A novelist is drawn into an epic struggle between the forces of good and evil in this surreal conspiracy thriller.
Gideon Harlax (Hywel Bennett), a cynical novelist specialising in paranormal thrillers, finds his fiction becoming reality. After witnessing the mysterious death of an enigmatic organist, Hitchcock Blonde (Ingrid Pitt), he is drawn into a vast and bewildering conspiracy. Aided by his lover, the musicologist Gwen Meredith (Dinah Stabb), Gideon discovers he is a pawn in an ancient conflict between two powerful supernatural beings: the benevolent angel Helith (Sting) and the malevolent Von Drachenfels (Dan O’Herlihy). His investigation becomes a sprawling journey across Northern Europe, leading to a final, apocalyptic confrontation on the sacred island of Lindisfarne.
This mammoth production, running over three hours, was a monumental statement of intent for the single television play. Writer David Rudkin constructed not a simple thriller, but a dense, allegorical fantasy that filtered Cold War anxieties through a prism of Christian eschatology and Norse mythology. The drama rejected televisual naturalism for a highly stylised, cinematic approach, with director Alastair Reid using ambitious location filming in Denmark and Northumbria to create its epic scope. The casting of Sting, then at the peak of his musical fame, was a considerable coup, lending the esoteric material a contemporary edge and ensuring a level of public attention the difficult script might not otherwise have received.
Broadcast: BBC One – BBC Birmingham, 1 Episode, 29 December 1981
Written by: David Rudkin
Director: Alastair Reid
Producer: David Rose
Script Editor: Roger Gregory
Music: Dave Greenslade
Main Cast: Hywel Bennett (Gideon Harlax), Dinah Stabb (Gwen Meredith), Dan O’Herlihy (Von Drachenfels), Sting (Helith), Anthony Steel (Trsitram Guise), Margaret Whiting (Laura Guise), Roland Curram (Asrael), Ingrid Pitt (Hitchcock Blonde), Ian Redford (Jed Thaxter), Sevilla Delofski (Magog), Mary Ellen Ray (Sonia), Cornelius Garrett (Pastor), Sylvia Coleridge (Gorgon Scholar)
