Barlow: Asylum (Seventies TV Season)
Content warning: rape.
Spoiler alert: this post gives away an essential plot point.
The introduction to this series of posts can be found here:
Barlow at Large, 1971 to 1975 (towards the end just called Barlow, this episode is a final series one), was a show in which Detective Chief Superintendent Barlow (played by the legendary Stratford Johns) is on full-time secondment to the Home Office to investigate very sepcial cases. The first series consists of one storyline over all the episodes and the subsequent three series have one story per episode.
To the best of my knowledge this is the only episode available (it's on YouTube) and in fact I had never heard of this series until romping round the internet looking for shows for this series of posts. I have found one seller who claims to sell the whole series: I am sceptical that he has the whole series, simply because he lists all sorts of rare TV gems that nobody has ever seen and claims he has the whole series. That said, there are some very good quality screencaps on IMDb, so I'm really not sure of this show's preservation or availability.
In fact one of the interesting things about this show for an old TV geek is that it takes us to a very precise moment in time. Historically British TV had shown a very functional, respectful ideal of policing: perhaps most obviously in Dixon of Dock Green (1955 to 1976). Z-Cars (1962 to 1978) brought an update in policing methods from the beat-based Dixon, and an update in the problems the police encountered, but in my opinion was still fiercely deferential. Softly Softy (1966 to 1969) and spin-off Softly Softly Task Force (1969 to 1976) both featured a fictional CID and were again keen to show the police as sea green incorruptible. Barlow at large was then a spin-off from Softly Softly Task Force. Phew. Stratford Johns played his Barlow character in all of these shows except Dixon - so you've got it right, he was actually the same character in two different shows broadcast at the same time, which is just wild to my mind.
The precise moment we reach here is the transformation of how policing was depicted on UK TV with the advent of The Sweeney in 1975 (and competitor Target in 1977) to a more realistic depiction of policing: not so much a few bad apples as rotten to the core, violent, psychopathic, in league with the criminals.
So this show depicts the year that policing changed on British TV and it's fascinating. It also takes us back to the Cold War because this episode is all about a sailor from a Russian ship who has landed in London and asked for asylum. According to this show there was no procedure for what was done if a foreign national asked for asylum at this time (I can't tell if this is true, but it just sounds wrong on every level, because of the potential for it to become a diplomatic incident), and so Barlow is entrusted with the task of proving whether he is a real defector.
I am going to say it right now: I really really want to watch the whole of this series because if it's up to this episode's standard it must be excellent. This episode is brilliant, for a very specific reason which tickles me. We are set up to think that Stefan Borowski the Polish sailor on a Russian ship (played by Martin Shaw), is gay and that is the reason he is seeking asylum, and it does this in the most brilliant way imaginable.
At the opening of the episode we see Borowski on his ship. Usually, if you want the viewers to think they're seeing a sailor in the Russian navy you would take the obvious step of dressing him in the telnyashka because that is what a Russian sailor looks like. But they haven't done that here. Borowski is wearing a white vest with some chest hair showing above and has a little moustache. I thought he reminded me of somebody but I couldn't put my finger on who. Plus he just looked wrong for a Russian sailor, and as part of my research for this post I have selflessly spent hours online looking at pictures of Russian sailors and can truthfully say the only moustache I have seen was on an 80 year old veteran. Obviously I don't know the regulations but my money would be on moustaches and beards being banned in their navy. But it just kept bugging me that he looked like somebody but I couldn't put my finger on it.
I'm laughing even as I type this but I didn't believe it when it struck me: to make us think that Borowski is gay they've only gone and dressed him in the 'clone' look that was so popular on the gay scene in the seventies. They've just abandoned an authentic sailor costume to dress him like nobody as much as Freddie Mercury.
And then I thought that I must be imagining this: the show can't possibly have dressed Martin Shaw up as Freddie Mercury to make us think he's gay. Could they? That couldn't possibly be happening.
I should say that after Borowski goes in the drink as his only way of escaping the ship and is then taken to a police station for questioning, his wet clothes are taken off him and he isn't given clean clothes to wear. He's questioned with what looks like a towel wrapped round him (the video is quite fuzzy). At one point Barlow actually tells his deputy not to give him any clothes to wear. What the hell is going on? Is Barlow coming out in the middle of this?
But then I knew I was on the right track and we are actually expected to think that Naval Rating Mercury is gay because Barlow pretty much asks him if he is and whether that is the reason he wants asylum. Borowski is at pains to say that he likes women although doesn't have a wife, it's just him and his mother (again, I can't overstate how much this is calculated to suggest that he is gay without actually saying he is; this is a genuinely brilliant script) before returning to saying that he is seeking asylum for reasons of non-specific political persecution.
The show does a brilliant job of setting this up before revealing the real reasons.
I just have a couple of criticisms of this show. The main one is that there is a plot hole that you could sail a Russian U-boat through, which is that this show is set during the Cold War. I do not believe that the level of distrust Borowski's request for asylum was met with is in any way realistic. Obviously you would ask the reasons an asylum seeker has but I just think that in the West in the 1970s the natural reaction to anyone from the other side of the curtain seeking asylum would be that of course they are.
The other is that there is a problem with an interrogation by Barlow at one point in the show, where he is talking to a woman who has been raped. This is the second time rape has come up in this series of posts and if it comes up in any future shows they won't appear here at all, I've decided. For a start, Barlow is apparently talking to a Russian national, and someone in their forces, about an alleged rape which happened on a Russian ship at sea. I just do not believe that any police officer of any nation would touch that with a barge pole. In fact I think they would refuse to talk to the victim at all. Nonetheless Barlow does talk to the woman (for plot reasons) and at one point says to her 'Some people say there's no such thing as rape,' for reasons which are not immediately apparent. He also tells her that if at any point she had agreed to sex with her assailant then there was no way she was raped. This probably accurately represents the sophisticated interrogation techniques and knowledge of the law of the police force, but you would expect TV to at least make an effort to get the law right.
Other than these criticisms I would highly recommend this episode. I didn't even know Barlow existed before coming across it for these posts, so am glad that once again writing this blog is introducing me to new things.
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