The Old Devils - The Complete Series BBC [DVD]

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If you’re in a certain mood - angry at everyone and everything around you, tired of life and looking for fault in everything you encounter, you will doubtless find a lot to love in here. I’ve been there, plenty of times, and certainly can imagine having enjoyed this a lot more in my youth. I can imagine it might also be relatable at an even later point in life. Perhaps the trouble here is that I’m at the wrong stage (late thirties) in the “interval of time between two bouts of vomiting” to appreciate this properly.

Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives. My principal source of irritation with this novel is its dishonesty. Amis had at this point in his career developed a reputation as a declining writer focused on personal themes – his serial adultery, his alcoholism, his declining health. He has sketched out a series of characters with these qualities or attributes, then ventriloquized through them on his tired personal and political hobby-horses – homosexuality, the ridiculousness of compulsory Welsh/English language public signage, faux-Welshness, trade-unionists and so on. Of course one must always be careful to distinguish between the personal views of an author and their characters, but there is a strong case for concluding that Amis shares many of the prejudices his characters articulate – he repeats these views consistently in a series of later novels, he attempts to make the characters articulating these views sympathetic and invariably shows only the reasons why they are justified in these views – opposing views are ignored. Reviewers seem relieved that this is not the openly misogynistic rant of Stanley and the Women or Jake’s Thing, but that doesn’t make it Lucy Jimeither.

The Old Devils - The Complete Series

I apologize to any fans of Sir Kingsley (I know there are many) but this one did not do it for me at all. Here’s Amis’s unflattering portrait of Malcolm, one of the group of friends, dressed to impress an old flame: The chronicling of (and inevitably, moaning about) a changing landscape of pubs, is an interesting curiosity, as is the storytelling around boozing. (Though I suspect that describing intoxication and its after-effects wasn’t something Amis especially struggled with.) Well, where to start? Equip yourself with a full liquor cabinet because you’re in for a busy one here. Every alcohol under the sun is an option, but you’ll probably be having a whisky and water if you’re a chap or a bottle or two of Soave if you’re of the female persuasion. If there’s one thing you can say for Amis here, it’s that he’s pretty even-handed with his criticism. Pretty much nobody here comes off well, and everyone comes in for some well-deserved criticism. It’s not entirely a Boys’ Own adventure for pissed old farts, either (though of course it is largely that) - the wives are also allowed to have their fun with all-day Soave-sozzled soirees.

Despite being a famous and prodigious boozehound, Amis insisted that he never wrote under the influence. "Whatever part drink may play in the writer's life, it must play none in his or her work," he apparently said. Like characters in this novel, drinking began around lunchtime, but only after he’d completed a strict daily wordcount. Most importantly, for me, I just found the rambling, theatrical style of the narrative too frustrating to follow. This novel took far longer than it should have for me to finish. Too many digressions, interruptions and conversations about nothing for my liking. Perhaps that’s the point, and I’m missing it. I can live with that. Alun Weaver ( John Stride) has found success as a celebrated London-based writer. After returning home to Wales with his alluring wife Rhiannon ( Sheila Allen) he reunites with university friends who chose to remain in the valleys. Long dormant romances are rekindled and rivalries are resurrected, posing a threat to marriages and friendships.I have always thought of Amis as a good bad writer, one who writes clumsy, poorly constructed sentences simply as a way of drawing attention to their deliberate awkwardness. Take this sentence for example: The humour in the novel is intended to derive from Amis’s portraits of flawed human nature. People are pompous, lecherous, complacent, stupid, and all manner of human weakness is on display for our entertainment. But I really struggled to care about these largely unpleasant people. There were several points in the novel where I was unable to work out who was speaking in a passage of dialogue, and the suddenly realised it didn’t really matter because I didn’t care. There are too many characters with too little differentiation between them. It’s actually a relief when a character that isn’t part of the “main cast” shows up (such as the amusingly awful Welsh-American) as they actually bring a brief moment of something different to the novel. Similarly the William and Rosemary story shows flashes of intrigue, of the world looked at through the eyes of a younger generation, but it’s hardly explored at all.

Episode Three Alun makes one final attempt to pen the great Welsh novel in this concluding segment of the Kingsley Amis adaptation, but tragedy strikes. This was Amis’ third nomination, having lost out previously in 1974 (Middleton/Gordimer) and 1978 (Murdoch.) A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.Is this brilliantly observant, or crudely done? Older people don’t dress very smartly, even when they are trying hard to impress. The point of view judgment in this analysis comes from Rhiannon, the old-girlfriend in question, who gives thanks for the plain shirt and ordinary shoes. Amis deploys these subtle changes of point of view with the skill of an experienced writer, unquestionably, but I am not convinced that there is much humour here, even if there is less spite than earlier later Amis either. As they stood, or with some minor surgery, they were supposed to be, he had striven to make them, his devout hope was that they were, the opening section of the only really serious piece of prose he had written since his schooldays.” Kingsley Amis's classic novel, about a group of university friends reunited in retirement, was adapted into a critically acclaimed comedy drama by Andrew Davies and originally broadcast on the BBC in 1992. It's a turbulent story of ageing, friendship, lust, nostalgia and nationalism. Even more surprising for me is how strong this looks as a shortlist - clearly some brilliant authors in there. I haven’t read all that many, though. Were any of them genuinely less interesting than this? This brilliantly written comedy drama is brought to life by an all-star cast that includes Elizabeth Morgen, Bernard Hepton and James Grout. In his final screen appearance, Ray Smith gives a scene-stealing performance that won him the BAFTA for Best Actor.