Sapphire and Steel: Assignment 1, Part 1

I see I have somehow never blogged about Sapphire and Steel's first assignment so obviously that must be rectified at once.

I have to say that I love the beginning of this one inordinately. The atmosphere is perfectly set by the sound effect of the wind outside the house, the parents reciting nursery rhymes with Helen, the clocks' ticking which abruptly stops, and the way we see Robert essentially alone on the ground floor of the house. All of these things are a classic cinematic way of setting up a scary atmosphere: this is why it's always raining in film noir!

Robert naturally becomes concerned when everything suddenly goes quiet, and the original sounds are replaced by a strange noise. He calls to his dad to ask what's happening, but receives no answer. He finds both parents have disappeared and he is actually alone in the house with his little sister Helen. She tells him that their parents have 'gone', but that is all she can say. Considering this is the first episode of the show, the invasion of time is perfectly depicted, with pipe and book just abandoned.

Into this situation walk Sapphire and Steel for the first time, without explanation, invitation, or warning: they just turn up at the door.

One of the things which interests me, considering this is the first episode of the series, is the development of Sapphire and Steel's characters. I have to say that Steel arrives fully formed, subtle as a sledge hammer, and really can't be doing with anyone's shit. Sapphire is, I think, slightly more mutable. On the one hand, her role as the sympathetic one who understands humans is already fully present. However she also has a hint of Steel about her, when she tells Robert that the policeman, with his idiot pen and idiot notebook, won't be able to help them. This just strikes me as so much like the sort of thing Steel would say that I actually wonder whether it's a line that got passed from Steel to Sapphire.

However there is another way in which Sapphire acts quite steely in her first appearance. After telling Robert that the policeman won't be able to help them, she immediately launches in to quite a forensic analysis of the house, its contents, and the situation, without regard to the fact that they have just walked into a situation where the two children are going to be, at best, mystified. She does this even before she bothers to introduce them to Robert and Helen.

Of course it has to be Sapphire who does do the introducing when it next happens. She's not just the slightly more steely version of her character that I have described above, she also has a magnificent aspect of being a blond bombshell, a sexual aspect to her which is completely absent elsewhere in the series. As soon as she introduces herself to Robert, visibly he realises that women aren't just mothers, falls in love with her, and announces that her name is beautiful. Seriously, Sapphire doesn't go around having males fall in love with her in the rest of the series, but this is an aspect of her character here that I love enormously!

Robert's character is a reminder for me that the series was intended as a children's show. I would put the actor at about fourteen or fifteen: not a child in the way the little girl is (and not that long before would have been old enough to have been out of school and at work in the UK), but not an adult. Remembering that the series was intended for children resolved the dissatisfaction I was going to express with having someone so young as the 'straight man' for the narrative: he's placed in a literal older brother role, as the nearest thing there is to an adult in the household, who of necessity has to do the explaining to Sapphire and Steel because his little sister won't. The way he is placed in this pseudo-adult role is only unsatisfactory is you expect the show to act as if it is an adult show. Doh. That said, he is an excellent blank canvas for Sapphire and Steel to explain the whole idea of their work and the show: he has the right questions scripted and is exactly what is needed.

On the subject of children, I feel slightly bad that Helen has the most peculiar effect on me: she irritates me beyond all bearing. At points where Robert is trying to get her to do things, that are important and about saving themselves, she just announces that she's not going to. At another point she wanders off into the out-of-bounds bedroom when everyone thinks she is asleep. Frankly the child is a liability and you would expect that their parents would already have warned her that one day she would come to a sticky end. This is a completely personal reaction, that frankly I would rather she spent the entire show in silence and just did what she was told. In fact she could even just be unseen as well as unheard. Call me unfair, but that's what I am.

I have a criticism, which is that I'm afraid there's an element of pseudo-history here, which you would really expect Sapphire and Steel to be on top of, because Sapphire just knows about the nursery rhyme without having to look it up and would not be restricted to earthly sources. You would expect her to know that the idea that Ring-a-ring-a-roses is related to the plague, is in fact not true, and it is of more recent origin than you would think. If you know this it's a bit incongruous in a TV programme where the entire problem is because there is an old house full of old things. You may consider this nit-picking, but we're talking about the legendary Sapphire and Steel here and so I have to appear to be critical and not just roll over on my back and let it wash over me.

It is perhaps my long-term fanaticism about this show that manages to miss the obvious fact that it was made in a studio and not necessarily on a huge budget, but I think that adds to the charm. It also doesn't matter that the account of the elements in the titles is apparently complete nonsense, which I know bugs a lot of people: my own view is that since the show is fiction it's allowed to tinker with the structure of the universe.

Phew, it feels really good to be blogging about a Sapphire and Steel again, and I'm reminded that it really does take extensive repetition and discussion, always that sign of quality television.

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