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Remembering Colin Welland 1934 - 2015

2017-11-02T11:10:00+00:00

Two years on from the death of screenwriter and actor Colin Welland, writer Simon Farquhar takes a look back at his work.

When Colin Welland received his Oscar in 1982 for the screenplay of Chariots of Fire, he made a special point of thanking British television, “where I learnt my craft”. Throughout the previous decade, having already established himself as an earthy, honest actor in Z Cars, he regularly brought those same artisan qualities to his plays, many of which were national events. Fiercely committed to his Lancastrian roots, Welland notably wrote meaty roles for women as well as for the overgrown schoolboys they were often lumbered with. When I wrote his obituary for The Independent in 2015, I described his dramas as “works of sympathetic anger; neat, character-driven slices of life populated by straight-talking matriarchs and small-town dreamers”.

I knew Colin Welland slightly. I interviewed him twice, once in his local in Barnes in London, in 2003 and once at a BFI screening of his magnum opus, Leeds-United!, and in the years that followed, would occasionally be surprised by a telephone call from him. He could be an intimidating presence, but he was also twinkle-eyed and warm-hearted.

For me, he remains the definitive television writer, the one who exemplified the democratic nature of the medium. Anyone can watch a Colin Welland play and identify with it. His stories were everyday, human stories. But while he didn’t revolutionise the single play in the way that Dennis Potter strove to, that’s not to suggest that his works lacked ambition. Leeds – United! was the most expensive British television film ever made at the time, a thunderous piece of big-screen film-making for the small screen that told the true story of a strike by Leeds clothing workers four years earlier. It was fearless in its depiction of dirty deals between employers and unions, which in Welland's view had seen a workforce sold down the river, a vivid display of both the chaos of industrial relations in the 70s and the revolutionary spirit of so much television drama of the era.

Joyce Kennedy, Lynne Perrie and Olga Grahame as striking workers in Leeds - United!

Welland was alerted to the story by his mother-in-law, who had been involved in the strike. “They’d eventually gone back to work without knowing why. I was quite a big cheese at the time so I was able to go up there and talk to everyone involved, on all sides, and get the whole sorry story”.

Welland would certainly have been able to beguile the suits of the clothing business at that time: he was then one of the most famous faces in Britain. He was still a busy actor, having won a BAFTA for his performance as the fair-minded teacher, Mr Farthing, in Kes. Virtually every one of his television plays up to that point had won a Writers Guild Award or a BAFTA, and he’d also begun branching out as a presenter of sports, travel and health shows.

Although he was flattered by the critical acclaim his writing received, he said it would all count for nothing if he were greeted by an embarrassed silence back home in Lancashire. “I write from the stomach”, he told the Radio Times in 1970.

Sheelah Wilcocks as Mrs Atkinson in Hallelujah Handshake

Welland wrote many dramas for the Play for Today slot. However, the first, The Hallelujah Handshake, was something of a departure from his Northern roots. It was, in fact, a story he heard on the golf course.

“The Methodist minister in Barnes told me about this misfit character who had suddenly appeared in the congregation. He was riddled with guilt that he didn’t do more for this man who didn’t have a complete personality but just created whatever he thought was needed for himself, wherever he went”.

Beautifully directed by Alan Clarke (who would later direct tougher fare like Scum and The Firm), the play presents us with an innocent, Walter Mitty-like figure, tireless in his zealous desire to help out and muck in. The gradual awareness that he is not all he seems is fascinatingly depicted by the reserved, well-meaning little community, and the play is a fine example of two of the strongest characteristics of Welland’s work: sympathy, and a determination to find the humanity and morality in every character, rather than conveniently splitting people into heroes and villains.

Perhaps his most celebrated piece, Kisses At Fifty, is the story of a humdrum coal miner (beautifully played by a BAFTA-winning Bill Maynard) who comes alive in middle age when he embarks on a fling with a barmaid. Thirteen years later, the story was filmed in Hollywood as Twice in a Lifetime, starring Gene Hackman. “The Americans weren’t used to stories like this being set among blue-collar workers, and really welcomed it”.

Bill Maynard as Harry in Kisses at 50

When I first interviewed Welland, British television drama was caught between a rock and a hard place. An hysterical reaction to the explosion of the internet and the multi-channel landscape had led to a sudden obsession with the bitesized, the tried-and-tested and the superficial. In a schedule suddenly drowning in docusoaps, lifestyle shows, cops and docs, we seemed as far away as it was possible to imagine from the days of Play for Today.

