Pat Howley TV Comment – Birdsong begins its melody

I THINK it was St Augustine who designated patience as the companion of wisdom and from my opening remarks here last week it would appear I have neither. My assertion then regarding period drama being a recent absentee from the BBC was made to look hastyover the previous two Sunday evenings by Call the Midwife and last Sunday evening it sounded especially hollow when the aforesaid 1950s midwife trauma of home births on a shoestring was followed by the long-awaited screen adaptation of Birdsong. Set in superb period costume against the trauma of First World War trench warfare, Sebastian Faulks's bestselling novel dripped money as it burst magnificently forth in its new adaptation from BBC1 for a winter's tale of romance and escapism, and the best evening of fireside television entertainment of the season so far. In two pleasingly chunky parts â€â€ the second going on air next Sunday evening â€â€ the larger-than-life love story with a plot of the time-honoured love's labour's lost variety is adapted for the screen by Abi Morgan, a young writer now soaring to fame and, presumably, fortune from her international success as the screenwriter of the acclaimed Maggie Thatcher movie The Iron Lady. For Sunday's lavish BBC production, in which no expense seems to have been spared, the action is always in the same area of Northern France but the time moves over the years to hell and back, from a pre-war and delightfully leafy rural location to the horrors and devastation of the Western Front. The story, which could almost have been borrowed from a Daphne du Maurier novel,  begins as the young and reserved central character Stephen Wraysford (played by Eddie Redmayne who has already made the part his own on the West End stage) arrives from England to a factory owned by the wealthy René Azaire (Nicholas Farrell) to learn the textile trade and he moves in with the family. It quickly emerges that behind the cultured elegance all is not well and not just because the factory workers are on a lengthy strike over low pay. Stephen, who says little and misses less, discovers that the owner's young and very attractive wife, Isabelle, is smuggling food to the starving workers and there's also the added complication that Stephen has fallen head over heels in love with her. Not only young and attractive, she is also a very unhappy Isabelle who is regularly beaten by her violent husband, René, and in no time at all Stephen and Isabelle have embarked on a passionate affair. When René finds out, the young lovers run from the house and are carried off into the night in a black carriage to the sounds of whistling whip and pounding hooves. It's all anyone of a romantic nature could ask for and a strength of the production is the memorable portrayal given the character of Isabelle by the French actress Clemence Poesy who I'm reliably informed played a witch in one or more of the Harry Potter films. She's no witch here but there's an unfortunate weakness in the production due to the at times achingly slow build-up to each twist of the plot and none more so than when the lovers make amorous cow's eyes at each other. I've nothing against cow's eyes but this pair do so for such lengthy periods that when I got the run of it I was able to nip out to the kitchen for a quick cuppa and be back before they'd stopped gazing at each other. It's called timing. As I mentioned earlier, the action switches back and over to the war in a way that became tiresome and sporadic and it didn't help that the battlefield scene â€â€ the same one over and over again â€â€ seemed as stiff as if it had been painted on canvas. Since his happy days with Isabelle, Stephen had become callous and cold and, as officer in charge of a detachment of soldiers involved in tunnelling under the German lines, he never misses an opportunity to make trench warfare even more miserable for everyone, himself included. During one tunnelling effort they are discovered by the enemy and Stephen is so seriously wounded that he is given up for dead and his body thrown amongst the corpses awaiting burial. Knowing nothing about Sebastian Faulks or his war novels I had assumed his hero had been based on the wartime experience of a real person but when one of his men out looking for Stephen's body discovers he is still alive I realised the story was fiction, and not very convincing fiction at that. Making an excellent recovery, Stephen is last seen leading his men over the top in yet another daring attack on the German lines but whether he will still be in one piece by the end of next week remains to ne seen. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Birdsong to perfection even if some of the events do not stand up so well in the clear cold light of day. What was gratifying for a Sunday night stay-at-homer was the impression that the BBC are again prepared to put resources into the production of good drama, in contrast to the last few seasons when it seemed they had thrown in the towel. â€Â¢ â€Â¢ â€Â¢ AS A discerning viewer I will not sit and watch any old thing just to pass the time so I'm careful to pick and choose. I don't always get it right and I was disappointed twice last week. On Friday evening I dutifully sat in to watch the American television success that is Homeland on RTE2 only to find it less than compelling viewing. I said I'd comment on it this week but I'll work myself up to it for next week, that's a promise. On the previous Thursday evening I was also disappointed by the first instalment of the four-part series Putin, Russia and the West on BBC2 but maybe I was expecting too much. I thought Vladimir would sit in and talk to us, especially when he is again running for election but no such luck from a documentary that never got anywhere near whatever it is that makes the former Russian president tick. Currently prime minister, Putin is obviously a man of few words but he said nothing at all on Thursday night and it left me to wonder had he any part at all in the documentary or was he even aware of its existence. Taking over from the ailing Boris Yeltsin in 2000, the documentary made great play of how the then relatively unknown former KGB man quickly consolidated himself in power and, surprisingly, how he sided with the United States against the Taliban in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack. In return there wasn't a peep from the Americans later when Chechen villages were terrorised by Russian soldiers and there was upsetting footage of an unfortunate poor man being dragged from his little cottage by soldiers and calling out to the camera that he was about to be shot, which he was. Who are the good guys any more? â€Â¢ â€Â¢ â€Â¢ I AM delighted to hear that DADS, the famed Dunmore amateur theatre group, are back on the 2012 festival circuit with Conor McPherson's The Weir and it's a play that demands to be seen. Set in a small pub somewhere in the west of Ireland, let's say Dunmore, it features the proprietor, three locals and a woman as they gather in for a drink and a chat, and maybe another drink and more chat, and they tell of their isolation and loneliness even though they are talking about nothing at all. The Dunmore players are Martin Silke, Padraig Lee, Padraig Waters, Damien O'Keefe and Joan Walkin and they will put on two performances in Dunmore on Friday and Saturday, February 24 and 25 of February before setting out to conquer a circuit that over the following month will take them to Tubbercurry, Claremorris, Claregalway, Glenamaddy and Cavan. I'll see you on one of the nights in Dunmore and don't say  I haven't given you ample notice.