Sword of Honour- R4 Classic Serial

[Guest]

The previous 10-parter, done many years ago, was excellent, but this new 7-parter version looks like trumping it in the comedy stakes. Part 1's Saturday evening repeat is still (hurry!) available on iPlayer, and Part 2 went out last Sunday. The actors are clearly relishing their characters.

Russ

[mercia]

enjoying it, though perhaps slightly surprised they have felt the need to re-adapt it - there must be books out there which haven't had the BBC dramatisation treatment yet (?).
particularly enjoying Adrian Scarborough's Apthorpe. I thought Patrick Troughton's 1974 Ritchie-Hook was very memorable.
this link reckons there were 11 episodes in 1974. http://www.suttonelms.org.uk/evelyn%20waugh.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/galleries/p01hk957

[amateur51]

enjoying it, though perhaps slightly surprised they have felt the need to re-adapt it - there must be books out there which haven't had the BBC dramatisation treatment yet (?).
particularly enjoying Adrian Scarborough's Abthorpe. I thought Patrick Troughton's 1974 Ritchie-Hook was very memorable.
this link reckons there were 11 episodes in 1974. http://www.suttonelms.org.uk/evelyn%20waugh.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/galleries/p01hk957

Many thanks for this mercia

I'm enjoying this hugely - it's obviously a work that successive generations of actors enjoy getting their teeth into.

[DublinJimbo]

Part 1's Saturday evening repeat is still (hurry!) available on iPlayer …

Got the dreaded message: "Sorry, this episode is no longer available on BBC iPlayer Radio". Ah well, I guess I'll just have to start at episode 2.

[aeolium]

I just caught the first episode on i-player before the time ran out. It was well worth hearing, especially for Pigott-Smith's portrayal of Ritchie-Hook. Pigott-Smith sometimes reminds me of another fine radio actor, Stephen Murray. I confess to preferring Waugh's pre-war novels to his later ones though, apart from The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold. In the Sword of Honour trilogy and Brideshead, for me the Catholic themes hang too heavily (and in the latter, a sort of nostalgia for Catholic feudalism).

It's quite interesting to have a look at the life of the supposed original for the character of Ritchie-Hook, Adrian Carton de Wiart - a different kind of Colonel Blimp.

[Dphillipson]

The new dramatisation is weakened by unnoticed continuity problems or anachronisms. The earlier radio version used military band music for the general theme; the new Episode 1 (set in 1939) used American dance band music not composed until the 1940s. All too obviously, this version's principals have no military experience. In Episode 1:
-- The drill command "Stand Easy" was followed by the crashing of stamping boots;
-- Marching men are halted by the command "Ten-Shun."
-- On the rifle range in 1939-40, bolt-action rifles are heard to fire as fast as modern autoloading rifles.
The enjoyment of listeners with no army experience is probably unimpaired, but these were gross errors and quite unnecessary.

[DracoM]

This serialisation is frankly poor and in come areas downright silly. Shame.

[Russ]

Dracs - do you mean 'poor' as in 'a bit of a mess' and 'downright silly' as in not enough serious bits?

Russ

[DracoM]

Both - yes.

[Dphillipson]

This serialisation is frankly poor and in some areas downright silly. Shame.

A major problem throughout is Crouchback's voice. Paul Ready simply sounds throughout younger than all
his supposed contemporaries (e.g. Box-Bender, Kilbannock) not to mention the narrator (Tim McInnerny).
This irritates in nearly every episode and wrecks the author's urbane tone. The earlier radio dramatization
(in 10 or 11 hours) was much superior.

[DublinJimbo]

The earlier radio dramatization (in 10 or 11 hours) was much superior.

As someone who hadn't heard the original, I must admit that I enjoyed this version enormously. Having listened to every episode, I came away wanting to read the book(s), which to my mind is the ultimate compliment to any dramatisation.

[Sir Velo]

As someone who hadn't heard the original, I must admit that I enjoyed this version enormously. Having listened to every episode, I came away wanting to read the book(s), which to my mind is the ultimate compliment to any dramatisation.

Indeed,though that's as much down to Waugh as the adaptation. For those of us who are au fait with the original novel, this has been a heck of a botched job, with omissions, poor casting and anachronistic linguistic howlers thrown in for good measure.

[DracoM]

Could not agree more.

Along with the recent epic blunder in fielding the ten tediously repetitive and ill-conceived afternoons of GF Newman, this was the Drama commissioner's least good decision of recent months.

The whole project was eminently worth doing, but as written and broadcast, incoherent, over-ambitious, tried to treat it as straight farce, more or less lost the central tragic ambivalence of the sequence.

Would love to have seen the note Waugh himself might have written to the Beeb on hearing how they had dismembered and diluted his trilogy. The lawyers would have been in!

[amateur51]

As someone who hadn't heard the original, I must admit that I enjoyed this version enormously. Having listened to every episode, I came away wanting to read the book(s), which to my mind is the ultimate compliment to any dramatisation.

now you've put the cat among the pigeons

[DracoM]

If it has whetted the appetite, I am delighted. However, I think you are in for a bit of a shock!! It is pretty serious literature.