Saturday 31 December 2011

Great Expectations, Downton Abbey, Emma and Mansfield Park

A feature of television at Christmas is a congestion of times past for the landed gentry who live in fine country houses and this year was no exception with Emma and Mansfield Park, a Downton Abbey Christmas special and from Time to Time. I also include the Dickens Great Expectations.

I have been less of a Jane Austin fan than the Bronte sisters as her portrayals of the superficiality between the landed gentry leave me cold. Mansfield Park and Emma is the same story told with different principal characters in the sense that a man and a woman become close friends over a period of time and only later appreciate that they also wish to become adult lovers and because they are friends there is confidence that their love could be long lasting if not happy ever after.

I have not read Emma the 1815 comedy of manners among the genteel of Georgian Regency England and therefore have been guided by others about the authenticity and effectiveness of the 1996 version with Gwyneth Paltrow in the title role and Ewan McGregor and Greta Scacchi among the cast. A year before there had been a USA set version called Clueless and last year an India film called Aisha. The television productions have been more faithful to the original intentions with versions in 1948, a six part BBC serial in 1960 with another in 1972 and a four part version in 2009. In the same year as the Paltrow the BBC produced a single session film with Kate Beckinsale which should be the one to compare. By coincidence this film featured on ITV in the afternoon so my decision to watch the second part of the Harry Potter finale and then write about the series proved justified in more ways than I had anticipated. The Americans, NBC and CBS have produced three TV versions in addition and there have been seven stage productions, including three musical versions.

Emma is an intelligent young women stuck in a world where she has too little to do other than gossip and match make about which she no talent. She is only twenty one so allowances are made for her youthful silliness.

I am not sure if we learn when her mother died but with the marriages of her sister and her governess she lives alone in the country house with her father who leads his own life and therefore leaves Emma (Woodhouse) to enjoy the country walks, the picnics and dancing with her permitted circle of contemporaries. She enjoys the company of her father’s friend George Knightly unmarried and in his late thirties whose younger brother has married Emma’s older sister. They have five young children and prefer nuclear family life but indulges his wife’s enthusiasm for vacations and visitations. Something which she shares with her young sister who one predicts will follow in similar fashion.

Having decided that she is a good match maker Emma sets her sights on finding a husband for her friend Harriet Smith who is illegitimate, and raised locally and not part of the set until introduced by Emma. When a local farmer and his sister take an interest in Harriet, Emma does all she can to prevent a relationship developing and insists that the girl rejects the offer of marriage from Robert Martin and friendship of his sister because she believes the girl could do so much better.

She targets the new young Vicar Philip Elton but he first sets his sights on Emma and when Emma rejects him, he quickly marries another young woman from out of town called Augusta because of her income of £10000 a year. The woman but lacks the genteel qualities of her new circle and is written as pretentious and boastful and likes to have her own way. She struck me as very suitable for her husband who in the tradition of the Church of England is an ambitious man with only the trappings of Christianity lacking religious sincerity.
There are two other principal characters. The first Frank Churchill, the son by his previous marriage of Mr Weston who has married Emma’s governess of sixteen years and who acted as a substitute mother to Emma, exercising good influence but limited to having been a servant in the household. Frank has taken the name of the husband of Mr Weston’s sister who raised the boy has their own after the premature death of his mother. He was raised in Richmond in Yorkshire but becomes an immediate hit when he visits except for George who becomes jealous when Frank sets his sights on Emma. He appears to be good in his judgement when Frank returns briefly to London for the purpose of getting a haircut.

The other principal character is Jane Fairfax who has been raised by her grandmother and a spinster aunt to be a spirited and sensible young woman of musical and social talents but because she is without fortune to make an appropriate marriage she appears destined to become a governess. She and Frank Churchill became acquainted while holiday in Dorset and where he executed a rescue of the young woman when out on a boat trip which ended in heavy winds and high seas.

Frank arranges a dance at the local Inn at which Mr Elton declines to dance with Harriet Smith who has to sit and watch the others enjoys themselves. Mr Knightley steps in. When Emma and Harriet are walking to her home one day they are accosted by gypsies in one version for their purses and by begging children in another. Harriet who falls to the ground is rescued by Frank Churchill and Emma gets her wires crossed and believes the girl has become infatuated with Frank who appears to be taking an interest in her when in fact she is taken with George Knightley.

There is a strawberry picking tea party at the home of Mr Knightly who owns the great house and estate in the areas. Mrs Elton says he should have asked her to organise the event but he puts her down saying that this will be the responsibility of his wife when he finds her but he remains in control until he does. I was struck by the volume of perfect strawberries on show in the British film version which does not reflect the size of the beds in the kitchen garden where they picks those they plan to take home.

There is a significant difference between the two films in the scale of the picnic to Box Hill which remains an important visitor attraction to this day and which I visited as a child in an extended family outing by bus. I revisited a few years ago and it is possible to park the car at the top of the Hill In the British version film the party includes footman, cooks and maids in their uniforms who transport screens and comfortable chairs as well as setting a table with a full buffet style meal displayed. The Paltrow version the picnic is modest by comparison.

This is a pivotal event because Emma humiliates the spinster aunt of Miss Fairfax and is severely reprimanded by George who is disgusted and disappointed her behaviour and she is suitable chastened and remorseful. However the crunch event is when the news arrives that with the death of his aunt, Frank Churchill has announced that he and Miss Fairfax are engaged. They were secretly engaged after meeting during the Dorset holiday but could not disclose further because of the anticipated disapproval of the aunt. With her death the relationship can be acknowledged. Because Mr Knightly had made his carriage available to Miss Fairfax her grand mother and aunt for a musical evening, Emma had thought he was interested in the young woman at one point and that it was George who had provided the sister with a piano for Miss Fairfax who is considered an excellent pianist and singer could play. In fact it was Frank Churchill who arranged the delivery on his supposed mission for a haircut in London. George returns home and visits Emma as soon as he learns of Frank’s deception. The scene leads the two disclosing their long term affection for each other. Meanwhile Harriet had regained contact with the farmer Martin and his sisters and they are also to be married. The film ends with a joint wedding.

Apart from her attractive facial features and body it is difficult to see what George sees in Emma It can be argued that at least Emma does not spend all her time seeking a partner or pursuing a fortune. However she must be condemned for the attachment to class and belief in her superiority over others. She contributes nothing to humanity. Miss Paltrow is excellent without a trace of an American accent and I preferred her version to that of Kate Beckinsale. Mark String is excellent as Knightly and Bernard Hepton as Emma’s father in the latter.

While the basic story of Mansfield Park is the same there is much more substance to the characters with an awareness of the true nature of slavery and the lives of the majority. Fanny Price is the second eldest of nine children whose father spends his time drinking and in an opium haze after being pensioned on half pay as a naval Lieutenant because of disability. While Fanny’s mother has accepted her fate she plots a better life for her daughter and arranges with one of her two sisters that Fanny should be raised at Mansfield Park where their other sister has married the owner. Like Fanny’s mother Lady Bartram (Lindsay Duncan) has retreated from life into her role as a dutiful housewife and it is the third sister, a widow and former wife of the Church of England vicar who comes to greet Fanny some two hours after she has been dropped off at the main entrance of the Mansfield Park in the early hours after the long coach ride from Portsmouth.

Fanny is to be brought up in the main household with four first cousins. The eldest when an adult accompanies his father on a visit to their wealth making plantation in Antigua. The elder brother disapproves of the use of slaves and as drawn the stark reality much to the horror and disgust of his father. He returns early from the trip and then is brought home from London by drinking friends when his money runs out. He is then struck down with fever and nearly dies.

Meanwhile the second son who has been a close companion of Fanny since she arrived in the household has been betrothed to someone appropriate according to his parents. She is Mary Crawford who when the older brother takes ill contemplates the advantages that his death will mean that that her future husband becomes the heir and inherits the estate. She is similar to Mrs Elton in several ways. She has a brother who appears intelligent and superficially charming and at first takes an interest in one of the two daughters of Sir Thomas and Lady Bartram. He also reminds of Frank Churchill. This ends the relationship.

