The Guardians: Part 8 - The Dirtiest Man in the World

Spoiler alert: This post spoils the conclusion of the episode.

So far I have avoided drawing any parallel between The Guardians (1971) and The Prisoner (1967 - 8) even though it covers much of the same material - government duplicity, manipulating the populace into compliance, misuse of technology and psychiatry, special enclaves where the politically difficult can be controlled - but in this episode the parallels become such that I can't avoid them any more.

The reason is that much of this episode covers misuse of psychiatry or is set in the 'hospital' where Tom Weston is being held. We see him being visited by Clare, and she cannot help noticing that he is happy as a sandboy away with the fairies. Clare is played by Gwyneth Powell and let me tell you that for anyone of my generation it is a striking sight to see Mrs McCluskey from Grange Hill asking her screen husband if he is stoned, although that is not a connection which would have pertained in 1971.

Perhaps one possible criticism of this show is that it possibly doesn't have a big enough cast. There are cast members who are vital to the plot of one episode and then disappear, and otherwise we know that the plot is going to revolve around half a dozen of the constant characters in each episode.

In this one it introduces two new characters. The first is the titular dirtiest man in the world, who is introduced being psychiatrically assessed by resident psychiatrist to the series (and at the state's behest), Dr Benedict. The dirtiest man is one of the people the state are most keen to control: he refuses to work and gives his profession as lavatory attendant, stating that he is qualified for it by failing a BA. By virtue of non-compliance he is also obliged to stay in the 'hospital' where Tom Weston is being kept, so that compliance can be imposed on him with a drug treatment.

The other character is another man calling himself Quarmby, who gets the dirtiest man to swap his food drugged with a new experimental treatment with his room-mate in the hospital, so that he will get the cannabis-infused food, and his room-mate will get the drug designed to have the opposite effect on the Dirtiest Man and make him become more alert to his duty towards society. Dr Benedict manipulates it so that the room-mate in question is Tom Weston, and along with him getting gingered up after being continually stoned, Quarmby engineers his escape and he is reunited with his wife.

Amongst all this Dr Benedict's wife comes back and they hash out the fact that she has abruptly discovered that her husband is a 'communist' murderer. So the main ethical discussion of this episode is the classic one of whether it is ok to murder the perpetrator of a dangerous regime, and whether the ends justify the means. It is essentially the 'would it have been a good idea to murder Adolf Hitler in the 1930s' question. It was nice to see a return of the aspect of this show which appears to have been setting out material for discussion for debating societies.

We also see Clare Weston in an appointment with Dr Benedict, where she talks again about whether she can love in her situation, and he tells her that at times he has fancied her. I'm not sure this is of any utility to the plot and we already know that he is at best an ambivalent character, if not a dirty old man, so I think it would have been better without this.

Quarmby finally manipulates the situation so that he is the only person who can provide Tom Weston with the tablet he needs daily to prevent withdrawal from the drugs he has been given in the hospital, which he uses as a bargaining chip to get him and Clare to agree to bow up the Guardians headquarters in Redditch. At least until the Dirtiest Man suddenly murders Quarmby, and leaves these matters unresolved.

My main criticism of this episode is that I think the two new characters of the Dirtiest Man and Quarmby could have been better used throughout the series, because they're both excellent characters. There is also the slight difficulty that the Dirtiest Man murders Quarmby at the end (I'm not sure why) which would rather have ruled out his character for the rest of the series. I also have the entirely personal difficulty that while they are both played excellently (by Graham Crowden and Peter Barkworth respectively), they are exactly the sort of actors who have been in everything and distract me by making me spend the duration of the show wondering where I have seen them.

There is a wonderfully funny moment where the Dirtiest Man asks Quarmby if he is a plain clothes policeman, because he has sometimes been followed by them, and Quarmby replies that he was sometimes followed by sailors when he was a young lad, but they didn't want him to join the navy.

An excellent, nuanced, episode, spoiled only for me by recognisable casting.

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