Growing up in the Seventies, one sure sign of a quality TV drama was the inclusion on the Radio Times cast list of Bernard Hepton. It’s only recently that I discovered he had enjoyed a lengthy career as producer and director before finding fame at the other end of the camera. Not all his output was on Mum and Dad’s agenda or of any interest to my childhood self but he starred in some truly memorable series throughout that decade.
Like Colin Blakely, Peter Barkworth and others, Hepton was a regular presence on the TV landscape, specialising in tall, honourable characters, perhaps with a hint of vulnerability. Judges, archbishops, senior cops or politicians: all were meat and drink to this Bradford boy, be it in a contemporary or historical setting.
I remember being very aware of the BBC’s prestige Tudor-era serials of 1970-71, The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth R and am pretty sure I was in the lounge on occasions they were on the screen, possibly even paying some attention. Whilst the enduring images in my brain are of Keith Michell’s fat-suit and Glenda Jackson’s white make-up, I must also have seen Bernard Hepton in the crucial role of Thomas Cranmer.
Then in ’72, when I was eleven, Colditz came along. World War 2 films were always on the box but Gerald Glaister’s prisoner-of-war series approached the subject in a very different way. Yes, there were plenty of cliched gun-toting Nazi guards, hackneyed German accents and stiff-upper-lip British officers but, unlike the monochrome TV pictures, not all the characters were so black-and-white. There were some enthralling episodes and, homework completed, I was allowed to watch most weeks. It wasn’t simply a case of Allies v Nazis. There were conflicts between the prisoners and also between those charged with preventing any escape. The mutual respect between the rival officer classes was ever-present and in particular Bernard Hepton’s Kommandant was portrayed as an honourable human being, unlike the brutally bitter and twisted SS Major Mohn (Anthony Valentine).
A few years later, the same production team were responsible for another claustrophobic wartime drama, Secret Army. Many of the same ingredients were present and correct but this time Hepton was on ‘our’ side. For three years, his character Albert Foiret ran a small bar-restaurant in Belgium. His customers were occupying German troops, blissfully unaware that the establishment was a front for the Belgian Resistance smuggling rescued Allied airmen back to Blighty. It’s interesting to watch the original show to rid my mind of the more lasting memories of Eighties comedy Allo Allo! and Gorden Kaye’s character Rene, his appearance so blatantly based on Hepton’s Albert. The latter also provided some continuity at the start of Secret Army spin-off series Kessler in 1981. He was a useful witness in the later hunt for the evil SS major who escaped capture after the war. Sadly, nobody seemed to care what happened to the sitcom’s looted painting ‘The Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies’…
Around the time I first went off to Exeter University, the Beeb broadcast another of its classic adaptations, and I became hooked. Like most Le Carre novels, Tinker Tailor Solder Spy was slow-moving and wordy, requiring considerable attention (I could never watch it now!); an action sequence would typically involve Alec Guinness giving his spectacles a particularly vigorous wipe. Guinness played George Smiley and one of his former recruits, the duplicitous Toby Esterhase, was a role made for Hepton. He reprised the role in the follow-up, Smiley’s People, and it was a crucial part requiring some mesmerising scenes with Guinness.
Also in my undergraduate days I watched Bernard in a very different spy thriller, Blood Money, this time as a DCS in Scotland Yard, and I would later welcome his appearances in Bergerac (as a senior MP) and The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (as a judge). Back in ’76 he also joined the stellar cast of I Claudius, another series demanding more concentration than most 15 year-olds could possibly possess, but those narrow eyes were unmistakeable.
Amidst all these heavy dramas, I’m glad to report Bernard Hepton did fit in a few comedies. The only one I would have watched was Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ’Em. In the first series, he was one of many notable character actors roped in to have their sanity severely tested by Michael Crawford’s Frank Spencer. In Bernard’s case, the humour was ramped up by his character being a psychiatrist. Our Frank was, of course, way beyond the scope of professional diagnosis or treatment.
His TV appearances became scarcer in the Nineties but it was only a few years ago that he died, aged 92. The announcement flooded my mind with happy memories of one of Britain’s finest television actors of my lifetime.
No comments:
Post a Comment