Maria is the eldest daughter of the Bartram’s who is pursued by Mr Rushworth who has £12000 a year but who is also a boring young man. She prefers the brother of Mary Crawford who something of a romantic womaniser. She runs off with Crawford soon after her marriage, gains a divorce but Crawford fails to marry her.

Julia is the youngest daughter who also fancies Crawford but is pursued by Tom Yates, a drinking partner of the eldest son. He and Julia run off together.

For a time Henry Crawford also took an interest in Fanny which Sir Thomas considers to be a good match. Fanny is not interested and when Sir Thomas gives her an ultimatum of marriage or return to her family she chooses the latter. In the novel she is between eighteen and nineteen years. She is pursued by Crawford when she returns to Portsmouth who in the film pays a young man to bring an entertainment of fireworks and a host of white doves to outside her home. When he befriends the family and appears to accept their comparatively low lifestyle Fanny warms to him and briefly consents to a marriage which she quickly withdraws. He goes off in a huff and quickly transfers his affections.

With the two daughters away from home and Lady Bartram wrapped him in her own world it is Edmund who is sent by Sir Thomas to ask Fanny to return when Tom becomes dangerously ill and it is she who nurses the older son much to the gratitude of Sir Thomas and Edmund.

The essential difference between Fanny and Emma and Edmund and Mr Knightly is that neither are natural social creatures preferring to spend their time reading and in good conversation. Fortunately for both they come to realise their adult affection as well as teenage friendship and shared interests. Before leaving home Fanny had developed a close relationship with a younger sister who shows some of the same qualities as her older sister. Their friendship is renewed when she returns home and in due course she joins Fanny and her husband at the Park.

According to my research there is a significant difference between character of Fanny in the original text and the film. There is acceptance of slavery and their family lifestyle in the book which is made into an issue in the film. In the book Fanny is shy and timid where as in the film she is single minded and self confident. She is physical weak and often tired in the text but an extrovert and outspoken in the film What the film version also attempts to do is to suggest that Mansfield Park is autobiographical Jane Austin in that Fanny spends a great deal of time writing from childhood and using scare family funds for paper when she returns home.

In the book she finds Crawford’s attention unwelcome and far from returning for as a punishment goes to escape his attentions. There are various other changes some work but others distort to an extent to arouse hostility from fans of the writer. I like the film version.

And now for something of a very different- A 2011 three part adaptation of Charles Dickens Great Expectations. In my view there had been nothing until now to compare with 1946 film which has John Mills as Pip the young man and Alec Guiness as his friend Pocket. Jean Simmons played Estella the younger and Valerie Hobson as Miss Haversham with Finlay Curry and Bernard Miles also featuring.

In the present BBC production Ray Winston as one of his better roles as Abel Magwitch and David Suchet is Jaggers. The story has become well known as a consequence of the films and TV production although the original text merits the reading. I possess a family edition in the Heron Great Works series but I must confess not to have read but I am placing with the other volumes for reading during 2012. We encounter Pip as a young boy in the care of his married elder sister who husband Joe a blacksmith treats the child as his own.

The various films and series all open with the Pip encountering an escaped convict in chains, Abel Magwitch and he frightens Pip into getting a tool to release him from his enchainment. Pip also brings the man a slice of home made pie. Pip also encounters a man with a scar on his face who is another escapee. Magwitch is captured with the file and pie and the authorities assume that the file has been stolen from the forge which is returned causing great concern to the sister but Joe appears more understanding the situation and Magwitch is struck by their kindness in leaving him the food. The event is pivotal to the story as is the next development.

Pip has an uncle who delivers supplies by trade including to the local great house where the lady of the house is looking for a local young boy to keep her adopted daughter company. Pip is suggested and while his sister sees this as a great opportunity for family advancement her husband is unsure. Pip enjoys the visits despite the strangeness of Miss Haversham, a comparatively young woman who lives as a recluse where the dinning room is laid out for a wedding breakfast from years before. The young adopted girl Estella is unkind to Pip who she regards as inferior until an event which changes their relationship. Relatives of Miss Haversham call with their son but are refused access to Miss Haversham. They are incensed when the find Pip is allowed into the house and upper floors. He is told to immediately leave by Miss Haversham who cannot cope with his visit because of the situation and when he leaves he encountered the son of the visitors who behaves like Estella, the daughter towards Pip but in this instance Pip defends himself and strikes the young man down. This delights Estella because he has made something happen.

When sometime later Pip and his step father are summoned to Hall the sister believes they are going to be rewarded and made up. However Miss Haversham has a different idea and offers to pay for Pip to be indentured as an apprentice Blacksmith. She arrange the formal document with the help of the family layer Jaggers who is another character who is play a key role in the story.

While they are at the Hall the sister humiliates the hired help at the forge and he batters her to near death so she is rendered into a vegetable state for the rest of her life. The hired help makes it plain to Pip that he is answerable to him rather than directly through his step father. Having been given a taste of the life of genteel classes Pip is disappointed by his fate.

Seven years later Pip, now a young man, is summoned back to the Hall and introduced to Estelle now a beautiful young woman who is about to go to Paris to a finishing school before going into society in London to have her pick of eligible young men for marriage. Estelle tells Pip never to come back to the House again although there is an evident attraction between the two. Because Pip has completed his apprenticeship Joe tells the hired help his services are no longer required because the Forge cannot sustain three adult workers. This further antagonises the help who determines to get his revenge.

There is then an event which is to shape Pip’s destiny. Jaggers arrives to say that a secret benefactor wishes to enable Pip to have the life of a gentleman in London society. He will be given a weekly allowance which he will collect once a week from the Solicitor and then if he follows his instructions and guidance he will inherit a fortune when he comes of age (twenty one years). He can make no enquiries about his benefactor but Pip immediately assumes this is Miss Haversham and that the intention is that he should become the partner for Estella. He visits the Hall and the lady says nothing to dissuade him from the notion although she does not confirm his assumption. Pip sets off for London in new clothes acquired with money given by Jaggers to set himself up on arrival.

In the second episode Pip is provided with a guide for becoming a gentleman in the form of Herbert Pocket who Harry encountered at the Hall as the obnoxious relative of Estella. He is a much changed individual in having sacrificed his income and inheritance for life with the young woman he loves. He has to find work in order to marry and for this he needs some capital but in he meantime he is undertaking services for Jaggers which includes helping to become a gentleman. While his influence is positive and he acts responsibly, Pip in his anxiety to be able to impress Miss Haversham and Estella begins to spend way above his means thus gaining the disapproval of Jaggers. The first casualty is his relationship with his step father who has to visit after months of not hearing anything. Joe realises that Pip has become ashamed of his former life and is pretending that he has always been a gentleman.

Pip explains to Pocket his love for Estella and then finds that his friend far from being impressed is alarmed. Pocket explains that Miss Haversham was jilted by her fiancée who turned out to be an adventuring con artist disappearing after she has settled some money on him. Pip ignores the advice to have nothing more to do with mother and daughter and accepts an invitation to return to the Hall to find that Estella has returned from Paris and Miss Haversham wants him to accompany his adopted daughter to London for the social season and finding a husband. Pip thinks that this is an invitation for him to begin a relationship with Estella.

Pip has become a self centred waster of his fortune incurring great debts in anticipation of the fortune he expects to inherit from Miss Haversham. When his sister dies he visits briefly just for the service as there is a dance to attend with Estella that evening.

One day at the office of Jaggers he arrives early and meets one of the other gentlemen looked after by the lawyer. This man is a member of the landed gentry and quickly establishes a relationship with Pip who does not realise that Bentley Drummle is using him and soon admits his disregard for someone without a proper background. He first learns the reality when is taken to an upper class brothel. He tries to warn Drummle off taking an interest in Estella when the two meet at a Ball. Pip remains convinced that his affection is reciprocate after he and Estella have shared a kiss although she later dismisses this as using him to gain practice as was the purpose of the original invitation to Haversham Hall all those years before. When she announces that she is to marry Drummle she explains to Pip she has a cold heart and has been brought up to bring unhappiness to men. This was the aim of her upbringing; taking revenge on men for what happened to her adopted mother.

