Sun 15 Mar 2015
A British TV Series Review by David Vineyard: FATHER BROWN (2013- 2015).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[38] Comments
FATHER BROWN. BBC, UK, 2013 to date. 35 episodes. Mark Williams, Sorcha Cusack, Nancy Carroll, Alex Price, Hugo Speer, Tom Chambers. Created by Rachel Flowerday and Tahin Guner. Inspired by the stories of G. K. Chesterton.
So, Father Dowling — no, wait, this one is British and there is no cute nun — Father Brown, that’s right Father Brown, is watching this couple making out; Father Brown is climbing over a fence; Father Brown has been poisoned; Father Brown has a broken leg and is being held hostage by a killer policeman; Father Brown pretends madness to go undercover in an asylum; Father Brown is trapped beneath a castle in a dungeon; Father Brown has to stop a bomb …
Father Brown (Mark Williams) has a nosy housekeeper (Sorcha Cusack), a randy aristocrat friend (Nancy Carroll), her semi-honest roguish chauffer (Alex Price), a full time parish in Kembleford in the Cotswolds (where there are more murders than Chicago and Miss Marple’s St. Mary’s Mead combined) at St. Mary’s, and two policeman whose lives he is the bane of (Hugo Speer and Tom Chambers who replaced him).
Father Brown is tall, hardy, and about as meek as a truck driver.
Father Brown wouldn’t know a paradox if it hit him with a lorry.
They have actually adapted a few stories by Chesterton. Not that you would know it unless you looked at the title, the only thing vaguely resembling Chesterton.
That awful television movie with Barnard Hughes was better than this. Walter Connally’s wholly miscast Father Brown was better. Kenneth More, seemingly miscast, was brilliant as was Alec Guiness, also seemingly miscast. Mark Williams is just miscast. It is difficult for a man his size to appear to be a meek, blinking, slightly pudgy, and unassuming priest with the power of an Old Testament prophet. This Father Brown has the power of a Jessica Fletcher.
The time is the 1950’s, God knows why since the stories end twenty years before that. Father Brown, who traveled extensively in the stories, is a parish priest and served in WWII. He deals with ex-Nazis and refugees and once with radiation poisoning. He seldom leaves Kembleford and his church, St. Mary’s. No one much respects him. Flambeau has a British accent, they couldn’t be bothered to hire an actor who could at least fake a French accent.
You know it isn’t Chesterton because communist and atheists tend to turn out to be innocent. You know it isn’t Agatha Christie because the young lovers almost never turn out to be the murderers.
This Father Brown never rises to the occasion. He never blinks behind his spectacles while transformed into a figure of Biblical strength. He never simply observes because he knows human nature and intuits the truth. He is never for one instant of film Chesterton’s priest in anything but name.
It’s an attractive enough series, and I might like it if it wasn’t the only Father Brown we will get. The actors are personable, and the mysteries no worse than usual, but of course it could be so much more, and instead it is, as I said, “Murder, He Prayed.”
If you are not an admirer of Chesterton’s stories you may not get why I feel such rancor for this unassuming little series. Try to imagine though they made a situation comedy out of The Great Gatsby. Try imagining they cast Pee Wee Herman as Sherlock Holmes. Try to imagine that the only Shakespeare there was to read was the Lamb’s version.
You are not going to get good television from people incapable of respecting their source. You are going to get this, a series that disappoints week after week, hints at Chesterton (admittedly not easy to film though the More series did it), but never fulfills the promise. You get what seldom happens on series shown on PBS, the lowest common denominator, just like network television.
This one wasn’t even designed to be shown at night in England. It was an afternoon series according to Wikipedia.
This might have worked despite all that if they respected the original in any way, if they understood what made Chesterton’s stories work, what made Father Brown a rival of Sherlock Holmes — the rival of Sherlock Holmes.
This Father Brown isn’t even a rival of Jessica Fletcher.
If you like it despite all that, fine. But don’t kid yourself that anyone connected to this ever read a single Father Brown story and understood it or what gave it power. Father Brown the comic book would be better.
