DVD: The Sinking of the Laconia

Alan Bleasdale, along with Dennis Potter one of the truly original voices of British television drama, has spent the past decade in silence. His brand of epic narrative, his penchant for letting his characters talk and talk, went out of fashion when along came a generation of younger writers who nicked Yosser Hughes’s catchphrase - “I could do that” – and slipped into his slots. He has returned with this, a sweeping drama replete with all the Bleasdalian virtues: a huge cast of characters, an astute eye for the historical hinterland, and a belief that human decency abides in unexpected places. In this case, a German U-boat.

The Sinking of the Laconia was shown on television in early January along with the documentary which accompanies its DVD release. It tells of a little-known incident in the war, when a British cruise ship commandeered to transport troops, civilians and prisoners was sunk by a German submarine which was wasn’t expected so far south, hence the lack of convoy protection. The U-boat captain, surprised to find women and children aboard, proceeded to rescue survivors and then came under attack from an American plane for his pains, sparking panic in Allied and Axis high command.

Bleasdale peoples ship and boat with characters each kitted out with their own story. The stubbly German sailors are perhaps a little too uniformly decent, the various survivors a little too carefully spread about the map of British archetypes (none more than Lindsay Duncan, who also voices the documentary featuring ordinary survivors full of extraordinary tales). The German cast includes Franka Potente as a young mother, and Ken Duken as the U-boat commander, while the Brits field Andrew Buchan of Garrow’s Law and Brian Cox. The photography, recreating scenes filmed on the U-boat at the time, is breathtaking, the action sequences convincing given budgetary constraints, while the story supplies a constant and moving set of shocks and surprises.

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