All the King's Men

As the grandchildren of Queen Victoria all squared up against each other at the start of the Great War, and as the once powerful Ottoman Empire finally shut up shop, the staff at King George V’s Norfolk Residence at Sandringham formed their own regiment determined to train and do their part for the war effort. They are led by the fastidious estate manager “Beck” (David Jason) and with the blessing of their royal patron, Queen Alexandra (a rather unremarkable performance from Dame Maggie Smith) set off to the Turkish sphere of operations where incomplete history tells us they were in involved in the perilous and somewhat disastrous Gallipoli campaign. This story is told from a perspective of a search, instigated by the Queen, into just what did happen and there is a familiar collection of faces used to deliver a story of courage and of, frankly, enthusiastic ineptitude at just about every level. David Jason is what we in Britain call a “National Treasure” but mainly as a comedy actor. Here, he seemed rather miscast and for me he failed to really ignite this formidable character as he becomes more of a parody of the stiff upper lip mentality than an exponent of it. It was made by the BBC and though they have clearly thrown considerable resource at this, it still looks and feels like a television movie with little by way of grand-scale illustrative photography of the battle scenes…

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