Spyder's Web: Rev Counter
To my shock I see that it has been eleven years since I blogged about this episode of Spyder's Web in a series of posts about the show in the very early days of this blog.
Just as a brief recap about the show since I've barely touched it for over a decae: Spyder's Web is a 1972 ITV series about a secret government espionage organisation - Spyder - which uses a documentary unit run by Lottie Dean (Patricia Cutts) as a cover. The series is about Lottie's exploits with her sidekick Clive Hawksworth (Anthony Ainley), following instructions from their boss J. Smith. These instructions are always delivered in offbeat ways, including by delivering a children's colouring book to their office at one point. It is very eccentric and obviously there are Avengers overtones although it doesn't ape the Avengers at all. The show was made and broadcast in colour although most of it only survives in black and white so it gives an impression of being older than its 1972 vintage - in fact in my opinion this is an advantage because it places it in its milieu of 1960s eccentric TV (Adam Adamant, etc) for the viewer.
In Rev Counter Lottie and Hawskworth are told to join a terrorist revolutionary cell who want to force Britain to give the Isle of Wight independence. It was the final episode of the only series of the show and I see that the last time I wrote about it I said that it was clearly intended to be a high point, although the show wasn't commissioned for another series.
It isn't what you might call a 'heavy' documentary about terrorism and espionage, with a light touch it's more a depiction of everyone involved as eccentric, and also calculated to give some viewers a slight discomfort. I think this would be because it is so entertaining and funny, while being about such a serious and potentially dangerous subject.
And so we see Hawksworth making bombs at home using a textbook he had at school. Personally I want to know what school he went to, because I don't remember that in our chemistry textbook.
There is extensive coverage of rallies by the separatist groups: because one of their leading lights is a vicar they look very much like any other husting would in a church hall, and the way the vicar is happy to use violence is contrasted with his parsonical voice and biblical quotations. At one point he asks one of the ladies to put the teaspoon back in the drawer next to the sub machine guns, as he takes a shilling from the recruits for the parish magazine.
Lottie and Hawksworth infiltrate the terrorist cell in disguise, as it were. Hawksworth wears a fur coat for most of the episode, and Lottie wears a long wig which perfectly makes her look like a hippie. In true eccentric TV style, this makes them look about as unlikely as they ever could be, and while the real terrorists look much more normal the whole just adds to the extraordinary effect.
The vicar asks them for a donation when they join up. Hawksworth says 'I'm afraid I haven't any change,' intending that it would be taken as him not giving, and the vicar replies, 'Neither have I,' as he takes the note he has from Hawksworth. Straight afterwards we go into the new recruits' training, in which they are all wearing berets and being trained by a commander who says that although he may have failed in the commercial growing of watercress, things have got better since he took up schizophrenia. The human foibles and relationships depicted in this show are top-notch.
Despite the show's concentration on details and relationships, shockingly Hawksworth's bomb does actually go off in this episode, which is another strange juxtaposition. I think it quite possible that a lot of people wouldn't take to this series at all, although I'm confident that regular readers of this blog would. I'm not going to give away the ending of this episode, because I'm nice like that.
I don't personally have any real criticism of this show or episode, however I see that criticisms on Amazon include that it seems slower in comparison to current TV and that it is evident that it was studio-bound and made on a low budget. I don't think these will be real criticisms for people who like Our Sort of Television.
The entire episode is available on a DVD box set.
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