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.
During my childhood it seemed that Derek Jacobi was omnipresent. Or perhaps I just watched The Secret of NIMH more times than I can count. But whenever his name was mentioned everyone would always add the caveat about what I great actor he is. At the time I didn't understand why the caveat was needed. And then I watched I, Claudius and I understood. The thing is you can never really grasp what an amazing actor Derek Jacobi is until you've seen him as Claudius. In 2007 for Masterpiece's thirty-fifth anniversary they conducted a poll to codify The Best of Masterpiece. I might have really gone in hard on the voting for the 2002 adaptation of The Forsyte Saga, which means that I, Claudius placed third behind that adaptation. I now take full responsibility for this happening, because I, Claudius deserved the highest spot it could get. Because there was no way it could upset Upstairs, Downstairs from the top spot. And I agree, Upstairs, Downstairs is the definitive show connected to Masterpiece, but I don't think it's the best show, especially in those early seasons of Masterpiece. In those early seasons I honestly don't know of a show with a more perfect cast than I, Claudius. The cast is what raises this above the typical Roman fare. And let me tell you, I know my Roman fare. I watch a lot of miniseries about Rome. I'm not thinking about Rome all the time, but if there's a miniseries or series about Rome I will devour it. Obviously there's Rome, but I have a soft spot for Britannia and Domina. In fact I know it's been two years, but I'm still not over Domina's cancellation. But these shows are nothing to I, Claudius. NOTHING! These are perhaps the best twelve episodes of any series ever. The cast alone is stacked! Brian Blessed as Augustus, Siân Phillips in her award winning turn as Livia, John Hurt as Caligula! Once you see their performances of these characters no one else could ever do them in your eyes. Caligula is unhinged yet at the same time sympathetic. He's out of control, he has a freakin' horse as a senator, and yet, during this spiral of debauchery there is such pathos that John Hurt brings to the role. Malcolm McDowell didn't stand a chance of usurping John Hurt when he took on the role three years later in the eponymous film. Did HE do a modern dance drag show? Well!?! As for Siân Phillips? Oh, she's so deliciously devious but her trying to find a loophole to eternal suffering on her deathbed for all the harm she has done, and let me tell you, if there was a death and it looked like poison, it was, and Livia was behind it, was television at it's best. Also, apparently getting deified is the loophole she was looking for. Thankfully she had a devoted grandson to carry out her final wishes. It was Claudius if you were wondering. And Claudius, that poor ruler sandwiched between Caligula and Nero. But Derek Jacobi brings this man out of the shadows of history, shows that this man with a limp and a stammer had insight beyond his years. The way he shepherds the story, being the focal point, yet also an outsider, makes this a show you just can't turn away from. There's a reason Kenneth Branagh cast Jacobi in Dead Again. That stammer, that will, it's unforgettable and interestingly an important twist to that film. Plus, oddly enough this show is currently escapist, because Rome really makes current politics and ever the fantastical politics seen in shows like Game of Thrones look tame by comparison. Now if only they'd release this on Blu-ray for it's upcoming fiftieth anniversary life would be worth celebrating. But I'd avoid the figs at the celebration if I were you. If you know, you know.
