Exactly five out of ten.
Lots for fabulous staging and sumptuous settings, from the Duchesses' own immaculate toy working class village, through the decaying stone and lime plaster of Wilton's Music Hall, past the glittering Deco ballrooms to the antechambers of the minor fascist royals and their fawning courtiers, to the perfection of Angel and Louis' stage costumes. Only the new London suburb let it down, because it had to look new, and it didn't.
None for the Jazz/swing thing, although at least it protected the BBC from its achilles heel of selecting the wrong music altogether.
Few (or is that less?) for the accents. Only Anthony Head nails it, with Jacqueline Bisset just behind. The others, the youngsters, must understand that speaking old fashioned posh English is our specialist subject. The would-be upper class actors should go and lock themselves away with tapes of the old Prince of Wales and the young Queen until they never slip into the strangled and dipthonated Estuarian that escaped at so many unfortunate moments that would each have cost them any reputation in refined society at that time.
Picky? Maybe to some, but these are the criteria this SIX HOURS of drama demands to be measured by. After all, what else does it offer?
- A low-grade murder mystery with a thoroughly low-grade plot. Think: since Louis knows he didn't do it he must realise who did, so why would he let a savage and dangerous knife attacker just hang around his band? And those who believe him must also follow the same line. A little plot development could have saved this storyline from itself: not confronting the person who did it should become a true tragedy: his own inaction the failure that leads to his being framed. But that's not the story here.
- Zero suspense. If we suspend disbelief on the above, why is there no tension drawn out of the presence of this threat in the midst of our odd little group of fellow jazz travellers?
- Minimal characterisation. Some of the cast get enough detail to demonstrate humanity, perhaps most notably Janet Montgomery's conflicted and tragic white immigrant Sarah, and John Goodman's plutocrat with a soft-touch Masterson, but the rest are just comic-book paste-ups, except for the black men who are, apart from Louis and the angry manager in episode 1, entirely absent verbally and visually. Apparently they are real musicians.
- Incredible characterisation. Could anyone get to be a zillionaire Wall Street Crash capitaliser by behaving like Masterson? You buy a going concern, invest in it heavily, hire all your new pals, and on day 1 they all turn up to work late, hang around demonstrating no dynamism and don't focus on your enterprise. That's not Conrad Black over there, even if his most beloved pet project is under even more threat.
And does anyone get to be a murderous psychopath because their parents were cold and stiff upper class fascists, which seems to be Poliakoff's stated thesis? If they do it needs more substance to make it credible.
So why as many as five stars out of ten? Well mostly because my partner is black and doesn't take to all the white nonsense at the BBC too kindly unless it is staging fine architecture, but did stay the distance with this and pronounced it Very Good.
We both thought Chiwetel Ejiofor's Louis painted a solecistic picture of great presence, that demonstrated a heroic dignity whilst working out whom to trust, eschewed most of the patronising pitfalls Poliakoff had laid down, and does, despite the writing, allow us to see the world through his - Louis' - eyes.
The broad image of the 30's was engaging, although it would have been good to better draw out the upper class xenophobia/xenophilia contradiction. The Prince of Wales can dance with the showgirl in private, but what else follows? This is surely the central question. You start with the idea that certain families are born to rule, that all white families are born to dominion over all black ones, then create a social mix. Some find themselves forced to stay loyal to their clan despite love, and some betray their caste because of passion for the logic of justice. Poliakoff's way is not soliloquy or wordiness, and that is to the good, but does he really lay down enough for us to live the feeling of time, or to see how fatal are its flaws? I don't think so. In the end it is the crafty white boy, Matthew Goode's Stanley, who offers us the only suggestion of hope of future opportunity and enlightenment.
Given John Goodman and Mel (Muck and Brass) Smith to work with, to name but two, something much more powerful than this was possible. Would it be unkind to suggest that this production demonstrates that British drama in general, and the BBC in particular, places too much emphasis on the individual genius of the writer/director and too little on the team? You imagine a modern classy US production of this would find it distinctly underwritten, busy itself with building much more detail onto this succulent framework, especially of ambivalence, plot and character and in passing, without much effort, find work for black actors beyond standing behind trombones. That doesn't require an HBO budget, just more attention to detail in the thinking of the writing and production.
If we build that way, we can find a proper role for BBC drama that will survive the rust on the Crittals and the breakage of cut glass accent production at RADA.
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