A feature-length drama based on the mysterious disappearance of the Sandringham Company during the 1915 Gallipoli campaign.
At the outbreak of the First World War, Captain Frank Beck (David Jason), the land agent for King George V’s Norfolk estate, receives permission to form a new company for the Royal Norfolk Regiment. He recruits from the estate’s staff: grooms, gardeners, and farmhands who have never seen combat. Under Beck’s disciplined training, this private army is forged into an effective fighting unit.
Deployed to the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, the company is ordered to advance on a Turkish position during the Battle of Suvla Bay. They march into a strange, low-lying mist and, in one of the enduring legends of the war, are never seen again. The teleplay follows their story from recruitment to their final, fateful charge.
This somber television film functions as a historical memorial, giving a human face to a strange footnote of the Great War. Its power is derived from the collision of two worlds: the ordered, pastoral life of a royal estate and the chaotic brutality of the Gallipoli campaign. The screenplay, by Alma Cullen, is an examination of class and duty, focusing on a unique unit of men whose loyalty was as much to their community and their King’s household as it was to the wider nation.
By casting David Jason, an actor primarily known for comedy, the production grounded its story in a figure of relatable authority, making the eventual loss of his company all the more profound. The film does not attempt to solve the mystery of the disappearance; instead, it commemorates the sacrifice.
Broadcast: BBC One, 1 Episode, 14 November 1999
Written by: Alma Cullen
Director: Julian Jarrold
Producer: Gareth Neame
Main Cast: David Jason (Captain Frank Beck), Maggie Smith (Queen Alexandra), William Ash (Corporal John Gascoigne), Stuart Bunce (2nd Lt. H.J. Van Reyn), Ian McDiarmid (Reverend Pierrepoint Edwards), David Troughton (King George V)
