My Boy Jack

[Ken Lees]

QUOTE (Phil_B @ Nov 12 2007, 12:46 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Is that the Loos battlefield? Not like the pieces I`ve walked across?

Yet more 'artistic licence', perhaps? See, it's not just the film-makers!

[ianw]

Especially Richard III. Tudor propaganda indeed.

Ah yes, but that's the history - 16th Century rather than 15th - "history within history" rather like the "play within the play".

Quite agree with others who have commended the Paxman piece on Owen and "What Did You do in the War, Daddy". Both vastly better than the Kipling effort - also quite agree that it's no bad thing to get the public talking about the Great War.

But this story of Jack Kipling could have been enthralling and much better drama with more accuracy and subtler probing of the Kipling character. A wasted opportunity - and Harry Potter is no real actor IMHO.

[truthergw]

QUOTE (Phil_B @ Nov 12 2007, 12:46 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Is that the Loos battlefield? Not like the pieces I`ve walked across?

Generally The Loos area was very flat but it was also one of the most active mining areas of the war. The Northern end near the canal was a mass of interlocking craters. There were also the brickstacks near Cuinchy It was not unknown for the ends of a brickstack to be in the hands of the opposing sides so essentially NML was a brickyard. There was fighting in the Quarries where again we held a bit and the Germans held a bit so NML a working quarry. One of the Panoramas shows part of NML with a railway line running across it with some goods trucks on the line. One of the trucks being marked as a sniper post. When the FRench first attacked here at Vermelles, the y fought for awhile across the vilage althogh, by the time the British started to take over, the village of Vermelles was all in allied hands.

[Desdichado]

Ah yes, but that's the history - 16th Century rather than 15th - "history within history" rather like the "play within the play".

Quite agree with others who have commended the Paxman piece on Owen and "What Did You do in the War, Daddy". Both vastly better than the Kipling effort - also quite agree that it's no bad thing to get the public talking about the Great War.

But this story of Jack Kipling could have been enthralling and much better drama with more accuracy and subtler probing of the Kipling character. A wasted opportunity - and Harry Potter is no real actor IMHO.

He gets on my wick too. I don't know if you'll agree with this but one of the most poignant scenes of men going into action in the Great War I've seen on television was the last episode of Blackadder goes Forth. My wife had never much cared for history up until then but after seeing that, she became interested and started reading about the war. Takes all sorts I suppose.

[n cherry]

'What did you do in the War?' is repeated on BBC3 I think on Wednesday 14th......

[Beau Geste]

Hello. I watched the film "My Boy Jack" last night too. I am totally unqualified to comment upon the military accuracies/inaccuracies of the film, but what I do know is how it made me feel - horrified by the brutality of war and totally saddened by the loss of so many young men's (boys) lives. I thought the film showed just how dangerous media & popular pressure can be, but it was the sheer waste of life and innocence that made me shed tears. I think actor David Haig's achievement is remarkable. "My Boy Jack" makes one think, which is always a good thing in my book!

A.

Nice posting Allena.

You make some important points.

Harry

[Beau Geste]

I thought that 'My Boy Jack' was excellent - two hours flew by.

As I've said before when people criticise the inaccuracies, 99.99% of the population wouldn't even notice (including me) and if it gets new people interested in the Great War and remembering then who cares.

Its the kind of film I could watch again and again.

I also watched the programme about Wilfred Owen which again was excellent.

Liam

Hear, hear ! Well said Liam.

Harry

[salesie]

"My subject is War and the pity of War." A quote from Wilfred Owen:

It seems to me that My Boy Jack is all about the Pity of War. Consequently, it admirably succeeded (despite its factual errors).

Cheers - salesie.

[Chief_Chum]

We should certainly not view productions such as 'My Boy Jack' as anything other than Sunday night entertainment because that is what they set out to be; not factual documentaries - and it was a beutifully filmed piece of drama.

I have worked with David Haig on two occasions (the West End production of Journey's End and his own revival of the stage play of My Boy Jack) and I know how passionate he is about the subject (and a very nice man too). The reason that the programme did not follow Kipling's considerable efforts post-war to find John was simply that the film was an adaption of the play and the play stops before the end of the war.

