The Rainbirds
- Episode aired Feb 11, 1971
- 1h 4m
IMDb RATING
5.2/10
17
YOUR RATING
A man who attempted suicide by jumping out a window is saved only to live in a coma, in which he has fantasies about his relatives and nightmare creatures.A man who attempted suicide by jumping out a window is saved only to live in a coma, in which he has fantasies about his relatives and nightmare creatures.A man who attempted suicide by jumping out a window is saved only to live in a coma, in which he has fantasies about his relatives and nightmare creatures.
Amber Blare
- Club Hostess
- (as Amber Blair)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaIn her 1975 book "Play for Today: The evolution of television drama" producer Irene Shubik explained why this episode, along with others (such as The Lie (1970) and some editions of The Wednesday Play (1964) ) had the additional title of "The Largest Theatre in the World".
Shubik stated: "I did not, in fact, commission The Rainbirds, which went out on 'Wednesday Play' (sic) in February 1971. This was commissioned by the Head of Plays as part of an agreement with the European Broadcasting Union that every member should annually commission one play which would be separately produced and simultaneously transmitted in each country belonging to the Union, under the title The Largest Theatre in the World. Each year an author of a different nationality is chosen, and the names have included Pinter, François Billetdoux and Ingmar Bergman."
Featured review
Much to Be Modest About
My interest in "Play for Today" was sparked when BBC4 screened several plays last year to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the series. I have managed to track down more examples on the net, and watching entries like "Angels Are So Few", "Robin Redbreast", "The Hallelujah Handshake", "Country", "Scully's New Year's Eve" and "Land of Green Ginger" have made me wonder why the BBC are so modest about celebrating these plays which are all little known today despite being of excellent quality.
Well, sometimes, those who are modest have got much to be modest about, as Churchill once said of Attlee. "The Rainbirds" reminded me that not all Plays for Today were of the same quality. It starts with a young man named John Rainbird attempting suicide by jumping from a hotel window, and thereafter consists of flashbacks to John's earlier life with his parents, intercut with scenes of doctors operating on him to save his life while he lies in a coma. And with repeated scenes of a white Jaguar, driven by a nun with John in the passenger seat, crashing. The nun is played by the same actor as the surgeon who is carrying out the operation. The actor is male, and also appears as an Army recruiting sergeant and as Napoleon. Don't ask me why. Or what these car crash scenes have to do with the rest of the play.
For that matter, don't ask me to explain anything else about the play. Even its author Clive Exton seemed unhappy with it, at least with it in form in which it appeared on television, as interpreted by the director Philip Saville, and publicly disassociated himself from Saville's version. It appears to be a satire on the attitudes of the older generation, because life with John's parents seems horrendous enough to explain exactly why he felt the need to take his own life. John's father is particularly obnoxious, the sort of man who should have been forcibly sterilised before he had a chance to beget offspring doomed to suffer beneath his mindless tyranny. He wants his son to embrace a military career, although he complaints that the modern Army are a namby-pamby lot who fail to place enough emphasis on manly virtues like killing people. Rainbird senior's views are so extreme that (in one of the plays few amusing moments) they even shock the hardened recruiting sergeant.
In one scene John takes part in a boxing match while dressed in full armour; asked to "step on the scales" he promptly steps on a pair of fish. (Scales, geddit?) The surreal nature of the flashback scenes can be explained as nightmares taking place in John's damaged brain as he lies unconscious. Such an explanation, however, detracts from any value the play might have as satire. Satirists can (and often do) exaggerate, sometimes to the point of the surreal, for comic effect. They can (and often do) draw black humour from their subjects by emphasising their ridiculous aspects. What they cannot afford to do is to retreat into the Alice-in-Wonderland logic that "it was all a dream", because satire needs some connection with the real world if it is to be effective. Subjects like militarism, bullying parents and callous medical professionals all exist in the real world, and are legitimate targets for satire. Saying "It was all a dream" is tantamount to saying "I am only satirising a fantasy world, not the real one. Feel free to disregard what I say".
We cannot, of course, know what "The Rainbirds" might have looked like had Exton been able to find a director whose creative vision matched his own. (Although the fact that Exton was previously best known to me as scriptwriter for the hilariously awful "Red Sonja", one of the worst films of the eighties, suggests that it might not have been a great deal better). When I reviewed "Scully's New Year's Eve" I scolded the BBC for keeping their light hidden under a bushel. "The Rainbirds", by contrast, deserves to be hidden under the biggest bushel the Beeb can find. 2/10.
Well, sometimes, those who are modest have got much to be modest about, as Churchill once said of Attlee. "The Rainbirds" reminded me that not all Plays for Today were of the same quality. It starts with a young man named John Rainbird attempting suicide by jumping from a hotel window, and thereafter consists of flashbacks to John's earlier life with his parents, intercut with scenes of doctors operating on him to save his life while he lies in a coma. And with repeated scenes of a white Jaguar, driven by a nun with John in the passenger seat, crashing. The nun is played by the same actor as the surgeon who is carrying out the operation. The actor is male, and also appears as an Army recruiting sergeant and as Napoleon. Don't ask me why. Or what these car crash scenes have to do with the rest of the play.
For that matter, don't ask me to explain anything else about the play. Even its author Clive Exton seemed unhappy with it, at least with it in form in which it appeared on television, as interpreted by the director Philip Saville, and publicly disassociated himself from Saville's version. It appears to be a satire on the attitudes of the older generation, because life with John's parents seems horrendous enough to explain exactly why he felt the need to take his own life. John's father is particularly obnoxious, the sort of man who should have been forcibly sterilised before he had a chance to beget offspring doomed to suffer beneath his mindless tyranny. He wants his son to embrace a military career, although he complaints that the modern Army are a namby-pamby lot who fail to place enough emphasis on manly virtues like killing people. Rainbird senior's views are so extreme that (in one of the plays few amusing moments) they even shock the hardened recruiting sergeant.
In one scene John takes part in a boxing match while dressed in full armour; asked to "step on the scales" he promptly steps on a pair of fish. (Scales, geddit?) The surreal nature of the flashback scenes can be explained as nightmares taking place in John's damaged brain as he lies unconscious. Such an explanation, however, detracts from any value the play might have as satire. Satirists can (and often do) exaggerate, sometimes to the point of the surreal, for comic effect. They can (and often do) draw black humour from their subjects by emphasising their ridiculous aspects. What they cannot afford to do is to retreat into the Alice-in-Wonderland logic that "it was all a dream", because satire needs some connection with the real world if it is to be effective. Subjects like militarism, bullying parents and callous medical professionals all exist in the real world, and are legitimate targets for satire. Saying "It was all a dream" is tantamount to saying "I am only satirising a fantasy world, not the real one. Feel free to disregard what I say".
We cannot, of course, know what "The Rainbirds" might have looked like had Exton been able to find a director whose creative vision matched his own. (Although the fact that Exton was previously best known to me as scriptwriter for the hilariously awful "Red Sonja", one of the worst films of the eighties, suggests that it might not have been a great deal better). When I reviewed "Scully's New Year's Eve" I scolded the BBC for keeping their light hidden under a bushel. "The Rainbirds", by contrast, deserves to be hidden under the biggest bushel the Beeb can find. 2/10.
helpful•00
- JamesHitchcock
- Jan 24, 2022
Details
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content