Edge of Darkness
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- This article is about the 1985 British television drama. For the 1943 World War II film starring Errol Flynn, see Edge of Darkness (film).
Edge of Darkness is a British television drama serial, produced by BBC Television in association with Lionheart Television International and originally broadcast in six 55-minute episodes on BBC Two in late 1985. A mixture of political thriller, science-fiction and murder-mystery, it was extremely popular, won several awards and is still remembered by many as one of the best British television drama productions of the 1980s.
The serial was re-edited into three episodes for broadcast on BBC One the week after the first run of the programme finished. A two-part compilation was the format initially available on VHS and DVD, before the full episodic version was given a release in BBC Worldwide's Classic Drama DVD strand in 2003.
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[edit] Background
Edge of Darkness was written by the highly experienced Troy Kennedy Martin, previously responsible for creating the famous and long-running BBC police drama Z-Cars and for writing the screenplays for feature films such as The Italian Job and Kelly's Heroes. Kennedy Martin originally wrote the script — then titled Magnox — in 1978, inspired by the Gaia concept, but it was not until 1982 that it took the interest of Jonathan Powell, then the BBC's head of drama series and serials, who assigned producer Michael Wearing to the project.
Wearing brought on board director Martin Campbell, whose disagreements with Kennedy Martin over the scripts would lead to much creative tension during the course of production. Campbell played down the ecological focus of the original script. The shooting of the six episodes took 20 weeks, and the production had a generous budget of £4 million, a quarter of which was contributed by the American television distribution company Lionheart, who handled the BBC's US sales. Their only stipulation was that the American character Jedburgh be introduced in the first episode, as he originally arrived only in the second.
The finished serial was screened on BBC Two on Mondays at 9.30pm from November 4 to December 9, 1985. Such was the public and critical acclaim upon transmission that it was rapidly repeated on the higher-profile BBC One, a rare occurrence and especially so soon after its original broadcast.
At the 1986 British Academy Television Awards, Edge of Darkness won the Best Drama, Best Director, Best Actor (for Bob Peck as the leading character, Ronald Craven) and Best Original TV Music categories. It was quickly made available on VHS, and has twice been released on DVD: in 1999 in a two-part compilation form, and in 2003 in an unedited, digitally remastered episodic format with various bonus features. In a 2000 poll of industry professionals to find the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes conducted by the British Film Institute, Edge of Darkness was voted into 15th place. It was also included in an alphabetical list of the forty greatest TV shows published in Radio Times magazine in August 2003.
In 2002, it was reported by Variety that Martin Campbell was planning a feature film version of the serial, with the action being switched to the USA.
[edit] Plot
The story of Edge of Darkness revolves around police officer Ronald Craven. In the first episode Craven, a widower, is returning home with his daughter Emma, having picked her up from a meeting of an environmental organisation at her University campus. On the doorstep of their home Emma is shot dead, apparently as part of a botched attempt on Craven's life by a criminal he had been responsible for convicting. Searching through Emma's belongings, Craven is however surprised to find a loaded handgun.
As Craven travels to London to investigate, he begins to discover that there was far more to his daughter's murder than was at first suspected. She was involved with various anti-nuclear activities, and as Craven traces those she was involved with he uncovers a global web of government conspiracy, encompassing British involvement in Northern Ireland, CIA involvement in underwriting/undermining environmental campaign organisations, the privatisation of the nuclear industries, and then-President Reagan's Star Wars missile defence plans. All this is centred on the mysterious nuclear facility at the fictional Northmoor, and potentially involving the fate of the entire human race.
Throughout his investigations, Craven is accompanied by visions of Emma, and it is never clear whether she is actually appearing to him as a ghost or whether she is a product of his imagination. He is also aided by the more corporeal form of CIA agent, Darius Jedburgh, who at first appears to be an adversary and then seems to be working on the same side. Craven also comes to realise that Emma's death was part of a wider attempt to cover up the illicit manufacture of weapons grade plutonium within a privately-managed UK nuclear reprocessing plant.
