Parky at the Pictures (DVD 10/11/2011) (From The Oxford Times)

Parky at the Pictures (DVD 10/11/2011)

7:40am Thursday 10th November 2011

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This week's trip down a very British memory lane begins with Maurice Elvey's You Lucky People (1955), which takes its title from the catchphrase made famous by its star, Tommy Trinder. With his quick wit, boundless optimism and toothy grin, Trinder had headlined a series of comic-realist flagwavers at Ealing during the Second World War, but he was about to make the transition from stage to television when this army romp was released to generally lukewarm reviews. Lacking the invention of Sailors Three (1940) and its sequel Fiddlers Three (1944) or the authentic immediacy of The Foreman Went to France (1942) and The Bells Go Down (1943), in which Trinder proved himself to be a more than capable dramatic actor, this has more in common with Frank Randle's parade ground farces. But it still has its amusing moments and is worth seeing for an early screen appearance by a young Rolf Harris.

In the decade since he was demobbed, Trinder has done well for himself selling army surplus goods. He remained a reservist, however, yet is still more than a little miffed to be called back to barracks for a fortnight's compulsory training, as time is money. Moreover, he renews acquaintance with his wartime nemesis, barking sergeant Rufus Cruickshank, and makes a new foe in RSM `Tibby' Brittain, who promises to keep his eye on Trinder in case he gets up to any mischief.

Naturally, he does. Yet, in between bouts of square-bashing, spud peeling and inspection backchat, Trinder finds time for the odd scheme, a couple of songs and a spot of romance with perky private Mary Parker. Harris is even allowed a trademark sketching spot, while Dora Bryan provides dependable support as a daffy sergeant. But this adaptation of Sidney Nelson and Maurice Harrison's radio play Fifteen Days rehashes too many cliché and caricatures, while the gags feel like more like army movie surplus than original quips. Moreover, the low budget means the action is largely confined to soundstage sets and the picture remains significant primarily for being one of the first two monochrome features to be filmed in the widescreen CameraScope process, along with Elvey's 1956 teaming of Fred Emney and Cardew Robinson in Fun at St Fanny's (1956).

Harking back to such Will Hay school comedies as Boys Will Be Boys (1935), Good Morning Boys (1937) and The Ghost of St Michael's (1941) and relying on jokes of a similar vintage, this lively mix of banter and ballad is rooted more in the Cardew the Cad comic strip that had appeared in Radio Fun in the late 1940s and the radio sketches that Robinson had performed on the BBC's Variety Bandbox than the markedly more subversive St Trinian's farces that Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat had just started producing for British Lion and London Films. Nevertheless, the concept of a grown man struggling to get his grades has remained a comic staple, inspiring the likes of the 1986 Rodney Dangerfield vehicle Back to School and the `Tales of a Third Grade Nothing' and `Let's Go to the Hop' episodes of Family Guy.

Having reached the grand old age of 25, Robinson is still stuck at the ramshackle institution run by shady headmaster Fred Emney, who keeps the gormless innocent bottom of the class in order to exploit the family fortune. However, Robinson is becoming increasingly unruly, especially since he developed a crush on French mistress Aud Johansen. But it's only when Scottish solicitor Kynaston Reeves begins to delve into Robinson's affairs that Emney is forced to do some quick thinking to keep the Cad at the school and keep himself out of the clutches of brawling bookmaker Freddie Mills.

Beside set-pieces like a game of roulette to determine who gets what for dinner and the occasional comic song, this is essentially a quip picture that revisits the kind of patter routines at which Will Hay and Graham Moffatt excelled. The curmudgeonly Emney is highly amusing as the principle-free principal, while droll support comes from Hay alumnus Claude Hulbert, Gerald Campion (who was then renowned as television's Billy Bunter), the word-mangling Stanley Unwin, the chic Vera Day, inveterate scene-stealer Peter Butterworth and the very young Ronnie Corbett, Melvyn Hayes and Anthony Valentine. But it's Robinson who is the real revelation and it's a shame he couldn't have found the funding for more movies in a similar vein, as Richard Hearne did with his Mr Pastry character.

