All The King's Men

[mrs_emma_peel]

All The King's Men
Yesterday ... Wednesday 29th December 2010 ... 9.00-11.10pm

All The Kings Men features David Jason in one of his finest ever roles as Captain Frank Beck in this absolutely outstanding First World War true-story of the vanished Battalion: the Sandringham Company. This is a devastatingly ferocious, exceptionally poignant drama and mystery (which endures to this day) enhanced by an incredibly beautiful and moving music-score by Adrian Johnston.

All The King’s Men features an exceptional cast including David Jason, Maggie Smith (Queen Alexandra) and David Troughton (George V) in a feature-length, moving war drama dramatising how the Sandringham Company mysteriously disappeared in the brutal action in Gallipoli in 1915.

The film was based on the story of the 1/5th Territorial Battalion of the Norfolk Regiment which included men from the King's estate at Sandringham House. These were grouped in a 'Sandringham Company', following recruiting practices of the period which sometimes attempted to keep 'pals' of similar background together in the same unit.

The Battalion suffered very heavy losses in action at Gallipoli on 12 August 1915 and a myth grew up later that as the Regiment advanced into battle ... they were engulfed and enveloped in a ghostly mist and simply disappeared. The enduring myth that the Regiment were saved from savage slaughter by being mysteriously drawn up into the mist has never been absolutely nor totally disproved.

The film dramatises these events and the origins of the myth back home, in the process following an investigator sent after the war on behalf of the Royal Family to find the truth about the company's fate. As represented in the film, after becoming separated from other British troops and suffering heavy losses the remnants of the Sandringham Company were taken prisoner Ottoman soldiers and then massacred.

This is an absolutely superb, powerful BBC war-time drama which matches, and I think even surpasses the classic 1981 Australian/Peter Weir film Gallipoli.
David Jason, Maggie Smith, William Ash, Patrick Malahide, David Troughton, Ian McDiarmid.
Directed by Julian Jarrold

Emma