Lucan – TV review
Lord Lucan's vile, hate-filled world of decadence and
privilege is brilliantly captured in Jeff Pope's adaptation of John Pearson's
book The Gamblers
Sam Wollaston
The Guardian, Thursday 12 December 2013 / http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/dec/12/lucan-tv-review
It's a pity that a man called John Burke resigned from the
infamous Mayfair gambling haunt The Clermont Club in 1965. Why a pity? Because
in Lucan (ITV), a much older Burke is played by Michael Gambon.
Jeff Pope's excellent drama is based on John Pearson's book
The Gamblers, and it cleverly includes Pearson as a character, linking the past
with (almost) the present. So we see Pearson (played by Paul Freeman)
interviewing some old aristos of the Clermont set, trying to shed new light on
the mystery that has intrigued Britain for decades. But because John Burke was
only at the Clermont for the first couple of years (he fell out with founder
John Aspinall), and wasn't around to witness Lord Lucan's downfall and
disappearance, he doesn't have an awful lot to tell Pearson. Or won't tell him
– they're a secretive bunch, these toffs, especially when it comes to Lucan and
facing up to their own despicable pasts. Anyway, what this all means is that
Gambon – such a spellbinding, screen-owning presence – is only around for the
first 10 minutes or so. That's the pity.
Not that there aren't other extraordinary performances. Rory
Kinnear's Lucan for one – quiet, proper, angry, not overburdened with brains or
imagination, blinded by his gambling addiction and his sense of entitlement. I
don't think there is any footage of the real Lucan; as far as I'm concerned,
Kinnear now is him. While Christopher Eccleston has become Aspinall, or Aspers
– charismatic and charming while ruthlessly relieving his so-called friends of
their inheritances, with a monkey on his shoulder or a tiger cub at his feet,
and some questionable views about "the natural order of things". Then
there's Catherine McCormack's Lady Veronica Lucan – anxious, vulnerable,
bullied, but somehow able to cling on to dignity in court. And Jane Lapotaire
as another of Pearson's interviewees, Susie Maxwell-Scott, is a ghastly old
trout clinging to a world that no longer exists, and one of the least sisterly
women you're ever likely to come across. All are brilliant.
But is there really anything left to be said about the Lucan
affair? Well, my thorough and scientific survey with approximately four (OK,
exactly three) people – Guardian employees, no less, though too young to have
been alive in 1965 and, if they were around in 1974, not yet on top of current
affairs, even sensational scandals – reveals that the under 50s know very
little about it. He went missing, they do know that. But was he a spy? Or did
he kill someone? His wife? Only one of my colleagues thinks a nanny might have
been involved. No one knows the name Sandra Rivett. So perhaps it's not
overfamiliar.
And, just as Pearson's book wasn't, this isn't only about
the Lucan affair either. Pearson started off writing a book about the Clermont
and the people who went there; it just turned into one about Lucan because, he
says here, "books have a strange way of exerting their own
existence". Pope's adaptation, too, is just as much about that time and
those people in that place, as about the Clermont. Actually, it's about two
rotten institutions – a vile club full of decadence and privilege, and an even
viler marriage – the Lucans' – full of hatred and abuse. The two combined to
create an almost unimaginable world in which psychological torture was
acceptable and planning on doing away with an inconvenient wife was just
another gamble.
The first part ends on that night, 7 November 1974, with the
nanny, Sandra Rivett, lying bludgeoned to death in the the basement of the
Lucan family home. Part two, which goes out next Wednesday and already beckons
with a menacing finger, will take it from there – Lucan disappearing and his
chums closing ranks, not saying very much at all. Until – and this is the
clever thing about making Pearson a character – many years later when Susie
Maxwell-Scott, the last person to see Lucan alive, tells Pearson something …
 |
Pier group: Rory Kinnear and Catherine McCormack in the ITV
crime drama 'Lucan'
|
Lucan, ITV: Review - Brilliantly acted, cleverly scripted and beautifully shot
SARAH HUGHES
Thursday 12 December 2013 / http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/lucan-itv-tv-review--brilliantly-acted-cleverly-scripted-and-beautifully-shot-8998791.html
It is almost 40 years since John Bingham, the 7th Earl of
Lucan, disappeared following the murder of his children's nanny Sandra Rivett.
Lucan was convicted of the crime in absentia and, while his body has never been
discovered, his estranged wife Veronica believes he killed himself sometime in
the early hours after Rivett's death.
Not everyone is convinced. For much of my childhood it
seemed as though newspapers filled a slow news day with a sighting of Lucan
apparently propping up a bar in a far-flung outpost of the former Empire and
the most common conspiracy theory has the Clermont Set – John Aspinall, Jimmy
Goldmith, Dominic Elwes et al – closing ranks to protect the peer, helping him
to elude the police at a crucial time.
Lucan, ITV's glossy reconstruction of the events leading up
to and after Rivett's murder, began with the declaration that "much of
this story is based on fact, though we have also included an element of
speculation" before plunging us straight into the familiar tale of
upper-class cads, gambling addiction and domestic despair.
Scripted by Jeff Pope, who has good form in tricky real-life
adaptations having produced the award-winning Fred West drama, Appropriate
Adult, Lucan drew on John Pearson's The Gamblers to present a hermetically
sealed world in which women knew their place and the greatest sin was to be a
bore.
In the lead role, Rory Kinnear perfectly caught Lucan's
ponderous charm, making you see why women such as Susie Maxwell Scott might
have covered up for him simply by dint of his birth, while there were strong
performances from Jane Lapotaire as the older Susie, Leanne Best as Rivett and,
in particular, Catherine McCormack as poor beleaguered Veronica, trapped in
marriage to a husband who appeared to delight in tormenting her and even
attempted to have her committed.
The show's real villain, however, was the machiavellian
Aspinall, played by Christopher Eccleston with serpentine grace (and the odd
accent issue). This Aspinall was a consummate game player and puppet master, an
outsider who pulled off the neat trick of seeming like the ultimate insider and
who was shown repeatedly reminding Lucan about survival of the fittest, the
natural order of things and the need to "fight dirty and let there be no
shame".
"Aspers" might have been an upper-crust Iago but
"Lucky" Lucan was no Othello brought low by jealousy and, while
Pope's script was adept at showing you how the peer got to the desperate place
where murdering his wife seemed a logical way of gaining custody of his
children, the best thing about Lucan was the way in which it gave Veronica a
voice, making this as much a story about the quiet desperation faced by many
married women, both then and now, as the same old sensational tale.
Yet even Pope's astute script couldn't quite shake off a
growing sense of queasiness that here was murder regurgitated as entertainment.
We talk about the Lord Lucan affair yet the real story is the brutal death of
Sandra Rivett and there was something wrong about the way she was reduced to a
bit part in her own tale.
The killing itself was shot in near- darkness and tastefully
handled but it was hard to watch without feeling like a voyeur in someone
else's tragedy. A feeling that seems only likely to increase next week when the
focus switches to the aftermath of the murder and the attempts or otherwise of
the Clermont Club to save one of their own. Lucan was a brilliantly acted, cleverly
scripted and beautifully shot drama. I'm not sure it should have ever been made.
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