There is one good streak left in Pip that he arranges a career for his friend Pocket with the help of Jaggers Chief Clerk, promising to pay the balance of fee required of £500. As a consequence Pocket is able to marry and the wedding is a cause for celebration.

Pip then discovers the truth that it was Magwitch who is the benefactor when the man comes to his room with a vast quantity of money, his inheritance. He is horrified believing that the funds are the proceeds of crime. He refuses the inheritance and with the allowance stopped his debtors mount their demands. He goes to see Miss Haversham and persuades her to give him the funds required to pay off the debt incurred in securing a career for Pocket, He agrees never to return and Miss Haversham finding that Estella is returning all her unintentionally sets fire to her self as she burns the letters.

Pip has discovered the truth about Estella and Magwitch. Magwitch was married and his wife was wronged by an individual who in fact is the man who wronged Miss Haversham. His wife had attacked the man giving him a scar and he is also the individual who has escaped from prison with Magwitch. He had not been caught and had made a good living for himself in London society as a gambler. Magwitch had taken the blame for his wife’s action in order to save her and his daughter from transportation to the prisons of Australia. Magwitch believed his child and wife had since died and he had made his fortune from sheep at the end of his sentence. Although he was a free man and the money honestly earned there was a stipulation that he should never return to London on pain of the gallows. Pip discovers the maid servant of Jaggers is the former wife of Magwitch and that their daughter is Estella given to Miss Haversham.

Pip with the help of Pocket before he and his wife leave England to take up a posting abroad with his firm and Wemmick the Chief Clerk Pip helps to hide Magwitch who now has a price on his head placed by the man who wronged Haversham’s and Magwitch’s. The plan is for Magwitch to return to Australia, taking ship once he has left the waters of Thames within the London boundary. However in London Pip is being followed by the former assistant to his step father, the man who effectively murdered his sister. His first intention is to kill Pip but he then learns of the connection between Pip and Magwitch and claims the reward once he had obtained the details of the plan. Pip plans to accompany Magwitch to Australia but the plan is thwarted when instead of reaching the London barrier bell they find their adversary with the authorities waiting. In the fight that follows the enemy dies but Magwitch is injured, captured and taken to prison to await the hangman’s nose. He dies from his injuries before with Pip telling him that his daughter lived and became a beautiful young woman and that she will be loved for ever by Pip.

Back in his room he is attacked by the step father’s former assistant who reveals that he also severely injured the sister. Pip manages to overcome the man who off screen is then taken into custody.

When Pip confronting Miss Haversham her dress catches fire and she dies from her injuries. Pip returns to the home of his step father and apologises for his behaviour. In the film when returning from his job as an estate manager or clerk of some king he meets his uncle who says he is no longer on hard times because Estella has returned to the Hall a widow. Earlier we learn that he husband died from a riding accident for which she thanks his horse! He returns to Hall for a reunion.

Dickens had two endings for his work. In the first the two meet in the a street in London, admitting that because of the suffering experienced during her marriage she had learned to undo the cold heart created by her adopted mother. The final edition of the published work they meet in the ruins of the Hall. However there is to be no life happy ever after for them. They meet and they part as friend but at peace which each other and the world.

I had also hoped to write about Time to Time a 2009 British film which is an adaptation of the Children’s novel The Chimney of Green Knowe. I saw the opening on the morning of my Christmas trip but left for lunch and the return journey hoping to see the rest on the ITV player. Alas it is not included. A thirteen year old boy is sent to the care of his Grandmother at the family country house when his father is declared missing in action during World War II and his mother determines to go to London to try and find news and establish a new life for herself and her son if he does not return. The family have been estranged because his father had married someone who was not approved and Vice Versa.

The film had Maggie Smith as the grand mother and also Hugh Bonneville of Downton Abbey which is not surprising given that they are both cast into key roles in the series by the Director of the film Julian Fellows who created Downton Abbey. The boy encounters ghosts when exploring the house and finding his way blocked by a wall to the wing previously destroyed by fire. The grandmother is matter of fact about the ghosts and the boys is able to travel into past times thus earning the family history and its secrets.

There was a two hour Christmas special at Downton Abbey in which some issues are resolved while others are left open for the next series.

The main developments are that the truth about why Lady Mary is marrying Sir Richard Carlyle comes to the attention of her father who although disappointed tells her not to marry and that he and the family will support her, suggesting that she goes to stay with a relative in the USA and find someone to love and marry there. She also tells the truth the Matthew who under pressure from his mother and the Dowager comes to terms with his guilt about the death of his fiancée and is therefore able to start afresh with Mary, despite the threat from Carlisle that he will expose the family and its scandals.

The second nice development is that Daisy, the kitchen maid eventually goes to see her husband’s father at his farm. He explains that William was not an only child but that all his brothers and a sister had died so after childbirth as had his wife. Daisy is still wracked with the guilt of having married William on his death bed when she did not love him. She visits after cook plays around with a Weegee board used to communicate with the dead and pretends it is William telling her to visit his father. She accepts that she was regarded as special by William and the offer of the father to treat her as a daughter. More and more she has become more than a kitchen maid and is encouraged by a visitor to the household to leave and better herself. The father in law advises her to tell of her complaint to cook and ask to be promoted to an assistant. The cooks is agreeable to this subject to the funds being available.`

The third nice development is that the youngest daughter who married the Irish revolutionary chauffer Branson has become pregnant and the Earl agrees to invite the couple to stay at the Abbey.

However there is no such good news for Sir Robert’s former valet who was taken off to prison accused of the murder of his wife. He is convicted and sentenced to death. Sir Robert uses his connection to have the sentences commuted to life and then promises to continue work to establish a miscarriage of justice. Mrs Bates has planned to leave the Abbey and go to London because of the publicity anticipate as part of the threat from Carlyle. With the reprieve she withdraws her resignation.

The manipulating Thomas is thwarted in his effort to become his Lordship’s Valet to replace Bates and under the continuing influence of O’Brien kidnaps Sir Robert’s dog and locks him a woodland shed aiming to find the animal and get into the good books. The plan misfires and he is unable to get to the animal when the search is called off because of other developments. When he goes out in the morning he finds the shed opened and animal not there. He falls and in a dishevelled state returns to find his Lordship out walking with the animal which was found by a couple of villagers who had claimed the reward. However his Lordship is impressed that Thomas had gone out looking and had had come to some grief in the effort thus signalling that he may well get his wish to function as the valet until the future of Bates is settled.

The events are set at Christmas with the traditional shoot on Boxing Day. This is an event still taking place in country house to this day. The Duke of Edinburgh had organised and planned to lead the Boxing Day family shoot at Sandringham until his was hospitalised for an operation to relieve a blocked artery.

Wednesday 28 December 2011

The Boardwalk Empire season two ends

The Boardwalk Empire is a creation which followed Romanzo Criminale in attempting to marry entertaining fictions with historical events including historical characters such as Al Capone and Lucky Luciano. The second series came to an end with some powerful reminders of the evil committed by many of those in glamorised accounts of the lives of the gangster who profited out of the Prohibition of alcohol years in the United States.

In previous coverage of the second season I explained that the main character Nucky Thompson had resigned from his office as City Treasurer and was being indicted for election irregularities as well as under investigation for various crimes identified by the Prohibition agent Van Alden. His main route for bringing alcohol into his area was being blocked by coastguard and customs and Al Capone had arranged for a hit man to kill him but Nucky has escaped with a damaged hand. He had given his mistress Margaret the impression that he was seriously consideration her suggestion that he should give up all his criminal enterprises and settle down with her and her two children who he asks that they refer to him as their father. However although Margaret is pleased with the development, it far from the truth.