Away from the cosy world depicted in these escapist comedies, a very different Britain was emerging and onetime Ealing director Basil Dearden and producer Michael Relph explored its pressing social issues in a series of problem pictures between 1947-61. Among the most enduringly important is Sapphire (1959), which was one of the first UK screen dramas to discuss race relations, although in following the lead of Elia Kazan's 1949 adaptation of Cid Ricketts Sumner's novel Pinky and focusing on a light-skinned black woman, the film was not as confrontational in its denunciation of prejudice as it might have been.

When Scotland Yard superintendent Nigel Patrick is called to Hampstead Heath to investigate the multiple stabbing of a young woman identifiable only by her monogrammed handkerchief, he confides to inspector Michael Craig that the lack of blood at the scene suggests she was killed elsewhere and dumped in the undergrowth in the hope no one would find her. On discovering that the victim was student Yvonne Buckingham, Patrick is equally sceptical about the Cambridge alibi of her boyfriend Paul Massie, a promising architect who has just won a scholarship to a prestigious European university.

But things takes a decisive twist when Patrick meets Buckingham's brother, as he is black Birmingham doctor Earl Cameron, who reveals that his sister had lighter skin as their father had been a white doctor, while their mother was a black dancer. Patrick also discovers that Buckingham was three months pregnant when she died and he takes Craig to task for being so revolted by the miscegenist aspect of the case, as it emerges that Buckingham was leading a dual life in attempting to pass for white in polite circles, while also seeking out uncouth company in seedy clubs in the Caribbean quarter.

While one line of inquiry considers Buckingham's relationship with affluent black man Gordon Heath and her steamier assignations at the downmarket Tulip Club with Harry Baird, another centres on Massie and his family, who knew about Buckingham's condition and had begrudgingly consented to a marriage. However, the attitude towards the visiting Cameron of mother Olga Lindo, father Bernard Miles and sister Yvonne Mitchell convinces Patrick that they know more than they are letting on.

Although it contained a scene of Baird being beaten by a gang of Teddy Boys and reference is made to the internecine feud between Baird and gangster Robert Adams, what is most striking about this often harrowing whodunit are the shifts from casual racism to outbursts of bileful bigotry that expose the depth of feeling that still existed a decade on against those who had followed the first passengers leaving the West Indies aboard the Empire Windrush. Dearden had previously assessed this situation in Pool of London (1951), but he was keen to show that intolerance was a blight that infected the bourgeoisie as well as the working classes. He also highlighted the fact that a prosperous black middle class was also emerging and implies a hope for the future in the politeness of the small boy Cameron encounters on his scooter.

However, Janet Green's screenplay still betrays a certain prudishness, as Buckingham is presented as promiscuous rather than emancipated, while jazz (even when arranged by Johnny Dankworth) is equated with moral bankruptcy. Indeed, some contemporary critics castigated Dearden and Relph for failing to condemn racism rather than simply admitting its existence. They would be more convincing in denouncing homophobia in Victim (1961), but they are more comfortable here handling the police procedural and the various white milieux than they are capturing the reality of London's black neighbourhoods.

At the same time that social realism sought to tackle taboo topics affecting the lower orders, the Establishment also came under fire from the new breed of political satirists and commercial film-makers no longer willing to tug their forelocks at their so-called superiors. As the director of the successful `Doctor' franchise and a regular collaborator with Rank icon Dirk Bogarde, Ralph Thomas was perhaps a surprising manner of the barricades. But in adapting Wilfred Fienburgh's novel No Love for Johnnie (1960), he laid bare the hypocrisies, partialities and foibles underpinning the British class system with a precision and frankness to match such angry young men as Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson.

