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I know what you’re thinking: what’s really lacking on the BBC at the moment? That’s right. Period dramas. Book adaptations. And Very. Angsty. Nazis. There’s just not enough of them on TV these days, I hear you cry. Well, you’re in luck. Saturday evening was all about the dramatisation of Christopher Isherwood’s 1976 biography, Christopher and His Kind, which ticked off these criteria very nicely indeed. Not only that, but Matt Smith took on the role of Isherwood, performing in some scenes that should definitely have had the kids hiding behind the sofa.
It’s inter-war Britain and Isherwood is a twenty-something bored novelist, stuck at home with his brother and mum. Instead of moping about the house, Isherwood sets off for Berlin “because of the boys” with his best mate and part-time lover, poet W.H. Auden (Pip Carter). Things begin well for them; Germany is destitute after WW1, and the unemployed male population is willing to sell itself to any passing sex tourist, Isherwood included. Along the way, the author meets Gerald Hamilton (Toby Jones) and Jean Ross (Imogen Poots), both of whom inspire characters in Isherwood’s later works. There are many men, and many flings, but Isherwood soon falls in love with Heinz, a young street sweeper, whom Isherwood becomes determined to save from Germany the rise of Nazi power.
If Isherwood was meant to appear shallow and self-obsessed, then Smith certainly played him to perfection. But whether it was the eccentric mannerisms, or the tweed jackets, he just couldn’t shake the echoes of his Time Lord persona, no matter how much innuendo there was in the script. “Going all the way?” asks Hamilton on the train to Berlin, to which Isherwood replies, “Excuse me!” with enough camp delivery to make the Tardis blush a very deep shade of blue.
Though I suspect Smith was the selling point of this dramatisation, it was Lindsay Duncan as Isherwood’s exasperated mother who stole the show with the best lines. “I thought it was ingenious the way you used your antipathy towards me to such creative effect,” she remarks – straight-faced – about her son’s published works. The costumes, sets and scenery were also incredibly glamorous, but this sometimes detracted from showing the real desperation and utter ruin of Berlin during the time. It’s only when we see Isherwood lavishing bank notes on Heinz’s poor, dying mother – essentially paying for ownership of her son – that we see the true effect of World War One on the German civilians.
The major problem I had with this drama was that it was, well, a bit boring. Whilst the first half hour was full of rampant homosexual sex scenes that may have been shocking in 1976 when the biography was published, it wasn’t enough to surprise a modern audience or add anything to the plot. As a result, the initial half of the story dragged. It was also difficult to find sympathy for any of the main characters, and by the time the Nazis showed up, the drama was becoming predictable.
This wasn’t a love story, and neither was it an enlightening social commentary; Christopher and His Kind was a superbly acted series of events that just left me feeling indifferent. Although there was a slight element of redemption towards the end, Isherwood’s character remained selfish and fickle – whether this was an intentional depiction, I don’t know. Readers and fans of Isherwood’s works will most likely find this an interesting and informative account of this period of his life, but as a standalone drama, it was too uninvolving to be properly enjoyable.
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