He had attempted to blackmail Van Alden who had a child by Nucky’s former mistress but Van Alden had cut a deal with the Fed attorney who had been sent to proceed with the prosecution despite Nucky’s effort to get political contacts in Washington to ensure that the case was dropped on technicalities.

Nucky decides to go to Ireland with Owen Sleater to meet IRA leaders allegedly bringing with him the body of his father to bury in his original homeland. He has all the appropriate paperwork to bring the coffin into the country without it being opened. This in fact contains repeating rifles and some ammunition which Nucky demonstrates to a group of IRA leaders. He says he can provide 3000 of the weapon in exchange for Irish Whisky. The plan misfires when the results of secret negotiations with the English are announced and prospect of a settlement which will end the killing. Nucky is however able to negotiate a deal with one of the group who own a distillery and had a substantial stock which he is unable to sell because of the conflict with the English. Nucky does a deal which leads to the import of the whisky as peaches with episode 10 titled Georgia Peaches.

While he was away Nucky had arranged for Chalky White to encourage his people to create unrest and go on strike. The focus is on the main hotel in town at the height of the tourist season - The Ritz Carlton. Here the all black kitchen crew work long hours for low pay and are required to eat basic food during short meal breaks. They go on strike during which time Nucky does a deal to sell a large quantity of the imported whisky and then to get the men back to work.

The Commodore and others begin to question Jimmy’s handling of the situation. Jimmy wants to settle the dispute so they can go back to making profits however the Commodore and others what a tough stand and arrange for Nucky’s brother Eli to organise some stick waving strike breakers to confront the pickets outside the hotel. In the melee the former Sheriff while Eli recovered from a bullet wound and back now as deputy is severely beaten up. This proves to be a message from Eli to keep his trap shut after he is interviewed by the Feds.

This then proves counter productive because the deputy is willing to give testimony that it was Eli who carried out the murder of the former husband of Margaret, Nucky’s present mistress. In the penultimate episode the Feds exert pressure on Eli to testify that he undertook the murder on instructions from Nucky, this they say will save him from the electric chair.

Because of the failure to use political influence Nucky has changed lawyers but despite his best efforts he warns Nucky it would be wise to put his financial affairs in order. Then they have a stroke of luck. Nucky has employed a black man during the period of the strike for which he is appreciative. He appears to be hanging around while Nucky and his new lawyer discuss his situation. Nucky is short tempered with the man but the lawyer presses the man to have his say. The man mentions that he attended the local Baptist church and was present at baptism ceremony at which van Alden had drowned his assistant!

Despite admitting his affair and fathering a child which appears to have brought into the good books of the Fed prosecutors van Alden has continued to supplement his official earnings with the cash taken from prohibition raids. He is approached with a proposition to raid a meeting at which Al Capone, Lucky Luciano and other local gangsters are putting up money for an illegal enterprise. It is suggested that a Prohibition raid at the appropriate time would net each of them $150000 and they shake on the deal. However events move quickly after the revelation that van Alden had intentionally killed his assistant to shut him up and when he is about to be arrested at the office and his gun is being taken the Prosecutor’s assistant is wounded and van Alden makes what appears to be a successful run for his life. Another witness against Nucky appears to have been neutralised.

Before Nucky had set off with Sleater to Belfast, the man had a sexual experience with Margaret but on return he keeps his distance. After her rejection by her brother in New York and his refusal to allow her to have contact with her sisters and help them she turns more to the local pastor who has already intervened over the behaviour of her son. While Nucky is in Dublin her daughter contracts polio with the implication that she might be unable to walk again. The girl is discharged from hospital wearing leg braces. The local clergyman is in attendance and he continues to put pressure on Margaret to renounce her dependency on the illegally obtained wealth of Nucky and his general patronage. She is consumed with guilt about everything including the disappearance/murder of her former husband. When she is issued with a subpoena Nucky makes it plain that he will not tolerate her giving any testimony.

However it is Jimmy Darmody and his wife Angela where the main focus of the final season episodes lies. As previously mentioned Angela has discovered that her husband was plotting to kill Nucky Thompson and she has taken up with a new arrival in the community, an authoress with bohemian friends. It was also Angela who had shown kindness to the facial damaged former comrade of Jimmy who had become his assassin.

Jimmy had commenced to deal with a gangster leader in Philadelphia who runs a butcher's which provides opportunity to dispose of the carcase of victims in his pies! Jimmy has an unpaid debt to the man which he ignores in his new status as the King of Atlantic City replacing his former Guardian. When the gangster crosses another of Jimmy’s associates he indicates it will be no loss if the man is assassinated. Unfortunately for the second time in a recent episode the assassination is botched and it is the assassin who is killed and when the gangster finds a match box from Atlantic City in the man’s clothing he makes the assumption it is Jimmy who has attempted to kill him.

He makes his way to Atlantic City and in the absence of Jimmy kills Angela his wife and her lesbian lover. In Under God's Power She Flourishes, the penultimate episode of the series, there are several flashbacks to Jimmy’s relationship with Angela during his time at university when he was yet to learn that the Commodore was his father and that his mother had been procured by Nucky when she was only fourteen years of age. We also learn of the circumstances which led Jimmy to joining up and serving in France during World War I and which led to his son being born during the long absence. The couple have only married recently.

Jimmy’s mother has a solution to the situation in which the child is told that his mother has had to visit relatives in Paris and that he will soon forget the women and regard his grandmother as his mother. There is the suggestion of incest between Jimmy and his mother. Jimmy is horrified at the idea that he and the boy should quickly forget Angela and this sends him into a rage he which he attempts to strangle his mother. His father intervenes and the two men struggle and Jimmy stabs his father wounding him badly but not fatally. It is then his mother tells him to finish the job so he stabs his father again, this time he dies.

Jimmy arranges for the death to be declared accidental and then discovers that under the Will the bulk of the estate falls to the former servant who attempted to kill the old man previously. Jimmy destroys the Will on the understanding that he will inherit and then his son. There is an import clue in this respect.

The final episode of the season begins with Jimmy and his minder raiding a meeting of the Klan and demanding to know the names of the three men that gunned down the workers of Chalky White, the event which opened the season. Jimmy then gives Chalky five thousand dollars for the families of the four victims about 60% that had been asked for and then the three men who we witness being beaten before being tortured to death in revenge.

Jimmy also announces to the remaining conspirators that he proposes to make peace with Nucky by insisting they withdraw their statements against him. His brother Eli is to take the wrap for the vote fixing. With the disappearance of Van Alden and the suicide of another key player the case against Nucky falls apart. He tells Margaret they should marry to prevent also testifying. When Margaret sees the way he is helping her daughter to walk she agrees to the marriage going to confession beforehand.

Everything seems to be going well for Nucky. The case against for the main charges which included murder and ballot fixing falls apart at the initial hearing and Nucky is released. The former deputy is left to carry the can for the murder. The present Sheriff, his brother Eli. is persuaded by Nucky to accept the charges laid against him for ballot rigging which will result in a sentence of two years of which the maximum he will serve is one, possibly less. Nucky promises to look after the wife and the many children.

It is then Jimmy who invites Nucky, accompanied by the Irishman as bodyguard to a talk. Jimmy explains that he was opposed to organising the hit on Nucky which is the truth and that it was Eli and the others who pressed that it should go ahead with what proved a botched operation. Nucky says he will look out for the man responsible for the death of Jimmy’s wife but separately we know that the man who was responsible is doing business with one of Nucky’s crime associates and that this raises a dilemma about what should be done with the toss of a coin being suggested.

Nucky and Margaret have married and she has invited him back into her bed again. He mentions that the government has agreed the money for the new fast road between Atlantic City and New York. He asks his wife to sign over to him the land along the chosen route which he had bought cheaply.

