The Glittering Prizes

Totally engrossing series. Excellent cast, with a young Tom Conti particularly outstanding. Many mini-series have since come and gone, but very few match it in quality or in hauntingly evoking an era. A masterpiece.

None of the British mini-series that found their way across the Atlantic stand as a greater achievement than "The Glittering Prizes." Not "I: Claudius," not "Brideshead Revisited," none of them.

Frederic Raphael's script strikes just the right combination of warmth and acidity with a note of genuineness that we don't always associate with this writer. The performances are uniformly apt. Many of the young cast would go on to solid careers, yet few of them would ever give greater performances than they do here.

Undoubtedly the TV technology of the period may appear quaint, but that certainly hasn't held back "I, Claudius." I have seen this series again since the first American run in 1977, so I'm not relying only on dim memory. The writing and acting still hold up.

So many of these mini-series are really second-rate, sometimes dreary, but that's what average means, average. "The Glittering Prizes" is among a handful of really great pieces of television, and we are waiting impatiently for the BBC to complete excavation of the archives and place this wondrous series before a new generation of viewers.

Over six episodes, vaguely connected, we follow a group of Cambridge students from their time at university in the 1950s to resignation in the 1970s. The glittering prizes of the title might be the trappings of academia, or simply success, children, or a sense of self.

Nominal star is Tom Conti, as a character perhaps based on the writer Frederic Raphael himself, touchy about his religion but not really caring about the Jewish traditions, seeking success and glory but staring failure in the face - although he only really appears in episodes 1, 3, and 6. On the fringes are other actors like a very young Nigel Havers, as a gay man sent down for indecency; Mark Wing-Davey, as a narcissistic David Frost-type producer director seduced by the bright lights of Hollywood; Malcolm Stoddard, not marrying for love but fond of the quiet life, and in one episode only, Dinsdale Landen as a boozy, cynical flirt bored with his minor university and his ordinary unchallenging wife who he remains 'academically' faithful to.

Like most 1970s productions, scenes studio-bound have an air of fake about them, while filmed inserts are showing their age. And in the cast there's a surprise or two - look for Spandau Ballet's Martin Kemp as a gangly schoolboy. The dialogue shows its age in places, too, but in the main it is good, though wordy.

Just don't expect a real storyline, or closure for the characters, and you might well enjoy this nine hour series.

This series, which ran on PBS in the '70s, was written by award-winning screenwriter and novelist Frederic Raphael. It follows a group of Cambridge students from the 50's through to the 70's. Several of them are thinly-disguised versions of their real-life counterparts. For example, Tom Conti plays Adam Morris, an aspiring Jewish novelist (presumably Raphael himself) and Mark Wing-Davey (of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy) plays Mike Clode (obviously David Frost.) A wonderful analysis of life in England from the post-war period through to the Swinging '70s. Shamefully, this series has never been released on video.

The script's the star of this sprawling six-part series from Frederic Raphael: probing, caustic and matchlessly witty, particularly in the two most successful episodes, the Brideshead-esque 'An Early Life' and the frankly outlandish 'A Past Life', which features Eric Porter as a fascist sympathiser. The acting is variable (Tom Conti's bravura central performance is the obvious standout), the worldview sometimes unsavoury and the penultimate episode has passages that really drag, but it's a work touched with a rare brilliance and the dialogue is simply spectacular. I picked it up after hearing Nigel Havers (who has a small but memorable role) say it was the best script he'd ever read.