The Gathering Storm

By EWAN MCDONALD

(Herald rating: * * * * *)

Three Baftas, three Emmies, a pair of Golden Globes, a couple of Screen Actors Guild gongs plus the prestigious Peabody Award for serious and important broadcasting achievement.

You'd have to figure that, since all of those honours were for best actor (Albert Finney), best actress (Vanessa Redgrave) and best TV movie, The Gathering Storm is a damn fine piece of television.

So damn fine, in fact, that no one has been able to find a slot for it on New Zealand television -- and you may reverse the order of those words if you wish -- where a sense of history is defined as, "Which celebrity got voted off the island last week?"

Made in 2001, it is based on Sir Winston Churchill's account of the pre-war years (again, for those with no sense of history, that is World War II, 1939-45, not before Bill Ralston arrived in Victoria St).

This work has been trawled before, as a 1974 TV movie with Richard Burton as Churchill and Virginia McKenna as his wife, Clementine; and as Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years with Robert Hardy and Sian Phillips, screened in the 80s.

It focuses on the 10 years between the first and second World Wars when Churchill, blamed for the Gallipoli disaster and associated with Britain's Depression woes, was sidelined from the Cabinet. Its focus is his relationship at home — though, as it must, politics intrudes.

The out-of-office MP and "Clemmie" are all but bankrupt thanks to Churchill's free-spending renovation of his country estate, Chartwell.

She has nearly had enough of her stubborn, cantankerous husband and joins friends on a four-month trip to the Philippines while Churchill fights his clinical depression with painting, bricklaying and writing.

Politically on the outer, Churchill worsens his chances of a comeback with his blunt warnings about the threat of Hitler, of Germany rebuilding its army and airforce, while Britain's official stance, under Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, is to pooh-pooh the problem. To make his case, Churchill is leaked classified information by Ralph Wigram, a Foreign Office mandarin (Linus Roache).

Finney's performance is astounding -- perhaps best appreciated by those who can recall Churchill, but since we are now in a demographic minority, perhaps best appreciated if you've seen the original bulldog in film clips. He is seen in almost every human situation, from walking around naked to speaking in Parliament.

It has been claimed that when some of the Churchill family saw scenes of Finney and Redgrave as their relatives, they were moved to tears by the accuracy of the portrayal.

The rest of the cast is a Who's Who -- or perhaps a Burke's Peerage -- of the British stage and screen. Apart from Roache, look for Lena Headey as his wife; Sir Derek Jacobi as the weak and conniving Baldwin; Tom Wilkinson as Churchill's shadowy supporter, Sir Robert Vansittart.

And it's goodnight from him: Ronnie Barker leaves his screen retirement, comes out of his new life as a secondhand bookseller, to play Churchill's butler, David Inches.

Engrossing. Gobsmacking. Absolutely the best thing not on TV.

DVD features: movie (96min); commentary by director Richard Loncraine and producer Frank Doelger; cast and crew biographies.