We see Jimmy having a day on the beach with his son and the boy’s grandmother in attendance. We also see him with his friend from the trenches urging him to recover from his experiences. He then insists that the friend remains behind while he goes to meet the killer of his wife who Nucky has telephoned to say has been located. Jimmy says this is something he must do. When he arrives at the agreed meeting place there is Eli on shotgun duty, Nucky and man supposed to be the prisoner. Jimmy is expecting the situation and unarmed. He says that he died in the trenches in World War I. He warns Nucky that after a while the drink, the drugs and whatever does not help and you are left with the guilt and no one to help you cope with it. Nucky appear hesitant about killing his former ward and who he treated as his won son. However he appears to shoot and finish him off. So we lose someone who has been a pivotal character in the series, second only to Nucky himself and perhaps Margaret.

Meanwhile we learn that agent van Alden with his child and the nanny have moved to a new city as man and wife when they are given lodgings. We also see Margaret transfer some, if not all, the land from herself to the church and not her husband. We do not know if she is doing this on her own initiative as her price for the saving of her husband or with his blessing. There is to be another season of this award winning series. We also learn the second seasons of the Game of thrones based on the second book is to being in April.

The Perfect Spy

The attention given to the Leveson Inquiry led to postponing my further watching and writing about the books, films and TV series of the works of John Le Carré but the Leveson Christmas and New Year break provided the opportunity to engage in some viewing and the 7 hour long episodes of A Perfect Spy which includes a good portrait of his real life father. The great questions are first how close are we allowed to get to the personality of Le Carré the spy? Are we also shown aspects of the personality of David John Moore Cornwall? Thirdly how much of myself do I see in this looking glass?

Spies for whichever country have characteristics in common. At the simplest of levels they are required to lead two lives and they are required to keep secrets from those closest to them. They must also be able to lie convincingly. For those who go undercover whether in the homeland monitoring organisations and individuals or overseas setting up networks and risking the lives of their agents as well as themselves there is need to be able to function in situations of extreme risk and danger.

Spies like soldiers should be able kill their enemies and accept that however much they take care there will collateral damage. A fourth grand question is: Can anyone with the Will and a level of physical and mental ability be trained to be a spy as most people can be trained to become soldiers or factory workers, or do some individuals have the personalities more suitable than others? I suspect the answer is both but that some individuals are more comfortable and find the role easier and will prove the most effective but also the most likely to become double agents. Others will need to believe that God is on their side and will not be able to function if their particular faith is lost.

Midway during the BBC adaptation Magnus Pym, the Perfect Spy faces a government selection panel for MI6 having undertaken bread and butter intelligence work during his university and national service experience for the MI5 and the military. He is asked about his father and argues that he has little contact from choice and then when asked about a Pym who is a successful conman he pretends this is his uncle, an approach he maintains even when a panel member points out that some criminality in ones background is an asset not a handicap.

Because of language ability he is to be sent to Czechoslovakia where he is asked about his willingness to undermine the regime even if his actions result in collateral damage which he justifies in shortening the life of the regime. But it is not his employers who give him the distinction of being the Perfect Spy. This we are to find out later.

I will also add, by way of introduction that knowing something of the story, although I have no recollection of seeing the series, perhaps because it did not feature George Smiley or Alec Guiness, I some apprehension. It was Christmas a time for celebration and being with family. It was not a time for a close examination of one’s failures and failings even if it should be! I have been impressed watching an episode a day over four days when returning to my Travel Lodge room and then cramming three episodes on my return home last night after a challenging drive home with several million others.

As a boy, Magnus Pym grows up in the 1930’s, a few years before me, enjoying being part of the wealthy fast cars and fast women lifestyle of his life and soul of the party confidence trickster father, played by Ray McNally, and an abused mother who tolerated that her husband also enjoyed the company of two young women of easy virtue which it later emerges he ran for profit, with associates who include Tim Healey and who in real life included the Kay twins. Early on Father and Healey are carted off to prison although the police fail to get hold of the filing cabinet in which all the records of his dodgy deals are kept. This cabinet becomes a gateway to freedom, of a kind.

The family lose everything including their home, and mother and son are required to turn to the father’s brother who is a blood and thunder preacher at the local Baptist type chapel. The brother is not just a bully who severely beats Magnus but there is the suggestion that he sexually abused his sister in the past and it is this which is used to blackmail him into given the two a home. The man’s wife is a secret drinker in the teetotal household. Their lives are a front and in fact one of the glaring issues of the series is that everyone leads at least two lives and has secrets with varying degrees of success at keeping them.

When, after his mother is sent off to a psychiatric hospital and at a Sunday school or children’s service someone has a fit, Magnus decides to use the same ploy to get himself out of the household, but the appointed nanny sees through the stunt, so he seeks revenge by peeing over the carpet in his uncle’s study, and when about be caught has another pretend passing it fit which the doctor suggests could be appendicitis and take him of to hospital where he is reunited with his father, Rick and Healey who have been released from prison during the first year or so of World War II. Phew. The context is that this was still the era when children had to been seen and not heard and males saw it their duty to beat their children as they themselves had been beaten to bring about acquiescence and self control.

In real life it is understood that Cornwell was sent to a preparatory boarding school which was bullying and abusive. In the film his father is soon back to his wealthy lifestyle this time exploiting the black market, commenting at one point that Magnus is perhaps one of 20 boys in the land who enjoyed a steak dinner that evening. After the war and shortages became less advantageous for commercial exploitation, his father becomes involved in a scheme defrauding the government by obtaining grants for renewing bomb damaged properties and then a scheme getting wealthy and lonely people to give up their capital for a superior income 10-12% is mentioned together with a return of capital to the estate. Nothing like the promised interest is paid and the capital disappears.

In real life I believe his father went to the USA at one point while Le Carré was sent to Sherborne Public school so he would become an English gentleman and a lawyer to become chief justice. In the series Magnus is bullied at the school because of his tendency to fabricate tales about his father’s exploits in the war. He carves the initials of one bully in the chapel, a flogging offence and this is an act which is to haunt him later. I am not sure the extent to which most parents forget the their acute awareness as children because of the need to move on from their own sinful behaviour and acts of wickedness or if there are those of us, like Magnus who remain haunted be all their experiences, traumas and short comings from the ideal of behaviour that has been implanted in them.

It is however fact that before going up to Oxford Le Carré spent at least a year 1948 1949 in Berne at the University where he made friends with a British Diplomat and his wife through the local English Church. According to a documentary about the life of Cornwall he commenced to undertake courier jobs for British Embassy and to provide intelligence on local extremists at the University.

In real life he also spied on left wingers and trade unionists when at Oxford and was then recruited to home intelligence service by someone who had moved from Sherborne School to the Principal of an Oxford College and on whom the character of George Smiley is based. In this production of the written work I am yet to read it is the contact at the British Embassy in Berne who is to become his mentor and sponsor for his life as a spy. In real life Le Carré was then recruited by MI5 before MI6 which he had to leave after the success of his book “The Spy who came in from the Cold published in 1965 and by which time he had over 25 years of involvement at different levels. He is now in his early 80’s.

In the TV series Magnus goes to Berne with an alleged Baroness Weber who has convinced his father that she is the rightful owner of a treasure box of art and manuscripts worth a fortune. They stay at the best hotel and she runs up huge bills at local stores buying fashionable clothing and jewels. His father has given Magnus a sum of money which is only to be handed over to the contact once Magnus has inspected the contents of the box. The Baroness persuades Magnus to hand over the funds after seducing him and then disappears. Magnus has to do a midnight flit and then undertake a series of manual work jobs as well as relying on charity to survive as his father has also disappeared again.

He then gains a scholarship at the University which brings him into contact with the British Embassy contact and spying on locals but there is no reference to the role as a courier.

He befriends a refugee in the same lodging house who claims to be a poet and they spend hours together discussing life. The man, Axel, is deported after Magnus reports to the British about his life. The suggestion is that he is either a Russian communist agent or a left wing extremist. It is an event which is to govern the rest of the story although it is not signalled at the time. In fact the reality is that he was then a struggling poet, seeking truth and grateful for the friendship of Magnus who he calls Sir Magnus and a refugee without paper but a limp.

