TV, FILM & RADIO
THE LATEST DOCUMENTARIES, BLOCKBUSTERS AND PERIOD DRAMAS
ONE TO WATCH
Grace under pressure
A Very British Scandal
BBC One, December
It was a divorce that gripped the attention of much of the nation. In 1963, having found compromising pictures of his wife, the famed socialite Margaret Campbell (née Whigham), Ian Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyll went to court to end his third marriage.
Before long, Margaret’s name would be dragged through the mud amidst lurid tales of law-breaking, violence, drug-taking and infidelity. One explicit image in particular, obtained by the duke when he employed a locksmith to break into a cupboard in the couple’s Mayfair home, became notorious. In court, presiding judge Lord Wheatley described Margaret as “a completely promiscuous woman whose sexual appetite could only be satisfied with a number of men”.
But how fair was this assessment? Scriptwriter Sarah Phelps (The Pale Horse) has long been fascinated with the couple’s divorce and sees Margaret in different terms. When A Very British Scandal, made by the same production company behind the award-winning A Very English Scandal, was announced, she said the story had been a “passion project” for her since 1993. “I felt very strongly that [Margaret had] been punished for being a woman, for being visible, for refusing to back down, be a good girl and go quietly,” Phelps noted. “ is drama is my tribute to her.”
Underpinning these words is the idea that post-World War II British society was a place of double standards and sexism in its attitudes towards women, and perhaps even institutionally misogynistic.
Leading the cast as Margaret, and playing her as someone who acted with dignity and resilience through experiences that would have broken many people, is Claire Foy (The Crown). Hollywood star Paul Bettany, best known as Vision in the Marvel films and subsequent WandaVision TV series, plays the duke. The cast also features Julia Davis (Nighty Night) as Maureen, Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava.
Women at war
The Army Girls
BBC Radio 4, December
By late 1941, the United Kingdom was a country with a single aim: to defeat the Axis powers. is required the whole of society to be mobilised and so it was, 80 years ago in December, the government passed the National Service Act (No 2, which for the first time conscripted women – initially childless widows and single women between the ages of 20 and 30.
Most of those called up served with the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), a branch of the British Army formed in 1938. By the end of the conflict, the ATS employed 190,000 women. Its most famous recruits included Princess Elizabeth, who trained as a lorry driver and mechanic, and Winston Churchill’s youngest daughter, Mary.
While you would guess the experiences of those at society’s apex were far from typical, the fact they served at all says much about the way the ATS inverted social norms and pushed women’s lives in unexpected directions.
Sadly, if inevitably, the number of ATS veterans diminishes by the year, all of which makes efforts by oral historian Dr Tessa Dunlop to collect their stories all the more important. In The Army Girls, she revisits some of the veterans she spoke with for her recent book of the same name.
It all makes for a rich documentary that explores, for example, how the service was initially unpopular with women because it was thought the work recruits undertook was dull. Nevertheless, there were adventures to be had as, for example, recruits served in a decimated Europe in the wake of D-Day. Less happily, many had to fend off the unwanted attention of male colleagues.
New World odyssey
The Pilgrims
PBS America, Thursday 25 November
The story of the Pilgrims is one of the foundational myths of the United States. It’s integral to Thanksgiving, the holiday so often associated with tales of the 1621 celebration at the Plymouth Colony, when the settlers marked bringing in their first harvest.
But who exactly were the Pilgrims? What was it about their lives in Europe that made them want to travel to the New World? And what was their role in the birth of American democracy? These are questions that lie at the centre of the Pilgrims, a feature-length documentary directed by Ric Burns. Covering the 70 years between 1560 and 1630, it’s a story that takes in religious persecution in England and exile in the Netherlands, as well as the colonisation of Massachusetts on land occupied by the Patuxet, Native Americans whose population was decimated by imported diseases.
The ultimate sacrifice
Solomon Browne
whose distress signal prompted the Solomon
Browne’s tragic, final launch
BBC Radio 4, Monday 20 December
Four decades ago, in December 1981, the coaster Union Star set out on its maiden voyage, tasked with transporting a cargo of fertiliser from the Netherlands to Ireland.
Aboard was a five-man crew, skippered by Captain Henry Morton, and along the way the ship stopped off in Essex to pick up Morton’s wife and stepdaughters so they could be together for the holidays.
But off the coast of Cornwall, Union Star’s engines failed, leaving the ship unable to manoeuvre as a fierce storm blew in from the Atlantic. A Sea King was sent to lift off those aboard, but the coaster was pitching so violently that its mast threatened to hit the rescue helicopter. Instead, the RNLI’s Solomon Browne was launched from Penlee Lifeboat Station, near Mousehole. Aboard were eight volunteers, including Coxswain William Trevelyan Richards. The men fought through the storm to reach the Union Star and battled to get alongside the ship. Four of those aboard the coaster made it to the lifeboat according to the Solomon Browne’s last message.
Tragically, nobody made it to shore. Both craft were lost and what came to be known as the Penlee Lifeboat Disaster cost 16 lives. is poignant drama-documentary, scripted by Callum Mitchell, recalls the events through a combination of a haunting score, comms from the night and the recollections of some of the crewmen’s family members.
Rebellious spirit
Dickinson
Apple TV+, new episodes streaming weekly every Friday until Christmas Eve
Emily Dickinson 1830–86 is now seen as one of America’s greatest writers. But in her own lifetime, spent largely in her hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts, during which she published just 10 poems, she was widely regarded as an eccentric figure – a solitary spinster who found it easier to communicate via letters than in person and latterly didn’t even much like leaving her own room.
In short, she probably wasn’t much like the figure we see in Dickinson, a coming-of-age comedy-drama that plays fast and loose with the past. In a similar style to Elle Fanning’s portrayal of Russian empress Catherine the Great, actor Hailee Steinfeld’s Dickinson is a thoroughly modern young woman who, determined to be the greatest poet in the world, kicks against the stifling New England environs in which she finds herself. at’s not to say Dickinson entirely ignores her actual history.
She’s shown, for example, as being in love with Sue Gilbert (Ella Hunt), her brother’s fiancée, something for which there is certainly evidence. The third and final series of Dickinson, set against the backdrop of the American Civil War, covers her most productive time as an artist, and also finds Dickinson dealing with rifts in her family.
Dynastic downfall
House of Gucci
In cinemas from Friday 26 November
In 1995, a hitman murdered Maurizio Gucci, former head of the Italian luxury fashion house. His ex-wife, Patrizia Reggiani, would later be sentenced to 29 years for ordering the killing in a sensational trial that made headlines around the world.
Ridley Scott’s second film of the year follows events leading up to the murder and its aftermath, and stars Lady Gaga (pictured) and Adam Driver as the warring couple at the centre of the story. A highcalibre cast also features Jared Leto, Jeremy Irons, Salma Hayek and Al Pacino.