One trick I think both play and drama missed was that, in Jack Kipling's last letter home, he tells his father that he has lost his metal ID disk and asks Rudyard to send him another. It obviously did not arrive in time and Jack was found, and was buried, as an Unknown. This would have alluded to the whole "is he or isn't he" debate about whether his is the body 'identified' a few years ago.

However, all this still does not excuse lack of research and/or effort to get everything as correct as possible when making a television drama. To say the programme s not aimed at "us" and that it doesn't matter completely misses the point. ITV claim to have spent £15 million on 'My Boy Jack'. For that kind of money it should be possible to find someone who can look at any photographs of Great War British soldiers and see which way up their belts should be worn (yes, that may seem a petty point but I could have chosen plenty of other points).

Good television or film making is all about giving the viewer a smooth ride. If you put as much effort as you can into getting all the details right the viewer does not keep mentally tripping up and losing their concentration on the story.

That is not to say that a drama shouldn't take some liberties with historical fact and, on occasion, it is vital to tell a complicated story in a short time. However, the producers took a great deal of effort with the civvie clothes, period furnishings, etc. If as much care was taken getting the military detail right it would have been much better, we wouldn't need to be discussing it - and for £15 million* that shouldn't have been hard!

(*From memory 'All The King's Men' (also filmed by David Odd who was director of photography on MBJ) cost £2 million in 1999 with half the film shot in Spain - that's inflation for you!)

We may see My Boy Jack as a film about the pity of war - and I am sure that is what the producers intended. However, as usual this is always a one-sided view. What 2/Lt Kipling and his men of 5 Platoon, B Company, 2/Irish Guards would think about the way they were portrayed can only be speculated on. However, I suspect that more than a few of them would much rather be remembered for doing the job they signed up for rather than being pitied by the TV watching public 90 years on...

[small scot]

We did try to watch My Boy Jack on Sunday night. A combination of being totally knackered and the programme itself meant that we gave up around about the second ad break.

Personally, I thought the characters that far were rather two-dimensional. I could have coped with it moving the way it did in a book, or possibly on the stage, but on TV it just didn't seem to work for me. Suppose I just have this preference for being able to know what's going on inside a lead character's head where possible, rather than just seeing the actions/hearing the words.

Good idea for a drama, and from what was said earlier, it got the good result of getting my generation/younger to think about what happened then, but not my sort of thing. Wonder if some of that was because I already knew a fair bit about what happened and Rudyard Kipling's later writings? (I like his work, so I did some reading about him several years ago )

Ailsa

[Staffsyeoman]

However, all this still does not excuse lack of research and/or effort to get everything as correct as possible when making a television drama. To say the programme s not aimed at "us" and that it doesn't matter completely misses the point. ITV claim to have spent £15 million on 'My Boy Jack'. For that kind of money it should be possible to find someone who can look at any photographs of Great War British soldiers and see which way up their belts should be worn (yes, that may seem a petty point but I could have chosen plenty of other points).

Good television or film making is all about giving the viewer a smooth ride. If you put as much effort as you can into getting all the details right the viewer does not keep mentally tripping up and losing their concentration on the story.

Well said Taff. Dolly Parton once said the "it costs a lot of money to look this cheap". I am ever perplexed by film and TV productions who wave their chequebooks in your face over their quest for 'accuracy' and then it is signally absent. Another perspective: this was not a production done on the cheap, so, to be brutal, some people well paid to get it right got it (unprofessionally) wrong. No, for the sake of history it doesn't really matter about the belt buckles. I don't care that a 'WW1 soldier' might actually be wearing 1920s SD - he looks the part. They should have hired Taff and his people.

The points about timeline are important - because TV and film, like it or not, become 'historical fact' in the popular imagination and undo the work of real historians.

[PhilB]

If this was purely drama, he could have used fictional main characters. Plainly, Haig wanted to hang this production around the Kiplings and this means there`s an onus on him to get things as right as possible. Not so much the minutiae of trenches but the personalities and events. Or should we class it as faction, leaving him carte blanche to pick and choose at the facts as they suit his play? Not being a luvvy, I dunno!