“People used to write to me back in the Seventies saying that they had been about to go out but been sucked into my plays because they recognised themselves”, he said. “I’ll give you an example of this. In Kisses at Fifty, after the couple have started this affair, he hasn’t told his wife, and there’s a little scene where he gets into bed beside her, thinking she’s asleep. And then out of nowhere, she says: ‘Harry… who’s this Audrey?’ You would not believe the amount of letters I had from people saying ‘how did you know? That’s exactly what my wife said when that happened to me”.

The lesser-known Jack Point is a personal favourite, the tale of a small town Gilbert and Sullivan society preparing their production of Yeoman of the Guard and encountering a casting crisis. Do they give the part to the woefully ill-suited elder of the group or break his heart and award it to the young lion who looks set to become a star? It’s a little play about little things, but it’s absolutely riveting.

The cast of the local Gilbert and Sullivan society in Jack Point, 1973

And then there’s Your Man From Six Counties, a love letter to the west of Ireland, a land Welland had fallen in love with through visiting his wife’s relatives there. It’s a rueful story of a young Belfast boy orphaned by The Troubles who is adopted by a rural aunt and uncle. Handsomely shot and tenderly told, more interested in peace than politics, it was, bafflingly, never repeated. How much this played a part in Welland moving away from television is debatable, but inevitably, the big screen was beckoning. However, despite the success of Chariots of Fire (uncharacteristically posh but another celebration of human spirit and defiance) and the equally-satisfying Yanks, the big screen was never really the natural home for his intimate storytelling.

His final years saw little new work produced, in fact in 1987, he was interviewed on the BBC’s Breakfast Time, and when asked what his next project was, revealed that he was writing a screenplay about George Stephenson. Fifteen years later, on the same programme, he gave the same answer. The film never appeared, perhaps proving that television truly was where his stories belonged. He was the Jimmy McGovern of his day, a writer driven by a love for the working-class community he came from, angered by injustice but, like McGovern, an optimist, whose stories usually ended in hope, not despair, celebrating the capabilities of… well, let’s call them everyday people.

Genome scrapbook: 1997

2017-02-24T14:22:16+00:00

Samantha Morton as Sophia Western and Kathy Burke as Honour in Tom Jones

Twenty years ago Labour won the election after 18 years in opposition, Princess Diana died in a car crash in Paris and Arsene Wenger was confirmed as Arsenal’s new manager. In 1997 I was doing my GCSE’s, so it won’t surprise you to learn that I remember a lot about what was on TV…

Drama got off to a grand start on BBC2, with an epic adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Nostromo running throughout February. Just over a year after he appeared in Pride and Prejudice, Colin Firth played Englishman Charles Gould, who returns to his South American birthplace to reopen an old mine (sound familiar?) The adaptation of this tale of social and political corruption was a huge undertaking. It was filmed in Colombia, and involved no fewer than 15,000 extras. The Radio Times reported that the actors, who included Albert Finney, Serena Scott-Thomas and Claudio Amendola, had to perform in 95% humidity.

Meanwhile, there was mystery afoot on home-turf; mystery of an unusual and somewhat spooky kind… Enter magician Jonathan Creek (played by comedian and actor Alan Davies). Helped by journalist Madeline Magellan (Caroline Quentin), he set to work solving crime, with an approach that could only be described as inimitable. Episode titles such as The Reconstituted Corpse gave some augury of the macabre crime-solving missions that were to follow. The programme has run on-and-off for the last 20 years and has clocked up 32 episodes, notably all written by the same man – David Renwick.

Caroline Quentin, Annette Crosbie and Alan Davies in Jonathan Creek

Psychological thriller Bright Hair hit our screens later in the year, starring another former Pride and Prejudice star, Emilia Fox. The then-23 year old was a convincing teenage schoolgirl, haunted after witnessing the aftermath of a murder. And on the subject of crime - although this blog focuses on BBC programmes - it would be an oversight not to mention that Midsomer Murders also debuted on ITV in 1997. The series, which launched with John Nettles starring as DCI Barnaby, is now in its 21st season and has probably solved more TV murder cases than all other crime series put together.

Later in the year on the BBC, Max Beesley smouldered in period drama The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. Billed as a “rollicking” tale, this five-parter also starred Samantha Morton, Frances de la Tour and Kathy Burke. It was racier than the recent Pride and Prejudice and Middlemarch adaptations, and Radio Times even flagged up some of the more controversial content. I certainly had to resort to some subterfuge to watch the third episode.

Back to pre-watershed, the “will-he-won't-he?” plotline continued in the Irish town of Ballykissangel, as the nation’s prime-time audience willed Father Peter (Stephen Tompkinson) to do something un-priestlike and elope with love interest Dervla Kirwan.