March 15th, 2015 at 7:11 pm
A very fine review, thanks.
March 15th, 2015 at 7:36 pm
One of the big problems is that it’s written by people who don’t appear to have ever read a mystery story. Of the two creators of the series, one had never read Chesterton, and yet still felt able to write a treatment for the show. The first series was dreadful, the second showed some improvement, and the third is one that I’m still working my way through (pretty bad so far)
I have found that the best way to enjoy it is to pretend that it isn’t Father Brown. Mark Williams does actually give a rather good performance–it just isn’t of the Chesterton character. This man is an ex-army chaplain with a gambling habit. The same goes for Flambeau. He just isn’t Flambeau.
The reason that Brown hardly ever leaves the village is the same reason that this is a 50s set series—this is a cheap show! Nowadays the earliest period that is relatively cheap to supply clothes/props is the 1950s. Equally, it’s cheaper to revert a small village to its 1950s state than try to turn Modern London into 50s London.
I understand that after finishing the Jeremy Brett Sherlock, producer Michael Cox wanted to make the definitive Father Brown, but he never got the chance. Sigh.
March 15th, 2015 at 9:26 pm
Everything seems to be set in the 1950s these days … Bradstreet’s comment may explain why.
March 15th, 2015 at 9:49 pm
Prior to making this series Mark Williams was Beach the butler in Blandings. I thought this might have been a step up, but perhaps not.
March 16th, 2015 at 7:16 am
I thought Williams was fine…as Arthur Weasley in the Harry Potter movies. David, you hit the nail on the head – abysmal is the word. We never got past series one; it was jsut too awful. There was nothing good about it, it was set in the 50s for no apparent reason, the housekeeper (even more so than the annoying one in GRANTCHESTER, which is also set in the 50s) is a horrible bigot and racist, but why go on?
March 16th, 2015 at 10:45 am
The 1970s series with Kenneth More isn’t too bad.
March 16th, 2015 at 2:20 pm
At least one episode of the More series, “The Eye of Apollo” is available to watch free on YouTube. The rest require a subscription. You will also discover a long running German Father Brown series, and the Alec Guiness/Peter Finch film THE DETECTIVE available.
I found the More series to be a fine adaptation of the Chesterton stories. More was curious casting for the role, best known as one of the girl hunting doctors in the DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE movies, the tough British soldier in NORTHWEST FRONTIER, the playboy bachelor romancing Kay Kendall in GENEVIEVE, Richard Hannay in the Box’s scene for scene color remake of THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS romancing Tania Elg, the no nonsense Naval intelligence officer set to hunt down the Bismark in SINK THE BISMARK, and the heroic first officer of the Titanic in A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, but he was ideal on screen as the little curate, meek and blinking, but capable of rising to great power. Surprising for an actor best known as a light romantic lead and later character actor (DARK OF THE SUN).
The episode based on “The Secret Garden” sticks with me even now with, if I remember right, a strong performance by Ferdy Mayne.
Flambeau by the way had a French accent, and was quite as flamboyant as in the stories before and after reform.
March 16th, 2015 at 2:30 pm
Williams is fine as an actor, personable, and with enough weight (pun deliberate) to carry a series, but he isn’t Father Brown. Once of twice in the few episodes based on Chesterton I had caught a glimpse of Chesterton’s good Father, but only for a minute.
As I suggested, and Bradstreet confirmed, the series creators never even bothered to read Chesterton or listen to the excellent BBC radio series sometimes rebroadcast on BBC4. I might be kinder if this was called Father Jones, but it still is far too like by the numbers American television.
In case anyone wants to know who I would choose to play Father Brown, my choice would have been Peter Sallis of LAST OF THE SUMMER WINE fame and the voice of Wallace in Wallace and Gromit. Currently I’m not sure.
