorter than the people around him, and I suspect either the rest of the cast were put on boxes or he was put in a hole to accentuate it. You can see why Finlay won an award – it’s a showy role, but he runs up and down pretty much his entire range within it.

Evidently, the author of the piece, Vincent Tilsley, intended it to be a six-hour series. When it was cut down to one hour forty five, amputating what he felt to be his best work, he quit writing and became a psychotherapist.

There’s a wonderfully horrible little cameo in there from Ray McAnally, too. It makes an interesting compare/contrast with the more recent and better known DOWNFALL. This piece is much more theatrical, much less restrained and measured in its effects. It makes a few departures from British tv of its period – no fake German accents, thank god, and also it simply translates “Fuhrer” – Hitler is referred to as Leader throughout. There are hallucination scenes, lines repeated like a mantra or chorus throughout – a really interesting construction.

There’s a chilling bit with children playing (a version of) Juden Raus. all the more awful for its matter-of-fact nature and everything it says about the insidious banality of evil.

And, hey, there’s a copy on YouTube as well as DVDS  (UK) (US).

I was trying to track down a memory of a modern-dress Greek play I saw on the BBC in the 1980s: what lodged in my memory was the Greek chorus composed of old British actors in tweeds, and Frank Windsor being one of them. It really started nagging me today – I’d shown a publisher friend an old rough idea that took a visual inspiration from that play, and I figured it was time to track it down.

“frank windsor greek chorus” got me here, and then here, and additional information got me the following on YouTube.

This is a TERRIBLE copy:

But now I know I didn’t hallucinate the whole thing. Insane cast. At one point you will find the magnificent William Morgan Sheppard! standing next to two Dr Watsons and the sainted Bernard Hill.

The set and atmosphere of the first section, set outdoors with the chorus, is thrilling. I’d love a better copy of this.

The Curse of the Gothic Symphony follows the journey of a fanatical and eclectic group of music lovers who aspire to break the curse behind British composer Havergal Brian’s notorious First Symphony.

On CuriosityStream, which I subscribe to, but it’s probably elsewhere.

If that line was in fact written by Sean Tretta and Kiley Rossetter, and not actually just tossed out by Patrick – the change in his diction for “the carpet” is either Terry Matalas catching Patrick fucking with his friends or a perfectly weighted reading of a nice joke – then I applaud them for that as well as the structural grace of this episode and the other well placed quips.

It feels like it took the creators and producers of PICARD a couple of seasons to steel themselves to do this season — the one where the old gang is put back together. That said, the previous two seasons gave this season the always authentically raw-nerved Michelle Hurd and the regal intelligence of Jeri Ryan. But it’s really all about STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION and revisiting those characters. Which leads me to thank the creators for giving Michelle Forbes the space and script to stop the fucking show with her appearance: it pleased me on personal and professional levels to watch an older Michelle go toe to toe with Patrick in tight, tense scenes and emotionally burn the room down.

All credit to Matalas and his team for pretty much landing a season of television that could so easily have been a complete disaster. I note also the QUATERMASS tones of the young people becoming the threat and the old people being the last chance.

I imagine a great many words have been expended elsewhere on this episode.

Connor is getting married on a boat. The wedding party is boarded first – the people who hold the “red invites.” Jesse Armstrong wrote this episode, and you can see him having a little fun around the edges of what is otherwise a searing piece of work.

Roman’s last words to his father. The episode is just loaded up with emotional mines. Kieron Culkin, Alan Ruck and Matthew Macfadyen in particular do some magnificent work here, and Zoe Winters has about a minute towards the end that steals the whole episode. The whole thing is stacked up with awards contenders, from writing and directing and all the way across.

The fascinating thing is that it absolutely reverses any expectation you may have had for this event in this show. You don’t see it coming and you don’t see it playing out like that. It’s a model of questioning your own narrative and building an incredible piece of work out of taking only the difficult choices.