Cold Comfort Farm

Nothing, but nothing, can beat the original novel by Stella Gibbons. Ostensibly a parody of earthy novels such as "Precious Bane" and the stuff by D.H. Lawrence, it is in fact a brilliant satire about the human race and what makes us tick, or not tick at all.

The closest any dramatisation has come to capturing her philosophy was probably the BBC Radio 4 version. Sometimes radio has better pictures, because you create the visuals yourself.

This early TV version suffered visually from being studio-bound, presumably because that is how things were done in those days. It also suffered, visually at least, from being directed by Peter Hammond, who loved 'frames within frames' and getting sexual symbolism into every shot; perhaps fashionable at the time but now seen as cliché ridden and hackneyed. However, it has a good cast and although it is really creaky by today's standards it is worth seeing if only as an alternative to the later and in my opinion less interesting John Schlesinger version, which had a huge budget and played the script for its laughs, avoiding the point of the novel.

So what IS the point of the novel? Well, read it and see. We all know a Judith; we all know an Aunt Ada; we all know people who blame their current condition on something in their past, either real or imaginary; we all know many of the human traits and foibles satirised in the novel. What Stella Gibbons did, deliciously, was not just to parody the style of novels by D.H. Lawrence and Mary Webb ("fecund rain spears" and "bursting sheaths") but also to extol the benefits of leading a tidy life full of beauty and harmony. She encapsulates the characteristics of the entire human race into one farmhouse full of superficially dysfunctional people. Read the novel, but, above all: read between the lines.

I was very much looking forward to seeing this. The cast looked very promising (especially Alastair Sim) and the BBC has a high reputation when bringing classic literature to the screen.

Somehow, somewhere, it all went wrong. Even by the standards of 1968 it is obviously studio bound, and the sets are so cramped you never get the idea of the farmhouse as a house, just the corner of a room here, a gate in the farmyard there. The camera set-ups are such that the main action always seems to be obscured by something in the foreground. The director also seems to be well on-board with the 60's 'sexual revolution' (basically people stopped hiding what they'd been doing anyway) and we are treated to shots of 'ploughing' (fnrr-fnrr) cut with a woman writhing in ecstasy in the main titles. There's also a bit of a manure fetish going on for some reason.

I was disappointed in the performances, which are too broad. The Starkadders are grotesques, but they need to be kept within bounds or they just look silly. There is so much ranting and raving in the first episode that it isn't so much funny as tiresome, especially by Billy Russell. Even Alastair Sim only gets into his stride during the sermon to the Quivering Brethren in part two. Sarah Badel is a bright and level-headed Flora, and Rosalie Crutchley makes a good Judith, but not enough to surpass the hint of madness in Eileen Atkins' eyes in the Schlesinger version.

It's not just the age of the production which is the problem here, it's the tricksiness of the director and his indulgence of the actors. I give it six stars because Alastair Sim is in it, but even he is not at his best.

While there are some strong performances, the crude production values and chaotic direction make this show truly painful to watch. Zooming the lens in and out "real fast" is the sort of thing people did with Super 8 cameras 45 years ago, but it was hardly funny then and is sort of pathetic today. The later film is, by contrast, a real pleasure. Much of the 1968 production calls to mind Monty Python at their worst, which puts to question what it is trying to achieve. We could not make it past the first of the three episodes. There are some solid acting performances (Alistair Sims is terrific, and Sarah Badel does a fine job) -- which is the only reason I have not given this film an "awful" rating. It is, however, awful, and I could not wait for it to be over. What is truly unfortunate is that the later version with Kate Beckinsale is very well done, and this show may discourage viewers from watching it. Skip the '68 show; watch the film.

See the wonderful 1995 movie version instead! I'm a big fan of British comedy and drama, and of the early 1970's Masterpiece Theater series that ran on PBS. However this early TV version is an absolute train-wreck of a production; everything about it is really bad. Those involved seem to have been watching too many Fellini films and seen too many stage productions of Marat/Sade, and thought it would be a fun idea to try incorporating a similar approach here. The result is a bizarre and amusingly unwatchable mess.

To me, this really is a case where the BBC beat John Schlesinger. The 1971 PBS showing was so good, it did cause me to find the Stella Gibbons and read it. If it was only for the Alistair Sim portrayal of Amos Starkadder, this one would still be worth watching.