Returned as the member for the die-hard socialist constituency of Earnley, Peter Finch has high hopes of making new Labour Prime Minister Geoffrey Keen's cabinet. However, he is overlooked because of wife Rosalie Crutchley's vehement Communist views and he takes his seat on the back benches smarting at the irony that she has left him, as she considers him a lightweight. Upstairs neighbour Billie Whitelaw is more than ready to provide a shoulder to cry on, but when she takes Finch to a party, he becomes obsessed with Mary Peach, a twentysomething model half his age who is seduced by his charm and status.

Just as Finch's love life takes a turn for the better, he is also approached by party schemer Donald Pleasence, who invites him to join a cabal intent on unsettling Keen and exposing his deficiencies as a leader. However, Finch is so besotted with Peach that he misses a crucial session at Westminster and he is not only browbeaten by his constituents, but also carpeted by both Pleasence and loyalist cheerleader Stanley Holloway. With his political career seeming in tatters, Finch is abandoned by Peach. But, as he considers Crutchley's suggestion they give their marriage another try, Finch is summoned by Keen, who makes him an offer he can't refuse.

As scripted by Nicholas Phipps and Mordecai Richler, this may lack the bite of later critiques of the games played in the Commons as House of Cards (1990), but it is very bold for its day and even anticipates such machinatory actions as Harold MacMillan' Night of the Long Knives (1962) and scandals like the Profumo Affair (1963). Finch won a BAFTA for his performance as the aspiring opportunist who adheres to principles only when they suit him and alliances only when they're convenient or potentially advantageous. He is superbly supported by Holloway, Pleasence and Keen, although Dennis Price, Mervyn Johns, Paul Rogers and Peter Barkworth all show well in smaller roles. The female characters are less well delineated, however, with the consequence that Peach is too naive, Whitelow too lovelorn and Crutchley too hectoring. But Thomas ably captures the atmosphere of both the Commons chamber and the corridors of power and it's amusing to note how little life inside the Westminster village appears to have changed in the intervening half century.

Finch also headlines Michael McCarthy's Operation Amsterdam (1959), a fact-based wartime thriller inspired by David E. Walker's book Adventure in Diamonds. Set in May 1940, during the first days the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands, the action centres on major Tony Britton and exiled gem experts Finch and Alexander Knox, who set sail on HMS Walpole to collect diamonds from Dutch dealers to prevent them falling into enemy hands. However, once in Holland, they have to rely on the suicidal Eva Bartok to get them past the Gestapo and local cops and put them in contact with Amsterdam's leading diamond merchants.

Finch persuades father Malcolm Keen to coax his colleagues into entrusting the party with their property. But the majority have placed their stones in a high-security safe with a timelock that cannot be opened for another 24 hours. So, with time very much of the essence, Finch, Britton and Knox have to break into the bank vault, even though they already suspect they have been betrayed by fifth columnists. However, even after they succeed in cracking the lock, they still have to reach the coast where a fishing boat awaits them.

Switiching a touch awkwardly in places between explosive combat action and twee scenes of Amsterdam clichés, McCarthy keeps this rather talky thriller moving at a satisfying clip. He pauses tellingly to note the fact that many of the merchants bringing their wares to Keen's house are Jewish, but mostly concentrates on the suspense of the heist and the peril of the journey north. Some sequences beggar belief, considering the quartet are supposed to be conducting a clandestine operation, but the odd open-top car ride and conspicuous delivery of precious cargo doesn't detract from the entertainment.

Finch and Britton are laudably purposeful, although the former's tentative romance with Bartok (who ultimately elects to stay behind and fight with the resistance) feels gratuitous. However, Reg Wyer's gritty photography and Philip Green's largely percussive score give the film a credibility and edge that is absent from McCarthy's often unhurried direction.

Indeed, the tempo is considerably livelier in Wolf Rilla's low-budget thriller Piccadilly Third Stop (1960), which makes tense use of the London Underground network for its tale of burglary, blackmail and betrayal. Slickly scripted by journalist Leigh Vance (who would go on to write the pre-Bond Sean Connery mob drama, The Frightened City, 1961), this is a definite improvement on the sort of talkative and set-bound shoestring crime B that was then a staple of British cinema.

