TV Reviews : The ‘Monocled Mutineer’: Intelligent and Bleak

We colonials like a good time. That’s why we insist on happy endings. On the other hand, there must be something in the English soul of souls that prefers twisted people lurching through desperation.

The recent case in point was Frederic Raphael’s “After the War,” which we saw on “Masterpiece Theatre” about a lot of hateful people hating everybody, themselves included--but with incredible wit. The new case in point is “The Monocled Mutineer,” a BBC production that airs its first episode tonight at 10 on KCET Channel 28. Three others air on successive Thursdays.

Alan Bleasdale adapted the true-life adventure book by William Allison and John Fairley about the elusive Percy Tomlis, who, as history tells it (the script doesn’t agree), led the 1917 mutiny of English and Australian soldiers at the brutal British training camp in France. He was lionized as Britain’s “most wanted man.” It’s “The Fugitive” all over again. Without the happy ending.

That, however, is later in this story. Tonight we watch young Percy’s stark childhood through his enlistment at 17 in the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1915 and the horror and stench of war.

Paul McGann, a young actor of great promise, portrays Percy Tomlis with an inner strength and an outer dash. In later episodes, veteran character actor Timothy West gives us a memorable portrait of the camp brigadier, who is ripped apart by his sense of duty and the growing, terrible realization that his duty is corrupt. In a way he represents the metaphor for an empire rotting from within.

Director Jim O’Brien, who did “Jewel in the Crown,” and his production and costume designers do a triumphant job of re-creating World War I--it’s anguishing to watch--and Bleasdale’s script is intelligent and bleak.

Too bad for Tomlis. Too bad he wasn’t an American. He would have lived and gotten a terrific series on prime time, and a book deal, and got to meet Barbara Walters.