This 8-part BBC Television drama was one of a number of offerings from the pen of the late Michael J Bird, all of them well-crafted exercises in intrigue and suspense with character-driven plots in an exotic foreign setting. Sometimes Bird's works veered off into the realms of fantasy, but Who Pays The Ferryman, perhaps his most acclaimed piece, is very much grounded in reality.
Jack Hedley stars as Alan Haldane, a successful boat designer who is effectively forced to retire a little earlier than he was expecting when his brother sells out the business against his wishes. A widower now without any ties, the embittered Haldane decides to finally return to Crete, where he fought heroically during the Second World War and where he met and loved a local girl whom he has never forgotten, but who never answered the letters he wrote to her when he returned to the UK.
Little does Haldane know what took place after he left Crete or what sequence of events will be triggered now that he has returned. The plot takes many turns, building up to an intense finale, and covers themes such as love, comradeship, bigotry, jealousy, greed, blood ties and the generational differences in clinging on to old customs and values. Along the way, the episodes treat us to many glimpses of Cretan life.
Betty Arvaniti is the second lead as Annika, the Cretan woman with whom Haldane develops a new romance, the path of which is obstructed by secrets from the past. Neil McCarthy demonstrates a reminder of his often overlooked talent and versatility in playing Haldane's old comrade (and now respected legal expert) Babis Spiridakis, whilst Takis Emmanuel, perhaps best remembered by British viewers for playing Tom Baker's sidekick in the 1974 film The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, is the rival who soon finds himself on a mission to see Haldane dead. Pulling the strings is the old matriarch Katerina Matakis, given suitable venom by Patience Collier. For me, however, it is Stefan Gryff who really steals the show in the role of The Major, the senior police official. An eloquent, dignified, principled and calm man, he gets most of the best lines with his thoughtful insights, and is to all intents and purposes the same character Gryff played in an earlier series by Bird, The Lotus Eaters.
Although essentially a serial, there are some episodes which deviate from the main story arc to present a self-contained plot, though this is quite effective as these particular episodes still advance the relationship between Haldane and Annika, as well as highlighting the passage of time as Haldane remains on Crete. They also give the opportunity for some welcome guest spots including a turn from Patrick Magee, an actor who specialised in unpleasant characters and he's very much playing to type here.
Overall, Who Pays The Ferryman is a well-paced, well-balanced drama with an opening episode that really hooks the viewer. The characters and their motivations are believable, and the series shows much of Crete as it was back in the 1970s. There are a few minor niggles, such as inevitable moments when Greek characters needlessly converse in English, or the obvious jumps between location film and studio, and curiously the main character Haldane doesn't have a single line of dialogue for the latter half of the final episode even though he features throughout.
Much praised in its time and with its theme music even riding high in the UK pop charts, Who Pays The Ferryman has been shamefully overlooked by the BBC since the 1970s, but it's a bona-fide classic of its time that deserves to be checked out.