In the third and fourth episodes Magnus, now played by Peter Egan for the rest of the series, has returned to England and is up at Oxford, a period when in reality he continued to provide intelligence on extremist clubs, societies and individuals at the university. The series does not cover this period in his life.

The reason for his appearance in the series is the selection of his father as a Liberal Democrat Candidate in the General Election. His father is still surrounded by his former cronies and one suspects that his choice of party was dictated only by his ability to con his way into the confidence of local hierarchy at a time when politics was very local and dependent on the war record or trade union support for the two main parties, before the era of TV campaigning and where local meetings would be well attended and covered by the local newsprint media. Rick is still up to his tricks finding ways to be able to book the Town Hall eve of Poll public meeting which traditionally would go to the sitting candidate or political Party which had won the previous Election.

Before the meeting Magnus discovers as young woman attempting to break into the filing cabinet which years before Magnus has held the key to prevent the police gaining access to the records of his father’s criminal deals. By this time Magnus has learned the art of surveillance and getting into locked places to view records and he does so in order to find the papers about the women’s father. The story goes back to the days of the insurance/income providing scam in which the subject handed over their capital for an income and protection when in old age as well as securing the capital as inheritance for the family. In this instance not only did her father see little of the promised income but on his death bed he had been persuaded to sign over the estate, which included a farm, so that the family was left penniless.

The young woman was spending the rest of her days attempting to bring Rick to justice.

Magnus who has already been placed in the position of endorsing his father’s campaign and which he does with a two edged choice of words, provides the young woman which ammunition to cause his father a major problem at his final public meeting by revealing that Rick has been to prison. Rick however is seasoned at being able to turn most verbal attacks or criticisms to his advantage. He pretends that as a young man he had used postage stamps from the petty cash box as a junior clerk which he had intended to return, an offence which even in the days before the World War II was unlikely to have led immediately to prison as a first conviction. He then uses a parable of the son given a second chance in order to win the crowd on the night over to his side, although he later admits that the headlines in the local paper was the reason why he did not succeed with the electorate in general.

Magnus had become engaged to a young woman of good standing and family background and has provided a cover story about his father being abroad. Somehow Magnus has got to learn of the wedding which he gatecrashes with his cronies, provides crates of Champagne and an expensive limousine as a wedding gift although while he showing the bride his generosity police vehicles are seen arriving in the background. There is then the scene as Magnus attempts to explain why the vehicle was immediately taken away.

While serving in army intelligence during national service Magnus is contacted by his former friend in Berne Axel who despite knowing that it was Magnus who turned him in says that out of friendship he can provide him with great intelligence which will further his career having become a spy for the Communists in Prague. He therefore knows all about the role of Magnus. He reintroduces Magnus to the former secretary of the extremist club at the University in Berne and with whom Magnus has what is suggested as his first sexual affair. She is called Sabina. He had attempted to use her to gain information about the club members although she had resisted his efforts to gain access to the membership list so he had been forced to break into the filing cabinet where the information was held and this had led to identifying Axel as an extremist as well as stateless refugee. She is to be his link and means of gaining the information which is to put him in the good books of his employers and further his career.

We know that in reality that Le Carré worked for MI5 before moving to MI6 and overseas postings but in this series he has moved from the army to MI6 and the relationship with his wife become quickly strained because of absences and the secrecy He is posted to Europe first to Prague and then to Berlin. There is a tense situation before a potential defector is met and who turns out to be none other than Axel with a record of their dealings to date including that Magnus complied with a request to provide low level intelligence for the high level stuff which Axel provided. Now he is to be blackmailed in a one way situation when he is provide the highest level of information in relation while he will appear to have established an excellent network of fictitious and false agents who will appear to provide quality information which will be either false or of little long term value. The only consolation is that his contact will be again Sabine.

When in Berlin he is contacted by the police in the middle of the night and fearing his role has been discovered he attempts to hastily destroy film and other giveaways of his trade. He then discovers it is his father in jail for yet another scam and a police chief who knows and respects Magnus and fixes for his father to be released.

His wife cannot cope with his absences and secrecy and faced with his departure to Berlin, seeks and gains a divorce. Magnus is one of those men who need a wife and family to provide a background cover of stability and commonplace when in reality he craves, like his father for the excitement of trying to beat the odds. In fact it is evident that Magnus has turned into his father. Gregarious, able to make friends quickly wherever he goes, and enjoying the illicit, Magnus like his father enjoys sex whenever the opportunity arises. The immediate employer is always Jack from the Berne Embassy and he takes a fancy to Jack’s woman friend Mary, who Magnus then marries and has a son, Thomas.

We then catch up with Magnus his wife and child in Washington but according to a suspicious associate and new CIA family friend” Grant Laderer he is always on the move all over the USDA talking to officials and getting secret information which he hopes is only being passed on to the UK. On a family picnic the issue of the Criminality of Artists versus the Artistry of Criminality is raised. And the extent to which one has to be a barking psychopath to enjoy their work, which they do.

It is 20 years since his recruitment by Axel who is also in the USA and an Embassy official and believes it is time for them to retire and he later offers Magnus a Dacha in the Black Sea with a chestful of medals. Magnus explains that for him he has become the game. A committee of USA officials led by one Harry Wexler think they know the particular game he is playing having noticed some curiosities in the computer analysis of Magnus and his Czechoslovakian networks.

Celebrating Christmas with his family, Magnus is called out to a bar where he meets his yet again destitute father and Magnus provides him with a steak meal but refuses to invite him home for the festivities making available fresh funds as he has in relation to various American cities where enterprises failed. The Americans insist on coming to London to put their suspicions to senior British intelligence officers but Jack dismisses it all as a Czechoslovakian attempt to frame Magnus. Recalled to London and haunted by his past, Magnus, under a false name, takes secret lodgings with a Miss Dubber (Peggy Ashcroft) at his childhood now desolate seaside holiday centre one of a row of near empty guess houses. He has survived the interrogation about his contacts, including the curiosities thrown up by the computer analysis but the Americans remain suspicious.

More years pass by and the family take a secluded villa holiday on the Island of Corfu. His teenage son Thomas is curious when an eastern European speaks with Magnus at an English cricket match in the capital city. The boy also notices that two youths appear to be watching and later he sees them outside the villa. The stranger is Axel who is again suggesting they retire. When Thomas hears his father telling his mother the man was an English Joe she wants to know why the deception. Several times she says he can tell her anything but she just needs to know. Magnus would like to but keeps his distance, including his escape visits to the Devon private guest house.

Magnus decides to extend the holiday so he can write a novel, with his son returning to school. At the airport the boy again notices the youths but Magnus again dismisses concerns. When he is out his wife starts to read the novel. He is then recalled by Jack to Vienna where he learns of his father’s death. There are those who experience an exhilarating sense of freedom when a parent dies which other become wounded. Over three decades have passed and the original two girls his father ran, now old women, explain they do not have the funds to arrange a funeral and cover his debts, Magnus provides a good cheque.

He then goes in search of Sid and the filing cabinet which Sid is reluctant part but Magnus says he will arrange for collection and later this is transported to his flatlet in Devon. The death of his father means that he wants to settle his account and next he tracks down the former pupil at prep school whose initials in carved in revenge and which led to a flogging. Magnus is having a category one break down and disappears to his Devon hideaway.

When Magnus fails to return to his wife in Vienna she calls Jack who visits Mary in Vienna and begins to interrogate her. Jack learns that Mary was asked to keep a joint Diary in which there are several meetings with someone called Poppy. He also discovers a document camera hidden in the chimney breast with film made in a communist state. Magnus has also shown interests in Jack’s wife in the past. She had been about to admit something when her husband had been called away because of the death of Rick. Now she reveals that early on she had removed a couple of sheets of information from the security file and which concerned the role of Sabine and her connection with Axel. Jack’s worst fears, given the way he defended Magnus against the Americans come to haunt him. He accuses Mary of knowing something was wrong for years. Jack arranges for Mary to watched day and night for some indication of the whereabouts of Magnus but it is Axel who contacts her at mass and says he knows how to get in contact by sending a coded message on the Czech radio similar to that which the UK to contact agents throughout Europe during the Second World War.

