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'The Vision' is a genuine curiosity and, thanks to the creative talent
assembled on both sides of the camera, a beguiling one. It was made for the
BBC's Screen Two strand (1985-98) by David Thompson,
Norman Stone and William Nicholson,
the producer-director-writer team which cut its teeth on
documentaries for the Corporation's religious broadcasting department before
moving into drama with Martin Luther, Heritic (tx. 8/11/1983) and the
award-winning Shadowlands (tx. 22/11/1985). In 1986 Thompson thought of a story
about rightwing Christian fundamentalists setting up a satellite television
network in Europe, with the aim of winning a perceived battle for the hearts,
minds and political direction of the continent.
The concept was none too fanciful. Russia under Gorbachev was being watched
with apprehension by the American right. 'Televangelists' like Jerry
Falwell and Pat Robertson - both mentioned in Nicholson's script - were bashing
their Bibles, and fattening their wallets, at peak time. In Britain, media giant
Robert Maxwell - also name-checked by Nicholson - was a looming presence. Rupert
Murdoch's Sky Channel was about to launch in Ireland. Politicians and
broadcasting authorities were being schmoozed, as was the public: there was talk
of satellite dishes being handed out for nothing to new customers. And serious
attention was being paid to some forceful women on the world and corporate
stages.
Events, and those driving them, provided a rich seam for the dramatist, one
mined so effectively by Nicholson that his lucid, intelligent and sardonic
script enticed an outstanding quartet of principal players: Lee Remick, Eileen
Atkins, Helena Bonham Carter and, at their head, Dirk Bogarde, who hadn't acted
in a BBC television drama for four decades. He gives a characteristically subtle
performance as washed-up former television presenter James 'Gentle Jim'
Marriner, who is almost literally seduced into joining the People Channel by its
cool, beautiful, obsessive, power-dressed boss, Grace Gardner (Remick).
The blessing of this production, hugely ambitious in scale and scope, is that
it never loses sight of the domestic, the quotidian. The scenes involving
Marriner's wife Helen (Atkins) and daughter Jo (Bonham Carter) are intensely
moving, and are played with a quiet discretion that makes the single eruption of
familial fury - when Jo discovers her father's infidelity from the newspapers -
all the more lacerating.
Thanks to tight direction, fine performances and a subject that resonates
once more in the wake of 2011's media scandals, 'The Vision' belies its years.
John Coldstream
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1. Looking for you (3:41)