Small-time thief Terence Morgan always has an eye for the main chance. While working a society wedding, he makes the acquaintance of East Indian ambassador's daughter Yoko Tani and discovers her father is temporarily keeping £100,000 in his safe. Frustrated by having to take orders from American smuggler John Crawford and needing five grand to pay off a threatening casino owner, Morgan decides to steal the cash. He cons Tani into co-operating by convincing her that they will elope with the loot. But he needs back-up and, when fence Dennis Price refuses to finance him, Morgan assembles his own gang, comprising Crawford, longtime buddy Charles Kay and dour safe-cracker, William Hartnell.

The plan depends on the quartet waiting in the Belgravia tube station after the last train has gone and walking along the line to the platform wall that abuts the embassy basement. Hartnell has demanded a third of the stash so he can retire and Morgan agrees because he has no intention of sharing with anyone. Crawford has also decided to seize the entire amount. But things quickly start to go wrong, as Tani's father comes back early from a diplomatic mission, while Kay is arrested and begins to crack under incessant questioning. However, it's after the trio have made their getaway that their problems really begin, especially as Morgan has failed to take into account the wishes of his lover (and Crawford's wife), Mai Zetterling.

Solidly played by a fine ensemble - with Hartnell and Zetterling particularly impressing as the old school villain and the scheming moll - and evocatively photographed by Ernest Steward to capture the mood of some little-seen parts of the capital, this is well worth another look. It still trails way behind the monochrome heist pictures that Hollywood had produced in the preceding decade and some of the supporting performances feel phoned in. But it's nowhere near as smug and self-satisfied as much of the BritCrime that has been churned out since Guy Ritchie changed the sub-genre wit Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998).

The year this flash-bang exercise in Mockney muppetry was released, Ken Loach was contributing some dramatic re-enactments to Franny Armstrong's McLibel, publicising the struggle of the Liverpool dockers in The Flickering Flame and completing one of his most acclaimed dramas, My Name Is Joe. By this stage, Loach had been directing for 34 years and he remains one of this country's most important screen artists at the age of 75. In order to celebrate this landmark, the magnificent boxed set Ken Loach at the BBC collects nine of his finest television works and reveals how his distinctive realist style has evolved since he branched out from series like Z Cars to make stand-alone dramas for The Wednesday Play.

This is not a complete survey of Loach's BBC output, with The Golden Vision (1968) being particularly missed - especially as it could easily have replaced the Christopher Logue-penned musical The End of Arthur's Marriage (1965), in which Ken Jones struggles valiantly as a husband who becomes so henpecked by wife Janie Booth that he takes the money he was supposed to be using for a deposit on a new home and fritters it on worthless oddities before coming home at the head of a procession of Mods on Vespas led by an elephant liberated from the local zoo. But, as an introduction to the work of a master, it's both welcome and invaluable.

Broadcast in April 1965, Three Clear Sundays was a trenchant condemnation of capital punishment that was written by James O'Connor, a career criminal who had been spared the hangman's noose in 1942. In many ways, it's a rather melodramatic storyline that relies on a number of contrivances to land a hot-headed Portobello Market trader in the condemned cell. But, as ever with Loach, the naturalism and commitment of the performances and the unimpeachable moral rectitude of the cause make for compelling and persuasive viewing.

Tony Selby is jailed for an altercation in a pub with a plainclothes copper trying to wind him up. Mother Rita Webb and brothers are notorious small-timers and Webb is disgusted by Selby's lack of backbone in simply doing his time so he can get out and marry pregnant girlfriend Finuala O'Shannon. However, Pentonville veteran George Sewell has his eye on Selby and convinces him to attack a guard so he can play the hero and earn a remission on his sentence. Tempted by the promised cash, Selby agrees. But his victim dies and he is sentenced to death, with neither Webb's attempts to bribe the jury nor O'Shannon's campaign for clemency having any success.