[Michelle Young]

My own boy Jack watched some of it and the Owen documentary. He said that in English yesterday a lot of pupils were talking about Regeneration, My Boy Jack and the Owen programme. If it gets 13 year olds talking well that is a good thing isn't it? The anorak in Jack noted a few errors in the Kipling programme BTW

Michelle

[salesie]

We may see My Boy Jack as a film about the pity of war - and I am sure that is what the producers intended. However, as usual this is always a one-sided view. What 2/Lt Kipling and his men of 5 Platoon, B Company, 2/Irish Guards would think about the way they were portrayed can only be speculated on. However, I suspect that more than a few of them would much rather be remembered for doing the job they signed up for rather than being pitied by the TV watching public 90 years on...

As an ex-regular, I quite agree that the vast majority of men who fought would certainly rail at being pitied - my point, though, was not that the men should be pitied, it was to show those who praised the "Owen" programme whilst criticising "Jack" that both programmes were in essence the same - about the pity of war. And, in that context, it seems to me that "Jack" did precisely what its producers set out to achieve.

Also, it must be noted that Owen's work did not become hugely popular until the 1960's, when a "new mood" prevailed. The majority of those who fought did not share Owen's (or for that matter Sassoon's) sentiments - consequently, although Owen's work is great literature, it does not represent the feelings of the majority of WW1 veterans; just like "Jack", the "Owen" programme was not wholly representative, but both, in their own way, were pretty good television.

Cheers - salesie.

[Gunboat]

I really wanted to watch this without prejudice and as I am far from being an expert I thought I would miss some of the details that many of the pals pick up on, I thought I might be able to get through it without fixating on errors.

But it was clear very shortly within the story that there were many avoidable errors. Kipling reading the announcement of the declaration of war at a packed meeting with the Kitchener Poster behind him?

That said I thought David Haigs portrayal of Kipling was delighful, I have no idea if that is what Kipling was like but it is exactly what I wanted Kipling to be like.

Daniel Radclife did a good job, I think the oversized hat and his size and samll stature (it looked to me that he would have struggled to get into a bantam division) was probably emphasised as a metaphor of his physical unsuitability.

Carey Mulligan who played his sister had a comparatively minor role but I thought she played what she had well and looked the part, you can see her face on many of the pictures posted in this forum of soldiers pictured with, wives, sweethearts or sisters.

Kim Cattrals' performance cant be faulted but I thought the script she was given was risible.

what offended me most is that it reinforced the unfortunate belief that if you are middle class you will be heroric and stoic and if you are a common working class soldier you will fumble with your bayonet, throw up or leave your social superior to struggle for his glasses in the mud. Is pain and suffering the reserve of the middle classes should only they get our symapthy. We only have to give a thought to a long running current news story to show that this prejudice still exists.

[Desdichado]

what offended me most is that it reinforced the unfortunate belief that if you are middle class you will be heroric and stoic and if you are a common working class soldier you will fumble with your bayonet, throw up or leave your social superior to struggle for his glasses in the mud. Is pain and suffering the reserve of the middle classes should only they get our symapthy. We only have to give a thought to a long running current news story to show that this prejudice still exists.

Bravo! Quite a few war films have portrayed the ordinary soldier as being less important than the officers commanding them. The Cruel Sea based on the novel by Nicholas Monserrat, concentrated largely on the ship's officers, with the ordinary ratings involved peripherally. Battle of Britain largely ignored the Sergeant Pilots and the Dam Busters had, I think, one Sergeant who was Gibson's flight engineer.

A few years ago, the BBC dramatised Frank O'Connor's short story Guests of the Nation. The storyline revolved around two British soldiers held hostage by the IRA during the 1916 Easter Rising. They were to be shot if Irish prisoners, under sentence of death, were hanged. The two soldiers formed a bond with their captors who held them in a farmhouse where the old woman who lived there fed them and gave them a bed. The Irishmen became friends with the English boys yet they tpp were under orders. As the men are led out to be shot, the old woman stood weeping by the fireplace. They were just ordinary lads doing their duty and paying the price. There was no glory, no stiff-upper lip, just an overwhelming sense of sadness and regret. See it if you get the chance.

[Beau Geste]

As an ex-regular, I quite agree that the vast majority of men who fought would certainly rail at being pitied - my point, though, was not that the men should be pitied, it was to show those who praised the "Owen" programme whilst criticising "Jack" that both programmes were in essence the same - about the pity of war. And, in that context, it seems to me that "Jack" did precisely what its producers set out to achieve.