March 16th, 2015 at 4:26 pm
Thumbs up for the Keneth More series. I got the DVD boxset out of curiosity some years ago, and was completely bowled over. More tends to be remembered nowadays for his film work, the majority of which were in the 50s and early 60s, where he tended to play a cheerful pipe smoking hero. But this tends to overshadow some of his more subtle and interesting work, a lot of it on TV, from the late 60s onwards. He was a lot more versatile than his popular reputation suggests.
If I were casting Brown nowadays, I would go for Toby Jones. Hollywood has tended to cast him in rather sinister roles (such as the evil Nazi genius in CAPTAIN AMERICA) but he can do loveable and eccentric, and is able to shift from being rather shy and diffident to being able to command the room. Someone really needs to cast him in that role.
March 16th, 2015 at 4:28 pm
I’ve used the word ‘tend’ or ‘tended’ about five times in a few lines. I must stop this tendency.
March 16th, 2015 at 5:18 pm
Bradstreet.
I can clearly see Toby Jones in the role. That sinister side would not be out of place in those scenes when Father Brown rises to Biblical prophet status.
When I first heard More as Father Brown I thought to myself this could not possibly work. Nothing I had seen more do in films where he was generally a hale and healthy fellow suggested Father Brown to me.
I could not see Crichton from the ADMIRIBLE CRICHTON as Father Brown, then the first episode I saw, “The Arrow of God” floored me. To date More is the best Brown we have had on screen big or small. It is a splendid series and remarkably faithful to some of Chesterton’s difficult to dramatize stories.
It would be difficult to top it.
March 16th, 2015 at 5:24 pm
I was expecting a final decision on whether or not the new Father Brown was a rotten show or not, but it appears it may have its merits. I seem to have tended to use “it” too many times, but I don’t plan to stop.
No one picked up on my reference to Mark Williams as Beach the butler in the first series of BLANDINGS. He seems to have been replaced in the second series. BLANDINGS is based on characters and stories by P. G. Wodehouse and was the subject of some discussion in recent issues of the newsletter of the Wodehouse Society.
March 16th, 2015 at 11:10 pm
Regarding Michael Cox’s plans to do a Father Brown series I have read nothing except what has been said here, but in Cox’s book A STUDY IN CELLULOID about the Jeremy Brett series he admits to making a mistake when he let Granada talk him into producing a Maigret series with Michael Gambon.
March 17th, 2015 at 3:07 pm
Randy,
The Williams FATHER BROWN is horrid Father Brown, but if it was just about a priest detective in the 1950’s it would be a minor palatable series with decent actors and production values.
My problem is with Frere B scaling walls, playing cricket, having served on the front lines, spying on a couple having illicit sex, racing to the rescue, and otherwise becoming Father Brown Action Man.
I’m not sure anyone associated with the program could tell you what a paradox was, much less write a story that was paradoxical.
There are powerful Father Brown stories to film; “The Oracle of the Dog;” “The Blast of the Book;” “The Invisible Man” … But they would rather make a male Jessica Fletcher of him, a nosy old busybody who won’t stay out of other people’s business.
March 17th, 2015 at 10:21 pm
My least favorite type of amateur detective is the Priest. I never liked Chesterton’s Father Brown so I have ignored the adaptations (this one is available at Acorn streaming).
The Priest character faces the problem that to reach the mass audience he can’t be too religious in one faith or another. Strip Brown of his strict Catholicism and you remove the most important part of what makes Father Brown who he is.
Today the Priest character seems to fall in two types of cliche. a good tolerant male who keeps his preaching to a minimum or the Priest with a crisis of faith. Neither interests me much.
March 17th, 2015 at 11:20 pm
#15:
I’m what’s known as a “cradle Catholic”:
not lapsed, exactly, I just don’t go to Mass any more.
But even when I was a regular on Sundays, the way movies and TV portrayed my church was always amusing to me and to my family.
Most of my family members were stunned to learn that Barry Fitzgerald was a Protestant – indeed, he was a vocal “Orangeman”, as was his brother, Arthur Shields. I sometimes wonder if they’d ever found out that Victor McLaglen was the son of an Anglican priest.
