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TV ONLINE EPISODE GUIDE
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Director : Philip Saville Script : Philip Martin Cast : (Dinah Carmichael), Paul Satbendar (Kuldip), Paul Barber (Malleson), Paul Antrim (Dermot Macavoy), Goutam Choudhury (The Servant), Graham Weston (Billy Rawlinson), Gordon Bilboe (Tommy Rawlinson), Tariq Yunus (Jashir Singh Mahall), Hans Mater (Van Der Staay), Alan Towers (The Interviewer), Romi Arora (Mangit), Bunny Johnson and Larry Brown (Rawlinson's Accomplices), Teon Terroll (The West Indian Schoolboy), Rolf Day and Mohammed Ashiq (The Comedians), Ethel Coley, Joanna White and Earlene Bentley (The Singing Group) and Marie Dali (Sandra). Publicity : Second City Fists - Thursday's play, directed by Philip Savile, is set in the underworld of Birmingham and pulls no punches in its presentation of a brutal lifestyle. Saville talked to Bernard Davies about the wider thinking behind the play, and the issues it raises: Director Philip Saville has never before made a thriller, a shocker, a play about physical violence, so Gangsters is a new departure. It is a story of revenge - a story which progressively tightens the screw of excitement until it finally explodes into violent purgation as stylised as the last-reel shoot-out in a Western. You can accept it at this level if you wish, but there is much more in it. There is the smell of a corrupting civilisation, of organised vice, of organised exploitation. There is a hint of the difficulties which arise in a multi-racial society. "Much in Eastern society and in Eastern thought," says Saville, "attracts our young people - its emphasis on the spiritual, its respect for life, its detachment. But what does Western metropolitan society offer the immigrant Easterner in return? Affluence, though in a subordinate role in society? The weakning of cultural, social, and religious bonds? In the literal sense of the word, disorientation? The play is set in Birmingham, but Saville does not suggest that the social and moral problems illustrated in the play are unique to Birmingham. The "second city" more or less chose itself as a location, partly because dramatist Philip Martin - and Saville himself - find its atmosphere almost electrically exciting, and partly because of the vigorous drama now coming out of BBC Birmingham. "One of the best things that happened to me," says Saville, "was to work in the Birmingham studios". Philip Martin, an actor as well as a dramatist, spent three months in Birmingham researching Gangsters, and was surprised to find himself cast in a leading part. Saville is excited about his performance, and about that of Maurice Colbourne, the other male lead. "This young actor," he says of Colbourne, "plays an intensely physical and strenuous part. He has a quality of velvety menace that I find remarkable". The cast also includes two new discoveries by Saville: Elizabeth Cassidy and Tania Rogers. Both girls have strong and important scenes to which they rise splendidly. When I talked to Saville, I put into words what, perhaps, many viewers will think when they have seen Gangsters: should we see so much violence on our screens? He pondered the question. "I can only speak for this play," he says. "Although it comes wrapped up as a thriller, I think it is still a legitimate exploration of the animal aspects of our society as distinct from the cerebral. There are several causes of contemporary violence. One is the response of young people to a machine-ridden world - then they try to take society by the throat, crying `Look at me! Recognise me! I am a person!'. Other causes, like greed, envy, corruption, are as old as Cain and Abel, but are made worse by our social conditions. Some of these causes, some of these conditions, are illustrated in Gangsters; I do not claim that the play explains violence, still less that it explains it away, but I believe it shows violence as an end-product of human failure - my failure, your failure. Have you noticed," continues Saville, "how curiously reluctant television is to drag itself into the 1970s? It is constantly harking back - to the Second World War, to the 1930s, to the 1920s, to the First World War, to the worlds of Upstairs, Downstairs, of Trollope, or Henry James. Gangsters is at least a play about the 1970s and the problems of the 1970s - violence, corruption, race, and the rest. And I believe that drama, far more powerfully and far more vividly than news items or documentary, can bring these problems to life and put them in their perspective. Put them, indeed, in our laps". Philip Saville is a man of ideas. When you meet him casually, you are impressed by his courteous charm which makes you think you are the one person he has ever wanted to meet. But at heart Saville is a loner, and his solitude is that of the anehorite: a still centre in the midst of busyness; it gives him a certain detachment that is almost oriental; it also gives him the empathy necessary to a creative artist dealing with other people and other people's works. He would like to direct a serial, because the serial, with its well-established characters and its recurring themes, can set up a closer rapport with the viewer than is sometimes possible with the one-off play. He is looking at new methods of researching and presenting dramatic truth - methods which might include animation, cartoon, film, live action, and a host of special effects. "I would like to see the television studio used as a technical warehouse of electronic and other effects in a new approach to television drama. Monty Python's Flying Circus was a breakthrough in the communication of comic and satirical ideas; I see no reason why a new `total theatre' should not come out of the television studio". (Radio Times, January 2, 1975 - Article by Bernard Davies). Synopsis : Blackmail, extortion, drug-peddling and the "Blackbird Run" of illegal immigrants to the West Midlands … How involved is Rafiq, the respected Indian community leader? Rawlinson, the nightclub owner? In this hard adventure story, released prisoner John Kline comes up against his old enemies - the gangsters. This is Kline, just out of prison. In tonight's action-packed Play For Today, he finds himself on one face of a violent triangle with the police and the Birmingham mob on the other two sides. Notes : This episode was originally transmitted 9:25pm to 11:15pm.