Drawing on his own death row experience, O'Connor recreates Selby's last hours in chilling detail. However, much of the preceding action rings soap operatic, particularly Webb's decision not to coerce O'Shannon into having an abortion after she learns that her father is wealthy. Selby's descent towards doom is also somewhat spurious. But the play sparked debate and the death penalty for murder was abolished in November 1965 (although it was only confirmed in law four years later).

Scripted by Nell Dunn from her own novel, Up the Junction (1965) remains one of Loach's best-known early works, along with Cathy Come Home (1966). Attracting some 400 complaints because of its bad language and frank discussion of sex, the programme played a prominent part in placing abortion on the political agenda prior to its legalisation in 1967. Yet, while it also served a social purpose, this was also a milestone in television drama, as the use of voice-overs, anecdotal digressions, expert opinion and a fragmentary, non-linear structure brought the influence of the nouvelle vague into British front rooms for the first significant time.

Factory girls Geraldine Sherman; Carol White and Vickery Turner go for a night out in Clapham and pair off with likely lads Tony Selby, Michael Standing and Ray Barron. After a splash in the local swimming pool, Selby and Turner disappear to a disused building, where he persuades her his wife doesn't understand him and she succumbs to his advances. Standing also succeeds in seducing Sherman on a second date and she resorts to a backstreet abortionist after discovering she is pregnant. However, the procedure is botched and she suffers a miscarriage back home and refuses to call the doctor in case he tries to save the child.

As time passes, White marries Barron, while Turner remains loyal to Selby, even though he has been sent to prison. Standing and Sherman are also still a couple. But, following a blazing row after a night's drinking, he is killed in a motorbike crash. But life goes on for White, Sherman and Turner and they are soon staggering along the high street in search of another good time.

Based on snippets of conversation that Dunn overheard in and around London, this is a momentous snapshot of the changing status and attitudes of ordinary British women. Loach and cinematographer Tony Imi capture the freewheeling nature of the Swinging Sixties without losing sight of the grimmer realities of everyday life. Roy Watts's editing and Richard Chubb's sound mix are equally extraordinary and few small-screen projects today would attempt such an audacious audiovisual experiment.

Made the following year, Cathy Come Home was more traditional in its approach. But few Loach films have had a more indelible impact than this sobering study of a young family's inexorable descent into poverty and despair. Watched by an audience of 12 million, it raised such burning issues as unemployment, homelessness and the rights of mothers to rear their own children. Moreover, its screening coincided with the launch of the charity Shelter and was praised by its founders for prompting the country to consider what had, up until then, been a largely neglected problem.

All seems to be going well for newlyweds Carol White and Ray Brooks. He has a good job and they move into a well-appointed new home shortly after welcoming their first child. But, when Brooks is injured in a motoring accident, he loses his £35 per week job and they are forced to move into a council tenement, only to be evicted shortly after the landlord's death. Dependent on sickness benefit (as he had no insurance), Brooks finds a caravan in a local park. But, with White pregnant again and unable to work, they are parted when Brooks is denied admittance to a hostel after the caravan is torched and, with the authorities refusing to extend the three-month sanctuary period, they end up living on the streets - and that's when social services finally take an interest in the case.

Back in 1966, the scenes depicting the bailiffs turfing the family out of their flat and the civil servants arriving on the railway platform to take White's children into care burned into the collective consciousness. Indeed, some 34 years later, the film was voted second only behind Fawlty Towers in the BFI's top 100 British TV programmes. Writer Jeremy Sandford (like Loach an Oxford alumnus) forcibly demonstrated that misfortune could strike anyone at any time and, in many cases, the much-vaunted national concepts of fair play and justice counted for nothing within a welfare system that had supposedly been set up to protect those who could not help themselves. Now seen at a distance of nearly half a century, this has lost none of its power and its relevance has been distressingly renewed in our recessional times.

