A Cambridge college is torn apart by an academic injustice and the political manoeuvring to correct it.
Lewis Eliot (John Clements), a fellow at a Cambridge college, is drawn into a bitter dispute concerning a former colleague, the young scientist Donald Howard (Alan Dobie). Howard has been stripped of his fellowship for supposed scientific fraud, a charge he vehemently denies. His passionate wife, Laura (Sheila Allen), insists he is the victim of a conspiracy and lobbies the college fellows to reopen the case. Eliot, along with a group of sympathetic colleagues, begins to investigate the evidence and finds it wanting. Their efforts meet stiff resistance from a powerful faction led by the intransigent senior tutor Thomas Crawford (Felix Aylmer), forcing the college to convene an internal court to determine whether a grave miscarriage of justice has occurred.
Ronald Millar’s adaptation of the C. P. Snow novel brings the author’s signature world of institutional power-play to the screen. The drama is a procedural, finding its tension not in action but in the meticulous machinery of academic justice and the subtle conflicts of the senior common room. Set within the hermetic world of a Cambridge college, the teleplay examines how personal prejudice, political calculation, and genuine principle collide when an institution is forced to confront its own fallibility. The production is a vehicle for a formidable cast of stage actors, who ground the intellectual and moral arguments in precise, subtle characterisation. It is a work of quiet deliberation, built on the verbal sparring of committee meetings and the tense decorum of collegiate life.
Broadcast: BBC, 1 Episode, 12 April 1963
Adapted by: Ronald Millar
From the novel by: C. P. Snow
Play production by: John Jacobs
Designer: John Cooper
Main Cast: John Clements (Sir Lewis Eliot), Felix Aylmer (Thomas Crawford), Alan Dobie (Donald Howard), Michael Goodliffe (Alec Nightingale), Sheila Allen (Laura Howard), Nigel Stock (Tom Orbell), Cyril Luckham (Sir Francis Getliffe), Harold Scott (M. H. L. Gay), Anton Rodgers (Lester Ince)
