There are some gems to be found on YouTube that aren't readily available anywhere else (there's also a lot of pirated stuff, admittedly). Among the obscure items I've come across is a forty-year-old Play for Today written by David Pirie, now not only a well-regarded screenwriter but also an experienced novelist. The play is called Rainy Day Women, and Mark Lawson once described it as 'one of the neglected masterpieces of British TV'.
This is essentially a wartime story, but it's framed in a manner that seems consciously to imitate The Go-Between, a book and film that I admire. In 1984, a young boy discovers a diary. The story told in the diary is the story of the film, and it's not only dark but thought-provoking.
Charles Dance, an actor I've always rather liked, plays Captain Truman. He is sent to investigate rumours of espionage in a remote village, presumably in or around Lincolnshire. There he encounters a likeable and sensitive doctor (Lindsay Duncan) and a woman called Alice Durkow (Suzanne Bertish) who is hosting some land girls. Durkow is regarded with great suspicion. Is she a spy? Or even a witch?
The Home Guard are much in evidence, but these men are very far removed from the lovable characters of Dad's Army. They are a very nasty bunch indeed. One of the local men is suffering from impotence and it's as if the war has rendered the whole village dysfunctional, socially and sexually. Truman is a decent man, but he's inhibited by his own conservatism from confronting the menacing locals head-on.
Domestic violence escalates into murder and ultimately something quite shocking happens. We are only told about it, which unfortunately does lessen the impact, but at least Pirie avoids exploitative writing and poses interesting, and far from straightforward, questions about human behaviour and the nature of moral courage. In many respects this is a low-key and moody story, with a few shocking moments, but I can understand why Mark Lawson likes it.
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