Dvd/150: LADY KILLERS (Nicholas Ferguson / Philip Draycott / Kenny McBain / Joan Kemp-Welch / Brian Mills / Peter Moffatt, 1981. tv)

The second series of seven murder trial dramatisations, introduced by Robert Morley.

Where the first series concentrated on women criminals, this focusses on men killing women - except for Edith Thompson and Freddy Bywaters: he killed her husband but they were tried jointly, one of the great judicial miscarriages.

This series doesn't match the first, an obvious choice for the producer but it doesn't carry much conviction.

Chewing the scenery are Kenneth Haigh as brides-in-the-bath killer George Smith and Christopher Cazenove as mad Ronald True, while John Fraser as Crippen is colourless.

However Ian Charleson shines as fake posh cad Neville Heath, Michael Jayston is fine as arrogant Frederick Seddon, on trial for murdering his tenant, as is Carol Drinkwater as his edgy wife.

The best is the Thompson/Bywaters episode with touching performances from (miscast) Gayle Hunnicutt, Christopher Villiers and Margaret Tyzack as his stricken mother.

Shelf or charity shop? I will keep this as it's my Ian but it's also worth keeping for the Thompson/Bywaters episode and some fine supporting performances across the series from Heather Chasen, Michael Ripper, John Justin, Michael Byrne, Joan Hickson, and Joan Sims' voice-over as the virago Mrs Crippen.

Dvd/150: I CLAUDIUS (Herbert Wise. 1976, tv)

40 years on, the BBC series of Robert Graves' I CLAUDIUS shines bright with it's dazzling cast and Jack Pulman's witty, concise adaptation - a textbook example in bringing a sprawling novel to life.

Filmed on BBC TV Centre sets, budgetary constraints allow Herbert Wise to concentrate on the interplay between the characters - and what characters!

Derek Jacobi is outstanding as Claudius who, in old age, writes the history of the emperors in his Imperial family from Augustus to himself, along with the formidable women they married or were murdered by!  Stuttering, lame Claudius is the family joke but survives them all to bear witness.

Of course it's the monsters one remembers: John Hurt's psychotic Caligula and the equally dangerous Livia, sublimely played by Sian Phillips in one of the great television performances.

 
Brian Blessed's avuncular Augustus, Margaret Tyzack's stoic Antonia and Sheila White's lascivious Messalina are among the other treasures.

Shelf or charity shop? You must be as mad as Caligula to think I would part with this!

RICHARD II / AS YOU DESIRE ME

It sounds like the start of an odd love letter but it in fact heralds the fact that I have done two theatre trips with Mr. Guy Thomas in the past week.

Last Thursday was RICHARD II at the Old Vic which finally saw Kevin Spacey delivering a performance worthy of that stage's history. Although not one of the most poetic of Kings - and I think some of the speechs could have done with more introspection and less tart snittiness - he really excelled in the deposition scene where his cry of anguished frustration "I have no name" was all the more powerful for seemingly coming from nowhere. He was ably supported by Ben Mles whose Bolingbroke slide smoothly into power after his exercise in regime change in a strangely Blairite manner. There was excellent support from Julian Glover as John of Gaunt as well as Oliver Cotton and Peter Eyre.

Tonight we saw Pirandello's AS YOU DESIRE ME at the Playhouse Theatre with Kristin Scott Thomas and Bob Hoskins, slickly directed by Jonathan Kent. I had seen the film starring Greta Garbo yonks ago so knew the story - Elma is an amnesiac singer in a Berlin cabaret, one night she is followed by a man who tells her that she is in fact Lucia, the wife of an Italian count who had disappeared from their villa in WWI when she was raped and kidnapped by some German soldiers. Bored by her decadent life as a mistress to a violent writer she goes to Italy where she is greeted by the count, her aunt and uncle. 

Four months later she agrees to meet her sister who had regretfully allowed the missing woman's death certificate to be signed. However what was at the heart of that decision was who gained control of the villa, as it was part of the wife's dowry on her death it reverted to her sister. Is Lucia really Lucia or is she simply being used as a pawn? When her ex-lover Santer arrives at the villa with an insane woman who can only speak the name of the aunt the whole question of identity is blown apart.

Sadly it reads and lives in the mind better than it does on stage - at 90 minutes it still seemed padded and repetitive. However it was worth seeing for the livewire performance of Scott Thomas - almost bursting out of her slinky 30s dresses with frustration of not knowing who she is. Hoskins was strangely muted as Santer but there were memorable performances by Margaret Tyzack and John Carlisle as the woman's older relatives.