malcp

The final (to date) episode of the TV Hornblower saga is not one of it's strongest. I'm a great fan of the books, but despite some great performances, the scale of the effects budget along with some dreadful writing, sloppy editing and a few doubtful casting choices make this a good, but never a great series. All throughout, one can't help but compare Ioan Gruffudd's, Hornblower performance to Sean Bean's Sharpe, and sadly he never quite measures up, when this is coupled with some trite dialogue, you just wish some scenes had been edited out. I'm not even sure that, had the series been made a few years later with the benefit of CGI, it would have compensated for these moments. All that said, I hope we do see some further episodes, if only to explore the potential of one of the greatest set of adventure stories ever written.

This is a very well written drama, beautifully acted with a fantastic cast set in authentic settings and must have been very expensive to produce. Why then did it fail to attract viewers and only run to four episodes. To my mind, the main failure was in allowing the English actors, playing French men and women, to speak with (presumably their own) English regional accents. While this was common in earlier films and series, here it jars with the otherwise laudable visual and plot-driven attempts at authenticity. Quite why this is so much of an issue is difficult to pinpoint, but it is very much akin to colour-blind casting and strains the credibility for viewers, particularly with only the Germans characters using their native language. It's other failing is it's music, which makes scenes of high drama overly mawkish. It is well worth watching, but deserved a far longer run.

Les Dawson was the perfect choice for this brave venture, which proved rather too bold for those more familiar with conventional TV humor of the time such as On the Buses or Doctor in the House. Akin to absurdist work such as Waiting for Godot; The Loner, though generally set in familiar, contemporary Northern settings and featuring a superficially familiar character to the one's Dawson played in Sez Les or the Les Dawson Show is an attempt at much more cerebral work. It is interesting that Charlie Drake, perhaps less revered for his comedic talent, did manage to coax an audience for The Worker, which did explore similar territory, while The Loner seems to have fallen flat on it's face. Not so much ahead of it's time, more not the kind of joke that the audience was expecting.