This is a really lovely television production of the original play anchored by a lovely performance from Celia Johnson as Sibyl Hathaway, Dame of Sark. For those unaware the island of Sark is a fiefdom granted to Dame Sibyl's family by the Crown, in an n arrangement which dates back to Elizabeth I.
This made the Dame a kind of absolute ruler at the time. (Democracy has evolved since on Sark - her great-grandson is the current Seigneur but with far more limited powers). The island is one of Britain's Channel Islands and geographically closer to France than the UK which is why they were occupied by the Germans during the Second World War.
This program is basically of series of vignettes showing how the Dame coped leading her people while under German occupation. As I said it is Celia Johnson who makes this worthwhile. Yes it is a performance of the stiff upper lip kind, full of English reserve but in Johnson's hands you can easily feel the depth of feeling that is really there and the journey she makes from thinking all Germans are Nazis to finding that some of them are decent human beings caught up in a Nazi nightmare. Tony Britton also gives an excellent performance as an honourable German officer, a career soldier, who has a distaste for Hitler and the Nazis and only wants to do his job as Commandant while at the same time knowing he needs to be aware of the Nazi true believers among his forces. Patrick Ryecart is also moving as an inexperienced German soldier of whom the Dame becomes fond but whose death she inadvertently causes.
This is not a drama about the hardship of daily life under occupation although that is certainly referred to. It is more about the interactions between a proud lady forced to live in changed circumstances under an occupying force and her own evolving attitudes as they become more familiar.
The program while very good is not without flaws. The news of the death in air raid in Liverpool of the Dame's son and heir is treated perfunctorily. The fact that his wife, British stage and screen actress of the 1920s and 30s, Mary Lawson, died with him is not even mentioned and there is no concern for their orphaned son (who eventually succeeded the Dame on Sark on her death in 1974). There is also no reference at all to any of her other seven children. The unseen Mr and Mrs Brownrigg whose fate is central to one of the sequences deserve more plot exposition as well.
Very worthwhile viewing for anyone interested in this part of history and admirers of Dame Celia Johnson.
This made the Dame a kind of absolute ruler at the time. (Democracy has evolved since on Sark - her great-grandson is the current Seigneur but with far more limited powers). The island is one of Britain's Channel Islands and geographically closer to France than the UK which is why they were occupied by the Germans during the Second World War.
This program is basically of series of vignettes showing how the Dame coped leading her people while under German occupation. As I said it is Celia Johnson who makes this worthwhile. Yes it is a performance of the stiff upper lip kind, full of English reserve but in Johnson's hands you can easily feel the depth of feeling that is really there and the journey she makes from thinking all Germans are Nazis to finding that some of them are decent human beings caught up in a Nazi nightmare. Tony Britton also gives an excellent performance as an honourable German officer, a career soldier, who has a distaste for Hitler and the Nazis and only wants to do his job as Commandant while at the same time knowing he needs to be aware of the Nazi true believers among his forces. Patrick Ryecart is also moving as an inexperienced German soldier of whom the Dame becomes fond but whose death she inadvertently causes.
This is not a drama about the hardship of daily life under occupation although that is certainly referred to. It is more about the interactions between a proud lady forced to live in changed circumstances under an occupying force and her own evolving attitudes as they become more familiar.
The program while very good is not without flaws. The news of the death in air raid in Liverpool of the Dame's son and heir is treated perfunctorily. The fact that his wife, British stage and screen actress of the 1920s and 30s, Mary Lawson, died with him is not even mentioned and there is no concern for their orphaned son (who eventually succeeded the Dame on Sark on her death in 1974). There is also no reference at all to any of her other seven children. The unseen Mr and Mrs Brownrigg whose fate is central to one of the sequences deserve more plot exposition as well.
Very worthwhile viewing for anyone interested in this part of history and admirers of Dame Celia Johnson.
