There is, as you may have noticed, an awful lot of nostalgia for the good old days of UK TV on this blog. To a certain extent, that’s because TV was better back then. Oh yes it was.
But not all TV. Despite the talent being confined to only 1/2/3/4 channels (delete according to whether we’re talking about the 50s, 60s, 70s or 80s) rather than the 250 or so we have now, British TV was still filled with an enormous amount of absolute crap. Not just repeats and the absolutely offensive, such as The Black and White Minstrel Show…
…but also the genuinely bad. A little while back, Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz from Look Around You took some footage from a show that used to air some Saturday mornings and added their own narration to give us Markets of Britain. Crackingly funny, more so if you used to watch the shows it mocks.
Since we’ve been talking a bit about the BBC’s Ghost Stories for Christmas this week, it seems appropriate to have a look at ‘the one that (almost) got away’: ITV Playhouse‘s adaptation of MR James’ Casting The Runes.
Virtually all the BBC Ghost Stories for Christmas were adaptations of short stories by James. Only 1976’s The Signalman, written by Charles Dickens; 1977’s Stigma, written by Clive Exton; and 1978’s The Ice House, by John Bowen, deviated from this tradition. However, this wasn’t because the producers had run out James stories to adapt – far from it, since BBC4 went on to adapt James’ View From A Hill and Number 13 in 2005 and 2006 respectively.
In fact, just as the BBC was winding up its annual Ghost Stories for Christmas, ITV’s ITV Playhouse anthology series chose to get two of its rival’s contributors, writer Clive Exton and director Lawrence Gordon Clark, to adapt James’s Casting The Runes. This wasn’t the first time ITV had adapted James or even Casting The Runes: there had been four black-and-white productions made of James stories between 1966 and 1968, including Casting The Runes, which have now been virtually lost (although some parts do remain of the adaptation of Casting The Runes), and it had adapted Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance for schools in 1975. But unlike those previous adaptations and those of the BBC, which had all been period pieces, this was a modernisation and extension of James’ original story.
Starring Just Good Friends‘ Jan Francis and Children of the Stones‘ Iain Cuthbertson, Casting The Runes took James’ tale of a covert, supernatural battle between a man and an outraged mage who’d received a bad review from him and transposed it to a modern day conflict between a TV journalist (Francis) and a notorious self-styled Aleister Crowley-like figure (Cutherbertson), outraged at being mocked by one of her documentaries.
Most of the features of the original story remain, from the Satanic curse secretly passed to Francis when she least expects it to the demise of a previous critic thanks to the curse a few years earlier, although the narrative is more linear and more eventful than James’ original. While lacking the quiet, haunting atmosphere of the BBC adaptations that perhaps only age, the empty countryside and a lack of people can bring, the ITV Playhouse version overcomes this by effectively using visual and sound effects – although Cutherbertson’s costuming and performance add an element of unwanted comedy to the proceedings.
Strangely, despite ITV Playhouse running for another five years, there were no more adaptations of James’s stories by the series – or by any other series – until Janice Hadlow revived the format for BBC4 and continued it once she moved to BBC2. Hopefully, now that BBC4’s drama budget is being handed over to BBC2, we’ll get another one this year.
If not, as in 1978, there’s now a golden opportunity for ITV to revive the tradition. Are you listening, Peter Fincham?
The full thing’s not available on YouTube, although Network DVD have very kindly released it on DVD (as a bonus, you get that adaptation of Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance as well), but here’s a trailer for it:
So far, most of the plays in this strand have been worthy, important and serious. But there used to be a strong tradition of comedy plays within most of British TV’s anthology series – there was even a Comedy Playhouse anthology series that gave birth to the likes of Steptoe and Son, Till Death Us Do Part, All Gas and Gaiters, The Liver Birds, Are You Being Served? and Last of the Summer Wine.
But Play For Today, the BBC’s main play series, aired a number of important comedy plays from no less a director than Mike Leigh, the man behind the award-winning Naked, Secret & Lies, Vera Drake, Career Girls and Life is Sweet. But despite having that kind of a CV in the film industry, arguably he is still best known for two of his six Plays For Today: Nuts in May and this week’s Wednesday Play, Abigail’s Party.
Genuine joy at this one – I may have mentioned them once or twice:
The BFI will make all 12 of the classic BBC films from A Ghost Story for Christmas series available on DVD this year, with the first two volumes – each containing a double bill of chilling tales – released on 20 August.
The first release features Jonathan Miller’s Whistle and I’ll Come to You (1968), with Sir Michael Hordern, paired with the 2010 adaptation of the same chilling tale, starring John Hurt and directed by Andy de Emmony. Released alongside it is a pairing of The Stalls of Barchester (1971), starring Robert Hardy and receiving its DVD premiere, and A Warning to the Curious (1972), with Peter Vaughan, both directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark. Each set comes with numerous special features and illustrated booklets.
As a Christmas treat during the 1970s, the BBC screened adaptations of the classic ghost stories of MR James, the Cambridge academic and author of some of the most spine-tingling tales in the English language. Most of the installments, which were broadcast to terrified viewers in the dead of winter, were directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark, who has been interviewed for new introductions on these BFI releases. With only three of the 12 tales previously released on DVD (by the BFI in 2002, and long since deleted), the films in this brilliant series have been high on many film and TV fans’ ‘most wanted’ DVD lists. With a subtlety and style all of their own, they have been a major influence on recent British horror films, such as The Woman in Black, and have inspired screenwriters and filmmakers such as Mark Gatiss (The League of Gentlemen, Sherlock).
The release of the first two Ghost Stories volumes is timed to mark the 150th anniversary of MR James’ birth on 1 August 1862.
Two more volumes, the first containing Lost Hearts, The Treasure of Abbot Thomas and The Ash Tree, and the second containing The Signalman (Andrew Davies’ adaptation of the Charles Dickens story), Stigma (written by Clive Exton) and The Ice House (written by John Bowen), will follow in September, while the fifth and final volume, containing the more recent installments View from a Hill and Number 13, as well as a complete Ghost Stories for Christmas box set, will be released in October.
Buy them (Amazon has volumes 1, 2, 3 and 4) ! More details after the jump.
