A satirical comedy in which a minor provincial incident in Fascist Italy escalates into a full-blown military operation.
In 1938, the evening routine of Colonel Passamonte (James Dale) at the Ministry of the Interior is shattered by a telephone call. He learns that a government minister, attempting to drive his car through a holy procession, has been set upon by the outraged citizens of the small hill town of Assino. His vehicle was overturned and he was pelted with tomatoes. Determined to make an example of the town for this slight against the state, Passamonte dispatches two lorry-loads of militia to quell the supposed insurrection. The situation confounds local figures such as Pietro Pacetti (Sebastian Cabot) and Tibaldi (Robert Eddison), as the military operation descends upon their unsuspecting community.
This 90-minute live television play was an early and ambitious commission for writer Nigel Kneale, adapted from a novel by N. C. Hunter. Broadcast just months before Kneale would redefine the possibilities of the medium with The Quatermass Experiment, the production is a key example of his sharp, satirical intelligence. The story uses the machinery of a political farce to examine the absurd and dangerous logic of a totalitarian state, where a minor provincial incident is inflated into a full-scale military crisis. Kneale’s teleplay turns a potentially tragic situation into a potent black comedy about bureaucratic incompetence and authoritarian panic. As with all live broadcasts of the era, the play is now lost, existing only as a significant footnote in the career of one of British television’s most important writers.
Broadcast: BBC, 1 Episode, 1 January 1953
Adapted by: Nigel Kneale from the novel by N. C. Hunter
Director: Julian Amyes
Producer: Ian Atkins
Designer: James Bould
Main Cast: Robert Eddison (Tibaldi), Hector Ross (Sacchi), Daphne Slater (Sister Teresa), James Dale (Colonel Passamonte), Hugh Munro (Orderly), Julian Somers (Sanzio Pasquale), Philip Guard (Peppino Rossi), Margaret John (Anna-Maria), Sebastian Cabot (Pietro Pacetti), Miriam Karlin (Tina Pacetti)
