Eddie Redmayne plays Stephen Wraysford, a British officer tunnelling beneath the Somme while flashbacks to 1910 France replay his affair with Clémence Poésy's Isabelle, the wife of his industrialist host. The lovers flee when discovered, but she abandons him; six years later a shell-shocked Stephen meets her sister Jeanne and learns he has a seven-year-old daughter he never knew existed. Director Philip Martin shoots the present-day war sequences in washed-out blues and greys, while the pre-war memories burn with honeyed colour, the visual divide mirroring Stephen’s fractured mind. Underground, Joseph Mawle’s miner Jack Firebrace keeps the men alive; above ground, Richard Madden’s Weir dies pointlessly to a sniper hours before the Armistice. Martin keeps his camera close to Redmayne’s face so every twitch registers the moment memory intrudes on survival. Abi Morgan’s script jettisons Faulks’ 1970s framing device and the protagonist’s bird phobia, tightening the story into a duet between love and carnage that ends with Stephen emerging from a blown tunnel to be told by two German soldiers that the war is over.
Production Details
BBC One / 1 Season / 2 Episodes / 2012
Created by: Abi Morgan
Showrunner(s): Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Lucy Richer
Writer(s): Abi Morgan
Producer(s): Lynn Horsford, Veronica Castillo
Cinematography: Julian Court
Music: Nicholas Hooper
Main Cast
Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Wraysford
Clémence Poésy as Isabelle Azaire
Matthew Goode as Captain Gray
Joseph Mawle as Jack Firebrace
Richard Madden as Captain Weir
Thomas Turgoose as Private Tipper
Misi Dunai as Riley
George MacKay as Private Douglas
Simon Nehan as Evans
Rory Keenan as Private Brennan
Daniel Cerqueira as Shaw
Nicholas Moss as RSM Price
