User Reviews

I was lucky enough to attend a screening of this 'lost' classic and was very much impressed by it.

From the start this is a tense film. Nigel Kneale drops you straight into the confusion of a military cordon surrounding the London embassy of the recently independent Republic of Makang. Kneale gives us little explanation, leaving us to piece together what is happening ourselves.

The incessant honking of car horns and chaos outside the embassy - the modern world, where the Prime Minister (Andrews) is trying to get a handle on the situation, makes a startling contrast to the peace and quiet inside the building. In the cellar, a crude thermonuclear device has been constructed and is being used to hold London to ransom by the Ambassador (Maxwell) and President (Wolfe).

Two performances really stand out here. Andrews' gruff and level headed Prime Minister and Maxwell's dignified and decent Ambassador. The confrontation between them brings out powerful performances from both: Andrews tries reason and threats of nuclear retaliation - Maxwell calmly and believably explains his love of his homeland and its people, pillaged of their resources by the British and forced to conform to ways of 'modern' living instead of the old ways which are their own - Andrews realises he cannot win.

The wild card is Wolfe's splendidly unhinged President, who is fuelled less by a love of his people than by a deep hatred of the British. This hatred leads to the film's final sequence, an incredibly tense showdown in the cellar, between the old ways of the Ambassador and the modern world of the President. The film ends as unexplained as it begins, relying on us to read what we will from the expression on the dead Ambassador's face.

Nigel Kneale's reputation amongst fans of cult television rests primarily on his classic work for the BBC, including his legendary adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Quatermass serials, The Stone Tape and The Year of the Sex Olympics, he wrote many other works, some lesser known. Amongst these are a handful of one-off plays he wrote for various ITV anthology programs after turning his back on the BBC, and amongst these is 'The Crunch', released on home media in 2017 by Network On Air alongside a pair of other Kneale-penned rarities.

Broadcast as an episode of ITV's Studio '64 (itself a season of Drama 61-67), The Crunch sees Nigel Kneale tapping into both the nuclear paranoia of the 1960s and lingering colonial guilt, as the ambassador from a former colony - the fictional Makang - announces that he has a nuclear bomb in the basement of his country's London embassy. Demanding reparations for the resources taken from his country when it was part of the British Empire, the ambassador threatens to detonate it if his ransom deadline is not met. The result is tense and gripping, as the British Prime Minister Goddard is forced to agree to ambassador Ken's terms and reluctantly prepares to hand over the money, only for Makang's insane President Jimsen to renege on the deal and decide that he's going to consign London to nuclear Armageddon regardless.

Always an intelligent and thoughtful writer, Kneale packs plenty of interesting material into play's roughly fifty-minute run time. The nuclear bomb might invoke the fears of the viewing public of the time, but what he's really interested in here is exploring Britain's often strained relationship with its former colonies, proving Kim and Jimsen with some pointed dialogue that highlights the sins of the British Empire without shying away from or glossing over them. The highlight of the film is the scenes between Goddard and Ken, as Ken demands a ransom of money equivalent to the amount of tin removed from Makang under British rule. Goddard arrogantly replies that the people of Makang had no need of it, and angrily asks "did you learn nothing from us?" Goddard's fiery rage is met by Ken's cold fury at what has been done to his country and his people by its former conquerors, and his condemnation of Britain's subsequent high-handed, patronising attitude.

Unfortunately, it does work entirely as well as it should, for two main reasons. The first is that the vaguely Oriental Makangians are played by European actors (Maxwell Shaw as Ken and Wolfe Morris as Jimson) in make-up that is akin to blackface and dates the production like nothing else. Maxwell gives an excellent, understated performance as the intelligent, icily restrained ambassador, but he still looks like a white actor in dodgy make-up. Morris's volatile President fares little better. The second problem is that for the intelligence of Kneale's script for most of the episode, he rather undermines it with an ending that takes 'The Crunch' into the realms of fantasy for which he is better known, as Ken changes into traditional Makang dress and uses ill-defined Eastern Mysticism to stop Jimsen from committing mass murder. It's such a dated and clumsy stereotype that it's really quite embarrassing. It also doesn't help that turning Jimsen into a frothing megalomaniac gives the (probably inaccurate) impression that Kneale's opinion is that former colonies always end up being run by power-mad dictators.

Nevertheless, on balance 'The Crunch' just about works. Ken's sudden transformation into a magician aside, the characterisation is up to Kneale's usual standard, and Harry Andrew's bullish, brave Prime Minister Goddard is a great character, who rather wonderfully refuses to leave on the grounds that replacing a Prime Minister is easy but that replacing London would be impossible. Andrews gives a very believable performance, as do the other actors including Anthony Bushell, who as in Kneale's Quatermass and the Pit proves well cast as an army officer. Kneale's script ensures that even the minor characters are convincing, from Peter Bowles Captain Buckley, through Cark Bernard's cowardly drunken Makang "expert" Lovell, to such minor characters as Cyril Renison's Milkman.

Director Michael Elliott captures the tense atmosphere immediately, with an unnerving constant background sound of car horns, signifying the fact that London has been brought to a standstill. He also combines the Paddington location filming with the studio sequences impressively well, whilst juggling a large cast and genuine army soldiers. There's also some nice camerawork, with tracking shots and close-ups used for dramatic effect.

Flawed though it is, 'The Crunch' remains an effective slice of television drama and a must for fans of Nigel Kneale's work. With a little more care taken to avoid racial stereotyping (which is especially jarring given the condemnation of British colonial policy) and the ill-advised fantasy elements at the end, it would probably be as highly regarded as his work for the BBC.