The Guardians: Part 13 - End in Dust, and Conclusions

This is the final part of The Guardians and attempts to draw together the numerous threads of plot that have been drawn out previously.

On one level there is a conclusion to the multi-layered plot that has been set out. I won't say how it concludes, but I am absolutely delighted that the plot is finally concluded exactly the way I predicted it would be. If you want a first criticism, you could say that this conclusion was fairly obviously coming, because even the characters have commented as various times that that was what was going to come next. The conclusion is actually pretty much what the British establishment would do in these circumstances, so it's authentic. It is also different from a more legendary ending, where the government would be overthrown and a revolution happen.

Then we have several discussions among the characters of the political, ethical and moral issues of both the pattern of government depicted, and the means of resistance which have been adopted. In a sense, the episode is therefore comcluding on the more 'political' side of the show. I like this enormously, and in fact this episode feels much more like being in safe hands than some of the previous ones, where it can feel as if the writer has been asked to continue a story with relatively little instruction as to where to take it.

The human, emotional side is given little room here, so there is little angst.

My only criticism of this episode specifically is that it feels as if it's written by an American and could reflect an American idea of politics. For example the Prime Minister keeps talking about being free, in a very American way, and about being impeached. Impeachment does exist here, but nobody has successfully been impeached since 1806; if a parliamentary party want rid of the Prime Minister a confidence motion would be the way to do it, or else if there are grounds to suspend him from parliament his consituents could get rid of him with a recall petition. Perhaps the talk of impeachment was intended to be theoretical because obviously in a dictatorship none of these ways of getting rid of a politician would be available.

Conclusions on the Series

My general conclusions of this series will come as no surprise.

It is a series with a huge subject, depicting a fictional England a decade after it was made, and the political and human interests of the populace at the time. As such it is a far-ranging series depicting multiple political, historical and social matters, and is successfully thought-provoking at every turn.

I haven't particularly mentioned it yet, but one of the most successful things about it is that the series rightly didn't attempt create a sci-fi future setting, but instead the sets are full of current and futuristic styles of the early seventies. It is honestly worth watching this series just for the sets and the style.

So this series is well worth watching but there's no avoiding the reality that it does have a number of significant problems.

The first may comes from the fact that episodes were written by multiple writers and apparently not together. This makes the episodes feel unpredictable and makes it feel like the plot is moving at different paces and very confusing.

I do think that probably it was a mistake to make this show's episodes an hour long. I keep hearing a criticism that it's very slow, even by the standards of the time, and probably half hour episodes would have been better.

It is also least successful when it is spending a lot of time on Claire Weston fretting whether she is in love with two men or what is happening, only to have this conclude by her killing one of them. She really only had to say this once!

So in conclusion, I think this show is well worth watching, for its depiction of fictional politics of a future England, discussion of multiple political and ethical matters, and even for its excellent, effective scenery. It would have been improved by shortening the episodes, and having one writer write the whole series so that the narrative was surer.

This blog is mirrored at

culttvblog.tumblr.com/archive (from September 2023) and culttvblog.substack.com (from January 2023 and where you can subscribe by email)

Archives from 2013 to September 2023 may be found at culttvblog.blogspot.com and there is an index to the tags used on the Tumblr version at https://www.tumblr.com/culttvblog/729194158177370112/this-blog