Alan Bennett

[Dr Amicus]

Just been looking at the BBFC's Website, and a load of Alan Bennett scripted BBC productions have been rated - seemingly for an Alan Bennett at the BBC box.

So far, the following have been through the system:

Dinner at Noon
Our Winnie
A Visit from Miss Protheroe
An Englishman Abroad
102 Boulevard Haussmann
Portrait or Bust
The Insurance Man
A Day Out
A Question of Attribution
Sunset Across the Bay
A Woman of No Importance

I saw quite a few of these about 15 years back when the BBC had a major Bennett retrospective - and they come highly recommended. Frears and Schlesinger are amongst the directors, and I know there is at least one member here who argues that they're some of Frears's best work...

[tojoed]

Alan Bennett at the BBC up for pre-order at Amazon UK. Release date 26 October 2009.

[MichaelB]

I'd hoped after the BBC's Mike Leigh blowout they'd turn their attention to Alan Bennett, and it looks like they've done it with a vengeance - this is marvellous news.

It's actually a better collection than I dared hope - it's not quite a complete survey of Bennett's fiction work for the BBC (it's odd that the Thora Hird/Julie Walters pieces Intensive Care and Say Something Happened aren't listed, or maybe the BBFC hasn't got round to them yet?), but it's certainly more extensive than I'd ever have expected. I certainly didn't expect them to include the first-person documentaries Dinner at Noon and Portrait or Bust!

I wrote many of these up for Screenonline a few years back in one of the most pleasurable research jobs I've ever been assigned to - here's A Day Out (1972), Sunset Across the Bay (1975), A Woman of No Importance (1982), An Englishman Abroad (1983), The Insurance Man (1986), Dinner at Noon (1988), Portrait or Bust (1994) and my colleague Sergio Angelini's piece on A Question of Attribution (1991). And without making any promises, the release of this set might well spur me on to cover the rest.

And hopefully Network will be inspired by this to release the six plays Bennett wrote for LWT in 1978-9, including Lindsay Anderson's notorious The Old Crowd - they've already done a sterling job on Jack Rosenthal, so there's a precedent.

Frears and Schlesinger are amongst the directors, and I know there is at least one member here who argues that they're some of Frears's best work...

That may well have been me, and I absolutely stand by it - A Day Out and Sunset Across the Bay stand comparison with anything Frears did later, and the first in particular is a little masterpiece. Low-budget BBC TV plays don't usually merit straightfaced comparisons with Renoir, but this would make a great double bill with Une Partie de Campagne. And I don't think there's any argument at all that the two Schlesinger pieces - An Englishman Abroad and A Question of Attribution - wipe the floor with anything else he did in the last 25 years of his life. (Didn't Pauline Kael once say that An Englishman Abroad was just about the most perfect hour of television she'd ever seen?)

[Dr Amicus]

It was indeed you Michael - and although it's many years since I saw these, I think I'd agree. At least in the sense that they're as good as anything Frears has done since - I'm a big admirer of a lot of Frears's work (he made an appearance in my 80s and 90s lists, and will almost certainly be there in my 00s list as well) both film and TV (although there is a substantial overlap obviously). Absolutely no quibble whatsoever re Schlesinger though - these are vastly superior to his later cinematic output.

I'm hoping the details are correct! I copied the titles from another poster over at British Film Forums and have done a quick double check on the BBFC website - apologies now if I've got anything wrong. But assuming it's accurate it's a must buy - especially at the price at the moment on Amazon of £22 (or just over £19 without VAT).

[MichaelB]

Play's selling it for £17.99. Still no confirmation of content, but with a £29.99 RRP it's safe to assume that quite a few of the above-mentioned titles will be included, even if not all of them are. And if all of them are included, this is the bargain of the decade.

[John Hodson]

Amazon.co.uk is following Play's lead and undercutting them by a penny at £17.98.

[tojoed]

According to Moviemail the set contains A Visit from Miss Prothero, Sunset Across the Bay, A Day Out, A Woman of No Importance, Our Winnie, An Englishman Abroad, Dinner at Noon, The Insurance Man, 102 Bvd Haussman, A Question of Attribution and Portrait or Bust.

Great to see An Englishman Abroad, best thing John Schlesinger ever did.

[MichaelB]

A couple of surprising omissions - where's Intensive Care, for instance? - but still an absolutely jaw-dropping bargain. And it's nice to see a couple of the documentaries included - Dinner at Noon and Portrait or Bust are little gems of quietly hilarious observation.