(Not to mention Tom Bosley [Jewish] as Father Dowling …)
Regarding Father Brown, the first version I ever saw was Alec Guinness’s The Detective (as it was known in the USA); I recall reading that playing the part was one of several steps that led to Guinness’s embrace of Catholicism.
The other actors who’ve played the part, I don’t know about – what faith (if any) they followed in their lives. That’s not supposed to make a difference, I know, but somehow Pat O’Brien (RC all the way) always seemed more convincing than many of the others …
The new Father Brown show, I’ve looked at here and there; the “improvements” that the producers have made on Chesterton seem dubious at best.
Side note:
EWTN, a Catholic-based cable network, runs an occasional series called G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle Of Common Sense,produced and hosted by Dale Ahlquist, a GKC scholar.
Ahlquist employs a company of actors to dramatize brief scenes from Chesterton stories. When they do Father Brown, the part is played by a slightly-built actor named Kevin O’Brien, who I think might be able to handle the part in a more ambitious production (my opinion; yours may differ).
Michael Shonk – I can’t tell from your comment whether you’re ex-Catholic, non-Catholic, or anti-Catholic, or some combination thereof. I guess it really doesn’t matter one way or the other.
Maybe I just wanted to get this all on the record.
March 17th, 2015 at 11:51 pm
I agree that this series is awful. I managed 3 episodes but only the first all the way through. But I am curious about the comments. Is everyone here from the USA? There is an issue about Englishness in this series, which is hard to explain. Poirot is a very English series, but made in England with overseas viewers in mind. FB is this kind of period Englishness but everything is more quaint, made for English audiences, or people looking for a kind of English golden age, rather than a good detective yarn. I am Australian (born 1953) so we grew up US and UK shows.
March 18th, 2015 at 12:19 am
Moe,
Some good observations. Thanks! Bradstreet is in the UK. As far as I know, the rest of us are in the US. Viewpoints from the rest of the world are always welcome. Please stop by again.
March 18th, 2015 at 1:28 am
16. Mike, thanks for sharing. To answer your question. I was raised an Episcopalian. My parents taught Sunday school and I was an Altar Boy. As I reached adulthood I stopped going to church, but always knew it was there. I would joke I was an agnostic – someone who didn’t know what the Hell was going on.
Then one day I was in the local hospital where my Dad was dying. While in the waiting room another man whose wife was dying got us all to stand in a circle and pray to God. Yet every time he called God Jesus I had a sharp bad feeling – it felt like I was lying to God, calling Him by the wrong name. It hit me then. I believe in God but not religion.
Everyone has his or her own relationship with God. My Mother remains a devout Episcopalian something I support and think is great. If you find any comfort in this World being a Catholic I am happy for you.
My problem with Chesterton’s Father Brown is his attitude towards others with a different point of view.
March 18th, 2015 at 2:15 am
I understand that there have been a number of complaints about the inaccuracy of the religious details in the Williams show. It’s not something that I’m really qualified to talk about, as although I’m nominally Church of England, I’ve never gone to church regularly. Like Michael, I believe in God but not religion.
Moe: I think that the chocolate boxy quaintness of FB has a lot to do with the fact that it is shown over here in the early afternoon. It’s about as pre-watershed as you can get, and is really aimed at young mums with pre-school kids and the elderly. Poirot is shown about 8.00pm as a rule, so it is allowed much more leeway about what it can deal with. It’s interesting that there was some concern about whether the Beeb’s CALL THE MIDWIFE drama would be popular overseas, as the show is basically about poverty stricken mums giving birth in slums. Would it appeal to those who liked shows such as DOWNTON ABBEY? The show has roughly the same period setting as Brown, but they’re very different. In fact, it has been emormously popular abroad. Audience response can be very hard to predict!
March 18th, 2015 at 2:47 pm
I did live in London a few years many years ago, but in London and not a small village, none the less the Englishness of the series doesn’t bother me as I am a confirmed Anglophile — though a sometimes jaundiced one. Other than Glasgow and parts of Manchester and once in a while the Welsh I have no problem with the accents in the UK or Ireland though the colloquialisms like being told by a girl to knock her up sometime took a bit of getting used to.
