Shooting The Chandelier

[poliphilo]

The unpleasantness has been sorted out (I don't know what it was but I presume something to do with copyright) and Micks 'Nostalgia' Channel has returned to You Tube- and it's archive of British TV plays from the 60s onwards keeps growing. I celebrated by watching David Mercer's Shooting The Chandelier, from 1977- choosing it because it provides the great Denholm Elliott with a leading role so beautifully atuned to his qualities that it must have been written with him in mind. He gets to spar with a youngish Edward Fox- another fine actor who has largely missed out on leading roles through having such a highly distinctive persona. They play invading/liberating Russian soldiers who have fetched up in a Czech chateau in 1945. Elliott is a drunken, clownish deserter, Fox a Colonel in the NKVD. Are they enemies or complementary opposites? We are going to find out...