User Reviews

'Mr. King' ( the late Thomas Baptiste ) intends to retire and leave Britain to return to his native Jamaica. Over an expensive dinner, he tells his daughters 'Susan' ( Ella Wilder ) and 'Linda' ( Josette Simon ) he plans on leaving them his London house. They are both delighted. Then trouble begins. He proposes a toast to Britain, a country he believes has been good to him. Susan is a NHS nurse and has seen first hand what government cutbacks ( Thatcher was in power at the time ) are doing to ordinary people. She refuses to join the toast. Her father becomes angry. She storms out of the restaurant. King then decides to leave his home entirely to Linda. So this family get-together is turning sour, and its not over yet...

This 'Play For Today' was shown only once on the BBC ( in 1984 ) and never repeated. I found it on You Tube ( along with others in the same series ) and was delighted to find it has lost none of its power. It starts out with everyone celebrating King's retirement but, as the evening progresses, the daughters' true feelings about their father emerge. The performances are excellent. Josette Simon's comes as a revelation to anyone who knows her from 'Blake's 7' ( she played gun-toting 'Dayna Mellanby' ). The script was by the late Barrie O'Keefe, who wrote the excellent Bob Hoskins movie 'The Long Good Friday'. Towering over the production is Thomas Baptiste. This fine actor's death a few years ago went largely unreported. If you are interested in strong, intelligent drama, 'King' will definitely not disappoint.

At first I wasn't sure what to expect. Barrie Keefe's drama starts with historic footage of Jamaicans arriving, literally "fresh off the boat," in England after World War II. This cuts to the present day (1984) where Mr. King (Thomas Baptiste) is being honored by his company for many years of faithful service on the day he is retiring. He gets a lovely watch for his troubles.

The story then cuts to one of Mr. King's daughters, a hard-working nurse named Susan (Ella Wilder). She puts her patients first, in the same way she puts her father first. A short time later we meet Mr. King's other daughter, Linda (Josette Simon). She is the polar opposite of Susan. She doesn't work and uses a wealthy boyfriend (Clarke Peters) to get by and put on airs.

That evening Mr. King takes both his daughters to dinner. Linda's rich boyfriend joins them. It's clear that Mr. King is a man of old-fashioned long-standing traditions; and that he loves his daughters as much as he loved his late wife. But he also loves England a great deal.

While watching this program, I was compelled to read up on the Jamaican diaspora. There's a wiki page on the subject. Supposedly, many Jamaicans left the Caribbean in the post-war years due to a high rate of unemployment, traveling to the U. K., Canada and the U. S. in search of jobs and a better life. In the U. K., there was a need for working class laborers that came from other countries. Mr. King's background mirrors this, and we get speeches from him at dinner about how he received a second chance in life coming to England. He made a success of himself and he always supported his family.

The conflict in this drama is that Mr. King wants to return to Jamaica, and he's going to leave the house he owns free and clear to his daughters. However, he is pained to see that his daughters may not share his values- especially materialistic Linda. Susan supports herself with her job at the hospital and doesn't want the house, thinking her dad should keep it in case he wants to come back. This offends Mr. King's pride and dinner ends in a fight. Mr. King ends up disinheriting Susan. Back at the house, he signs the property over to money-hungry Linda who intends to sell it and make a tidy little profit.

Of course Mr. King realizes, too late, he cut the wrong daughter out of his life. He goes to find Susan at the hospital. We get a poignant reconciliation, even though Linda has still "won" and is selling the house.

This is a think-piece that makes you ponder what legacies are all about...and more importantly, what a life's work amounts to. Will the next generation appreciate these struggles and hard-won victories and what has been handed down to them?