From Midshipman to Post-Captain, the fictional career in the Royal Navy of one Horatio Hornblower has been well documented by Andrew Grieve over the past few years. `Duty' is the latest in the series with our hero getting married to his landlady's daughter (Julia Sawalah) and then sailing off across the channel for some close and personal stuff with the French.
There's nothing to the story and yet somehow you are dragged in. Maybe it's Ioan Gruffud's saturnine charm as Hornie (or `Horrie' as his wife calls him). He's actually a bit of a prig but unlike most of his species acts fast and gets away with things a more hesitant man would never achieve. His facility for putting his own neck on the line strangely endears him to his crew (if my boss was that reckless I think I'd ask for a transfer to something less hazardous, like fireships). His attitude towards his new wife is peculiar; he has married her out of a sense of duty, he doesn't dislike her but he is aware she's not Admiral's wife material. Still when a character's mother-in-law is played by Barbara Flynn, a man has to take his chances.
Realism is not a big feature of this show (the French unconcernedly moving their troops around with a British ship in the bay) despite the use of what looks like a full-sized replica of the sloop `Hotspur'. In an earlier episode a few hundred British troops manage to get ashore in full view of the French on the beach without being noticed. It's also not too likely that a steward as good as Doughty would have been put on a capital charge for accidentally striking a junior officer, nor that a younger brother of Napoleon Bonaparte would wind up aboard one of His Majesty's ships (though come to think of it one did become King of Naples). But all that doesn't matter. C S Forester could tell a good yarn and the series makers have ultilised his formula to good effect. The whole thing is overflowing with chauvinism and xenophobia (even the Americans can't be trusted) and yet we cheer every time Hornie puts his sword through some unlucky foreigner.
There's plenty of good period detail without too much pedantry and Matthews the Bosun (Peter Copley and Styles (the lower deck trouble magnet played by Sean Gilder) are always entertaining. It's simple, but not mindless stuff and its US popularity is intriguing. I can't see it having much appeal to the French, though.
