TV review by Rob Gowland:
Off with their heads!
The Scarlet Pimpernel

Sundays at 8.30pm ABC commencing on May 9.

"I've written a poem."
"Who sir? You sir?"
"Yes sir, me sir."
"No, sir!"
"Yes sir. Listen.
"The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart.
"They seek him here, they seek him there,
"those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
"Is he in heaven or is he in hell?
"That damned elusive Pimpernel."

The dialogue is from the much admired and fondly remembered 1935 film of 
The Scarlet Pimpernel, with the great Leslie Howard as the secret 
rescuer of French aristocrats, hiding his exploits behind a facade as a 
very foolish fop dancing attendance on the Prince of Wales.

The poem remains in the new three-part series from BBC Birmingham, but the 
affected dialogue is significantly toned down and Sir Percy is less a fool 
and more of a recognised wit.

Indeed, Richard Carpenter's script for the three 90-minute episodes (each 
complete in themselves) is notable for the way it narrows the dichotomy 
between Sir Percy's heroics and his foppish society posturing, making the 
heroics much more credible.

The three episodes, each the length of a feature film, are based on the 
books of the British novelist and painter Baroness Orczy, otherwise known 
as Emmuska Barstow.

Born in Hungary, she published The Scarlet Pimpernel, the first of 
more than 40 similar romantic adventure novels, in 1905.

Most of her books are set in the period of the French Revolution and 
include several Pimpernel sequels. However, although she paints a 
vivid picture of the Revolution, she understood it not at all — or perhaps 
she chose to ignore the historical reality in favour of a more easily 
saleable myth.

Her's is the Revolution of the Terror: "the Mob" rules Paris, manipulated 
by the cunning and evil Robespierre, who ruthlessly and cold bloodedly 
exterminates his enemies; the "aristos" sent in the tumbrils to Madame la 
Guillotine are almost invariably "innocent" (and of course brave, dignified 
and "noble" as befits their heritage).

France has degenerated into chaos, ruin and horror arrousing the anger and 
the sympathy of the gallant young English aristocrats. And the most gallant 
is Sir Percy Blakeney, who, with his followers, the League of Gentlemen, 
pops over to Paris to visit his tailor and rescue the odd French aristocrat 
or two.

Sink me! It's devilish excitin' work!

It's also extremely reactionary propaganda that perpetuates a view of the 
French Revolution (and by extension all revolutions) that has been 
assiduously propagated by the Right since before the French 
Revolution.

It was how the English Revolution of a century earlier was portrayed for 
mass consumption — and still is: Cromwell and the Roundheads (never 
"Parliament") are ruthless and cruel, the Cavaliers are gallant and noble 
and dashing, if there is a love story the boy will be a cavalier not a 
supporter of Parliament.

France, at the time of the Revolution, was practically bankrupt and ravaged 
by famine.

When the King reluctantly summoned the Estates General on May 5, 1789, 
basically to find new ways of raising money, the Third Estate rebelled. 
They demanded an end to privilege, especially the privileged rule of the 
aristocracy.

[The Estates General were a kind of consultative council representing the 
three sectors of society: the aristocracy (First Estate), clergy (Second 
Estate), and nascent bourgeoisie (middle classes) (Third Estate) — had not 
been called for 175 years.]

The bourgeoisie's call for an end to the glaring inequalities in French 
life, to raise instead the goal of liberty, equality and brotherhood, found 
popular support among the peasantry and the lower classes in the towns.

The Estates General reconstituted themselves as an Assembly and set about 
creating a constitutional monarchy. Thousands of aristocrats left the 
country (long before the Terror) and began intriguing with foreign monarchs 
to restore the king's (Louis 16) absolute power.

As the revolutionary process developed in France, European royalty, 
especially the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia, prepared to 
invade the country.

The revolutionaries took up the challenge. The Girondists, the party of the 
the higher levels of the bourgeoisie, also hoped a revolutionary war would 
improve their position in their internal struggle against the Jacobins who 
represented the lower middle class and the artisans.

Even while war raged, the Girondists continued to conspire against the 
revolutionary aims of the lower levels of the bourgeoisie (the Jacobins) 
and their supporters among the common people.

In 1793, Robespierre, leader of the Jacobins, had the Girondist deputies 
arrested and effective power passed to the Committee of Public Safety which 
he headed in Paris.

This is the stage at which Baroness Orczy usually chooses to begin her 
stories. The Committee sought to suppress the internal sabotage and 
counter-revolution of both the aristocracy and the upper bourgeoisie with 
the Terror.

