Season 12 - Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years (1982-1983)
Off the top of my head I can name half a dozen actors who have memorably played Churchill from John Lithgow to Gary Oldman. Yet these award winning roles in Lithgow's and Oldman's case didn't excite me nearly as much as the fact that Robert Hardy had portrayed Churchill. For over thirty years he appeared as Churchill in a variety of shows, including an episode of Marple if you can fathom it. In fact I probably only saw him in Marple before finally tracking down a copy of Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years. The reason that Robert Hardy excited me as Churchill is that he is an effortless actor. Whatever role he's playing he is that character. Plus, there's something Churchillian about him that just felt right to me and obviously to him, or he wouldn't have kept going back to the role again and again. Oh boy was I in for a surprise. I will admit that by the end I had become accustomed to how he was playing Churchill so that I accepted him in the role but the problem is he's trying too hard. This isn't the effortless actor I have come to know and love, this is an actor working their hardest to capture the speech and mannerisms of an historical figure to such a degree that the role feels belabored. It was off-putting to see this great actor brought low by overthinking. This show has an amazing cast and yet, because of Hardy's insistence on how he played Churchill, the whole thing came off as a caricature. This is one instance where the fact that this show isn't readily available makes sense. This can be lost media and no one will mourn it's passing. What's more I just don't know what the focus was meant to be. While he was "out of office" in the British sense as not having a cabinet position, by American standards he was still in office because he retained his seat in Epping. So, he wasn't really out in the wilderness as I see it... But until we actually get to introduction of Hitler in episode three with the ramifications of that not seen until the end of episode four, we literally have a miniseries that is just India, India, India, Clemmie why won't you have sex with me, as she not so subtly chops down a beloved tree, India, India, India. I mean, I get that he's obsessed with India, so many Brits were, but what's the deal with his wife? I always thought that Winston and Clemmie had a good and solid marriage and here it's all her running off and not giving him what he wants and NEVER explaining anything and in the end just wasting the brilliance of Siân Phillips. You DO NOT waste Livia! Though you kind of forget the whole first half of the miniseries when the back half is all the lead-up to WWII. Years of Churchill warning what was to come and everyone ignoring him. Given what's going on in this country at the moment I just couldn't handle this. I'd zone out, I'd disassociate, by the end when they were doing an air raid test I was balling. So many people posit the question that if you had a time machine would you go back and kill Hitler. I just want to go back and bitch-slap Neville Chamberlain. So much of what he was saying to appease Hitler is the basic party line of the Democrats. Can't they see that history is repeating!?! Aren't they just as scared shitless as I am on a daily basis!?! Also, is Bernie our Churchill? Please let it be so. I need a small measure of hope.
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