Leeandkate

. . . almost. The BBC's new six-part serialisation fails to answer the basic question, Who is Alan Clark? We all know his public persona, the flamboyant, outspoken, womanising Conservative MP - but that's all we get here. The series starts with his election victory in 1983, but it's not made clear whether this is a re-election or his first time in Government. His past remains a mystery, with no clue as to how he's gotten where he is apart from a few reminiscences of sexual conquests past.

John Hurt did criticise the speed of filming and the budget, and it's easy to see why. Every set is claustrophobic and bare, Clark seems to inhabit his own little world in which people come and go without really making much impression. Is this meant to give us some idea of his mental state, or is it just filming on the cheap? There's certainly very little period detail beyond his secretary's clothes and hair.

Ultimately it comes down to casting. John Hurt is perfect as Clark (as is Jenny Agutter as his wife Jane), but if it were all down to nothing but imitation then Alan Clark might as well have been immortalised in a one-man show, something along the lines of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads.

Short film which focuses in close-up on a reclining woman's face for its entirety. Occasionally her hand appears in the frame as she draws on a cigarette. And after about five minutes it's pretty obvious what she's doing. To herself, if you get my meaning. There's no soundtrack apart from a background hum, not even her (heavy) breathing. Typical 60's experimental short film, really; is it trying to tell us anything? Apart from "this is what a woman looks like when she has an orgasm?" What if she was faking it?

While the plot and characters are as described above, two things puzzle me. The film's title, for one - at no point is this a battle of the sexes, the fact that protagonist and antagonist are of differing gender matters little until Mr. Martin's clumsy attempts at murder are mistaken for seduction by his intended victim.

And then there's the coda of the piece, where a voice-over suggests that maybe Mr. Martin has won the battle, but may lose the war, as Mrs. Barrows' tears stir something within him. The entire sequence feels tacked-on, and the American accent of the v/o artist (Sam Wanamaker) suggests the film, extolling as it does traditional values over modern ways, perhaps wouldn't play well in the progress-obsessed 1950's America, and was hastily re-branded as a quirky sex comedy. Incorrect though such an assumption may be, it does leave one wondering. . .