Director : Alastair Reid Script : Philip Martin Cast : Beverley Taylor, Oscar James, Oswald Lindsay, Earlene Bentley, Ethel Coley, Joanna White, Rolf Day, Aly Khan, Ralph Lawton, Peter Simpson, June Bolton, John Main, Terry Downes and Tariq Yunus. Publicity : Gangsters Of Boom Town 1976: The Midlands aren't what they used to be. The "provincial" tag has lost its drowsy overtone. "Just look at the Birmingham skyline," says David Rose, producer of the new six-part crime serial, Gangsters. "Look at the tower blocks, the mixture of races in the streets. There's a difference in the air. It's edgy, electric. We're in Boom Town 1976. That's the feeling of excitement and suspense we want to convey". He's emphatic that Gangsters - which deals with gang-wars, the smuggling of drugs and immigrants and the prostitution racket - is not Birmingham-based. "It's not about one city. It is symptomatic of any big Midlands town". But Birmingham is where the story began. "I invited writer Philip Martin to join the BBC script department at Birmingham where I'd gone to develop regional drama and told him to look around for three months to see if he could find a subject which interested him. He walked the streets and talked to the police and visited the clubs and at the end of it he wrote his play, Gangsters. It ended with the death of Rawlinson, a gang-leader and night-club owner and John Kline, a visiting villain from London, waiting to be charged with his manslaughter. The series, also called Gangsters, takes the story from there. Unexpectedly set free, he's approached by Khan, a Pakistani undercover agent working for one of the security services. Kline, he suggests, could help him penetrate the white underworld". Rose believes in rooting his thrillers in actuality. "Not only in incidents. The regions in which they're set also give them a special flavour". He was the founding father of Z-Cars - set in Lancashire - and ran the programme for four years. Softly, Softly transferred the action to Bristol and Task Force moved on to the Medway. "One of the jobs of regional drama is to develop new writers and new actors," says Rose. "I also think it's vital to strike up an association with regional theatres. Birmingham Repertory, for instance, put on Trinity Tales, a play by Alan Plater best-known for his television work, with Bill Maynard and Francis Matthews. And the play was then adapted for television: that kind of contact is helpful to us all". Gangsters, he thinks, represents a breakthrough in several directions. "It must be the first ever television series to have a Pakistani hero. He's played by Ahmed Khalil. Kline, his reluctant accomplice, is played by Maurice Colbourne. Certainly it's violent and the language is a good deal tougher than you'd have heard on television, say, five years ago. But we're reproducing life. I have to rely on twenty years' experience to judge what is suitable and what isn't. I'm not in business to titillate or offend anyone". The violence in the series is frequently stylised, he says: "Almost to the point of resembling pop art. It's gaudy and brash, the stuff of entertainment". There's a literally smashing climax to the first episode in which Kline and Khan are trapped in a derelict building by West Indian gangsters who plan to do them in by demolishing the house with a massive steel ball and chain. The ball swings towards the crumbling bolt-hole. The image freezes and the caption rolls "To be continued next week …". Batman and Robin have rarely found themselves in tighter spots. At the same time, says Rose, Gangsters, with its cast of strippers and punters, rogues and racketeers, have been filmed with a rare feeling for atmosphere. "We've used a hand-held electronic camera which can go wherever an actor can go. It's increased the pace and fluidity enormously". What pleases him most is the veracity of the series. "We make no distinction between races or colours. The heroes and villains are black, brown and white just as you'd expect them to be". Best of all, he adds: "There's hardly a policeman in sight". (Radio Times, September 4, 1976). Synopsis : Rawlinson is dead. The smooth running of the underworld has been interrupted. In the Asian, West Indian and white communities the gangsters search for a new leader. Why do the police choose this moment to release John Kline, a strong contender for Rawlinson's job?. Notes : The series was originally transmitted 9:55pm to 10:45pm.
Director : Alastair Reid Script : Philip Martin Cast : Oscar James, Oswald Lindsay, Milo Sperber, June Bolton, Tariq Yunus, John Main, Terry Downes, Marie Dali, Rolf Day, Trevor Butler, Joyce Grundy, Paul Stathan and Heather Barrett. Synopsis : Kline and Khan have barely seconds to act as Malleson prepares to bring the house down.
