Show Notes
While looking for a drama beginning with the letter Q, having decided to ignore that programme about that Bernard fellow, we quickly agreed that A Question of Attribution would make an excellent choice, partly as we knew it to be a celebrated and award winning drama, but also because it would be our first Alan Bennett. Oh mother!
First written and performed for the stage in 1988, this drama about the fourth member of the Cambridge Spy Ring, Sir Anthony Blunt, was adapted for television in 1991 and features James Fox as Blunt, David Calder as his interrogator Chubb, and Prunella Scales as HMQ (Her Majesty the Queen).
As well as praising Bennett's deft script and the performances of Fox, Calder and Scales, Andy and Martin discussed public access to art, the value of a 'time in Perth' clock, and the identity of the fifth member of the Cambridge Spy Ring. Step forward Lemaitre from The Reign of Terror and indeed Beta from The Krotons. Or maybe not.
It doesn't take the pair long to get into politics and the dangers of our post-truth world, in a week when Britain was set to break international law because of the self-serving idiocy of its current government. What fun!
Next Time: Ready When You Are, Mr McGill
More from An A to Z of UK Television Drama
[Spoiler alert! This series is almost 50 years old but we will be revealing - around 90 minutes - in who spectacularly dies in the literal cliffhanger to episode 7. You have been warned!]
After a brief hiatus, Andy and Martin resume the second season of A to Z with the letter V. Admittedly cheating a little, their choice was 'Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton', the second of two autobiographical Dennis Potter plays from 1965 in The Wednesday Play strand. They also cover the first play, 'Stand Up, Nigel Barton'. Both feature Keith Barron as the title character who we follow from childhood, to university, to a reluctant attempt to stand as a Labour candidate in the General Election.
Andy and Martin travel back in time to the summer of 1965 and the adventures of HR consultant Drew Heriot and his sister-in-law Anne as they face up to the machinations of 'Undermind’: aliens who have brainwashed British citizens in order to cause national unrest ahead of their imminent invasion. Their various schemes include: spreading pirate radio misinformation; inciting youth violence in a seaside resort; influencing the works of a popular children’s author; the distribution of suicide-inducing birthday records; interference with the printing of exam papers, and most abominably of all, the assassination of Eamonn Andrews! Yes, really.
This month Andy and Martin review the highly regarded 1987 BAFTA-winning Scottish drama Tutti Frutti, written by John Byrne and starring Robbie Coltrane and Emma Thompson.
Twenty-one years after their first recorded interview on the first Survivors DVDs back in 2003, Andy catches up with Carolyn Seymour who played Abby Grant in Survivors.