The Glittering Prizes (1976/BBC DVD/British TV Mini-series)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C+ Episodes: B-
Frederick
Raphael Made a big reputation for himself in his ability to write memorable
screenplays for films about relationships including Darling (1965), Two For The
Road, Far From The Madding Crowd
(both 1967) and Daisy Miller (1974)
so when the opportunity to do a TV mini-series of his work arrived, he
delivered The Glittering Prizes (1976)
for the BBC and its boldness in taking on issues like sexism, racism, anti-Semitism,
religion and hypocrisy in society from the counterculture end of things with
dark humor made it a critical and commercial success.
Based on
his experiences at Cambridge in the 1950s, it remains a very bold work and despite
some uneven run-on, is very watchable.
Tom Conti plays Adam Morris, a surrogate for Raphael saying what he may
have (and maybe hoped to have) said in his time there and Conti is very good in
the role. Each episode is loosely
related to the other, but not necessarily like a soap opera or regular
mini-series in that one show continues all of the previous show, yet this is
not an anthology.
Instead,
it becomes a character study of the people, the times then & now, the
school and the establishment in general.
Unlike the big-screen versions of his work, the shots and form of these
shows are more closed, intimate and concentrated without feeling staged or
phony. It can be unintentionally funny
after a while when you watch all the shows, but it works and ranks with the
best such shows from the last Golden Age of TV in the U.S. or U.K. and is
distinct in its approach. Stanley
Kubrick later took on Raphael and this form for his final film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999) which has some
similar approaches while pushing this look to the limit. Turns out Kubrick was inspired by one other
Raphael-influenced work, the parallel TV ad campaigns for Taster’s Choice
(U.S.) and Nescafé (U.K.) coffee
commercial series with Anthony Head (Manchild)
and Sharon Maughan (The Bank Job)
talking about coffee like it is sex.
Co-directed
by Waris Hussein (Doctor Who, Quackser Fortune Has A Cousin In The Bronx,
The Possession Of Joel Delaney) and
Robert Knight, this mature, intelligent mini-series also has a great cast
including Prunella Gee, Nigel Havers, Tim Pigott-Smith, Miriam Margolyes, Eric
Porter, Martin Kemp, Tim Preece, Sarah Porter, Barbara Kellerman, Jennie
Anderson, Grant Bardsley, Judi Bowker, James Bree, Anna Carteret, Kim Fortune
and John Gregg. Hard to believe it took
this long for this to arrive on DVD.
The 1.33
X 1 image is not perfect, but for a PAL analog videotaping its age, looks
pretty good, while the Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono sound is also clean and clear for
its age, despite showing it. Extras
include Raphael returning to Cambridge to reflect on his work called Writers
& Places: All That Glittered, made a while ago as he extensively
revisits and discusses the work and experience that made this all possible.
- Nicholas Sheffo