The pitiable aristocrats portrayed by the good Baroness were not all 
"innocent"; they were as a class assiduously trying to overturn the 
revolution and restore their privileges.

There were armed counter-revolutionary uprisings of royalist nobles and 
their retainers (roughly akin to the armies of White officers who fought 
ferociously against the Reds in Russia in 1918), and these she also 
depicts, but with little sympathy, portraying them as well-intentioned 
failures (in marked contrast to Sir Percy's Britishers).

But while the radicals among the bourgeoisie had the support of the poor 
and the oppressed, the latter's aspirations went far beyond what the 
bourgeoisie was prepared to support.

Reaction was inevitable, and in 1794 it won the day: in the "Thermidorean 
reaction" Robespierre was arrested and sent to the guillotine. With him in 
a very real sense went the Revolution itself.

From there the road led within a few years to the military coup that 
brought Napoleon to the position of Consul (and, before too long, Emperor). 
The upper level of the bourgeoisie had successfully entrenched itself in 
power and the masses were despatched back to their hovels to try again in 
1848.

Orczy portrays the British aristocracy as the main opponents of the 
bloodthirsty French revolutionaries, but in fact it was the British 
bourgeoisie who were the most tenacious opponents of the ideas and actions 
of the regime in Paris.

In Britain, the bourgeoisie had been entrenched in power since Cromwell's 
time. Any movement for an end to privilege in Britain would now be a 
movement against the bourgeoisie's privileged position.

The British ruling class pursued the war against Revolutionary France, and 
later Napoleonic France, with greater vigour than any other European 
country.

Baroness Orczy, however, was not really interested in history. She was 
writing adventure romances, and they have as little relationship to 
historical fact as the average pirate story or Western.

So why bring the matter up? Because, unlike the Barbary Coast or the Wild 
West, the French Revolution, and Robespierre in particular, is subject to a 
continuing cultural offensive designed to denigrate it and him in the 
popular mind.

The new three-film series compounds this offensive by virtue of its high 
level of artistry. The opening scene, in which the young Marguerite St Just 
watches her parents get hanged by the local lord for daring to ask for a 
bit more land, establishes the series' democratic credentials — it 
recognises the faults of some of the aristocracy.

This serves to give more credence to its subsequent depiction of Paris 
under the Terror, the "revolution gone wrong". Shot in the Czech Republic, 
with old Prague standing in for 18th century Paris, it is a triumph of 
evocative art direction.

The "Parisian" exteriors are crowded with the debris and detritus of a city 
that has suffered a whirlwind of sorts: it is a vision of a city not just 
in turmoil but in torment.

The only joyous revolutionaries are a few wild-eyed and usually murderous 
fanatics. Compare it to Jean Renoir's great classic of the Revolution La 
Marseillaise and they are not only not in the same city: they are not 
on the same cultural plane.

That said, this is a very well made series. Richard E Grant makes a good 
fist of the Pimpernel and gives the pleasant impression that both the actor 
and character are enjoying the goings on. And his costumes are really 
somethin', sir.

His wife, the grown-up Marguerite, is played by Elizabeth McGovern with a 
startlingly narrow range of expression. She only seems to become really 
animated in the bedroom scenes.

Ronan Vibert plays Robespierre, and it is a perfect Baroness Orczy type of 
portrayal: soft spoken, even effeminate, cruel, arrogant yet fearful of 
opposition,  untrue in almost every detail yet a splendidly rounded 
portrayal.

His "chief of the secret police", Chauvelin, is played by Martin Shaw with 
a solidity and sense of real menace that admirably suits the complexity of 
the character as presented here: this Chauvelin has secrets of his own, 
skeletons in his closet and personal reasons for his hatred of Percy.

If Shaw does not entirely convince us that he is French, that is as much 
the fault of the production as of the performance.

All the French characters speak in English with no affected French accents 
(except for the odd lapse). This has some curious effects.

In one scene, where someone leaps to his feet and sings the 
Marseillaise — in French — he appears to have broken into a 
foreign language.

A significant element of Carpenter's script is the attention given to 
female characters. Marguerite risks her life as readily and almost as 
frequently as Percy and in each of the three episodes there are strong 
central characters who are women.

One of them, in the first episode, the treacherous Minette, who betrays 
Darcy's friends, is played by Emilia Fox, who will be remembered as Darcy's 
shy young sister in the BBC's Pride And Prejudice.

In short The Scarlet Pimpernel is exciting and enjoyable even though 
the wrong side wins all the time.