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What’s this a review? Sorry for the silence, alas work is too busy and I took on a couple of pet projects which took up my little spare time. That said… I still listened to plenty of plays and documentaries – so where to start? Smiley of course.
Well we are 5 programmes in to R4’s re rendering of John le Carré’s George Smiley, a mammoth task and one fraught with dangers. Hanging over George Smiley is the shadow of Alec Guiness. Anyone who saw the TV version of Tinker, Tailor and Smiley’s People see Guiness when they read the words George Smiley, including le Carré! And not just Guiness, look at the cast, Ian Richardson, Bernard Hepton, Michael Jayston, Hywel Bennett…
Enter stage left, Simon Russell Beale, will he step into ewan McGregor’s shoes and do a crappy impersonation of Obi wan for us? Read on gentle listener.
I approached Call for the Dead with as much of an open mind as I could, and I have to admit for the first 5 minutes this soft, inward performance didn’t seem quite right, then suddenly – it had changed, I suddenly realised this was Smiley. A troubled, complex, man. In love, loved and loveless – his job treating him the way life does, all pitch perfect from Beale.
Now before I laud too much praise on Beale’s performance (can there be too much?) I have to just say the cast (Kenneth Cranham, Eleanor Bron, Geoffrey Palmer, Ian McDiarmid, Phillip Jackson, Maggie Steed, Ewan Bailey I could go on for ever…) adaptation and direction all reach the same heights. The plays move along well keeping plenty of detail and incedent, whilst never seeming stagey. i can give no better example than in an expository scene in A Murder of Quality between Smiley and Ailsa which literally took my breath away. The subtlety of all concerned in presenting a scene which makes one wonder if you are eavesdropping on a conversation is incredible. After that I was eagerly awaiting the first of the Karla trilogy.
Tinker Tailor is as good as it gets I think. Shaun McKenna deserves something in the order of a Knighthood for his masterly revision of this book. Ewan Bailey is brilliant as Guillam, and here you will see a subtle shift away from the TV series. Young Peter Guillam is very much his own man, and whilst loyal to Smiley, still unhappy with his own mole like status in the Circus. Toby is also slightly revised more pointedly explaining his own complex role.
Strangely the most similar scenes to the TV are those of Ricky Tarr, truncated but no real change of emphasis, but then they are the scene setter, the Macguffin, there is no emotional burden laying heavily on Tarr, just simple betrayal, loss and fear.
When it comes to Ann, the TV series made he a distant object from Smiley, and was always the weaker part of the TV series. Mckenna exposes Smiley through his constant internal discourse he has with Ann (as opposed to the reality of their non communication, in once case cleverly broken by a bad line). This exposure of Smiley’s inner thoughts, means Ann’s infidelities (which are exposed as we hunt Gerald) seem pin sharp painful as you hear the tenor of Beales voice change.
Is it perfect, well I can’t think of anything to criticise. Everything seems so real, so normal, you just don’t question it. Only in A Murder of Quality, when the twist relates to the misrepresentation of someone’s personality does it jar a little, but that is a fault of the novel and it is only apparent in this version due to the normality of everything else.
So if you like le Carre, should you listen? Well I am sure you are, but if you like radio at all – dive on in there, and look forward to some more great adaptations in 2010.
For the remainder of this review Sir Alec Douglas-Home will be referred to as Baillie Vass.
Well maybe not, but Private Eye did have fun with the PM who lasted less than a year. History does not look back too fondly on this period of the Tory parties time in power. The government was already damaged by Profumo and when they chose a hereditary peer as a Prime Minister in 1963 the country was not entirely convinced about this, and it seemed to represent the broken nature of the Tory government.
Based on the bizarre true events of a near kidnap of Douglas-Home as he stayed in a house near Aberdeen (with no bodyguard) make for a fascinating little play. Whilst the situation is largely true, the dialogue and resolution are spun from the imagination of Martin Jameson, and it leads to a great 40 minute play. The cast is does a great job, and Tim Mcinnery is spot on as the doubt ridden PM.
We will never know what conversation was had between the PM and the angry students that led them to abandoning their attempt (though the fact that Home believed it would lead to a Tory victory instead of Wilson was interesting). There is enough tension, and the suggestion of anger and violence to make this great drama. What it also does is highlight the current concern of the dislocation of politicians from the public, and some relevance to the position of Mr Brown… but not too obviously, it lets the dialogue make the points.
For such a strange situation the dialogue seems very real, and whislt we can see times where issues and history are highlighted writer Martin Jameson wisely refrained from making the dialogue too ‘knowing’ which it is easy to do from 45 years distance.
Well worth a listen, and another great bit of historical drama from the BBC.