Having made his cinematic debut with Poor Cow (1967), Loach joined forces that same year with playwright David Mercer for In Two Minds, which the pair would expand to feature length as Family Life in 1971. Based on Mercer's own experiences after suffering a nervous breakdown, the programme drew howls of protest from the psychiatric profession and even an accusation from Dennis Potter that it was more a broadcast on behalf of the theories of RD Laing than a work of art. Nevertheless, the docudramatic approach that Loach adopted was so authentic that twentysomething Anna Cropper's battles with her parents and her inner self seem closer to a case study than a television show.

With the camera assuming the perspective of an unseen doctor (voiced by Brian Phelan), the family members are invited to offer their opinions on the causes of Cropper's insecurity and potential schizophrenia. Lamenting that she was once such a delightful girl, mother Helen Booth scowls that she has shamed the family by drinking to excess and having an abortion after a fling with actor Peter Ellis. But father George A. Cooper concedes that his wife can be overbearing and caused their older daughter, Christine Hargreaves, to run away at 17. She thinks Cropper has brought her troubles on herself by failing to follow suit. But, despite throwing a kitchen knife at Booth and suspecting Cooper of resenting her for not being a boy, Cropper elects to stay at home because they need her.

As Phelan continues to probe the family for information, a second side of Cropper emerges. She insists she is `bad' and reveals she became pregnant after sleeping with a writer, whose very name causes her to become elated. However, she never told him about the baby and she concludes she is being punished for her wickedness. Agreeing to return to the clinic, Cropper becomes increasingly defenceless against her `other' self, who propositions the male doctors and arranges an assignation with fellow patient George Innes. But a nurse discovers their plan and Cropper is sedated and her visiting parents bemoan her lack of control. She is subjected to electro-shock therapy and presented before a class of students for analysis. But not all agree that her condition is inherent and question the lecturer's conclusion that there is no connection between her mental fragility and her domestic environment.

This conclusion led to heated exchanges across the media, with Mercer's insistence that he had not promoted Laingian theory on the BBC arts show Late Night Line Up seemingly disproved by Potter's New Statesman riposte. On a filmic level, Loach achieved a shattering degree of intimacy and realism that often recalled Carl Theodor Dreyer's technique on The Passion of Joan of Arc (1927). Cropper's performance is certainly exceptional, as she veers between gestures and expressions with an emotional dexterity that makes it all the more disappointing that she is now better known for her marriage to Coronation Street's William Roache than for her undoubted talent.

Loach ventured into industrial relations with The Big Flame (1969), which marked his first collaboration with Trotskyite writer Jim Allen. Chronicling a strike on the Liverpool docks, the 16mm film so enraged Mary Whitehouse, the spotlight-seeking secretary of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, that she declared it `a blueprint for the communist takeover of the docks' and wrote to both Prime Minister Harold Wilson and Leader of the Opposition Edward Heath to demand an immediate review of the BBC charter.

Angry at plans to mechanise the waterfront and introduce a system of casual labour, Liverpool's dockworkers vote to strike under the leadership of Norman Rossington and Peter Kerrigan. However, as they are unable to claim the dole while out on strike, the men soon begin experiencing hardship. Radical socialist Ken Jones is furious that the bosses refuse to negotiate until they call off the action, so Kerrigan and Rossington meet with rabblerousing veteran Godfrey Quigley, who convinces them to call for worker control over the docks and helps them arrange deals with foreign ships to launch the initiative.

However, British ships refuse to co-operate with the collective and the leadership is weakened when Jones is duped by infiltrator Griffith Davies into sending Quigley and Rossington into a police trap. With troops preparing to storm the dock gates and Jones ready to mount violent resistance, Kerrigan concedes defeat the strike committee is jailed for conspiracy to affect a public mischief. But the dockers elect the successors and dig in for a prolonged occupation, with the radio announcing support from comrades across the country.

