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Reviews
Doctor Who: Kinda: Part Four (1982)
Time has been kinder to Kinda
Sad to say that Season Nineteen was not a high point in Dr Who, nor a great debut for the new Doctor, Peter Davison; if the spiteful tabloids were calling him 'the wet vet' (and the spleen of the talentless never tastes good), a good deal of the blame must lie with the programme makers, rather than with the star.
And it's for this reason that in 1982, the reception of Kinda was of derisive incomprehension 'What was it about?', wailed a legion of spotty youths, 'We don't like the snake!'. Such is the peril of making one part of a TV series incongruously good.
There's the trouble; it's a clever, highly literate, script, well acted, and the fine designs are well-executed. If the Mara at the end is visibly a giant puppet snake, the Dark Places of the Inside, shown in Tegan's dream, are a Becketish world where such a thing would be well at home. By the halfway point of Episode Two, a significant portion of the cast are running mad, and with reason.
It's true that not every plot point is explained - why does Hindle insist on making a model city? How does the blatantly empty Box of Jana work? And who are the old couple playing Chess? - but this doesn't really matter, we can always work it out for ourselves.
(Fans of The Bill may spot three of Sun Hills Finest pounding the Deva Loca beat)
Treasure Island (1990)
I don't think it's so good
In the same way as Kevin Costner played Robin Hood in the movie with the money, while Patrick Bergin did a far better job in the other Robin movie of the same year (1991), and in the same way that Carrol Read's Oliver! (1968) was a film of Lionel Bart's musical (1960), itself a treatment of David Lean's film Oliver Twist (1948), this Treasure Island fails to match up to the BBC version of 1977, which seems to have inspired it.
Imagine the scene; the Hestons viewing the 1977 tape, not a star to be seen, and Charlton lamenting his never yet having played the Sea Cook; surely Junior could write the script - and direct it, no point in letting someone else stick their oar in - and with Charlton's name involved, surely they could get some real stars, and make a much better movie; after all, they'd have more money.
And there's the first rub, Oliver Reed never quite gets beyond Oliver Reed (and who decided Billy Bones was a Scot?), Christopher Lee is a shade gratuitous as Pew (did we have to be shown the true horror behind the mask?), and Julian Glover (Livesey), so accomplished as a villain, is a little too much like a villain with nothing bad to do today, than a truly good man. There's lots of star quality, but not much depth.
As to the script, it's not bad, though the BBC influence is definitely there, the trouble is that while the BBC adaptor, John Lucarotti had a fine grasp of RLS's pirate idiom, Fraser Heston hasn't.
It's forgivable for an American writing UK English to make the mistake, but 'Bugger', Bloody Hell' and 'Bastard' were not common C18 nautical curses, and 'Blighter' is definitely Victorian; Heston's pirates slip into 1940s far too often, and it jars. (And Trelawney habitually drinking tea; where did that come from? Is it just to underline that this story happens in England not America?)
Having said all that, Christian Bale is extremely good as Jim, and Heston's Silver is all it should be (the pity is that we just don't see enough of him), Michael Halsey is splendidly nasty as Israel, Stephen Mackintosh does a highly effective cameo as Dick, and John Benfield is a really scary and violent Black Dog.
It's not a bad film by any means, just not nearly as good as it should have been.
Treasure Island (1977)
As good as it gets
One thing that characterised BBC drama of the 1970s was lack of money, and the concomitant stratagems devised to cover the yawning gap between vision and recourses. What could they have produced with just a bit more money? For this Treasure Island (co produced with Australia) they got it.
The cast and credits read as a roll call for the great TV character actors of the 70s, directed, produced and written for by men who had previously made plausible the glorious hokum of Dr Who.
John Lucatotti's script is fiendishly clever, and while little of RLS's original is missing, there is a significant degree of action that the book might allude to, but Jim (the narrator) is unaware of.
spoiler warning
It's in the first part of the story that this takes place; Billy Bones (a suitably desperate Jack Watson) tempts Jim's father (a suitably desperate but feeble Terry Scully) into arranging a two man treasure voyage, the corrupt shipping agent Ezra Blandly (a cosily conniving John Bascombe) guesses their intentions and tips off Silver, who hoodwinks and then cruelly tortures the information out of a hapless alcoholic Mr Arrow (Linal Haft). Billy Bones plans founder, and poor Hawkins snr catches pneumonia in the rain, which finishes him.
It can be perilous stuff to play with a classic, and all to Lucarotti's credit that the trick pulls off; his grasp of RLS's pirate idiom is so good that it really isn't easy to spot the additions if you don't know the original well (one of my favourite interpolations is Arrow telling Redruth 'You climb that ladder like a gamekeeper'), and the great advantage of Lucarotti's 'backstory' is that we are able to see much more of Flint's crew before the narrative starts killing them off.
The pirate characterisations are uniformly ripe; Patrick Troughton crafty and capable as Israel, Talfryn Thomas avaricious as Morgan, Stephen Boswell stammering as Dick, Stephen Grief a smoothly sinister Anderson, and Roy Boyd as a volatile, menacing Merry. Then of course there's Silver.
Alfred Burke is a quite astonishing Sea Cook; slick, violent, cunning, and dangerously plausible: Charm itself on one leg. At no point do you see an actor playing a part; you see John Silver. But for Jim and circumstances, he'd win easily.
And the good guys, honest to a man, are far from stupid; Anthony Bate shines as Livesey, beautifully precise; Thorley Walters blusters as Trelawney (but he's a crack shot, and the image of him wading ashore from the swamped jolly boat is a delight); Richard Beale delivers a sharply terse old salt as Smollett, the only pity is that he lacks a decent curtain call. Even Redruth, Hunter and Joyce (Royston Tickner, Brian Croucher, Roy Evans) come off well as three honest men out of their depth but doing their damnedest anyway.
Among this heavyweight cast it would be easy for a child actor to get lost, but happily Ashley Knight holds his end up extremely well (he played the young Claudius the previous year); the kid really can act, and he never, ever gets schmaltzy.
As to the rest Jo Kendall is a great doting wife and scolding mother, Christopher Burgess is a believably inept Black Dog, and David Collings is a repulsive, yet entirely human Pew; similar can be said of Jack Watson's Billy Bones; fierce, violent, bullying, but ultimately vulnerable. Paul Copley is a filthy, smelly and visibly barmy Benn Gunn complete with what sounds to be a Manx accent.
If there's a tiny shortcoming, a couple of the sets do look like sets, but that's really quibbling: The acting is superb, the writing and direction peerless, with no character wasted, the fight scenes are great (look out for Israel chinning O'Brien with a belaying pin), and there's a roistering rendition of Fifteen Men as a title track. This Treasure Island is as good as it gets.