Members of Magnus network go silent. Jack realises Prague is rolling up the fake network and the extent of Magnus’s betrayal is finally revealed. Magnus also senses his time is up and it is evident he is preparing to take his own life writing long letters for his son, his wife, Jack and Axel. He has become a close friend with his landlady and buys her a present before effectively saying goodbye.

Jack has taken Mary with him plus a local armed special squad as Magnus is known to have with him a service revolver. They hear one shot and Magnus is found with half his face blown off.

The key scenes occur earlier especially between Magnus and Axel. Magnus shows his appreciation for the way he and Jack ran him but he wishes his life had been different and that he had not been set on the road to so much betrayal. When sleeping with Jack’s wife, or may have been Mary she tells Magnus that he had never loved any woman which Magnus had to concede and we learn that he uses the same love making expressions as he had with Sabine four decades before and likely with his two wives other women. He says that the creation of his son is the only worthwhile thing he has done outside of being the Perfect Spy, an epithet awarded to him by Axel.

Wednesday 21 December 2011

Romanzo Criminale season one ends

Romanzo Criminale takes my award for the most interesting and realistic portrayal of gang culture in the 70’s and 80’s albeit it in Rome because of the mixture of fiction with historical reality. I still find it odd to describe events during my life as historical. It is not my serial of year which goes to the second season of Tremé.

I write this having lost the draft which was written in preparation for the season finale last night after I gone to bed but for once there is not usual frustration at having lost the work possibly by overprinting a second piece of writing. I did not know the outcome of the season unlike the second season of the Boardwalk Empire which is shown a week earlier in the United States before the broadcast on the splendid Sky Atlantic channel.

Previously I explained that two gangs of small time Roman criminals came together as a collective to kidnap a wealthy businessman and then used the ransom to commence a drug distribution network across the greater part of the city. Originally they were supplied by an established criminal group who also demanded a percentage of the profits but later they eliminated the leader and cut a deal with the Mafia for supply and who were willing to leave distribution to the new arrivals. The gang gradually took over all Rome through a process of intimidation except for one sector which remained under the control of someone who had raped the girl friend of one of the leaders. Eventually the culprit was isolated and murdered.

The former Leader of one of the groups Liban or Libanese had lived with his mother who throws him out because she feared he would be killed one day because of his criminal activity. He lives in an isolated a caravan until the money begins to roll in and he first buys an expensive apartment and eventually a city villa. Returning to the caravan he finds contact from the girl who was raped and has a romantic interlude but quickly learn that she had been put up to this by her boyfriend who steals his flash car and cleans out his safe before attempting to disappear. They are found and killed as the body count mounts. One episode closes with Liban sitting on the beach where he had the relationship past and present with the girl, on his own wrapped up the fur coat bought for his mother but rejected by her.

Libanese is never satisfied with the position of the gang and branches out to a casino where the gang members lose mini fortunes to the house. They also invest in stock market speculations and other legal enterprises to build up funds for their rainy days.

The gang is pursued by a young senior police detective with an old and wiser associate who work to a judge/magistrate. He has a sister who has become a revolutionary socialist at the time when the official communist party had gained considerable influence in Italy to an extent that a former Primer Minister Alberto Morro planned a deal which would bring them into power.

This was anathema to the right wing who still mourned the departure of the regime of Mussolini. Just before the end of the twentieth century I made a visit to Italy staying outside of Rome but making two visits to the capital city for the first time in some thirty five years. I was part of an organise tour where the guide, born I suspected in the 1970’s was a devotee of the Duce pointing to the successes under his regime and showing contempt for Italian politicians and their post war history of frequent changes.

Alberto Morrow was kidnapped and executed by a left wing brigade although there was evidence at the time that government supporters, especially in the Italian Secret service, were unenthusiastic about finding him alive because of his political intentions. The government had contacted the criminal underworld for information but then changed its mind but the link was made.

As the first of the two seasons of this Italian made and language series approached its climax there is the second historically accurate development included, the terrorist bombing of the train station at Bologna on 2nd August 1980 which killed 85 people and wounded 200 others. A right wing terrorist organisation Nuclei Armati Rivolutionari was implicated with some 50 member’s arrested and eventually several leaders were imprisoned after long process of investigations and trials which went until 2004 when a man who had been 17 years at the time received a 30 year sentence for his role and upheld as recent as April 2007. He had been charged with the assassination of Judge Mario Amato in June 1980. However the two leaders persisted their innocence after trials and retrials with stretched from 1988 through to 1995.

It is also alleged the organisation received direct help with weapons, explosives, hideaways and passports from the real Romanzo Criminale. A cash of NUR weapons was found in the basement of the Ministry of Health and in the series the gang hired the vacant basement of a government department to use as a store at one point and to conduct official business.

In series the man who planted the bomb is killed with a gun which is traced back to a gun used in the original kidnapping which enable the gang to enter into drug distribution. His body happens to found in the district where the senior Detective who had been investigating the Roman crime gang had been posted. Previously it emerged that the Italian Secret Service had been keeping watch on the Detective in part because of the activities of his sister. Senior officers of the services with right wing political links had established contact with the gang via the Mafia at the time of the search for Alberto Morro. The same individuals appear to have been involved when crucial evidence, a tape recording which linked the gang to the original kidnapping disappeared and resulted in their release from prison when they had been held for a bank robbery which they did not committed and which had led to the deaths. Because of his ongoing inquiries the detective had been blackmailed into resigning and moving to another job outside of Rome. His assistant had been moved into archives and the judge/magistrate who had overseen their investigation had received a warning about his future after he had been given the papers which the Detective and his assistant been working on.

The detective now discovered that the murdered young man on his patch had a train ticket which indicated he had arrived or left the Bologna train station before the explosion. Then a check on the bullet in the victim revealed that it appeared to have been used by the same gun involved in the original kidnapping which appeared to tie in the gang to the latest murder and the bombing. The magistrate/senior officer to whom the Detective was working then advises that the papers are being handed to the investigation team from Rome and then the Detective sees one of the Secret Service men who ordered his departure handed the papers from his latest discoveries.

It now time to remind of a number of other characters in this impressive series and how they have become linked into the fictional and historically linked story. The first is Dandi a young man with a passion for the latest clothes and stylish lifestyle and for the prostitute Patrizia, a woman also of culture and good taste as well as determined commercial brain. Dandi comes to the attention of the police detective because he uses some of the marked ransom money to purchase the favours of Patrizia and the Detective attempts to persuade Patrizia to cooperate with information in turn to protection from prosecution for her occupation and use of the ransom money. He also becomes obsessed with the woman finding it difficult to resist her attempt to corrupt with use of her body. As a skilled actress it has not been clear if she fancies him as much he fancies her. In fact we left the series as the Detective went with another prostitute, a part time woman who worked at a bar frequented by the Assistant to the Detective who first suggested that maintaining contact with a prostitute or two was a good way of building up an information network.

Because of Dandi’s reckless preoccupation with Patrizia Liban and the other former head of the second group who formed the initial alliance, know as the Cold, or Ice decided to finance the establishment of a high class brothel which Patrizia would run and enjoy an income greater than her previous earnings and thus be available exclusively available for Dandi.

