This tranquil canal journey was tinged with sadness
One of TV’S most charming series sailed back onto our screens last night, but it was bittersweet because this could well be the final voyage. Great Canal Journeys
(Channel 4) saw actors Timothy West (skipper) and Prunella Scales (first mate-cum-cook) taking a tranquil trip down memory lane.
The couple returned to the Oxford Canal, where they first fell in love with Britain and Ireland’s inland waterways. Aboard their own boat, the traditionally designed “Peggy Thompson”, they navigated north from Banbury, chugging through the bucolic Cherwell Valley to the village of Cropredy. They paused to ponder the bloody battle here during the English Civil War and the annual festival founded by Fairport Convention – at which point the genial folk-rockers came aboard to play Who
Knows Where the Time Goes?. “It almost could’ve been written for us,” said Scales with a fond smile.
Their trip was tinged with sadness, given the recent deterioration in Scales’s dementia and deafness. “It makes conversation difficult, so we don’t talk as much as we did and that’s sad,” sighed the stoical West. “I do feel quite lonely sometimes.”
Wrapped up cosily in hats and Barbours, sipping mugs of steaming tea, they instead watched the countryside glide by at four miles per hour. Scales said hello to every duck, swan or lamb they passed, while describing the buds and blossom as “magical”. Their affection and enthusiasm was certainly intact. “As her condition gradually progresses, Pru’s at her most content simply enjoying nature,” West explained tenderly. “Out here, she’s at her best. On the canal, her distant memories float to the surface.”
There were digressions into history and engineering, readings aloud from literature. They stopped at the medieval church of Wormleighton, the Spencer family seat, then onto their home port of Braunston, where they were joined by their family for a party celebrating four decades of “messing about in boats” and their 35th episode.
En route, there was reminiscence, reflection and peaceful interludes of silence. This was an even gentler treat than BBC Two’s Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing, if you can imagine something so soothing. Flashbacks to previous favourite journeys added to the elegiac feel.
“The canals will carry on without us,” concluded West. “I just wonder if we can carry on without them.” If this is to be the pair’s last series, they have done themselves proud – but I hope we meet again.
The phoney war was over on
World on Fire (BBC One) and the real battles had truly begun. There were firing squads and revenge killings in Warsaw. There was a full fire fight in Belgium.
The world might have been ablaze but phlegmatic Sergeant Stan Raddings (Blake Harrison) put it more prosaically. “If you could spell, you’d be an intellectual,” said Lieutenant Harry Chase (Jonah Hauer-king). Stan replied: “If I could spell, I wouldn’t be here with my arse on fire.” As if to prove his point, a howitzer landed mere yards away.
Writer Peter Bowker’s multistranded wartime drama cranked up another gear as it passed its halfway point. Harry, Stan and their unit fought for their lives in Flanders, where German troops outnumbered the Allied forces two-to-one. Harry initially froze but finally proved himself by taking out a Nazi sniper – albeit with a brick and a bayonet, rather than the pistol in his hand.
Back in Warsaw, the resistance activity of the rapidly hardening Kasia Tomaszeski (Zofia Wichlacz) had horrific consequences as the SS swiftly retaliated. While in Manchester, pacifist patriarch Douglas Bennett (Sean Bean) guessed that daughter Lois (Julia Brown) was hiding her pregnancy by ex-lover Harry, so met Harry’s mother Robina Chase (Lesley Manville) to discuss this delicate matter.
Over tea and cucumber sandwiches – what else? – senior cast members Bean and Manville showed their class. There was even some subtle social comedy as Douglas added five sugar lumps to his cup, while Robina looked more askance with each plop.
Bowker’s script was heavy-handed at times. Radio reporter Nancy Campbell (Helen Hunt) continues to broadcast on Exposition FM and one inevitably finds oneself more emotionally engaged with some plot-lines than others. However, as Sunday night dramas go,
World on Fire is an old-fashioned crowd-pleaser with huge heart. Great Canal Journeys ★★★★ World on Fire ★★★