Hawkmoor

Review by John Winterson Richards

One of the joys of writing for this website is discovering that the television about which one feels nostalgic often holds up surprisingly well when one reviews it, and ideally that means literally re-viewing it, many years later. The other side of the coin is having to accept that at least some of it was not quite as good as one remembers it.

Both are true of BBC drama Hawkmoor, which has a special place in your reviewer's heart as apparently the first family drama series based entirely on Welsh history broadcast throughout the UK* - and also what feels like the last since then. Compare that with Scotland, the history of which has provided rich material for the likes of Redgauntlet, Kidnapped, The Master of Ballantrae, and Flight of the Heron. This is a missed opportunity because Welsh history is splendid stuff, full of the sort of sex and violence that always appeals to teenaged boys and television producers. Of course it helps Scotland that she produced Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, and a strong tradition of historical novelists which Wales lacks. Instead, Wales has Llewelyn Prichard's 1828 The Adventures and Vagaries of Twm Shon Catti  (sic), often claimed, somewhat dubiously, to be the first Welsh novel. It is not very good.

However, it is based, very loosely, on widespread older legends surrounding a genuinely interesting real-life character, Thomas Jones of Porth y Ffynnon (Fountain Gate) near Tregaron in Cardiganshire. Being illegitimate, he did not have the usual Welsh patronymic "ap" and so was known as Twm Sion Catti, "Cathy's Tom John," after his mother. Gossip connected him with the Wynns of Gwydir in North Wales, but then a man in a position to name his own father might as well choose one from the greatest family in a county conveniently far from his own.

The stories that led to Twm Sion being dubbed "the Welsh Robin Hood" are usually dated to the 1550s, when he was in his late teens and early twenties. Poverty and a multiplicity of jurisdictions ensured that Wales had remained a famously lawless place since the nominal English conquest. That began to change when Henry VIII, himself of Welsh stock, had abolished the separate jurisdictions a few years before the criminal activities associated with Twm Sion, so the legends may represent the last embers of the old anarchic tradition.

It is significant that Porth y Fynnon is located very conveniently for anyone wanting to move between three separate counties in a hurry. Highway robbery was still a well established occupation in Wales; almost respectable. At the same time, it may be that the religious controversies of the reign of the unpopular Roman Catholic Queen Mary were a factor in the outlawry which ended when Twm Sion is said to have been granted a pardon, probably by Mary's Protestant successor, Queen Elizabeth. If so, was that coincidence? The evidence is vague. Either way, history is at least definite that Thomas Jones did well very for himself later in life, making a spectacular upwardly mobile second marriage to the daughter of Sir John Price of Brecon Priory, one of Thomas Cromwell's most successful enforcers who had a gift for changing sides at the right moment. Twm Sion's will confirms that he became a man of some property, a Gentleman by Welsh standards, as well as a noted poet and scholar, connected with some of the big names of the Renaissance in Wales, and a local official, before making a pious end in comfortable old age.

Life for the poor tends to be nasty, brutish, and short in most times and places, and that was especially true in 16th Century Wales. Yet there is no evidence that "the Welsh Robin Hood" did anything to change that or ever really tried. He was not fighting to overthrow the system but to get on in it. If anything his atavistic lawlessness was an obstacle to progress. The earliest folk takes portray him as a trickster rather than a heroic "social justice warrior." So Lynn Hughes' basic plot for Hawkmoor, set out more clearly in Hughes' own novelisation, published by Penguin at the same time the series was broadcast, stretches the facts to turn him into a champion of the poor against an oddly nebulous threat. The book is very well researched, and that research is reflected in a number of nice details in the script, but it still takes liberties with history. For example, according to the official list, the Sheriffs of Cardiganshire at this time were all local Welsh Gentry, not heavy handed English oppressors like the one in Hawkmoor.

Hughes' basic story is nevertheless solid, and part of the problem with Hawkmoor is that its adaptation by another hand leaves out much of the depth and complexity of the novelisation. It occurs to your reviewer that most people do not have the Hughes and Llewelyn Prichard novels, or Welsh Outlaws and Bandits by Professor Edward Arfon Rees, or Tudor Wales by Dr W S K Thomas in their private libraries, and so might struggle to follow what is happening. Twm Sion's objectives and the stakes are insufficiently clear, and therefore not as compelling as drama requires.

This lack of clarity is exacerbated by some inexperienced direction, especially in the early episodes. The blocking, or lack of it, is sometimes "am dram" level. The supporting players, who are, it must be said, of greatly varying ability, often seem visibly at a loss as to what they are supposed to be doing in a scene. Apart from a clever horse race, the standard Seventies BBC "action" sequences have, as usual, not aged well. This clunky stagecraft is the biggest disappointment rewatching Hawkmoor for the first time in almost half a century. It is doubly a pity because there is still so much to like about the production in other respects.

Above all the early colour photography is as stunning as the direction is poor, and it still shines through the degradation of the tape and the low quality of the only version available on YouTube at the time of writing - this is not complaining, for the people who posted it deserve gratitude, because Hawkmoor has never been released on any video or DVD format: it ought to be, and if ever a show was crying out for digital remastering this is it. The Beeb must have spent a fortune on location filming at a time when it was still a big deal, but it was money well spent because the Welsh countryside really delivers. There is a strong evocation of nature that compliments the folk ethos of the project. The titular hawk in the opening titles is a star, if apparently a difficult performer when filming.

The production values in general are excellent, especially for the time. Great effort was obviously put into getting the costumes, properties, and set dressings right. One can see the contributions of the Welsh Folk Museum at Saint Fagans. There are a lot of extras in the big set pieces. The memorable theme tune and much of the delightful incidental music, composed by the appropriately named and unfairly neglected James Harpham, sounds suitably in-period, even if purists might disagree.

John Ogwen (The District Nurse) is a personable Twm Sion, if perhaps a little too mature for the juvenile delinquent of both history and legend, and it is a mystery why his work here did not lead straight on to bigger things. Perhaps his commitment to Wales kept him home. Jane Asher (Holby City) is radiant as a feisty aristocrat with a social conscience. Why were women on television so much more beautiful back then? Britain's "go to" villain of the time, Philip Madoc, returns to his home ground as a wicked Vicar and gets to speak his native Welsh. As so often in his supporting roles, Madoc hints at a depth of character the script never allows him to explore. The great Rachel Thomas (Ennal's Point), the archetypal Welsh "Mam," plays essentially the same role here but as Twm Sion's servant rather than his mother. Perhaps Churchgoing Rachel objected to playing someone's mistress. Jack May (Adam Adamant Lives!) is an interestingly conflicted Sheriff, and Meredith Edwards (The Life and Times of David Lloyd George) and Richard Bebb (Poirot) are landowners struggling to be fair minded. Londoner Godfrey James (Witchfinder General) is astonishingly authentic as the epitome of Welsh working class manhood Shanco, Twm Sion's best friend and second in command, and comes close to stealing the whole project.

In fairness it is obvious from what is on the screen that the BBC invested heavily in the success of their attempt at Welsh historical drama, and they got great value for their money from their cast and crew, only to ruin their own efforts by putting the whole thing together so clumsily.

(* "For I am Welsh you know" - to quote Henry V to Fluellen in Shakespeare's Henry V)