Mar 29, 2021
To Encourage the Others (BBC, 1972)
"Sergeant Fairfax has told us that he came and grabbed Bentley, and while you were all there together by the head of the lift shaft, you deliberately shot him -"
"I didn't, sir."
"- having been incited to do so by Bentley saying, 'Let him have it, Chris'. Now, are you saying you did not hear that?"
"Bentley didn't say it."
"Well, three officers heard it in the darkness from different points of the compass. Are you saying he did not say it?"
"I'm saying I didn't hear it, and if they heard it then they got better hearing than mine."
#To encourage the others#alan clarke#BBC#Single play#classic tv#David Yallop#Charles Bolton#Billy Hamon#Roland Culver#Philip Stone#Wensley Pithey#Arthur Lovegrove#Carmel McSharry#John Ringham#Ken Halliwell#Michael Sheard#Christopher Coll#Derrick Slater#A hugely significant work in the filmography of Clarke and indeed an incredibly important piece of British TV. Sometimes described as a#Play for Today altho there's no evidence it was ever transmitted under that banner (it probably had many of the same team working on it tho#That wouldn't be unusual). The Bentley case is lodged in the public consciousness of the UK as one of the most blatant and shocking#Miscarriages of justice in the modern era; this play followed the 71 publication of a book of the same name which sought to clear Bentley's#Name and establish the facts of the case. In the process Clarke and writer Yallop establish the benchmark for producing riveting docudrama;#Court room scenes follow official transcripts and reenactments are cleverly staged as a sequence of bw photographs. For all that it's#Professional and measured in approach you can't miss the subtle rage which beats just below the surface: rage at a system which knowingly#Perverts itself to mete out punishment it feels befitting. Clarke keeps the screen very crowded and tight giving everything a claustrophobi#Desperate feel (which of course is only heightened in the scenes in Bentley's cell). The use of quotation cards and official statement#Extracts is only another carefully considered tool as well; the very final quote (from the then crown prosecution service and informing the#Production team that there was not requisite public interest in reopening Bentley's case 20 years after his death) feels like a punch to#The gut. That it would in fact be another 25 years after this play aired before Bentley was finally pardoned is an affront to all decency.