[Zazou dans le Metro]

A couple of surprising omissions - where's Intensive Care, for instance? - but still an absolutely jaw-dropping bargain.

Hope this does well enough to prompt a release of the 'Six plays by Bennett' series which includes stand outs from Dave Allen in One Fine Day and Alan Armstrong in A Day on the Sands

[MichaelB]

A couple of surprising omissions - where's Intensive Care, for instance? - but still an absolutely jaw-dropping bargain.

Hope this does well enough to prompt a release of the 'Six plays by Bennett' series which includes stand outs from Dave Allen in One Fine Day and Alan Armstrong in A Day on the Sands

Already mentioned several posts above. Network would have the rights - and they've done some pretty decent packages of other writers (Jack Rosenthal springs to mind), so it's certainly a possibility.

On the other hand, Intensive Care is a BBC production, along with Rolling Home, Marks and Say Something Happened - and I can't see that quartet being released separately, so it's a shame they weren't included. Oddly enough, two more plays from that 1982 series are included - Our Winnie and A Woman of No Importance.

[Dr Amicus]

It looks like my original list was accurate - which makes this a bargain if you can find it for £17.99.

[MichaelB]

I've managed to get my hands on a set of checkdiscs of Alan Bennett at the BBC - so here are initial findings.

The set is spread across four discs as follows:

Disc One
A Day Out (1972)
Sunset Across the Bay (1975)
A Visit From Miss Prothero (1978)

Disc Two
Our Winnie (1982)
A Woman of No Importance (1982)
An Englishman Abroad (1983)

Disc Three
The Insurance Man (1986)
Dinner At Noon (1988)
102 Boulevard Haussmann (1990)

Disc Four
A Question of Attribution (1991)
Portrait or Bust (1994)
Extras

Unless there's a booklet in the package (I only have the discs), there are just two extras, but they add up to nearly an hour of new Bennett material. The first is a nearly 40-minute illustrated interview in which Bennett reminisces in detail about working on the plays and with various people (Patricia Routledge, Coral Browne and longterm producer Innes Lloyd in particular). I particularly liked his account of visiting various sets and ending up as an unofficial Northern dialect coach ("I don't think I ever attained the status of having a car sent for me, so I just used to turn up"), but the whole thing is studded with similarly self-deprecating gems.

The second extra is a set of individual introductions, which can be watched either before each play or in a single 20-minute clump on disc four. They're pretty brief, typically around two minutes apiece, but they're an utter delight (I've watched them all) - anyone familiar with Bennett's diaries will recognise the tone immediately. For An Englishman Abroad, for instance, he riffs on the possibility of Guy Burgess living long enough to return to England as a harmless old man, where "he would have gone on chat shows, been a guest on Desert Island Discs and dined out all over London. In England, you only have to be able to eat a boiled egg at ninety, and they think you deserve the Nobel Prize". Everything (including the extras) also gets optional HOH subtitles and up to half a dozen chapter stops apiece.

As for technical quality... well, they're inescapably sourced from either 16mm film or one-inch analogue PAL videotape, but with that proviso I think they look about as good as can realistically be expected. They certainly seem slightly sharper than the Beta SP transfers I watched a few years ago when covering Bennett for Screenonline. Aspect ratios are of course 4:3, as they all should be. My only niggle is that I wish the entire package had been in 4:3 - annoyingly, the new material is all in anamorphic 16:9. This isn't a particularly major issue with the intros (though some players might jump slightly as they adjust from 16:9 to 4:3), but the clips accompanying the interview are either cropped or - criminally - stretched to 16:9. This isn't an especially big deal either, as they're very brief and presented correctly in their original context, but it's annoying nonetheless. (Of course, the stretched clips might be fixed between checkdisc and retail version).

But that aside, this is even more of a bargain than I originally thought, especially at the pre-order price.

[GaryC]

Thanks for that, Michael. I have this on pre-order and I'm looking forward to receiving it at the end of the month.

[GaryC]

My copy has arrived and I can confirm there is no booklet. The region coding is unusual - Discs One and Three are dual-encoded R2/4 while Discs Two and Four are both R0.

One minor niggle is that the main menu on each disc has the individual titles and subtitles on/off as mid-grey on black unless you highlight each item, and I found it hard to read.

[Jonathan S]

Perhaps as a companion to this DVD set, BBC Audio has released a CD of the surviving audio tracks from Bennett's wiped TV sketch series On the Margin. As I mentioned in another thread, this was originally issued decades ago as a commercial LP record (presumably before the videotapes were erased).

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