Weak, sick and totally believable, Gambon’s Churchill was sublime
With the Churchillian panache that consisted of half a quip and half a snarl, Sir Michael Gambon rumbled: ‘Growing old is not for cowards.’ Never was a line more heartfelt.
the 75- year- old actor openly confessed last year that he was no longer able to remember his lines and could not continue on stage.
that has brought an unexpected bonus for tV viewers because, cut adrift from his beloved theatre, Gambon is indulging in more television — as the drunken photographer in Fortitude, for instance, and the bullying parish council chairman in the Casual Vacancy.
But he took on perhaps the bravest role of his career in Churchill’s Secret (itV). By his own admission his powers are waning, yet he is willing to measure himself against a regiment of his contemporaries, including Richard Burton, Robert hardy and Albert Finney, who have played Sir Winston.
More than that, Gambon portrayed him at his l owest ebb — halfparalysed in bed at his Chartwell home in Kent, barely able to hold a glass to his lips, but fighting to keep his grasp on political power.
Following a series of strokes, Churchill’s mind was wandering. he forgot names, lost his train of thought and sometimes lapsed into childish songs. Gambon made it look as natural as breathing, but then snapped back to reality in brief flashes.
his depiction of Churchill’s first attack, as he addressed a dinner table at Downing Street, was completely convincing. he didn’t have to loll or drool: it was as though a burst of radio static had blurred his brain. Director Charles Sturridge added visual clues, with bubbles of coloured light popping on the screen, but there was no need. Gambon’s acting told the whole story.
For the first few minutes, i was concerned that this drama might show too much relish at Churchill’s frailty, as Meryl Streep did in her distasteful performance as dementiastricken Margaret thatcher in the 2011 movie the iron Lady.
But this was not a prurient or prying film. in recent tV productions, we have seen Churchill portrayed at almost every age — a cocky Cabinet minister at the outset of World War i, an officer in the trenches, a bulwark against organised crime in the twenties, a rejected war hero finding solace in painting.
No other figure from British history appears so frequently in drama and history programmes. Why shouldn’t we see him when he’s weak and sick, and beset as he of t en was throughout his life by weaker men who want to see him gone?
this time, those men included his son Randolph, played by a rotund Matthew Macfadyen as a bitter drunkard with a venomous line in snobbery. One of t he best moments in a script crammed with excellent dialogue came when he dismissed his father’s private secretary, Jock Colville, as a ‘greasy little margarine-eater’.
the whole production was so well done that it even used the adverts cleverly to break up the 130-minute drama into five acts.
the middle section, where the Grand Old Man’s martini-swilling children briefly descend on Chartwell to assess whether he’s dying, was a miniature masterpiece, set inside a larger one.
The Night Manager (BBC1) also consisted of stories within stories. it began with a languid look at arms dealer Richard Roper (hugh Laurie) on holiday in Majorca with his young son and just a few of his closest bodyguards. it was a picture so nearly innocent it might have seemed bland, except for the terror his girlfriend Jed (Elizabeth Debicki) was swallowing back with every smile.
And then special forces hotelier Jonathan Pine (tom hiddleston) arrived to stop a kidnapping, and the story rewound six months to reveal the satisfying sting the secret services were planning.
But the tension faltered when the narrative leapt forward again, and then twanged back. A flash forward had been inserted into the flashback and we saw, just for a few seconds, a shot of Pine’s kitchen splattered with blood.
Eventually, all t hi s was explained, but there really ought to be a rule against more than one time trick per episode. Otherwise, deep into a Sunday evening, viewers might find it all too complicated and just give up.