BBC-2’s 1979 effort Accident arrived with the damp, grey weight of a Tuesday in the Home Counties, a setting where ten lives collided with the sudden metallic finality of a roadside wreck. Joe Waters produced this eight-part meditation on the whims of fate, using a structural audacity that feels quite startling for the era. The narrative fractures into a kaleidoscope of perspectives, pulling us through the debris of human intent to find a pair of expectant parents dreaming of Yugoslavia, their hope meeting the cold reality of a stockbroker’s chauffeur and a pair of prison guards escorting their charge.
Writers Derek Ingrey and Ray Jenkins possess a keen ear for the quiet desperation preceding a disaster. They employ a restless chronology, skipping between the moments before the tires lost their grip and the long, agonizing shadows cast into the future. It is a technique demanding total attention, as the series insists on examining every angle of the impact until the glass and chrome seem to whisper their own stories. Anthony Isaac provides a musical score that underlines the creeping dread of the mundane turning into the monumental.
Though the title has largely slipped from the collective memory, the production managed to assemble a gallery of talent that remains impressive to look back upon. Michael Byrne brings his usual gravitas to the role of Ian Shaw, while a young Anthony Head appears as Simon Lovell, long before he became a fixture of more supernatural dramas. Patricia Garwood and Peter Geddis anchor the domestic tragedy as Dilys and Frank Martin, providing the human pulse beneath the technical cleverness of the flashbacks.
There is a certain bleak beauty in the way Geoffrey Hinsliff and Bernard Kay handle the roles of the guards, their stiff professionalism providing a sharp contrast to the raw vulnerability of Michelle Newell and Daniel Hill. The series succeeds because it treats the central catastrophe as a hub from which these varied spokes of British life radiate outward. It captured a specific, grey-skied anxiety of the late seventies, reminding us that the trajectory of a life can be permanently altered by a single patch of wet asphalt and a moment of diverted gaze.
Production Details
UK / BBC-2 / 8x50 minute - episodes / Broadcast 2 November 1979 - 18 January 1980
Writers: Derek Ingrey, Ray Jenkins
Music: Anthony Isaac
Producer: Joe Waters
Main Cast
Michael Byrne as Ian Shaw
Anthony Head as Simon Lovell
Patricia Garwood as Dilys Martin
Michelle Newell as Terri
Geoffrey Hinsliff as Edmunds
Bernard Kay as Andrew Buchan
Davyd Harries as Jack Dutton
Daniel Hill as Tom Baxter
Jane Collins as Joanna
Martin Neil as Stephen Mitchell
Eric Mason as Pritchard
Peter Geddis as Frank Martin
Caroline Holdaway as Diana Baxter
Patrick Jordan as Lionel Megson
Marc Zuber as Mr Asif
