A Very British Coup
|
List Price: Our Price: $8.00 You Save: $21.99 (73%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $7.67 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of A Very British Coup
Movie Review: Another Day at MI5
Summary: 4 Stars
British political thrillers are top-notch, and this one is no exception, even if it is a product of the eighties. The Cold War may have evolved into something else, but the problem of media frenzies, covert surveillance and behind the scenes manipulation of events by secret intelligence services continues. In this scenario, when a genuine left-wing Labour candidate becomes Prime Minister, certain Tories, to protect their long-standing aristocratic privilege, pull all sorts of shenanigans to dislodge him, even resorting to blackmail, extortion, and murder.
The designers of this series are to be complimented on the sets, which reproduced the interiors of Number 10 Downing Street in a convincing manner (from pictures I have seen). The elegant imagining of the staircase, the cabinet room, and the residence stand in marked contrast to those of "The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard," in which the interiors were so nondescript that I never believed for one minute that I was actually inside one of the most famous residences in London.
A drawback of this well-acted series [Among other actors, Clive Merrison is excellent as a slick BBC news presenter who excels in lobbing loaded questions at his guests.] is its rather faded look (although this probably can't be helped since the program was made for television in 1986). The series is also dated by the device that was likely included to give the story a hypothetical aspect: it refers to a king, which, since the Queen is still with us--and long may she reign!--and the Soviet Union has folded, detracts from the verisimilitude of the scenario. The most dated aspect of the film, however, is the use of what now seem like gothic computers with LED TV-like monitors that must hold about 55k of memory (Shades of my old Apple IIe!). One wonders whether the cell phones on "The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard" will seem like dinosaurs in twenty years!
To Acorn Media's credit, they have included a lengthy audio interview with the author as well as selected filmographies. As usual, there are no subtitles.
Each episode begins with disturbing images of burning debris falling into the Thames. The full significance of these does not impact the viewer until the end credits roll.
Movie Review: The British are so good at drama...
Summary: 4 Stars
I really enjoyed this movie. Yes, it is the story of a left-leaning politician. Yes some of the accents are a bit hard to understand (captions, please). But if you loved the House of Cards, with the incredible Ian Richardson, playing the role of a conservative right wing Prime Minister (after Margaret Thatcher no doubt), you will love a Very British Coup which speaks to the political turmoil doing the 1970's era Britan that was the impetus for the rise of Thathcherism. Social unrest, union strikes, global gamenship are all on display in this movie. The British do this type of drama so well. This is top form BBC drama...Movie Review: Taut thriller
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a great political thriller with an emphasis on "political" - an alternative history of the UK suggesting what might have happened had a Tony Benn like figure (except more proletarian) led the Labour Party to victory in the 1980s.
Ray McAnally is brilliant in the role of Harry Perkins and you'll root for him regardless of your personal politics. A bit strange at first seeing the pre-Blackadder Tim McInerry (Lord Percy Percy) as a villain but he is deliciously evil in the role.
The only downside is this is a "vanilla" DVD with no extra features worth mentioning.
Movie Review: The usual slant
Summary: 3 Stars
This film is yet another leftist fantasy. No wonder it won all sorts of awards. The story (screenplay by the normally outstanding Alan Plater)is about a Soviet-loving, kindly, and tough working class pol who works his way up to being Prime Minister of England. After he has nearly bankrupted the country and ruined its anti-communist foreign policy, the wicked Right devises false charges against him to drive him from office. We are left at the end wondering what the oncoming election will do: defeat the compassionate hero or leave him to continue bankrupting and appeasing. In short, there is no ending.
Ray McNally is compelling as the hero, and the casting all around was good. The director, Mick Jackson, is another story. He relies on short, choppy, close-up shots (at one point I thought he would shove the camera up an actor's nose), and flashing photos to keep the his teenage audience satisfied. The music is below par. At times, near the end, the hero takes actions accompanied by whistling from the sound track.
On the whole, beyond the acting, the film is an uninspired political polemic. It should have been shown on PBS (perhaps it was), where the audience would have been highly sympathetic to the preachy ideological slant.
Movie Review: A Very British Bore
Summary: 2 Stars
"A Very British Coup," a political thriller, was a 1988 Granada production for The United Kingdom's BBC4 Television channel, home of the experimental, the left-wing, and the sexually daring. It's a political drama, concerning itself with the skulduggery surrounding the tenure of Harry Perkins (Ray McAnally) at the vaunted residence of the British Prime Minister, 10 Downing Street. It was based on the novel of the same name by Chris Mullin,(A Very British Coup), a reporter who was eventually elected a Member of Parliament himself, and who, accordingly, should know what he was writing about. Screenplay was by Alan Plater,( The Beiderbecke Tapes);direction by Mick Jackson. It was seen here on the Public Broadcasting System's "Masterpiece Theatre,"won an International Emmy, and three top British TV Awards. It consists of three 50-minute episodes. The movie is badly dated, and was long out of print before Acorn re-released it in August, 2003.
It's a fantasy, written in the waning years of the Prime Ministership of Conservative Margaret Thatcher, about what would happen if a Far Left -wing member of the Labour party, rather than the centrist Tony Blair, who did actually win election, were to win the Prime Ministership. It posits the election of down-to-earth Yorkshireman Harry Perkins, a third-generation Sheffield steelworker, to the highest office in the land. He enjoys quoting the prestigious "London Times," that called him a "simple fool" during the campaign. He comes in with an agenda appropriate to himself: close down United States military bases, break up media monopolies, and dismantle British nuclear weapons. He upsets many of the British and American powerful with this agenda: did I mention that he's anti-American?
You could consider the film the grandchild of the American Frank Capra's famous 1939 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, in which the naïve Jefferson Smith, so memorably played by Jimmy Stewart, goes to Washington as a young man with an agenda. But it's heavily influenced by the brilliant British Boulting Brothers 1959 comedy I'm All Right Jack, in which Fred Kite,Communist-oriented union leader/shop steward, as unforgettably played by Peter Sellers, enjoys nothing more than a chance to shut down the factory. It certainly is the direct progenitor of House of Cards Trilogy (House of Cards / To Play the King / The Final Cut); another more successful British political drama, starring Ian Richardson, which closely followed it. And I guess you'd have to say it's the grand-dad of Sally Wainwright's meretricious 2006 fantasy, The Amazing Mrs Pritchard,in which Jane Horrocks, as Ros Pritchard, Midlands supermarket manager, gets herself elected Prime Minister. Except, whereas the Perkins character has spent a lifetime in politics, has submitted himself to the discipline of his party, works himself up to high office, and has an agenda, the Pritchard character is a newbie to politics, without education in it, background, or her own agenda.
The Irish McAnally's performance in the lead role is towering, and hits all the right notes. It's one of three great performances he delivered shortly before his 1990 death: Peter Egan's conman father in the TV movie John Le Carre's A Perfect Spy; and the indomitable father to the Irish Christy Brown character (as played by an Oscar-winning Daniel Day Lewis) in My Left Foot. He's surrounded by supporting actors who are able enough, some familiar faces, but none really well-known. He is, in fact, the only reason to see this movie, which is the very model of an all-talk no action film--the first, introductory episode literally put me to sleep. You will spot a woman's face about once every 15 minutes, if you care about that kind of thing, and I do. And, what would be a finishing, disastrous touch for many, in a movie that's all talk, there are no subtitles. Sorry folks, but, unless you are a big fan of the talking heads on CSpan, this is very much "A Very British Bore."