Just kiss her! Stephen Tompkinson and Dervla Kirwan in Ballykissangel

Soap fans were treated to two exciting plotlines in Eastenders, as Bianca and Ricky tied the knot (for the first time) and the tempestuous relationship between Grant (Ross Kemp) and Tiffany (Martine McCutcheon) culminated in a paternity row over baby Courtenay.

Now for something a bit more serious…

On factual TV, psychologist Oliver James put some of the famous faces of the day on the couch in The Chair, showing that psychotherapy really had gone mainstream in the UK. And there were plenty of white knuckles over on BBC Two, with fly-on-the-wall docu-drama Driving School, which followed the experiences of learner drivers. The programme is best remembered for bringing cleaning lady Maureen Rees to fame as an early “reality TV star” (and for helping her to pass her driving test on the 7th attempt).

Meanwhile in my household, as Radio 4 celebrated 12,000 episodes of The Archers, an obligatory silence was imposed in the kitchen each evening so that my mum could tune into the latest from Ambridge. And comedy To The Manor Born had an outing on BBC Radio 2, with Penelope Keith reprising her role as Audrey fforbes-Hamilton.

Say Hello!

It was also an important year for children’s TV, with the launch of Teletubbies on BBC2. Within months, that theme tune had become every parent’s earworm, and a debate was set off about whether the Teletubbies’ gibberish would harm children’s speech development (shades of Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men in the 1950s). There was also an important moment for children’s news programme Newsround, which celebrated its 25th anniversary. In its honour, BBC1 hosted a nostalgic retrospective, Newsround’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Years.

Alan Partridge first appeared on the radio, in BBC Radio 4's On The Hour in 1991

A-haaa!

We all had a bit of a laugh when Steve Coogan reprised his role as an inept presenter in I’m Alan Partridge. The 1997 series saw Partridge demoted to a role in local radio ("Good morning, Norwich"), but still dreaming of the "glory" days. Could he get his television show re-commissioned? His frantic attempts to pitch new formats to a BBC commissioning editor are classic moments of television comedy.

And after a three-year absence, fans were thrilled when Red Dwarf reappeared for its seventh series. Episode 6, written by Kryten actor Robert Llewellyn, saw the crew being transported back to a virtual reality land - based on Pride and Prejudice. And what happened when Red Dwarf met period drama? Answer, Kryten’s head exploded…

Over to you chaps… did you enjoy the programmes mentioned above? Or have we missed one that you liked? Let us know in the space below:

The following programmes are available to purchase from BBC Store and other providers: Jonathan Creek, Red Dwarf, I'm Alan Partridge, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling and Teletubbies.

The Sunday Post: I, Claudius

2016-09-25T09:00:00+00:00

Claudius (Derek Jacobi), established as Emperor of Rome, contemplates the conquest of Britain - this time, Brexit would take several hundred years to come into effect

Forty years ago this week, on 20 September 1976, BBC2 broadcast the first episode of one of its best remembered classic serials, I, Claudius.

Based on the novels I, Claudius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves, it was the story of one of the lesser-known Roman emperors and the dynasty he belonged to, whose family business, as producer Martin Lisemore memorably put it, was ruling the world.

At this time, adaptations of novels on BBC television fell into two camps, the more popular works shown on BBC1, while more challenging or obscure novels went to BBC2 (at this time billed as The BBC2 Serial). These would go out in longer episodes – typically forty-five to fifty minutes – while BBC1 adaptations were twenty-five to thirty minutes for each installment.

Despite being just the latest in a long line of BBC adaptations, I, Claudius stood out from the rest. To begin with, the novels, written in the mid-1930s, are in a very accessible style. Although Robert Graves was a poet and a classical scholar, the novels were written as popular fiction to earn money, so Graves’ writing is not dry, but very readable. He is adept at bringing life to the historical characters and events, derived from his knowledge of classical authors such as Suetonius and Tacitus.

The adaptation for television is also skillful, with the dramatist Jack Pulman bringing his own light touch, and making it his own while being true to the spirit of Graves’s books. It’s no mean feat either, because of the complicated relationships between the characters, most of whom are related to each other. As with The Forsyte Saga back in 1967, Radio Times helpfully included a family tree in their preview article. There was also a short introductory programme In Nineteen Hundred Years… presented by the series’ historical adviser Robert Erskine, to give the background to the series.

The Claudian family tree, vital to make sure you don't accidentally marry someone you're not already related to...