As another ex regular of long, long service I can't just sit here without responding to your comment that " the majority of men who served would rail at being pitied" Why? Were they some form of supermen who were unlike any soldiers who have followed the sound of the drum since then ? No, of course they weren't. These were ordinary lads who for one reason or another got caught up in the euphoria of the time ( just as Jack did) and one reads in almost every book that has been written on The Great War that they abhorred the way they were sometimes treated both during and after the conflict ended.

They deserved and in the main WANTED to be recognised and treated like heroes. The fact that they weren't is an unforgiveable blemish on our social and political history.

The term "pity" implies a "feeling of tenderness aroused by a person's distress or suffering" The Oxford Dictionary goes on to "talk" in terms of "an act of compassion" and I for one experience those feelings every time I visit the battlefields and every time I pick up a book on the Great War.

The lads who fought weren't supermen. They were just like you and I in many ways. They did their damndest and very often surprised themselves at what they were able to endure. But they were frightened men and constantly afraid that at times that fear would be too difficult to bear and they would let themselves and their colleagues down. In other words they were human beings. And very often they were undoubtedly caught wanting. So what?

I ask God to bless them all whatever they achieved or didn't achieve. Yes I pity them ( I feel a great tenderness towards them) because I doubt very much if I could have emulated their achievements however magnificent or "ordinary" (by the standards of the time) that was.

I reiterate what I said in an earlier posting on this thread. "My son Jack" caught the vulnerability and the ordinariness (and I use that term in a gentle and supportive way) of the men who "gave their all" and the intense suffering of those who loved, were left behind and lost the ones they cherished.

Harry

[Beau Geste]

what offended me most is that it reinforced the unfortunate belief that if you are middle class you will be heroric and stoic and if you are a common working class soldier you will fumble with your bayonet, throw up or leave your social superior to struggle for his glasses in the mud. Is pain and suffering the reserve of the middle classes should only they get our symapthy. We only have to give a thought to a long running current news story to show that this prejudice still exists.

I'm sorry Gunboat but I couldn't let this pass without a comment. Were you only watching the officer, the frightened lad who threw up (but didn't hesitate to go over the top when the whistle blew) and the the poor lad who was on the verge of panic and could handle a simple task like fixing his bayonet. I'll tell you what, lets jeer at him. What you saw on the screen was as close as we know to what it was really like and yes, Jack managed to hold himself together because being in command somehow gives one that extra ounce of strength. Did you also notice the stocism of the NCO. He too was petrified but because of his experience and maturity he somehow managed to hold himself together.....just. Then there were the other members of the platoon, petrified young men who also answered the call when it came

I've read few books over the past few years that haven't been on the Great War. Some manage to capture the horror of that time but none can do it anything like a film or a TV play. I cry every time I visit La Boiselle and Ovilliers or the Sunken Lane near Beaumont Hamel were the Lancashire Fusiliers bought it. Letters written from the front on the eve of a great battle have the same effect on me. Some of these books and letters describe that even some officers are overcome by the sheer horror of what they have to face.

I cry because I care, as you do too I'm sure, but I do try very hard to understand. Sociological claptrap just gets in the way.

Harry

[salesie]

As another ex regular of long, long service I can't just sit here without responding to your comment that " the majority of men who served would rail at being pitied" Why? Were they some form of supermen who were unlike any soldiers who have followed the sound of the drum since then ? No, of course they weren't. These were ordinary lads who for one reason or another got caught up in the euphoria of the time ( just as Jack did) and one reads in almost every book that has been written on The Great War that they abhorred the way they were sometimes treated both during and after the conflict ended.

They deserved and in the main WANTED to be recognised and treated like heroes. The fact that they weren't is an unforgiveable blemish on our social and political history.

The term "pity" implies a "feeling of tenderness aroused by a person's distress or suffering" The Oxford Dictionary goes on to "talk" in terms of "an act of compassion" and I for one experience those feelings every time I visit the battlefields and every time I pick up a book on the Great War.

The lads who fought weren't supermen. They were just like you and I in many ways. They did their damndest and very often surprised themselves at what they were able to endure. But they were frightened men and constantly afraid that at times that fear would be too difficult to bear and they would let themselves and their colleagues down. In other words they were human beings. And very often they were undoubtedly caught wanting. So what?

I ask God to bless them all whatever they achieved or didn't achieve. Yes I pity them ( I feel a great tenderness towards them) because I doubt very much if I could have emulated their achievements however magnificent or "ordinary" (by the standards of the time) that was.

