Reviews

The drama was at its best, however, when showing the poisonous legacy of being the child of a great man. Matthew Macfadyen was outstanding as the boorish Randolph. The meal between him, his mother and his drunk and depressed sisters as their sick father lay upstairs was a minor masterpiece of suppressed feelings and long-burning resentment.  

No other figure from British history appears so frequently in drama and history programmes. Why shouldn’t we see him when he’s weak and sick, and beset as he often was throughout his life by weaker men who want to see him gone?

This time, those men included his son Randolph, played by a rotund Matthew Macfadyen as a bitter drunkard with a venomous line in snobbery. One of the best moments in a script crammed with excellent dialogue came when he dismissed his father’s private secretary, Jock Colville, as a ‘greasy little margarine-eater’.

Not for the first time recently, Michael Gambon was competent enough, but without ever seeming to go beyond what was strictly necessary: something that can’t be said of Alex Jennings as a comically exasperated Eden, or Matthew Macfadyen who as Randolph chewed up his sisters and the scenery with equal relish.

Matthew Macfadyen’s Randolph is splendidly ghastly.

Worst of course was Randolph. We saw far too little of Matthew Macfadyen as the great man’s ghastly son: an alcoholic failed politician, all his father’s snobbery, none of the redemptive charm. His sometime friend Evelyn Waugh, on learning Randolph had had a benign tumour removed from the lung, is remembered for having noted drily: “It was a typical triumph of modern science to find the one part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it.” Macfadyen played him with an outstanding and brave dislikability.

Meanwhile, the Churchill family gather at Chartwell. This is the drama’s other substantial factor. While the old man and Clemmie are devoted to each other, the family, is, essentially, disastrously dysfunctional. Matthew Macfadyen is marvellous as Randolph, who is portrayed here as a drunk and jackass. His rudeness to everyone is startling and he succumbs to violent, drunken sulks when his siblings challenge him about his lack of success. Not that any of them have done anything substantial in their lives. An early scene of the family having dinner is a remarkable mini-drama of rage, envy, self-loathing and fury.

Spoiler:

WEEKEND’S MUST-SEE II: “Masterpiece: Churchill’s Secret,” 8-10 p.m. Sunday, PBS.

It’s 1953 and Winston Churchill is back in power at age 78. As a stroke pushes him near death, his children argue. So do his colleagues; some want to replace him, others want to keep it secret.

Michael Gambon is perfect as Churchill, but many of the best moments come from others. There’s Matthew Macfadyen as Churchill’s son – drinking heavily, complaining loudly, grieving inwardly. And there’s Romola Garai as a nurse, suddenly surrounded by the giants of her era.