William Boyd has based the three-hour film on the Evelyn Waugh autobiographical war novels with tremendous success - and it's weirdly like watching one of Will's own stories, with its multiple characters, lunacy of war theme, unhappy relationships, luck (or lack of it) and changing identities. Indeed the author himself acknowledges the Helleresque Catch-22ness of Waugh which is well evidenced in the scenes in which the fearsome Brigadier Ritchie-Hook (an excellent performance from Robert Pugh) entreats the men to shoot at him, and where the equally insane and reclusive Ludovic (Guy Henry, also great) prevents his name from being on any official documentation.
Katrin Catrlidge we know from Mike Leigh (she's sadly no longer with us), Robert Daws as Maj. 'Fido' Hound has been one-offs in lots and lots of TV series though maybe is best known to us from Rock and Chips and as 'Tuppy Glossop' in Jeeves and Wooster and - if we saw it - TV's Take a Girl Like Me. Megan Dodds as Victoria has a similar background as indeed did Henry (best known for Rome and Criminal Justice) and Pugh (The Shadow Line and many other things), and that's why everyone looks so familiar, though our fellows Mangan and Rhind-Tutt, Simon Williams and Leslie Phillips need no introduction. And the opportunistic Trimmer / McTavish is played by Richard Coyle from - amongst many other things - Coupling.
It appears that almost every character experiences a leg injury!
Extremely successful, filmed in Mallorca. Music by Nina Humphreys, ph. Daf Hobson, editor Joe Walker (12 Years a Slave, Hunger, Shame, Brighton Rock, Harry Brown).
Oh yes. I forgot the glue: Daniel Craig. Wonderful. He'll go far, that lad.
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