I reiterate what I said in an earlier posting on this thread. "My son Jack" caught the vulnerability and the ordinariness (and I use that term in a gentle and supportive way) of the men who "gave their all" and the intense suffering of those who loved, were left behind and lost the ones they cherished.

Harry

Your comments are pretty much spot on about these men not being supermen, with the same cross section of fears, loves and courage that we all have. But, it seems to me, your first two paragraphs contain a glaring contradiction i.e. if they, as you rightly say "...in the main WANTED to be recognised and treated like heroes" then why would they not rail at being pitied?

I don't pity them - I admire them.

But I do pity war - I pity that more men and women will have to face the dreadful circumstances of that oh so darkest of all human traits; I pity that war is as much a part of life as love is; I pity that even today in some parts of the world old-men still preach to the young "It is sweet and right to die for one's country" but in their devilment change country for faith.

So you see, I do pity - but not the men who fought (and still fight).

Cheers - salesie.

[ianw]

Can anyone advise what the likely make-up of Kipling's platoon would have been. I would have assumed a mixture of regulars/reservists and new men but with a preponderance of the former?

That said, I note that 2nd battalion was only formed in July 1915. So was it indeed as raw as it was pictured?

[Gunboat]

I'm sorry Gunboat but I couldn't let this pass without a comment. Were you only watching the officer, the frightened lad who threw up (but didn't hesitate to go over the top when the whistle blew) and the the poor lad who was on the verge of panic and could handle a simple task like fixing his bayonet. I'll tell you what, lets jeer at him. What you saw on the screen was as close as we know to what it was really like and yes, Jack managed to hold himself together because being in command somehow gives one that extra ounce of strength. Did you also notice the stocism of the NCO. He too was petrified but because of his experience and maturity he somehow managed to hold himself together.....just. Then there were the other members of the platoon, petrified young men who also answered the call when it came

I cry because I care, as you do too I'm sure, but I do try very hard to understand. Sociological claptrap just gets in the way.

Harry

No I wasn't only watching the officer and I am in no way jeering at the thought of the very real fear that men must have felt but it seems in every portrayal in film or drama now that some private soldier has to throw up, or be stricken with panic, of course I am sure that mustve happened, but for every man that reacted in the way proportionately there must have been as many officers that reacted that way, but that is seldom if ever shown. I would be no less sympathetic had it been the character Jack or some other officer who was visibly terrified indeed it would have been perhaps a more compelling and sympathetic story had he after all his trials and tribulations in getting into the army that rather that fulfil a stereotype that he had been sick and scared and barely able to control his actions... perhaps that would have made the actions of his jingoistic father seem abhorrent....I wouldn't have jeered him, I wouldn't have thought him less brave for being like that.

Sociological Claptrap it may be....but consider this, grossly exagerated though I am sure it was, but we were shown heartrending scenes of the struggle of his parents to find out what happened to him, we felt their anquish and suffering....but is it not arguably more sad and tragic that there were thousands of parents of private soldiers who were missing who did not have the ability, the resources, the influence to try and get the information, who would have had the doors of authority slammed in their faces. Isn't that the more tragic story? Perhaps it isn't as compelling a drama to show the grief of the working classes because they would have to carry on with their lives, to work to survive.

[ianw]

Staggered that someone signed off £15 million to make the programme. At that level of cost, I despair at anyone making the definitive Great War film.

[Beau Geste]

Your comments are pretty much spot on about these men not being supermen, with the same cross section of fears, loves and courage that we all have. But, it seems to me, your first two paragraphs contain a glaring contradiction i.e. if they, as you rightly say "...in the main WANTED to be recognised and treated like heroes" then why would they not rail at being pitied?

I don't pity them - I admire them.

But I do pity war - I pity that more men and women will have to face the dreadful circumstances of that oh so darkest of all human traits; I pity that war is as much a part of life as love is; I pity that even today in some parts of the world old-men still preach to the young "It is sweet and right to die for one's country" but in their devilment change country for faith.

So you see, I do pity - but not the men who fought (and still fight).

Cheers - salesie.

I'm sorry Salesie but I'm not altogether sure that I follow your argument.

