james-1455

My wife and I saw Breakfast on Pluto in Cambridge. We were slightly apprehensive as generally the critics in the UK hadn't liked it. But we needn't have worried as it is a generally enjoyable and heartwarming film, where villains such as terrorists and bent coppers are villains and perhaps occasional heroes to make them more human. One of the criticisms is that the film is a series of episodes, but then that is how it has been filmed.

For those who like to know locations, the hospital is St. Ann's in Tottenham, which is a geriatric and mental hospital. Previously all our memories of the place were rotten ones.

Warren Mitchell is one of mine! Or should I say he was brought up in North London and he went to the other good school in the borough, Southgate County. He is not the uneducated oaff, Alf Garnett, but a grammar school boy of a more Jewish origin than me.

So strangely in So You Think You've Got Troubles, Warren Mitchell was playing someone closer to his real self than any of his other roles.

I'm certain the BBC was worried about it and they only ever showed this excellent series once and then late at night. It probably got closer to the truth in Ulster than anything else at the time. Warren's musings on the nature of a God that had left him a widower were quite profound.

A few years ago, I spoke to one of the writer's on a BBC phone-in and said how much I'd liked the series. He said that he'd thought it was one of their best and I got the impression that he thought the BBC had done it less than justice.

If you ever get a chance to see the series, then do!

The Password is Courage was made for International Refugee Year in 1959 and I seem to remember that was why Dirk Bogarde did the film. At the time I was living in East Anglia (as I do now) and reports of the filming were shown on the local news. There was also an interview with Charlie Coward, who was then a bookmaker.

I think that a lot of the shaky locations were due to the limited budget, but I thoroughly enjoyed the film at the time. I also saw it at Liverpool University in the 60's, where it was put in its historical context and it stood up well.

Lose the reasons for making it and the truth behind it and I suspect it could become a very poor film.