On the brink of darkness
| Television series | |
|---|---|
| German title | On the brink of darkness |
| Original title | Edge of Darkness |
 | |
| Country of production | United Kingdom |
| original language | English |
| year | 1985 |
| length | 55 minutes |
| Episodes | 6 in 1 season |
| genre | Crime , thriller |
| music |
Eric Clapton Michael Kamen |
| First broadcast | November 4, 1985 (UK) on BBC Two |
| German-language first broadcast |
October 9, 1989 on Das Erste |
| occupation | |
| |
On the edge of darkness (original title: Edge of Darkness , German reference title: The Plutonium Affair ) is an eco-thriller produced by the British television channel BBC . It ran in the UK in 1985 as a six-episode miniseries. The ARD showed four years later a dubbed version every Monday evening at 20.15.
A group of militant environmentalists inspired by the Gaia theory track down an illegally operated reprocessing plant in a disused mine. The activists do not survive their efforts.
The BBC broadcast date was before the Chernobyl accident . The background to the series was, among other things, the nuclear course of the then British government under Margaret Thatcher and the disputes over the nuclear facilities of Sellafield .
The main roles were played by Bob Peck , a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company , as police officer Ronald Craven, Joanne Whalley as his daughter, eco-activist Emma, and Joe Don Baker as CIA agent Darius Jedburgh. Directed by Martin Campbell . The "depressing film music" came from Michael Kamen and Eric Clapton.
In the UK, the "dark thriller" was an exceptional hit with audiences and critics. The series was repeated for the first time by the BBC after just four weeks. Peck won the BAFTA TV Award in 1986 for his performance.
Director Campbell also staged a screen version of the material, which was released in 2010 under the title Order Vengeance (the original title was also Edge of Darkness ). The main character, this time called Thomas Craven, was played by Mel Gibson .
action
Vacation in the Realm of Shadows, Part 1 (Compassionate Leave)
Police officer Ronald Craven is investigating a fraud incident involving the local union organization. He reluctantly lets the organization's boss, the corrupt James Godbolt, change his mind to hand in his investigation report only after the Labor Party conference in Blackpool.
From the depressing meeting, Craven drives to the university in pouring rain to pick up his daughter Emma. Emma Craven is an active member of an environmental protection organization and sits on the podium at an event.
On the stairs in front of Craven's house, Emma is shot dead in an assassination attempt when she throws herself protectively in front of her father.
The investigation initially focuses on gangsters whom Craven once put under lock and key. However, Craven soon realizes that his daughter was leading a double life. Her belongings, which included a Geiger counter and a pistol, are radioactively contaminated, as is her body.
Ronald Craven is released from duty, but continues to investigate on his own initiative and with the tolerance of his superiors. In London, Guy Pendleton, a senior government official, tells Craven that Emma was a terrorist.
Vacation in the Realm of Shadows, Part 2 (Into the Shadows)
In the getaway car of Emma's murderer, there are actually fingerprints of a criminal who her father once arrested.
Ronald Craven is informed that Emma was a member of a subversive group called GAIA. Six activists, under Emma's direction, broke into an underground nuclear waste storage facility near Northmoor, Oxfordshire. All six are now dead or missing.
What worries the government most, however, is evidence that Northmoor is illegally storing plutonium and that a reprocessing plant may be operating there even without the government's knowledge. GAIA wanted to prove this through the break-in.
At this point, CIA agent Darius Jedburgh also appears. The American government is also extremely concerned about the activities in Northmoor. There is an unusual match of interests between the American secret service and an environmental terrorist group.
Also new for Ronald Craven is the realization that the corrupt union boss James Godbolt has close contacts with the IIF company, which operates Northmoor.
The Burden of Proof
Emma's friend Terry Shields, an activist with the Trotskyist wing of a new socialist party, tells Ronald Craven that Emma was on the trail of a hot cell in Northmoor . Terry Shields did not survive his contact with the police for long.
Another at first inexplicable lead leads Craven to McCroon, an informant he used to have contact with in Northern Ireland. McCroon is also in contact with Robert Bennett, boss of the UK IIF, which is facing a takeover by the American nuclear company Fusion Corporation, represented by its chairman Jerry Grogan. Government officials Pendleton and Harcourt believe Bennett was behind Emma's murder.
Ronald Craven learns from Darius Jedburgh that the GAIA group does not stop at human life because it places planet earth above human beings. “You cannot appeal to their humanity. They don't believe in humanity. ”And from Darius' friend Clementine, Craven learns that the CIA agent is secretly one of the founders of GAIA.