Why can't one pity those who fought and suffered, in one way or another, and admire them at the same time ? You seem to be suggesting that these two emotions ("pity", defined in terms of a feeling of tenderness brought on by the way they suffered during those awful years, and "admiration" which conjures up notions of "wonder") are in some way mutually exclusive. I don't think so! My attitude towards those who fought in The Great War is a mixture of the two.

I know I'm generalising to some extent here, but the fact that they suffered terribly is beyond doubt and because of that I feel 'a great compassion' (pity) towards them. At the same time, they have my admiration for being able to overcome the hardship and fear that was so often with them

I don't really know what you mean when you say that you "pity war". I'm familiar with the notion of "the pity of war" but not in the way you have expressed it. I too abhor the fact that young people are today fighting in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and those who are still preaching "dulce et decorum est", but my compassion and admiration is solely for the poor devils caught up in this abomination, not the abomination itself.

You say that my first two paragraphs contain a "glaring contradiction", I can't see where. Of course they wanted to be recognised for what they had achieved and they were full of hope that the country they had fought for so valiantly would be a place "fit for heroes" when they returned. If they were going to "rail" at anything, it wasn't the fact that ordinary people, like you and me, would treat them with admiration and compassion, it was because "the system" largely ignored the needs of them and their families and in consequence they felt utterly let down.

Great to chat with you Salesie

[Beau Geste]

No I wasn't only watching the officer and I am in no way jeering at the thought of the very real fear that men must have felt but it seems in every portrayal in film or drama now that some private soldier has to throw up, or be stricken with panic, of course I am sure that mustve happened, but for every man that reacted in the way proportionately there must have been as many officers that reacted that way, but that is seldom if ever shown. I would be no less sympathetic had it been the character Jack or some other officer who was visibly terrified indeed it would have been perhaps a more compelling and sympathetic story had he after all his trials and tribulations in getting into the army that rather that fulfil a stereotype that he had been sick and scared and barely able to control his actions... perhaps that would have made the actions of his jingoistic father seem abhorrent....I wouldn't have jeered him, I wouldn't have thought him less brave for being like that.

Sociological Claptrap it may be....but consider this, grossly exagerated though I am sure it was, but we were shown heartrending scenes of the struggle of his parents to find out what happened to him, we felt their anquish and suffering....but is it not arguably more sad and tragic that there were thousands of parents of private soldiers who were missing who did not have the ability, the resources, the influence to try and get the information, who would have had the doors of authority slammed in their faces. Isn't that the more tragic story? Perhaps it isn't as compelling a drama to show the grief of the working classes because they would have to carry on with their lives, to work to survive.

Hello Gunboat and thank you for a really interesting response.

Let me start by saying that my reference to "jeering" wasn't directed at you personally. What I was trying to do was show that something like that would have been really familiar to officers and NCOs in The Great War or in any war for that matter. I'm sure you are right incidentally, many officers would have been just as frightened as that young boy and indeed some of the books I've read have alluded to it. The point I made though is, I think, a valid one: the fact that these people, officers from the middle classes or lads from the working class areas of our cities and farms, could hold themselves together and obey orders (especially when those orders were often questioned by all and sundry) was amazing.

You said it was a case of "stiff upper lip and all that" where Jack was concerned. Well, he too was frightened. It showed when he said goodbye to his father just before going to France. He said something about "26 (or about that) officers from the regiment have already been killed". That simple statement and the look on his face, as he climbed into the carriage, spoke volumes to me regarding his state of mind.

I made a point in my earlier posting that those in command somehow HAVE TO hold themselves together. Whatever they're feeling they mustn't show it. A sign of weakness at the wrong time could have a momentous impact on the men he leads.

I thought it was an excellent two hours. I don't know if I would have enjoyed it any more if the writer had used his "poetic licence" with a little more freedom and had Jack acting in the way you describe, but I doubt it.

Again I don't know if I would have been more moved had the subject not been a family with wealth and connections but one, say, from a mill town in the north of England, but again I doubt it.

I do though take your point. The mere thought of hundreds of thousands (millions) of relatives suffering because of the loss af a loved one is the real and only tragedy of war.

I enjoyed your posting,

Harry

[PBI]

'What did you do in the War?' is repeated on BBC3 I think on Wednesday 14th......

Change of Plan,its now being Shown on BBC4 at 21.00hrs....thats Nine o clock in the Evening for the Captain Mainwarings amongst us...