Conveying not only the spirit of the times, but also anticipating the union unrest that would bring about the Three Day Week and confrontation with the Thatcher government, this is an audacious polemic and infinitely superior to both Loach's own The Flickering Flame and Jimmy McGovern's laboured variation on the same theme, Dockers (1999). Responding to what would become Allen's trademark brand of everyday dialogue, the cast deliver staunch performances, with the ever-dependable Jones and the pugnacious Rossington being shaded by Kerrigan, whose dejection on recognising defeat is gut-wrenching.

Kerrigan similarly excels in The Rank and File (1971), another examination of the gulf between the workers, their union representatives and the bosses that was originally broadcast in the Play for Today strand. Taking his inspiration from the strike at the Pilkington glass factory in St Helens, Allen relocated the story to the Potteries. However, by Loach's own admission, it suffers from trying to be too topical rather than universal, as Allen had agreed to write the script after meeting an ageing time-server who had been threatened with the loss of his pension unless he scabbed.

The focus falls on the unofficial strike committee and the tough decisions they have to take in defeating the exploitative employers, while also ensuring that the labour force isn't left destitute in the process. Kerrigan is joined by Billy Dean, Tommy Summers, Johnny Gee, Neville Smith, Bert King and Mike Hayden. But, while they conduct daily meetings in the local pub and travel down to London to meet with the General Secretary of the TUC, their followers are being arrested on picket lines or intimidated by blacklegs.

Gee is beaten up by strike-breaking thugs, while Jimmy Coleman has his windows smashed after a charity concert. But the most discomfiting scene involves Charlie Barlow and the Wilkinson personnel manager, who explains that because he has been involved in the strike he must forfeit his pension entitlement in order to be rehired as essentially a new employee. His resigned acceptance of this vicious disregard for the man's years of service is heartbreaking to behold and Loach films it with typical compassion for the underdog, who is treated with the same patronising contempt the headmaster displays towards the naughty boys in Kes (1969).

In Days of Hope (1975), Allen seems to blame this humiliation on the failure of the working class to wrest power from the ruling elite between 1916-26. Tackling his first period piece, Loach concurs in showing how a land that was supposedly fit for heroes turned its back on them on their return from the trenches and forced them to accept a Gradgrindian regime that sought to turn back the clock in terms of both wages and conditions. Originally planned as a feature about the 1921 Durham mine strike, this four-part serial is one of Loach's finest achievements and makes a magnificent companion to his masterpiece, Land and Freedom (1995).

In 1916, teenager Paul Copley is considering lying about his age to join up when he sees police close in on the farmhouse where he lives with parents Clifford Kershaw and Helen Beck and his sister Pamela Brighton and her husband, Nikolas Simmonds, a conscientious objector whose refusal to kill a fellow worker earns him the scorn of his father-in-law. The couple decide to flee to London, but Simmonds is arrested during a Quaker anti-war meeting and he is sent to the Western Front at the same time as Copley is sent to Ireland to maintain order during the Easter Uprising.

Simmonds refuses to fight and is lucky to have his death sentence for cowardice commuted to a decade of penal servitude. Meanwhile Copley has refrained from shooting an Irish boy, despite his allegiance to the IRA, and his sympathy for the oppressed causes him to desert in 1921 rather than use force against the striking Durham miners. He befriends one of the men (Gary Roberts) who has been locked out by the owner in the hope that he can starve them into accepting pre-war wages. But the action is compromised and Copley is arrested during a dawn raid and he is sentenced to three years in prison.

By the time he is released, Copley has become sufficiently radicalised to join the Communist Party. However, his stance makes life awkward for Simmonds, who has become a Labour MP just as Ramsay McDonald (John Young) becomes the first socialist prime minister. As Copley meets with a Soviet delegation to discuss the New Economic Policy, Simmonds is dispatched to Liverpool by Ernest Bevin (Malvin Thomas) to address a meeting of the Transport and General Workers Union to urge them against allying with the Communists at a time when solidarity is key to the strength of the movement. After the speech, however, Simmonds is interviewed by journalist Stephen Rea, who informs him that the upper classes will never agree to plans to nationalise the means of production and the financial sector. He even confides that Labour minister Josiah Wedgewood (John Philips) would be ready to implement the anti-revolutionary strategy devised by Lloyd George in 1919 and Simmonds is crushed when he learns that this is true.