I was brought up Baptist, but that has nothing to do with my love of Father Brown or Chesterton. Chesterton himself was a convert to the faith, in part by the man who was the inspiration for Father Brown. My first wife’s grandfather was Opus Dei and his half brother a Cardinal so I had some exposure to the Church. Even before that I took Hollywood’s depiction of priests and the Church in general with a grain of salt — usually Irish salt at that.
Protestant ministers generally fare worse on the screen, but equally fanciful. They are either hypocrites or ineffective other worldly types for the most part with the occasional two fisted type like Joel McCrea in STARS IN MY CROWN. Almost nothing about faith or religion is portrayed very realistically though. It is always used allegorically in drama and seldom realistically.
Any way, if I had a problem with priest heroes I would never have read THE POWER AND THE GLORY, KEYS TO THE KINGDOM, or Perez Reverte’s THE SEVILLE COMMUNION.
They made a decision early on for Williams to always wear the cassock and the shovel hat, which would have been rare in England if not Ireland at the time. Brown did not always dress that way in the More series, though he did wear the hat. Chesterton never says Brown is always in the cassock — mostly it comes from the illustrations though it would have been more common then than the post War period.
As for the religious preference or prejudice, being a Protestant, and Baptist at that, didn’t keep me from liking Webber’s Father Bredder or Rabbi David Small. I didn’t care much for Dowling, but it was politics and not religion in that case.
Since a large part of the audience is probably Anglican or Protestant in England and here I doubt that has anything to do with its popularity. As I said, if it wasn’t Father Brown I would have no problem with it as a minor entertainment.
Michael is quite right about the intolerance in Chesterton, but I probably wouldn’t agree with Post’s Uncle Abner either. I’m afraid I don’t hold writers from that era to modern political correctness. If I let politics and religion intrude much in my escapist reading I wouldn’t have anything to read.
I do understand this series appeal though. As I said, it is virtually MURDER,SHE WROTE, another popular series I did not care for. My only problem is thanks to this we won’t see Brown done right.
Mike,
I have seen the Chesterton series and agree about Kevin O’Brien. I recall one lively episode based on one of GKC’s famous debates with George Bernard Shaw. I can be entertained by Chesteron’s wit and occasional wisdom without being converted by it.
March 18th, 2015 at 4:25 pm
David, I was a big fan of the Rabbi Small books when they first appeared but when I went back to reread them they dulled me to sleep.
My dislike for Brown is not PC. I don’t have a problem with writers with opinions unpopular in today’s society or I disagree with (I am a fan of pulps and its covers). I just find I rather spend my time reading books I like than ones that annoy me. I read him I didn’t like him I moved on.
I still have in my line of to read books Chesterton’s THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY and THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES. I hope to enjoy them or at least finish them without wanting to punch the hero in the face every other page.
March 18th, 2015 at 5:21 pm
Michael.
THURSDAY is a surreal comedy and the hero is Chesterton’s poet Gabriel Syme who also appeared in a series of mysteries of his own. At least I think he is the same Syme, a bit hard to tell.
Thursday will depend on your mood.
I did not mean to suggest any kind of prejudice on your part other than not liking GKC. I was just stating that my background would not seem to lend itself to a taste for Catholic writers and it does for some odd reason.
I could not re-read the Rabbi Small books either when I tried. It’s a one trick pony situation. I think the reason Kemmelman’s reputation fell off so sharply when he died is many readers found they could not go back either.
I agree wholly though, if you don’t like the protagonist it doesn’t matter how well the book is written. GKC though does have more than a few critics for his anti-Semitism and intolerance, that I find just the standard for his day. It’s something like P.G. Wodehouse’s somewhat questionable patriotism, it doesn’t mean I can’t read and enjoy his work because his lack of political savvy was a bit blind at a time when any fool should have been able to see what was going on (his wife was quite a vocal critic of the Nazi’s even while living in occupied France and it seems may have lent herself to more than vocal critiques).
