User Reviews

Ken Loach's 1975 four-part BBC drama Days of Hope marked his final television collaboration with writer Jim Allen, although the pair would work together again on feature films in the future. Subtitled "A Series of Four Films", it consists of four feature-length episodes that follow working class protagonist Ben Matthews as he navigates key issues beginning with the First World War, and ending with the 1926 General Strike, and does so in ways that will be entirely unsurprising to anyone familiar with the work of either the writer or director.

Episode One - '1916: Joining Up' - sets the tone. It follows Ben as he idealistically decides to join up to fight for his country against the Germans, only to be posted to Ireland, where the English are decidedly unpopular. Meanwhile, his brother-in-law Philip - a conscientious objector - is forced to join the army, refuses to fight, and finds himself facing a death sentence. This is World War I Loach- and Allen-style, comparing it to the issue of "Class War", and was unsurprisingly met with some controversy at the time it was broadcast.

And it goes on in that vein. Episode Two - '1921' - takes place against the back drop of the coal lock-out, as Ben deserts the army and is taken under the wing of miner Joel, who along with his fellow workers is caught up in what is either a strike or a lock-out, depending on one's point of view. It is most definitely history viewed from the left wing, with Allen and Loach firmly on the side of the miners. It is of course quite heavy-handed, with a policeman warning the miners that under the Emergency Powers Act he can arrest anyone he wants without a warrant (which he promptly does) and that every bit of land the villagers can see belongs to someone else. The army is seen to be the enemy, enjoying afternoon tea with the straw-boater wearing aristocrats at a nearby stately home; both police and army are portrayed as strong-arm, fascist bullies, and their individual members are portrayed as caricatures rather than characters, in stark contrast to Ben and his friends. Pritchard (Edward Underdown, perfectly cast) is written as an out-of-touch, if seemingly affable and well-meaning, landowner, whose attempt to convince the miners to return to work is patronising and condescending to say the least. He's portrayed as a stuffy old idiot who believes that erosion of religious spirit is responsible for Britain's ills, and he's ultimately untrustworthy, reneging on his promise to protect the miners from prosecution when the lock-out ends.

Episode Three - '1924' - marks a change of pace, as Ben is released from prison and joins the Communist Party. Meanwhile, Labour has come to power for the first time, and Philip Hargreaves becomes a Labour MP. There's lots of material about Communism versus Socialism, with Labour the acceptable face of the latter and uneasy about the former ("We support the Labour party as a rope supports a hanged man" one Communist Party leader says). As a left-wing view of the first Labour government, it's arguably the most interesting episode of the four. There is of course a naïve and doomed view from Hargreaves that Labour could legislate capitalism out of existence and implement socialism instead, and there's also lots of suspicion about the Liberals, who support the minority government. Inevitably, it's also very dialogue heavy, but often riveting, notably during the disillusioned Hargreaves discussion with the evasive Wedgwood (and the episode is also notable for featuring a line comparing Churchill to a vulture and Lenin to an eagle, which Loach has since claimed caused outrage in some quarters at the time).

The final episode, '1926: General Strike', is similarly dialogue-heavy, but is unfortunately less riveting. In an attempt to accurately establish the history of the eponymous strike, it sees Allen writing a first half that sidelines Ben, Philip and Philip's wife Sarah, in favour of lengthy, dialogue-heavy scenes that provide context and background at the expense of pace. With a focus on the historical background to the General Strike, the unions are the target of as much of Allen and Loach's ire as the government, and there's lots of politics and scheming, with Brian Hayes' Stanley Baldwin portrayed as being in the pocket of the coal mine owners. In the strive for historical accuracy (albeit with a very left-wing bias), the episode becomes interminably slow, and even when Ben, Philip and Sarah start to become more prominent, Allen seems more interested in focusing on the real-life details than his pre-established characters (at times in fact, it recalls his previous docu-drama collaborations with Loach, most notably The Big Flame). The Labour Party's unease about the concept of a General Strike features heavily, with concerns that it smacks of revolution and a concern that Communist Party members might try to take control of the strike for their own ends, which they do indeed attempt to do. Given that history largely judged the General Strike as a failure, the episode has a definite air of sour grapes about it, and Allen lets his prejudices show during a dinner party scene that is embarrassingly caricatured, with an elderly female aristocrat wondering the unemployed could just emigrate to Australia; he makes his point, but without subtlety.

Thus, Days of Hope feels like a Loach and Allen leftist manifesto that is trying to be a historical document presented in a dramatic format. And for all its flaws, as a weighty slice of television, it's actually quite impressive. Loach shoots the whole series largely on location, with relatively static camera work which makes it seem less like a docu-drama than Loach's earlier work for the BBC and more closely resemble the feature films that he would make later. He handles relatively action-packed sequences as well as he does the dialogue-heavy ones, for example during the battle between villagers and police and army in the second episode, which sees the camera getting up close, drawing the viewer into the action. When actors are talking, which is most of the time, he makes good use of close-ups; Loach is a director who has always given his cast members plenty of room.

Of that cast, Paul Copley stars as Ben, and gives a brilliant, naturalistic performance, particularly when he sees a comrade killed by a landmine in Episode One, and when he becomes increasingly impressionable and passionate about Communism in the later episode. The rest of the large cast consists largely of jobbing actors familiar from a dozen BBC productions of the era, and some less so: Nikolas Simmonds gives an earnest (if occasionally slightly stilted) performance as Philip Hargreaves, but frequently fluffs his lines. There's a scene with Philip and Clifford Kershaw's Tom Matthews in which the characters discuss the rights and wrongs of war, and both actors stumble over their dialogue. By contrast, Gary Roberts, in what appears to have been his first television role of not very many, gives a much more impressive performance as Joel Barnett, whilst famous faces at early stages of their career include Alun Armstrong as Billy Shepherd and Stephen Rea as a reporter.

In keeping with most of Allen and Loach's work, every character feels real - for better or for worse. Days of Hope is now largely forgotten except by Loach and Allen fans, and it is very much a product of its time - overly long, slow and occasionally dull. But it remains compelling, even for audience members who disagree with its politics, and if nothing else it showcases Loach's talents as a director when he was still in the early days of his long cinema career.

Held my interest and I'm a Conservative! I must say that I found the character Sarah rather offputting. I believe there should have been a sequel-Philip would,I think,have wound up a Minister in the 1945 Government and then in the House of Lords.Ben stuck with the Communist Party,gone out to Spain, eventually left the Party over Humgary.