David Morrissey's rubber baron Walter Blackett rules his tropical empire from a Kuala Lumpur mansion, scheming to fuse firms with Charles Dance's dying Webb while pimping his daughter to the heir. The business plan unravels as Japanese artillery grow louder and Luke Treadaway's idealistic Matthew arrives, clutching a copy of Keynes and a conscience. Christopher Hampton’s six-part ITV adaptation of J. G. Farrell’s satire gives the British upper class enough rope: they stage charity balls, hoard rice, and argue over cocktail recipes while bombs fall on the docks. Filmed in Malaysia after Singapore’s skyline proved too modern, the series uses Carcosa Seri Negara’s peeling grandeur for the Blackett residence and requisitioned colonial shop-houses for sweaty street scenes. Hampton, who knew Farrell before the author’s death in 1979, keeps the novel’s comic contempt intact: Jane Horrocks’s Sylvia frets about orchid arrangements as Elizabeth Tan’s Chinese-European Vera quietly counts the days until empire ends. Director Tom Vaughan lets the final episode detonate the fantasy: the family flees in a launch flying a makeshift white flag, leaving their rubber to the enemy and their servants to fate. Viewers watched the six-week run between 13 September and 18 October 2020, giving ITV its highest Sunday-night drama figures that autumn, then forgot the catastrophe as quickly as the characters did.
Production Details
ITV1 / 1 Season / 6 Episodes / 2020
Created by: Christopher Hampton
Showrunner(s): Damien Timmer, Karen Thrussell
Writer(s): Christopher Hampton
Producer(s): Farah Abushwesha
Main Cast
David Morrissey as Walter Blackett
Jane Horrocks as Sylvia Blackett
Georgia Blizzard as Joan Blackett
Charles Dance as Mr Webb
Elizabeth Tan as Vera Chiang
Luke Treadaway as Matthew Webb
Colm Meaney as Major Brendan Archer
Bart Edwards as James Ehrendorf
Craig Haydon as
Leigh Barwell as Olive Kennedy Walsh