Even when I disagree, I never question why anyone does or doesn’t like something, though I am always willing to argue a point, especially with someone I respect as I do you.
Frankly I love the Brown stories, his essays, and his poetry. He also wrote some good humorous fantasy works.
I have my own lists of popular writers I don’t like and unpopular ones I do. I suspect most of us on here do, and I’m happy to say most of us have no shyness about stating it.
March 18th, 2015 at 8:20 pm
I have wondered why some of my favorite writers of the 70s-80s no longer appeal to me. Not only Kemmelman but writers such as Michael Z. Lewin and Lawrence Block. Meanwhile others of the time such as Vince Kohler, Gregory Macdonald and Paco Ignacio Taibo II continue to entertain me.
March 19th, 2015 at 2:14 am
I’ve always thought that Wodehouse got something of a raw deal from posterity about his broadcasts. His writing show that he ridiculed Mosley and his Blackshirts, and no less a critic than George Orwell cleared him of any collaboration with the Nazis. Anyway, it’s a bit unfair when someone like George Bernard Shaw actively supported mass-murderer Stalin and defended his show trials. Posterity can be very selective…
David Vineyard and Michael are totally correct about the way that some writers can be re-read endlessly, whilst others shrivel up very quickly when one comes back to them. I did enjoy some John Le Carre when I read them back in the 80s, but looking at them now they seem quite dull. On the other hand, a writer such as Anthony Price come up as fresh as paint.
March 20th, 2015 at 2:55 pm
Bradstreet,
I’ve always held that Le Carre was 80% reputation and about 20% talent. Some of the early books hold up well before he got pretentious and began to preach about the evils of intelligence work (at least early on he recognized it was a necessary evil), and I still enjoy the Smiley books though I agree with John Bingham, the model for Smiley, that George was exactly the type who consistently defected throughout the fifties and sixties.
He still writes a good book once in a while, THE NIGHT MANAGER, OUR GAME, THE TAILOR OF PANAMA (which is so close to plagiarized from Greene’s OUR MAN IN HAVANA anyone but Le Carre would have been ripped to pieces for it by critics), THE CONSTANT GARDNER. On the other hand, his last few books are unreadable, with even the well acted film of A MOST WANTED MAN ruined by Le Carre’s idiotic and well contradicted theory that the Security Services in the West were paranoid about the infiltration of Islamic terrorists. Curiously he issued no retraction after the incidents in France and elsewhere.
Le Carre’s reputation as a master of all things espionage related is utter nonsense. All his tradecraft and his terminology is utter BS and his picture of the inner workings of the British services total fantasy. He was never more than a minor Foreign Office functionary in West Germany running at the most post office drops compared to actual insiders like Fleming, Bingham, Desmond Cory, John Buchan, Brian Cleve, Simon Harvester (whose books were so accurate the KGB station chief in Ulan Bator used to buy them all in multiple copies and have them forwarded to Andropov and others in Moscow) and others. Unlike Fleming, Maugham, or a Compton Mackenzie he was never in danger of being prosecuted under the Offical Secrets Act because all he wrote was fantasy.
The Brit services did like to imagine themselves as Le Carre’s Machiavellian Oxbridge types and adopted some of his language, but it was strictly because they were flattered to be thought so diabolical in the wake of the disasterous late fifties and sixties when treason wrecked their reputation.
And he can be dull as dishwater when he tries to be literary. There seems to be an opinion because he writes such lumbering prose that he must be important. Victor Canning, who came to share le Carre’s view of the security services was a much better writer and still worth reading.
Anthony Price and William Haggard only get better with age like fine port.
As for the writers from the 80’s I can’t quite nail what went wrong with them or me. That’s the period when I had all I could take of Spenser, when I stopped reading Block for the most part (though his early books are still entertaining), dropped Lewin, Asch, so many others. And while I love the hardboiled form and the classic private eye I am very seldom impressed anymore and have not been since then. There are exceptions, Dan Simmons Joe Kurtz, Michael Kortya’s Lincoln Perry, and the reliable genius of Bill Pronzini’s Nameless, but there is a long list of writers whose work I just stopped reading from that era — especially in the hardboiled genre.