RadioArchive
http://radioarchive.cc/torrents-details.php?id=5959
Well apologies to all for not posting too much, work is still marching on at a pace and bucking the credit crunch keeping me busy, and despite plenty of listening, not too much writing… So it was the 40th Anniversary of the moon landings, quite rightly something we can SHOUT about as a world and be damned proud of.
I realise I tend have have the educated reader visiting this site so lets forget the crap of conspiracy and look at how BBC radio celebrated this anniversary. There were several programmes highlighting the this great achievement and I have chosen a couple to highlight and maybe give a listen.
Maybe? That hints at something I guess, whilst these programmes do not represent the best and worst of radio documentaries, they show one that hits the mark and one that just misses. Moonbathing, a radio 2 documentary misses the mark but has a much more difficult job. Trying to equate a bunch of egotistical rockers enjoying spaced out visions with the people featured in Walking on the Moon who actually did the deed was always going to be a tricky job. The problem lies in comparing the obvious pomposity of rock and pop music with the awe inspiring job done by the Apollo team in 1969.
Now with music ,one cannot be entirely impartial, one has tastes, biases and ears. What I hoped for in this documentary was something about the process behind the creativity of some great music. Music inspiring or referencing the moon landings. Gliding serenely above the rest was Brian Eno’s ‘Apollo Atmospheres’ which got a scant few minutes airtime in this documentary. A beatiful album produced by Eno and Lanois to support the film “For All Mankind” produced in 1983. It is also the only music that appears in both documentaries.
The documentary was interesting, I liked the Joe Meek stuff, the obvious mention of a Seraphim, the link to sputnik, 2001 etc. What one gets is a kind of travelogue through space rock. This is OK but the link to the moon is only by association.
The programme starts with Pink Floyd’s music for the BBC’s images of the moon landings, a relevant and interesting point yet covered in no real detail,then we go into Haydn’s Creation and Holst’s Planet Suite, followed by some twee 50’s country music to start the discussion about the ‘Space race’ and sputnik, cue “satellite baby” and in we go to Les Paul…
This is just the first 5 minutes. The problem here for me is it never fell into either camp, it was neither seriously investigating the cultural (and popular) impact of sci-fi and space, nor was is highlighting some key space music moments, instead it rattled through a shopping list of space moments and music.
Now all that said, give it a listen, but it is only vaguely associated to the Moon landings, instead think of journey through space music and you’ll enjoy it. It is well researched and presented but the sheer volume of material covered lessens any memorable impact it may have.
Onto Walking on the Moon, how good is this documentary? Listen to the first 10 seconds and try not get hooked, the music ( for much of the programme Brian Eno’s Apollo Atmosphere’s), Buzz Aldrins incredulous opening statement, inspiring stuff. I am going to have difficulty reviewing this programme without constantly heaping praise on it, but like so many other great Radio Four documentaries these programmes are just superb.
The confidence they have to let archive material and superb interviews tell the story is stunning. This should show other radio and TV documentaries that you do not need flashy technique or gimmicks to sell a historical documentary, just great interviews, confidence in the story and great editing.
The use of the original BBC coverage to drive the very basic narrative of the moon landing makes the journey seamless and it links into the comms traffic of the flight and back to more interviews. You learn so much about the feelings, the pressure and the hope that existed during the build up and eventual landings on the moon.
The interviews are wide enough to cover the story (the astronauts, control, wives) but still focused enough that the story and that focus is never lost (except once for me but more on that later).
When Buzz Alsdrin started to talk about the technical but fascinating detail of the actual landing, you slowy realise just how big, how important and how astonishing this feat actually was. His voice drifting over the occasional music is hypnotic, his matter of fact explanation of this astonishing journey is fantastic. As we drift through interviews and comms traffic through to touchdown (via vintage BBC coverage) we get more and more tense til the final moment of the Moon landing. You get a sense of the tension at Mission Control and lastly and most importantly you get a vision of what it was like to walk on the moon, stunning material, beautifully assembled. The Gene Kranz interview is absolutely wonderful, interesting and personal. He gives a great feel of the human side of mission control.
The only slight complaint I had was the vox pops of ordinary people’s recollection of the moon landing, what it mean to them, how they felt etc. These are great and very interesting, but for those few minutes we lose the granduer, the power of the story. The very normality of these interviews is great but it just jars against the stunning storytelling of the last 30 minutes. It sounds apart and different from the rest of the programme (both stylistically as well as content) and may have worked better as a footnote, but this is a minor niggle.
The documentary picks up again after this ‘island’ and carries on to a great finish, and I cannot recommend this highly enough, great – great listening. Forget the visual spectacle listen to this documentary.
BBC Link.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lj8zs
Radioarchive
http://radioarchive.cc/torrents-details.php?id=5907
http://radioarchive.cc/torrents-details.php?id=5963
