If
her uncle had not been such an idiot, Elizabeth II never would have been Queen. Due to his dubious judgment, his brother’s
daughter will soon ascend to the throne.
The caddish Johnny Spence half-jokingly describes the days leading up to
her coronation a period of monarch-less anarchy. It will indeed make a fitting backdrop for
Charles Sturridge’s completely Anglicized adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s The Scapegoat (trailer here), which airs in
syndication on participating PBS stations, including Chicago’s WTTW this coming
Saturday night.
John
Standing has just been downsized out of job as a boarding school teacher. With no family to support and lacking any significant
ambitions or prospects, he sets out on vaguely defined walking tour. Stopping at a seedy public house, he is startled
to come face to face with his dead ringer, the wastrel Johnny Spence. After a night of imbibing with the charming
but overbearing Spence, Standing is surprised to wake up and find the man has
absconded with his anonymity, leaving him to take his position of wealth and
privilege.
Unfortunately,
Standing soon deduces the Spence family fortunes are sagging. His doppelganger was hoping to save their
glass foundry with a Hail Mary business deal, but he rather doubts the playboy
pulled it off. However, he is quite
charmed to meet the man’s spirited young daughter (Mary Lou, a.k.a. Piglet) and
his nervous wife Frances. Conversely, he
is quite uncomfortable around Nina, Spence’s sister-in-law with whom he seems
to be having an affair with. Yet, nobody
seems to suspect his reluctant impersonation, not even his resentful brother
Paul or their morphine addicted mother, Lady Spence. Frankly, the family might just be better off
with the new and improved Johnny Spence, but the old one is still out there, up
to no good.
Produced
by ITV, Scapegoat is a nifty little
thriller that had a spot of film festival play before its American television
run. Transferred from the south of France to post-war Britain, Sturridge’s
adaptation is tightly paced and uses the impending coronation as a clever
metaphor. As the director of most of the
beloved Brideshead Revisited miniseries
as well as the masterful A Handful of
Dust, Sturridge has a keen feel for Twentieth Century British period
pieces. He displays a nice touch with Scapegoat, combining a Downton-esque vibe with film noir-ish
elements.
Logically,
Sir Alec Guinness (the master of multiple parts) had first crack at the
Standing/Spence role in Robert Hamer’s 1959 feature film. Yet, Matthew Rhys (now probably best known
for FX’s The Americans) steps into
his shoes admirably well. In fact, this
might be his strongest small screen work, eclipsing his suitably brooding John
Jasper in The Mystery of Edwin Drood. His Spence is charismatically wicked, but he
also makes a convincingly confused and depressed everyman as Standing. Alice Orr-Ewing is a bit vanilla as poor
Frances, but Andrew Scott (Jim Moriarty in Sherlock)
adds some edgy energy into the mix as Paul Spence. Yet, Sturridge’s wife and Brideshead co-star Phoebe Nicholls occasionally
upstages everyone as the smart-than-her-employers housekeeper, Charlotte.
