The show is called "Page Eight." A title sequence. There's jazz. There's London. There's Bill Nighy, with the promise of Michael Gambon and Rachel Weisz to come, with script and direction by David Hare. This, one is tempted to feel, is why they invented the electric home playhouse contraption (otherwise known as the television). To bring importantly crinkled actors, speaking impeccable lines by importantly lefty playwrights, to me just after supper. It's like having one of the studios of the National Theatre parked in the corner of the room.
Theatre on TV?
And that felt like the problem, as the show began. Rachel Weisz was given the kind of off-hand, slightly disconnected dialogue which is terrific to introduce a character if she's striding across the stage calling out over her shoulder, but felt very stagey in tight focus and murky lighting. For a few minutes, there was an uncomfortable air of "slumming it," as if everyone was rather too aware that TV was getting something better than its usual fare and the medium had better look grateful about it. Still, it all settled down before long, largely due to the terrific back and forth between Nighy and Gambon. The script had them as two spies, "Johnny Worricker" and " Benedict Baron", old friends from Cambridge whose connection had only become deeper when Worricker's wife left him and eventually found solace with Baron. They made a terrific double-act, like two of Le Carre's men (the inevitable comparison) but with better timing and a richer sense of the ludicrous in their trade.
(Suspicious) Figure in a Landscape
The plot ramified, involving a secret report on who knew what and when about extraordinary rendition, a possible murder in the Gaza Strip, political influence on intelligence gathering and a despairing modern artist. As a list, it almost sounds like a satire on the preoccupations of a metropolitan lefty stage-scribbler like Hare. However, these plot strands never became the full focus of the viewer's attention, and this is what really put "Page Eight" out of the league of technospiage soaps like "Spooks" or "24", and into contention with the likes of Le Carre. The plot just formed a background across which Nighy could wander as his character searched for something which might have been a cause, a purpose, or a redemption.
There was no particular suspense, since the viewer would have a hard time in isolating once particular element to be in suspense about. Some of the audience probably found this intensely irritating, but I enjoyed it thoroughly. It meant that "Page Eight" wasn't dependent on one plot twist or a final reveal for its impact, but on the accretion of a mood and the depiction of a man's world falling apart around him. There were moments which felt glib - some of the jazz on the soundtrack, the occasional bit too much of one character explaining to another the significance of a discovery - but overall it was a thoroughly engaging piece of work. David Hare's no Stephen Poliakoff, but we could do with a lot more people like him working in the medium.
Jem Bloomfield - Jem Bloomfield was educated at the universities of Oxford and Exeter, and is currently working on a PhD on Webster's revenge tragedy "The ...