Then through their watch on the Detective and their general interest in the gang the two State Security men blackmail Patrizia gay male friend (who was found with an underage age youth) to locate and gain entry to the brothel where they demand a room in order to listen and record conversations with clients. Liban and Dandi with another lay wait for the security men and warm them to keep away. Almost immediately the three gangsters involved are returned to prison and kept apart so they and those on the outside do not know why. It is then revealed that they have been arrested by the Security men who demand that the gang now effectively works for the Secret Service. Previously the hand had come across a policeman who enjoyed gambling and using prostitutes. They do not kill him on the understanding he is their inside man. He comes up with the idea of stealing a stash of drugs from the police. This appeals to Liban and they carry out the raid without knowing they have been set up by the Secret Service men
They explain that they are a collective and they cannot agree to the position without consulting, especially The Cold. They are released on a temporary basis and on the understanding that if they fail to persuade their colleagues to cooperate they will be brought back

Before this Dandi had beaten up the gay friend of Patrizia for leading the Security men to her. While the trio are incarcerated rumour sweeps through Rome that the skids are under the gang.

A feature of all the members of the group is that with wealth and power they have reached the point of being unable to survive without drugs, drink, women and gambling all to excess undermining their ability to function and keep their expenditure below their income. One of the group loses 30000 lire to Dandi who insists on payment. While Dandi is in prison the colleague who is in a drug and drunken stupor most of the time visits the brothel and makes a play for Patrizia. She passes him on two sisters who believing he has passed out and incapable make negative comments which he hears and badly beats up one of the girls and is only stopped from doing likewise to the other by Patrizia with a gun ordering him out.

He then takes on all comers at a local bar he and colleagues frequent and sent away with his tail between his legs told that the whole lot are finished and that the whole of Rome is looking forward to their downfall. On their release although he has offended Dandi it is recognised that they cannot have their authority challenged in this way and the man with Dandi and Liban execute the offender burying where several other bodies have been hidden beforehand. Patrizia insists that Dandi apologises to the gay friend. Dandi visits and insists that if the young man does not want to be beaten up again he must a report to him all that happens at the brothel and what Patrizia says and does.

The story of the Cold has previously been covered and how he detests his father from catching him cheating on his mother when a young man and starting out at a delinquent for a raid on the store/bar of his father’s mistress. He has used a lot of ill got gains to support his brother’s education but then falls for his brother’s girlfriend and her for him. This alienates the brother. In these final episodes of the season his father approaches to say the brother has gone missing and his mother cannot sleep with worry. The Cold arranges for a trusted new friend to find the brother who is located living with some hippies. The brother is persuaded to return home but also the Cold recognises that it is time for the brother to leave home.

The girl friend rejected The Cold because he did not tell her he was a gangster, but not because he was a gangster. This had badly affected The Cold who appears the most intelligent of the trio and at one level the most sensitive and conscience stricken. His new friend is a young loner bank robber who committed crime which led to Liban, Dandi and others being arrested at one point. The young man cooperated to ensure that the gang members were released without identifying himself. He has a passion for fast motorbike rides as the Cold but whereas The Cold will only kill for good reason this young man does it for the thrill. It is at this point and before I attempt to knit the various strands and interests into the grand finale that I return to historical reality. Just before the Bologna bombing a leading Magistrate Mario Amato was assassinated by Luigi Ciavadini then a young member of the NAR. The magistrates had been investigating the activities of the far right.

In the series I think it is the Mafia drug suppliers who ask for a magistrate to be murdered and it is The Cold’s new companion who carries it out. When the Detective discovers that his work on the Bologna bombings has been handed to the Secret service agents he returns to Rome to give the information to the magistrate Judge who had supervised his work and despite the threats to both of them the decision is taken to reunite the Detective with his assistant and to continue their inquiries but this time with the involvement of the Secret services in the Bombing and the protection of Romanzo Criminale very much in mind.

The detective learns that The Cold has decided to cash in his savings and flee the country with his girl friend for a new life. They book the first long haul flight available in a couple of days a one way ticket to Rio. The Cold says farewell by to his friends but he is picked up on a minor possession charge by the Police Detective and held in prison with the offer of release if he explains about the tie up between the gang and the Secret Service.

Liban has become increasingly paranoid and drug crazed himself. He understandably flips his lid when one of his closest associates attempts to kill him because the colleague believes that Liban has ordered the death of his younger brother who was trading in a small quantity of drugs. Liban orders everyone check out for the missing drugs and inspects everyone’s books. There is a complicated trail which I did not fully understand but it appears that another colleague had found the financial pressures from his extended family too great to fund from his drug earnings and had set up a loan sharking service as a profitable sideline. The younger brother had been involved as were two others who carried out the killing and who been caught celebrating the arrest of the trio when also in jail. Liban beats them up and ensures they now work for him, The Cold felt sorry for the colleague who had attacked Liban and releases him. Despite his paranoia, obsessions and bad trips Libanese appreciates the reasons why The Cold wants out and uses his Secret Service connections to get him out of jail and to arrange for a false passport when The Detective blocks his lawful passport to prevent him leaving the country.

As part of his delusions Liban is haunted by a killing and persuades the Secret Service to release to him the weapon involved in a previous killings which he believes will stop the daymares. It is when The Cold presses Liban to also cut and run with his earnings that his colleagues admits he is now tied to the Secret Service which only underlines the need for The Cold and his girl to get away.

There four other storylines indicating the potential disintegration of the gang. As is normal which such groups and a feature of the Sopranos, there is an interest in horse racing and fixing races. There is concern when their supported horse comes second and someone else makes 300000 lire. The source is tracked down! And persuaded to hand over half the winning and 60% from future winnings.

The Mafia suppliers become concerned when the arrests commences and then when there is a delay in making the payment for the next supply. This requires a liquidation of assets at a loss because the current kitty has been extended because of the extravagances of the collective.

Liban continues to be ambitious and becomes interested in a new apartment block which he is told he can purchase at a considerable premium. He is not pleased when the asking price is raised when his interest becomes known. He therefore arranges for some forty families living in squalid conditions to move in. This forces down the price to below what he was originally prepared to pay but he then uses force to evict the squatters. Having turned to him for help Godfather fashion, those involved are very angry.

The fourth strand is down to The Cold, at one level and takes us back to the tie in with the extreme right and Secret Services. Because of the pressure on the gang The Cold requests for some of the guns kept in security, including the Italian made easily concealed Beretta. When the weapons are retrieved those assigned to the task realise that the Beretta(s) have been replaced and because the Cold does not check the horde when they are returned he misses the exchange. It is one of these guns that killed the man who placed the Terrorist Bomb at Bologna station.

Liban becomes more and more crazed and talks in terms of placing everyone on wages thus alienating even more people. He attempts to visit his mother shouting out that he is now the King of Rome and wealthy and that she can now be proud of him. If she is home she does not answer his call. A motorcycle with two young people faces hidden with their helmets approaches and the passenger whose hair and build suggest a girl shoots Liban several times dead in the pouring rain outside the home of his mother. Quickly the news spreads and the rest of the gang assemble one by one to look on. This includes The Cold just before his planned departure and Dandi who has also suggested packing up and moving elsewhere with Patrizia for which she shows no enthusiasm.

The Secret Service men had reported to their boss their concerns about Liban but he had suggested they use him as far a possible. They had decided that with the departure of the Cold they should focus on Dandi.

I look forward to seeing how the story unfolds in its second season.

There is a further footnote on the historical reality. It is true that the Italian Secret Service was implicated without proof in the Bologna Bombing, in the assassination of the Magistrate and the extreme right. What is established that the NUR had close links with the Banda della Magliana which controlled he Roman criminal underworld in the 1970’s through to the 1990’s, Its is also established that the Cosa Nostra and the Camorra and they that were also involved with the Nato secret and illegal anti Communist organisation Operation Gladio which in turn was sponsored by the CIA. There was also involved with the notorious secret Catholic Masonic organisation the P2 Propoganda Due among whose members was Silvio Berlusconi and whose grand master, Licio Gelli was said to be involved in various criminal activities and unsolved matters. A search of his villa produced a document for the rebirth of Italy, a new Constitution and the suppression of Trade Unions. The organisation was involved the Pope’s bank Banco Ambrosiano where it’s Chairman Roberto Calvi fled to London and was then found hanging below Blackfriars Bridge, seen as a warning killing. There is therefore plenty of scope for the second season continuing at various levels.