The Englishman in the High Castle

An Englishman's Castle was a three-part BBC drama that starred Kenneth More and was screened in 1978. It was set in an alternate 1978 where Britain had been conquered by Nazi Germany.

I don't remember it from the time and have long wanted to watch it. The other day I found all three parts on YouTube, namely:

• part 1
  
• part 2
• part 3

If you want a blow-by-blow account, then Archive TV Musings is the site for you. Here I offer some more random thoughts.

To begin, I have a Kenneth More problem: I don't like him when he plays the hero. I'm reminded of Matthew Sweet and his comment on A Night to Remember: 

You almost get the feeling watching A Night To Remember that the ship goes down simply to wipe the smug grin off of Kenneth More's face.

and also of his comment on More's onscreen character in general:

He was heroic in a cocky, big-brotherly way - like a public-school prefect who might have saved a new boy from a beating, but expected three terms of shoe-polishing and crumpet-toasting in return.

But the older, compromised More we see here is more to my taste. He plays the scriptwriter of a popular television drama called An Englishman's Castle, which is set in the recent past and is reaching the time of the German invasion of Britain. 

This, and the complications of his personal life, suddenly make it harder for him to please the viewing public without upsetting the authorities. Up till now, he has made the compromises that allowed him to walk this tightrope.

Then there is the brilliance with which an authoritarian state is conjured up without showing us anything. The violence all takes offscreen and every one running things is British. The only German we see is an amiable young soldier who appears in the drama within the drama.

And then there's the cast. More's wife is played by Kathleen Byron, the mad nun from Black Narcissus. The controller of the television channel is Anthony Bate, soon to play Sir Oliver Lacon in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. One of More's sons, though he's not at his best here, is Nigel Havers.

In the minor roles are two figures with pleasing trivial connections. Jonathan Kydd, the son of the actor Sam Kydd, appears on one of my regular podcast listens - Chelsea Fancast - every week. 

While the young German soldier is played by Louis Sheldon. As Louis Sheldon Williams he was one of the children in Our Mother's House and, better still, his mother wrote a weekly column for Liberal News in the 1960s.

If you click play on the video at the top, you'll soon see a scene between Kenneth More and Anthony Bate. If you like it, I think you'll like the whole thing.