Indeed, Stanley Baldwin's Conservative administration convened this Transport and Supply Committee during the General Strike in 1926. However, Allen and Loach are less interested in government tactics than the betrayal of the miners by trade unionists who lacked the courage of their convictions and failed to press home an advantage to ensure a Trotskyite takeover of the country. Unsurprisingly, this concluding episode drew the loudest howls of protest from the right-wing press, which accused the pair of political bias and factual inaccuracy. The latter charge was entirely unproven, while producer Tony Garnett went on the offensive by stating that bogus objectivity was much more pernicious than a committed viewpoint. He could have used a similar defence in justifying the last title in this outstanding set, The Price of Coal (1977).

Reuniting with Barry Hines, with whom he had worked on Kes, Loach cast a quartet of northern club comedians in key roles in this two-part insight into life in a South Yorkshire colliery. As the emphasis in the first episode, `Meet the People' was on quipping humour, Bobby Knutt, Duggie Brown, Jackie Shinn and Stan Richards rose to the challenge with aplomb, as the workforce at Milton pit near Sheffield made extravagant preparations for a visit by Prince Charles at a time when essential maintenance work needed to be carried out and the local community was experiencing an economic downturn.

Loach and Hines revel in the clashes between Shinn's jobsworthy manager and the wiseacre Knutt, who is exasperated by the folly of planting trees and sprinkling slagheaps with grass seed solely for a two-hour visit. But the cross-chat is littered with salient asides about widows' pensions and the role of the Royals and even the liberation of a garden umbrella from a pub garden to shelter as many people as possible from a sudden downpour acquires symbolic significance. The naysayers make their point, however, as, while equerry Edward Underdown fusses over protocol and the Bomb Squad search snap tins, they succeed in daubing pro-Scargill slogans on the walls. They are painted over, as is a patch of ground for a helicopter landing pad. But, while the miners are corralled into a reception committee, Knutt's son, Haydn Conway, bunks off school to go fishing.

Such sly humour is noticeably absent from `Back to Reality', which takes place a month after the jamboree and opens with Knutt telling the cricket-mad Conway that he has managed to get hold of tickets to the Headingly test match. However, shortly after his shift begins, an explosion rips through the pit and Knutt and his ripping crew are trapped. Oldest son Paul Chappell rushes home to inform his mother, Rita May, and she comes down to the colliery to join other anxious relatives in a makeshift waiting room that remains terrifyingly silent, as Salvation Army volunteers shuffle around offering tea and sympathy.

As the management organises rescue parties, it becomes clear that the blast was caused by an unsupervised apprentice electrician and arguments begin about whether this was a freak accident or the result of years of complacency and neglect. As the NUM officials seek to apportion blame, word comes that Richards has perished. Knutt is lucky to survive, however, as he is seriously injured when finally brought to the surface. The only question now is whether lessons will be learned from the disaster.

The recent tragedy in South Wales demonstrates the continuing dangers associated with mining and Loach and cinematographer Brian Tufano chillingly capture the claustrophobia and precariousness of the shafts. But it's the pacing of the unbearable wait for news that makes this so harrowing. The strength of the writing is pivotal, but the restraint of the performances is also crucial to the authenticity of an incident that was based on the 1973 disaster at the Lofthouse Colliery near Wakefield. And, once again, Loach proves prescient in having May deliver a line about the fickleness of the press, as while they are posing as the people's friend during the crisis, they will soon turn and accuse the miners of holding the country to ransom - as, indeed, the pro-Tory papers would during the strike of 1984-85.