The investigation proves fatal for those involved in it - Craven and Jedburgh are both irreversibly contaminated by their exposure to plutonium while investigating Northmoor. Dying of radiation poisoning, they respond in different ways. Jedburgh, who has escaped, goes to an international conference on nuclear power and makes a barn storming speech about the dangers of nuclear proliferation. He finishes the speech by bringing together two bars of weapons grade plutonium he has removed from Northmoor, causing a criticality accident and irradiating those responsible for setting the facility up. Craven, who is being held in a military hospital by the British government, escapes with the help of another government agent, Clementine (played by Zoe Wanamaker) and goes to dissuade Jedburgh from the next step in his plan, which is to cause a nuclear explosion in Scotland with the rest of the plutonium. He succeeds, though the secret services follow him and kill Jedburgh, and is last seen wandering the moors above the retrieval site, calling out the name of his dead daughter.
[edit] Cast & Crew
Craven was played by Bob Peck, who although an immensely experienced theatre actor, had made very little television before Campbell cast him in the starring role — Kennedy Martin had originally written the part with the more experienced John Thaw in mind. Peck, however, put in an acclaimed performance and won several accolades for his role, including the BAFTA Best Actor award.
Emma was played by Joanne Whalley, in one of her first leading roles. The next year she would feature heavily in Dennis Potter's famous serial The Singing Detective, and later went on to become a high-profile film actress.
Jedburgh was played by American character actor Joe Don Baker, who would go on to play a very similar part — another CIA agent — called Jack Wade in the James Bond films GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies, a role in which he was also cast by Martin Campbell.
Harcourt was played by British actor Ian McNeice who has gone on to have a continuing, consistent career in film and television. Several other familiar faces to British viewers appeared during the course of the episodes, including Brian Croucher, Hugh Fraser, Tim McInnerny, Zoe Wanamaker and John Woodvine, and as themselves television reporter Sue Cook, weatherman Bill Giles and MP Michael Meacher.
Martin Campbell went on to have a successful directing career, and worked on feature films such as the James Bond movie GoldenEye in 1995. Producer Michael Wearing was already well-known for producing high-quality BBC drama serials such as Boys from the Blackstuff (1982) and would later become the head of Serials in the drama department, overseeing such projects as Our Friends in the North (1996).
The musical score for Edge of Darkness was composed by Michael Kamen and rock guitarist Eric Clapton. Much of the material was initially improvised while watching a playback of first edits of the episodes. The pair won a BAFTA Award for their work, and before his death in 2003 Kamen was planning to revisit the score for Campbell's planned film version. Kamen and Clapton's collaboration led directly to the pair composing similar scores for the 1986 Mel Gibson movie Lethal Weapon and its sequels.
Series advisor Walt Patterson, who provided the technical background on reprocessing and plutonium, was a leading commentator on nuclear affairs, and author of the best-selling Penguin book Nuclear Power (1976-86).
[edit] Trivia
- The series featured a fictional, militant environmental organisation called GAIA. The BBC was compelled to place a dislaimer at the end of each episode stating that "the GAIA Organisation portrayed in the series Edge Of Darkness is entirely fictional and has no connection with the Gaia Movement or the publishers of Gaia books".
- The original scripts included a strongly shamanistic theme, with Craven becoming a tree on the moors after his death. This element was heavily cut (partially due to the objections of Bob Peck) and only survives in one scene, where Craven is discussing his daughter's image of him with a psychiatrist after she has died.
- Aside from the Clapton/Kamen soundtrack, Willie Nelson's "The Time of the Preacher", New Model Army's "Christian Militia", and Tom Waits' "16 Shells From A 30.6", feature in the series. "Christian Militia" is on the record player when Terry's body is found. Craven listens to "The Time of the Preacher" when he is in Emma's room in the first episode. It later emerges Jedburgh is familiar with the song and both he and Craven sing it on two occasions, the lyrics being significant.
[edit] References
DVD:
- Documentary: Magnox – The Secrets of Edge of Darkness. Bonus feature included on the 2003 BBC Worldwide DVD release. BBCDVD 1179.
Books:
- Evans, Jeff. The Penguin TV Companion (1st ed.). London: Penguin Books. 2001. ISBN 0-140-51467-8.
- Vahimagi, Tise. British Television: An Illustrated Guide. Oxford. Oxford University Press / British Film Institute. 1994. ISBN 0-19-818336-4.