Re this Father Brown series I was surprised that no one, even those who dislike Chesterton, came to its defense. It’s rare to see this sort of unanimity on a series here. I think the best anyone gave it was harmless and that Mark Williams had been better elsewhere. I’m not sure I have seen that here before.
March 20th, 2015 at 11:58 pm
David,
How happy I am that you have taken a strip off Le Carre, politically, personally and as a storyteller. I always had negative feelings relative to his work, but with me, only instinct. In any case, you have spoiled me as I now expect nothing less than clarity and information. From you, not the other guy.
March 21st, 2015 at 4:58 pm
Graham Greene’s politics were not so far off of Le Carre’s, but the difference was genius, honesty, and the fact Greene was fairly important in MI6 at one time and well connected (his biographer made a good case Greene stayed connected and his anti-Americanism may have been a pose — he liked Texas when he was there, so I’m fine with it). His comical portrayal of MI6 in OUR MAN IN HAVANA is much cannier than anything in Le Carre’s heavy handed over praised books.
Le Carre famously held that Bond, a romantic patriot, would be a likely traitor because of his drinking and womanizing despite the fact that anyone who knew anything about British wartime activities knew Bond had a dozen real life counterparts like Eddie Chapman, Fitzroy MacLean, Michael Milhall (sic?), and Wilfred Dunderdale that were all loyal to the end — no small thing in the case of Chapman, a convicted felon who volunteered to work for the Germans and promptly surrender to the British police as soon as he parachuted back into England — especially considering the British had put him in prison as the leader of the infamous safe cracking Gelignite gang.
Le Carre works on a false premise, and actually is far off on the types found at the top of the security services. In that Len Deighton is much closer to reality. When I was with the Embassy and liaison to the British Security Services he was something of a bad joke, mostly useful for the disinformation he was feeding the Soviets with his imaginings. A few did start calling it the Circus, because it was a good metaphor but no one ever called C Control, though a few secretaries got tagged as Miss Moneypenny as a joke.
You were far more likely to meet someone like Fleming’s Bill Tanner or John Gardner’s nasty Moystn than any of Le Carre’s semi Wodehousian types (le Carre is Wodehouse without a sense of humor, wit, or clarity — just the silly ass part).
Incidentally re Fleming, Maugham, and Mackenzie and the Offical Secrets Act, Fleming faced prosecution because FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE came close to revealing ULTRA but in the end prosecuting him would only have revealed more; Maugham’s last Ashenden story revealing his mission to Bolshevik Russia nearly got him; and they actually banned one of Mackenzie’s books because, among other things, he revealed C was called C, which let the cat our of the bag about the real C Mansfield Cummings (he’s also where Fleming got the M though his M is based on Admiral Sir John Godfrey).
But my big problem is Le Carre, even at his best, is heavy handed and a difficult read. Being difficult to read is not a qualification for great literature. Even the short time I was at Oxford almost no one talked in the silly ass gibberish Le Carre attributes to so many of his upper echelon spies, and frankly, though the British can be ruthless in the business, they actually back their operatives and those they have turned very well. It would be rare to sacrifice an agent casually as in Le Carre and both they and the Soviets treat defectors much better than we do.
What they do get right, Le Carre included, is that operatives, especially NOC’s often do operate in the blind, but they expect to. They don’t want to know everything, and they are given enough to ‘confess’ if interrogated to save their lives and save them from torture. No one who knew everything would ever be allowed in the field. That, and more time is spent keeping things from the public than the enemy, which is what the enemy is doing too.
You wouldn’t want civilians to ruin the game.
William LeQueux’s melodrama and E. Phillips Oppenheim’s salon and diplomat spies were both founded in more reality that Le Carre. He just happens to be on the far left of the equation, others on the far right produce equal balderdash, and the truth … There is no truth. It’s espionage. Everybody lies to everybody all the time and the way you uncover the truth is by determining which are the smaller lies.