Director : Alastair Reid Script : Philip Martin Cast : Oscar James, Oswald Lindsay, John Main, Terry Downes, Rolf Day, Talat Hussain, June Bolton, Tariq Yunus, Peter Fontaine, Chris Gannon, Terry Taplin and Pat Roach. Synopsis : A missing consignment of heroin, an abandoned railway station. Surveying the scene are Rafiq, the sophisticated gangster, and Khan, the double agent. How will Kline escape the factions ranged against him at the Battle of Snow Hill?
Director : Viktors Ritelis Script : Philip Martin Cast : Chris Gannon, Terry Taplin, Pat Roach, June Bolton, Tariq Yunus, Oswald Lindsay, Oscar James, Rolf Day, Marie Dali, Ena Cabayo, Paul Satvender, Christopher Benjamin, Peter Fontaine and Talat Hussain. Synopsis : On the top of a modern skyscraper block, there is a general falling out of friends. Can John Kline avoid execution at the hands of three gunmen? What is the extent of his partner Dermot Macavoy's treachery?
Director : Kenneth Ives Script : Philip Martin Cast : Robert Stephens, Oswald Lindsay, Oscar James, Christopher Benjamin, Mikel Lambert, June Bolton, Tariq Yunus, Earlene Bentley, Ethel Coley, Joanna White, Rolf Day and Kristopher Kum. Synopsis : A bullet from Sarah Gant's gun shatters John Kline's temporary belief in ghosts. Why has Sarah, the elegant New Yorker, lured him to a secret rendezvous? What is her connection with the dead Dinah Carmichael - the beautiful stripper?
Director : Kenneth Ives Script : Philip Martin Cast : Robert Stephens, Tariq Yunus, June Bolton, Dona Croll, Oscar James, Mikel Lambert, Oswald Lindsay, Aly Khan, John Abineri and Christopher Benjamin. Synopsis : John Kline keeps his head above water as Khan plunges into the deep end. Who is head of the secret consortium? How close is Kline to learning his identity? Can Khan's death end Kline's influence in high places?
Director : Alastair Reid Script : Philip Martin Cast : Rex Wei, Terry Downes, Kristopher Kum, Tony Then, Dennis Chin, Vincent Wong and Peter Wong. Synopsis : In which undercover agent Khan investigates a drug route along the Asian highway and John Kline becomes involved in a Chinese paper chase across Birmingham.
Director : Alastair Reid Script : Philip Martin Cast : Robert Lee, Kristopher Kum, Tony Then, Dennis Chin, Kajoo Chua, Terry Downes, Andrew Rinous, John Main and Jamie Adams. Synopsis : In which a mysterious assassin is summoned to the West Midlands from Hong Kong and Rafiq, the sophisticated Asian godfather, propositions the beautiful Lily Li Tang!
Director : Roger Tucker Script : Philip Martin
Director : Roger Tucker Script : Philip Martin Cast : Kahjoo Chua, George Chong, Kristopher Kum, Robert Lee, Marian Kemmer, Eric Young, Kim Teoh and Anna Korwin. Synopsis : In which a master of Kung Fu meets his end while agent Khan is taken to the cleaners - No Way Out!
Director : Alastair Reid Script : Philip Martin Cast : Kim Teoh, Eric Young, Donald Pickering, Barbara Yuling and Jamie Adams. Synopsis : In which John Kline goes to the cinema with the lovely Lily Li Tang and finds that a seat in the back row can be perilous when the lights go down.
Director : Roger Tucker Script : Philip Martin Cast : Philip Martin. Synopsis : In which John Kline has a touching encounter with the White Devil, Chinese New Year is celebrated - and a funeral is well attended. |
Emerging
successfully from the Play For Today anthology series in January
1975, Philip Martin's near two-hour-length play Gangsters
proved so popular that a series was almost immediately commissioned
and followed eighteen months later. BBC Birmingham (charged with
producing both the pilot episode and the series itself) had, by the
mid 1970s, become a primary force for risk taking ventures employed
by the network, as exemplified in serials such as Rainbow City
(featuring the first black leading actor in British Television
history), Second City Firsts (a collection of short plays, bite-sized
slices of contemporary life), and the network was preparing Empire
Road for transmission (the first all-black serial, scripted by a
writer of ethnic origin).
The series was created by Philip Martin. The Play For Today edition was produced by Barry Hanson. The series was produced by David Rose. Music for the Play For Today edition was provided by Dave Greenslade. The signature tune for the series was performed by Chris Farlowe. Music for the series was provided by Dave Greenslade. Text © Matthew Lee, 2005. |
