All the King's Men (TV programme)

Infobox Film
name = All the King's Men
image_size = 200px
caption = DVD cover
director = Julian Jarrold
producer = Gareth Neame
writer = Alma Cullen
narrator =
starring = David Jason,
Maggie Smith,
David Troughton
music = Adrian Johnston
cinematography = David Odd
editing = Chris Gill
distributor = BBC
released = UK
runtime = 110 min
country = UK / USA
language = English
budget =
gross =
website =
imdb_id = 0220969:"For film adaptations of the American novel, see All the King's Men."

All the King's Men is a feature-length World War I drama by the BBC starring David Jason, first broadcast on Remembrance Sunday, 14 November 1999. The film is based on a book by the film's co-producer, Nigel McCrery. It derives its title from a line in the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme.

Plot

It is based on the story of the 1/5th (Territorial) Battalion of the Norfolk Regiment which included men from the King's estate at Sandringham House. The battalion suffered heavy losses in action at Gallipoli on 12 August 1915 and a myth grew up later that the unit had advanced into a mist and simply disappeared. [ [http://user.online.be/%7Esnelders/sand.htm The Vanished Battalion] ] The film dramatises these events, the origins of the myth back home, and a royal investigator sent after the war to find the truth about the unit's fate. This fate is depicted as being taken prisoner by the Turkish Army and then massacred, for which the drama was criticised by a relative, but was largely accurately protrayed. [ [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/524337.stm BBC News | Entertainment | King's Men ending 'distasteful' ] ]

Executions

The book itself only hints at the possibility that a proportion of those who died were "executed". The Reverend Pierrepoint Edwards, who discovered the mass grave was reported to have let slip, much later, in a private conversation that the bodies he'd found had been shot in the head. The veracity of that claim is left up in the air, the suggestion being it was never made public at the time to protect the feelings of the King and Queen and relatives of the deceased. There is stronger evidence though in the form of the account of one survivor, (Private Arthur Webber of the Yarmouth Company), taken prisoner during the battle. He was wounded to the head and claimed to have both heard other wounded being bayonetted and shot by Turkish soldiers and been attacked in the same fashion himself. Ironically he was saved by a German officer. In addition at least one officer was seen being taken prisoner during the battle but for whatever reason he never turned up as a P.o.W. and was never heard from again. However, the suggestion in the book is that, based on evidence from the time, the Turkish soldiers struggled with the concept of taking prisoners as opposed to a deliberate extermination policy. The Germans are said to have had problems getting the Turks to understand that they needed enemy troops alive for intelligence information.

The film does go quite a way beyond the book in the way it portrays a larger group of men taken prisoner being deliberately executed. This is both questionable in terms of the portrayal of the Turks and in terms of recognising the fight the troops put up. From the accounts of the time, as related in the original book, it would seem that far from being tamely slaughtered as prisoners, most of the men who died did so in heavy fighting, either being killed outright or dying from the wounds suffered. The unit had advanced way beyond any other unit in the line and as a consequence had actually found themselves some distance behind the still otherwise intact Turkish lines. Ultimately a group of anything up to 200 men had been surrounded at a farm house and wiped out during the ensuing fighting. In the fate of Captain Beck the film makes assumptions as well. The last sighting of Captain Beck was by one of the survivors, who saw him slumped under a tree with his head to one side, some time before the end of the battle. They couldn't be sure that he wasn't already dead at that point.

Production

Filming occurred at Sandringham, on the North Norfolk Railway and elsewhere in Norfolk, with Andalucia in Spain serving as Gallipoli.

Reception

David Jason won Best Actor in the TV Quick Awards for his performance. [ [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/910246.stm BBC News | ENTERTAINMENT | Ali G takes top TV award ] ]

The rendition of the Norfolk dialect in the film was one of the instances that led to the creation of the Friends of the Norfolk Dialect to preserve and promote the proper recreation of it. [ http://www.norfolkdialect.com/update.htm ]

Cast

Principals

*David Jason - Captain Frank Beck, the Sandringham estate manager
*David Troughton - George V
*Maggie Smith - Queen Alexandra

Other

*William Ash - Sgt. Ted Grimes
*Sonya Walger - Lady Frances
*Stuart Bunce - 2nd Lt. Frederick Radley
*James Murray - Pvt. Will Needham
*Ed Waters - Cpl. Herbert Batterbee
*Tom Burke - Pvt. Chad Batterbee
*Ben Crompton - Pvt. Davy Croft
*Eamon Boland - Arthur Beck
*Jo Stone-Fewings - Lt. Alec Beck
*James Hillier - 2nd Lt. Evelyn Beck
*Emma Cunniffe - Peggy Batterbee
*Adam Kotz - Oswald Yeoman
*Patrick Malahide - Capt. Claude Howlett
*Gaye Brown - Queen Mary
*Phyllis Logan - Mary Beck
*Ian McDiarmid - Revd. Pierrepoint Edwards
*Danny Worters - Pvt. George Dacre
*Laurence Dobiesz - Luke Grimes
*Roland Oliver - Mr. Adams
*Jamie Beddard - Roland Adams
*Patrick Burke - Publican
*Francis Magee - Able seaman
*William Hoyland - Lt. Col. Proctor Beauchamp
*Jenny Dewsbury and Steve Davidson - Sandringham villagers
*Nicholas Haverson - Private at station
*Chris Fox - Corporal at station
*Darren Tighe - Cpl. Lloyd
*Roger Morlidge - Private in pub
*Daisy Gough - Princess Mary
*Heather Tobias - Mrs. Batterbee
*Jasper Jacob - German doctor
*Oliver Haden - Kamal Demiriz
*Ben Shockley - Neil Marklew

Crew

*Gareth Neame - producer
*Ruth Maturuas - associate producer
*Nigel McCrery - co-producer
*Rebecca Eaton, Hilary Salmon, Jane Tranter - executive producers
*Original Music by Adrian Johnston
*Cinematography by David Odd
*Film Editing by Chris Gill
*Casting by Maureen Duff and Gail Stevens

References

External links

* [http://www.khakidevil.co.uk/All%20The%20King's%20Men.html Costumes for the drama]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/510000/audio/_511491_story.ram Interview with Jason (audio file)]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/511491.stm BBC News, "Jason's heroic endeavour"]
* [http://www.roll-of-honour.com/Norfolk/Sandringham.html Sandringham War Memorial]
* [http://www.iwm.org.uk/upload/package/2/gallipoli/pdf_files/azmak.pdf Account of the attack from the Imperial War Museum]