Oddly Le Carre’s greatest fault lies in not being cynical or dubious enough to see past his own blinders. Self delusion is the deadliest enemy in the secret world. Self delusion brought down Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union. You can’t fall for your own lies, your own propaganda, your own disinformation. That’s fatal.
March 21st, 2015 at 7:54 pm
LeCarre’s huge popularity amongst certain critics may be a case of being at the right place at the right time. His big breakthrough came with the publication (1963) and film version (1965) of THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD. At about this time the Bond movies were approaching their first huge peak of success with THUNDERBALL (1965). Fleming had always received a rough ride from certain areas of the literary establishment, largely because he was pro-British/American and anti-Soviet, so the huge success of his character in the movies was a complete anathema. Smiley and co. were safely left wing and thus acceptable.
April 24th, 2015 at 6:05 am
For us Italians, the definitive Father Brown is Renato Rascel, who played the character in a series produced by the RAI (the Italian equivalent of the BBC) in 1970. (It was usual for the RAI, in those years, to broadcast detective stories, set in England, France or USA, but shot in Italy and with Italian actors.) Rascel was one of the greatest names of the Italian vaudeville and comedy, but he got success also as dramatic actor and singer; in addition to being physically perfect to impersonate the Chesterton’s character (he was five feet and two inches tall), he was excellent in showing both Father Brown’s external humor and his inner humanity. The Flambeau’s role was played by another great Italian stage actor, Arnoldo Foà .
April 24th, 2015 at 3:59 pm
Thanks for the information, Angelo. Fascinating. Not available in the US, only on Region 2 DVDs.
From YouTube, though, a sample:
February 23rd, 2016 at 3:43 pm
Many thanks to Angelou Cappelli
I am trying to track down DVDs of the fabulous Italian series but with subtitles. We viewed them here in Australia years ago on our SBS TV channel which had done the translations to English as subtitles. They were some of the most enjoyable episodes of TV I have seen. The beautiful Italian settings both inside and out contributed to the enjoyment. I would be very pleased to know if they can be found on DVD.
February 23rd, 2016 at 4:52 pm
On further investigation it seems that the Italian series I am wanting.. With English subtitles.. Is the 1988 production “Sei Delitti di Padre Brown” (the 6 Cases of Father Brown) with Emeys Jones as Father Brown. It was a great series. Very memorable. Very enjoyable. I am very keen to obtain dvds with English subtitles. I do know that TV channel SBS in Australia broadcast them there having themselves written the English subtitles. Regardless I still do not know where or how to obtain copies.
I would still be keen to obtain dvd with English subtitles of the 1970 “I Racconti di Padre Brown” (the Tales of Father Brown) with Renato Rascel.
Ideally these would be suitable for region 4 players though this might be impossible.
Many thanks to anyone who can help me on this.
January 19th, 2020 at 1:35 pm
Odd that a series pretty much condemned by all contributors here is still running as of January 2020. In the UK MarK Williams is also widely regarded for his many parts in The Fast Show – which was nice
January 19th, 2020 at 6:53 pm
You make a good point there, David. I’m going to see if one of my streaming sevices carries the series. I’m going to have to check it out for myself.
November 14th, 2020 at 12:33 pm
I have a completely different perspective on the new BBC Father Brown series. It is so popular because it speaks to a wide range of people in ways that Chesterton’s stories do not. Each should be appreciated on its own merits but from where I’m viewing, the new series offers timely comments on current issues.
My full analysis of the series can be found online: The BBC’s Father Brown Series: Moving Beyond Chesterton.
November 14th, 2020 at 3:28 pm
Pamela, Thanks for adding your perspective about the series. It’s a long essay but certainly one that anyone reading this ought to take the time to read. Here’s the link, to make it easier to find:
https://milnesmusings.wordpress.com/the-bbcs-father-brown-series-moving-beyond-chesterton/
November 14th, 2020 at 6:12 pm
Thank you Steve. It is long but there is still much more to be said.