Monday 26 December 2016

571 Harry's Game




First  viewed : 25  October  1982

By  contrast , I  knew  pretty  much  exactly  when  this  one  was  going  to  crop  up  because  its  haunting  theme  tune  was  a  big  hit  and  introduced  the  hitherto  obscure  Irish  folk  group  Clannad  to  an  international  audience.

Harry's  Game  was  a  three-part  adaptation, by  Yorkshire  TV  on consecutive  week  nights, of  a  Gerald  Seymour  novel. Harry  Brown  ( Ray  Lonnen )  is  a  serving  army  officer  sent  undercover  into  the  Republican  community  to  flush  out  an  IRA  hitman  Billy  Downes  ( Derek  Thompson )  who  has  just  assassinated  a  Cabinet  minister  in  London. He  eventually  manages  to  trace  Downes  through  his  own   girlfriend  Josephine  ( Gil  Brailey )   but  the  IRA   are  also  on  to  him.

It's  a  tense,  gripping  thriller  which  manages  to  capture  the  bleak  pointlessness  of  the  conflict  without  laying  it  on  with  a  trowel. It's  not  black  and  white  either. Harry  is  a  ruthless  operator  who  doesn't  think  twice  about  endangering  Josephine  while  Billy  starts  regretting  his  involvement  from  the  moment  he  pulls  the  trigger. There's  some  harrowing  moments  particularly  the  suicide  of  teenager  Theresa  ( Linda  Robson )  who  gets  caught  between  a  rock  and  a  hard  place.

Lonnen  put  in  a  great  performance  as  Harry  but  I  can't  say  the  same  about  Thompson   whose  limitations  as  an  actor  are  rather  exposed  here. Tony  Rohr  is  chilling  as  his  brigade commander; he's  played  IRA  men  so  often  I'm  sure  even  Gerry  Adams  thinks  he's  a comrade.

The  climax  is  suitably  exciting  though  you  have  to  ignore  a  major  continuity  gaffe  when   Downes's  shattered  windscreen  repairs  itself  mid-car chase.

I'd  love  to  see  it  again  for  more  than  one  reason. The  back  streets  of  Leeds  doubled  for  Belfast  and  it  seems  very  likely  that  the  area  I  lived  in  during  my  last  year  at  University  there  was  featured.  From  the  few  clips  on  YouTube,  I  haven't  spotted  the  actual  street  I  lived  on   (  Thomas  St  ) but  perhaps  in  the  whole  series  it  would  be  there.

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