Jack Pulman had been writing for television and radio since the late 50s, and he adapted his first of many classic serials, Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann, for BBC2 in 1965. In 1972 he gained his longest and most challenging commission when the BBC asked him to tackle War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy’s mammoth tale of upper-class Russian families during the Napoleonic wars, which ran to 20 episodes. He also wrote the first four episodes of the 1975 version of Poldark, before being approached by producer Martin Lisemore to adapt I, Claudius.

Lisemore himself had come up through the ranks of the BBC drama department, before producing his first serial, Thomas Hardy’s The Woodlanders, in 1970. Since then he had worked on BBC2 classic serials (with one exception, 1975’s The Master of Ballantrae, for BBC1), including Heinrich Mann’s Man of Straw, in which the lead role was taken by a young actor called Derek Jacobi.

After completing How Green Was My Valley (starring Stanley Baker and Sian Phillips), I, Claudius was his next production, with experienced director Herbert Wise given the task of realising the drama. There was one contractual hiccup: Graves had sold the film rights to Alexander Korda’s London Films, and an abortive version starring Charles Laughton was commenced in 1937. The rights still remained with London Films, who were credited on the BBC series as a result.

Though thirteen 50-minute slots were allowed for the dramatisation, it was decided that since the first episode only featured Claudius’s birth at the end, it would make more sense to combine episodes 1 and 2 into a feature length episode so that viewers could see the character as part of the action in week 1. Thus it was transmitted as 12 parts, although a 13-part version was available for foreign markets (the extra episode was called Family Affairs).

Filming for the I, Clavdivs title sequence is ruined when the Director General's pet snake, Neville, escapes from his vivarium (that's yer actual Latin that is...)

Claudius did appear at the beginning and end of almost every episode, in framing sequences of him as an old man at work on the history of his family. The rest of the story was thus largely depicted in flashback, gradually coming closer to the ‘present’ time. These sequences allowed us to see the mature Claudius and gave an idea of his true personality.

It was decided to feature no location filming for the serial, for artistic reasons rather than a result of low BBC budgets, though it meant more money could be spent on other aspects of the production. The only film used was for the title sequence: a simple but arresting shot of a snake slithering across a mosaic representation of the main captions.

Apart from music featured within the action – trumpets announcing the entrance of emperors, for example – the sole piece of music was the title theme, composed by Wilfred Josephs and performed by early music specialists David Wulstan and the Clerkes of Oxenford.

One of Herbert Wise’s first tasks as director was to cast the large array of major parts the production required. Firstly, there was Claudius himself, who was one of several roles who had to age several decades through the series, starting as a callow youth and ending as an old man, with the help of the BBC make-up department. The actor had also to contend with Claudius’s physical afflictions – a limp, a twitch, and a stutter – without losing sight of subtlety of characterisation. (Ashley Knight had the task of portraying Claudius as a boy – with the same range of impediments as his older self.)

Claudius, while being thought a simpleton by most of his family, was a survivor, and the series shows his range of response to the changing political situation around him. After much deliberation (with candidates including Ronnie Barker), Derek Jacobi was chosen as someone who could convey all these things. Early scenes with Claudius and his contemporaries, however, employ child actors, and Other major characters included the Roman emperors Augustus, Tiberius and Caligula, plus Augustus’s wife Livia, whose scheming to ensure the succession of her son (by her first husband) Tiberius provides the driver for the plot in the first half of the series.

The second half shows the consequences of what Livia has unleashed, after her death. Sian Philips, fresh from How Green Was My Valley, was cast in the role, and she also had to be ‘aged up’, from middle-age to decrepit old age by her final episode, Queen of Heaven.

The other three emperors were played by Brian Blessed, (in one of his few beardless roles since Z Cars), as Augustus, the reigning emperor at the start of the series, George Baker as Tiberius, and as Livia’s grandson Caligula, an extraordinary performance by John Hurt.

Hurt, who had just been in the much-lauded The Naked Civil Servant, was reluctant to take the role at first, but was persuaded by the quality of the actors he would be working with. Herbert Wise organised a pre-production party, in contrast to the usual 'wrap' party at the end of a series, as too many actors would have moved on to other jobs by then, which enabled the cast to get to know each other before starting work.

Derek Jacobi with Robert Graves when the latter visited the set of I, Claudius. Both men had German ancestry, and both went to St. John's College - Jacobi at Cambridge, Graves at Oxford

Blessed plays Augustus as an ordinary man, who makes the best of his unsought role as emperor and is very successful. By the time the series opens he has been doing the job for many years, and he is considering the succession. Despite Livia constantly badgering him to pick her son Tiberius, there are plenty of other suitable candidates.

