The Museum of Television and Radio's current screening series, "Disruptive Directors of British Television," will soon be focusing on a form of English drama that rarely gets optioned by PBS: the original teleplay.
The reason we see so few examples on our home screens may be that our own tradition of television plays, which flourished in the era of live broadcasting, was cut off in the 60's, when video replaced the kinescope; television drama of this kind is unfamiliar to many of us. But some of England's finest playwrights (Dennis Potter and Alan Bennett among them) have been primarily television writers, and many of the most distinctive English filmmakers of the last two decades cut their teeth on television plays. [cut out information on other movies in the series] Of the four directors who will be highlighted, three have gone on to successful careers in movies: Stephen Frears (represented here by the 1983 "Saigon: Year of the Cat"), Mike Leigh ("Abigail's Party," 1977) and Ken Loach ("Cathy Come Home," 1966). The fourth, Alan Clarke ("Made in Britain," 1983), directed a handful of films before his death in 1990; the rowdy, eruptive mid- 80's sex comedy "Rita, Sue and Bob Too" was the only one to reach American art houses, where it garnered much less attention than it deserved. (Two weeks remain in the first half of the "Disruptive Directors" series, devoted to the biographies Ken Russell made for television.)
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"Saigon: Year of the Cat," set at the end of the American presence in Vietnam, mostly reflects the sensibilities
of its writer, David Hare, many of whose plays attempt to fuse sexual themes with political drama. Mr.
Frears's contribution, though, is the most interesting stylistic element in the piece. Mr. Hare wants us to see the
affair between a C.I.A. operative (Frederic Forrest) and a British bank loan officer (Judi Dench) as somehow
doomed by the disintegrating milieu in which it transpires, just as the sexual behavior of the protagonist in one
of his most famous plays, "Plenty," is meant to be explainable by the collapse of the British empire. Mr.
Frears's direction evokes the mood of a 1940's romantic melodrama — he makes specific reference to
"Casablanca" — where relationships move excitingly against the exotic background of political intrigue.
Judi Dench gives a poignant performance in "Saigon: Year of the Cat" that is both marvelously subtle and deeply expressive. She conveys what the script never manages to: the combination of heightened consciousness and emotional exhaustion that feels like the appropriate response to living in a world (the westernized South Vietnamese culture) about to vanish forever. She has a daring sexual forthrightness in her scenes with Mr. Forrest; she seems drenched in her desire for him.
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Cathy Come Home," "Abigail's Party," "Saigon: Year of the Cat" and "Made in Britain" will be screened Thursdays through Sundays at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York and Los Angeles, beginning with "Cathy Come Home" on Nov. 29 and continuing through Jan. 20. The first half of the "Disruptive Directors" series, devoted to the director Ken Russell, ends with "Song of Summer," about the composer Frederick Delius, which screens Thursday through next Sunday and Nov. 23-25.
Thanks to Emma for sending me this article which appeared in the New York Times on November 11, 2001.