G.B.H. (1991)

UK
Television Mini-Series
Director: Robert Young
Writer: Alan Bleasdale
Cinematographer: Peter Jessop
Composer: Richard Harvey, Elvis Costello
Cast: Robert Lindsay, Michael Palin, Lindsay Duncan, Julie Walters, Philip Whitchurch, Andrew Schofield, Tom Georgeson, Dearbhla Molloy, Peter-Hugo Daly, David Ross, Jane Danson, Alan Igbon, Stephen Hall

This Alan Bleasdale masterpiece feels like The Angry Silence (1960) remade by way of Dickens and Fawlty Towers with a dash of Monty Python and a dollop of All the President’s Men (1976). It’s also quite, quite brilliant. Boys From the Blackstuff (1982) remains his magnum opus, but this ten hour mini-series from Channel Four, a powerful, funny, and often moving examination of political skulduggery, comes close to matching it. A bevy of beautifully drawn characters orbit around Michael Murray (Robert Lindsay), a brash leftist councillor with a skeleton in his closet, and Jim Nelson (Michael Palin), an anxious yet principled headmaster, whose lives collide and change irreparably. The performances are all good, but Lindsay, Palin and Whitchurch are particularly excellent.