Tiberius himself doesn’t really want the job, he enjoys being a soldier, but Livia forces him to divorce his wife and marry Augustus’s daughter Julia to edge him towards the throne. Sian Phillips gives another of the series’ outstanding performances as the ruthlessly ambitious empress, who discovers after all her machinations that her son Tiberius is a disappointment to her, and in her final hours reveals she wants to be made a goddess after she dies.

When Tiberius eventually succeeds, he leaves the running of Rome to his ambitious lieutenant Sejanus (Patrick Stewart) until confronted by evidence that Sejanus is plotting to depose him, at which point the rebellion is crushed.

By the time Tiberius finally dies – he is memorably polished off when he seems to be coming back to life by an ambitious centurion – the heir apparent is the young Caligula, who has connived in amoral behaviour up to and including the death of his own father. Soon after assuming the throne Caligula falls ill, but on recovery is convinced he has become the Greek god Zeus.

Claudius, who has reluctantly become a confidant of the new emperor, realises Caligula is mad and expects him to be quickly deposed. Claudius’s folly throughout the series is his desire for Rome to be turned back into a republic, as it was until Julius Caesar’s time.

The episodes featuring the reign of Caligula are notable – in an overall fairly gory series – for some of the most brutal and shocking scenes in the production. In episode 8, Caligula has incestuously impregnated his sister, and, convinced that the child will be a greater god than himself, cuts open her womb to kill – and it is implied, eat – the foetus. The scene caused concern even before it was transmitted, and the episode had several re-edits before the head of BBC drama serials, Bill Slater, was satisfied – even then the master tape was edited again afterwards, so that the original, slightly nastier version of the scene no longer exists.

In the following episode, Caligula’s tyranny and irrational behaviour increasing, and having appointed his horse a senator, a conspiracy arises to assassinate him – and the whole imperial family. However, though Caligula is bloodily struck down, the Praetorian Guard find a terrified Claudius hiding in the palace, and make him emperor, quite against his will.

All other candidates having been eliminated, the Praetorian Guard decide Claudius, who doesn't want the job, should be emperor (if only all leadership candidates were like that)

The rest of the series shows the progress of Claudius’s reign (the narrative is now adapted from Claudius the God), once he has been persuaded by his friend Herod (yes, that Herod) that he needs to accept the throne in order to stay alive. He still wants to return Rome to the Republic, but finds it harder than he thought. Meanwhile, his wife Messalina, who he was forced to marry by Caligula, is gaining a reputation for extreme decadence, with orgies and infidelities that are causing resentment against Claudius.

Again just in time, the conspiracy is revealed to the emperor and Claudius is disillusioned again. At the conclusion of the series, Claudius is nearing the end of his life, and having led the conquest of Britain has become ironically successful. He has married his niece in an attempt to finally convince the Roman people to reject monarchy, by showing how corrupt an institution it is. His own son, however, tells him that no-one want the Republic to return.

Claudius eventually allows himself to be poisoned, and although dead, converses with the prophetic Sybil who predicted his fate (as seen in the first episode). She tells him of what will become of Nero, and Claudius realises he is powerless to shape history in his idealistic way, but that things will, in a way, sort themselves out.

I, Claudius, which has an epic sweep despite being produced entirely on video in Television Centre studios, does bear up to repeated viewings, even if its production standards now seem primitive (but then they probably always did – though when Sian Philips was visited at the BBC by her then husband, Peter O’Toole, starring in a rival Roman epic, he was impressed by the quality of the BBC’s Roman armour compared to the second-rate costumes his film was using.)

It was usual for Classic Serials on BBC2 to be given two showings in the week of their first transmission, but I, Claudius was repeated another two times in the next two years (including, again like The Forsyte Saga, a showing on BBC1, to far higher audiences), with another outing in 1986 to commemorate Robert Graves who had died the previous December. Further repeats came on BBC4 in 2006, making it one of the most frequently re-run of all archive programmes.

The finished series was recognised in the following year’s BAFTA awards, with Jacobi, Phillips and set designer Tim Harvey being honoured; Herbert Wise also later received an Outstanding Contribution award. I, Claudius has been consistently highly regarded by successive generations and in industry polls.

When rehearsals of I, Claudius got underway, at first the actors were not sure what to make of the scripts, and struggled to get the key to the story. The vital clue that enabled the cast to get the nub of the piece was given to them by Graves – that it is an Italian family saga, where power is the key, and people will do anything to get it and ruthlessly hold on to it. Don’t think Roman Empire – think the Mafia.

Foreshadowing The Sopranos, I, Claudius also gave rise to a mini-wave of BBC historical sagas such as The Devil's Crown, The Borgias and The Cleopatras, with varying success... but tell us which is your favourite. And if you haven't seen I, Claudius, it's available on BBC Store