Hello, Jamie.
We watched an LC recon of all 4 episodes
The first episode makes a little of the quite alien marauding and lawless actions of the Redcoat soldiers.... and of course the outright exploitative ethical vacuum that is Grey and Perkins and their barely concealed criminal slave trading.
The highlight is the Doctor's impersonation of a German doctor (Dr Von Wer) and his duping of both Grey and his secretary Perkins to escape. Polly is great in ep2 for the gumption she shows in fighting back effectively against the redcoats when the Scots seem to have all but given in.
Overall this seems slightly interesting. The Highlanders looks very definitely a different show to the last serial. This is a pedestrian historical-ish romp through a sordid and horrible piece of unfortunate British history.
I wonder if an influence on this story is Peter Watkins' "Culloden". This was a 1964 docudrama version of the 1745/46 highlander uprising and in particular the battle of Culloden. "Culloden" presented the battle and it's participants in TV interview style, using hand held camerawork much like a live coverage of the battle would appear if it were on modern TV. It went some way to make the Highlanders' political aims seem unlikely, misguided, divided and hopeless. The Highland Scots were shown as loyal but poor and their leaders as somewhere between gullible and insane. The English were demonised as vicious and vengeful and their Hanoverian princes as uncaring and more interested in finery, luxury and rich indolence than bloody and distasteful conflicts about such minor things as freedom, welfare and human rights. The way it did this was by in your face interview of costumed unknown actors accompanied by explanatory narrator.
So viewers familiar with Culloden would be expecting Doctor Who and the Highlanders to depict a barbaric tragedy.
DW's Highlanders shows the Scots as heroic and valorous if a little simple minded. The villains are the solicitor Grey and Trask, master of the Annabelle whose avaricious slave trading is breathtaking. This is consistent with the world of Culloden.
The other notable influences this may have is of course any number of filmed versions of the Battle of Culloden: the 1948 technicolor flop of Bonnie Prince Charlie starring David Niven, the 1953 version of the Master of Ballantrae with Errol Flynn, or indeed any of the half a dozen versions of Kidnapped. (e.g. 1948 with Roddy MCDowall or 1960 with Peter Finch)
With ep 5 of the previous serial we are now half way through the missing episodes. After this there's just 43 'picture shows' to go. I hope that's encouraging.
ABM Rating 2.90/4.00
LJM Rating 3.50/5.00
SPJ Rating 6.80/10.00
No. 11 (out of 31)
Link to Cumulative Rankings
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