Breakthrough
McCroon actually tries to shoot Craven at his home. A police sniper prevents this - and with it the disclosure of information to Craven. This suffers a nervous breakdown.
With the help of an ex-colleague, Ronald Craven manages to break into the central computer of MI5 and inspect the Northmoor files. It also indicates that McCroon worked for Northmoor Security.
On the sidelines of another hearing in the UK House of Commons , union leader James Godbolt Craven admits that he worked for the IIF and - since he had not completely sold himself - gave the GAIA group access to Northmoor.
Apparently the IIF security service flooded the shaft in which the activists were staying with radioactively contaminated cooling water in order to drown and radiate the group at the same time.
After another fatality washes up to the surface of a lake near Northmoor, the autopsy reveals that Northmoor has highly enriched and weapons grade plutonium.
Craven often has conversations with Emma, who appears to him as a child or as a young woman. He once told her in the park: “You want to mess with the most dangerous company in England, run by the most dangerous man in this country! Do not even think about it."
Craven asks Jedburgh to board him at Northmoor.
In the Northmoor Adit (Northmoor)
At the hearing in Parliament it becomes clear that the UK Ministry of Defense is involved in the Northmoor activities.
Craven and Jedburgh struggle through the Northmoor shafts. But the security service is already waiting for you, because there has been a leak at the CIA.
The two men discover the hot cell where there was a terrible radiation accident. Several contaminated bodies are floating around in the sewage. Jedburgh succeeds in stealing several ingots of plutonium with a ghostly blue glow.
The IIF people are doing everything possible to kill the intruders. Jedburgh, however, takes a lift to the surface and Craven, after a thrilling chase, reaches an old shelter and with the last of his strength can reach a phone that is still switched on. Downing Street is at the other end.
Billing (merger)
Both men are exposed to radiation from their stay in the hot cell and will have to die within weeks. Jedburgh, with Craven on his trail, arrives in his military uniform at a NATO conference in the Scottish Gleneagles Hotel .
There, Jerry Grogan from the Texas Fusion Corporation will give a visionary lecture on the civil and military consequences of successful energy production using nuclear fusion. Before the enthusiastic conference, he sees humanity as an interstellar race on its way into the universe.
However, Darius Jedburgh holds up the ugly mirror of the plutonium state to the conference, in which no liberties and no deviation are tolerated. To demonstrate the practices of the Fusion company, to the great horror of the conference, he pulls two bars of plutonium out of his jacket pockets with his bare hands and holds them up.
The conference leaves the place in panic. Jedburgh finds himself in an abandoned hotel in the Scottish mountains, followed a little later by Craven.
A military command storms the house. Jedburgh takes some of the attackers with him to death before he is shot. Craven is also expecting a bullet. However, the commander of the combat squad says to him: “No, no. They belong to us. "To which Craven calls after the withdrawing attackers:" I do not belong to you. "
At the end you see Craven screaming the name of his daughter on a hill above a reservoir in the mountains. At the dam, the authorities are recovering the remaining bars of plutonium that Jedburgh had taken from the hot cell.
One last pan of the camera shows the black flowers, which, according to the GAIA legend, bloom when the earth begins to defend itself against people.
reception
Great Britain
In Great Britain, “Edge of Darkness” was one of the most successful television series and was equally well received by viewers and television critics. It is listed as number 15 among the most influential television programs by the British Film Institute. Channel 4 leads the series as the third best televised drama.
The BBC itself was apparently surprised by the overwhelming response, as the series had initially been broadcast on the smaller broadcaster BBC Two , beginning November 4, 1985 . Now the series was repeated on BBC One from December 19, 1985 . This doubled the number of viewers from 4 million to 8 million.
British television reviews were particularly impressed by the complex story and the acting performance of Bob Peck in the role of the police officer Ronald Craven, who was constantly involved in dialogues with his deceased daughter. Joe Don Baker as the cranky and obscure CIA agent Darius Jedburgh was also highlighted. The transmitter Channel 4 leads Darius Jedburgh in the list of the top 100 television roles 84. as number Baker ten years later by director Martin Campbell for his James Bond film Goldeneye as CIA agent Jack Wade committed to a role he in the Tomorrow dies never again filled in.
Veronica Taylor of the British Film Institute wrote:
"Edge of Darkness combined personal tragedy with global threat, comedy with threat, action scenes with politics, realism with myth and fantasy, and turned it into a gripping, innovative six-part drama that fully deserves its cult status and many awards."
Germany
In Germany, the series was brought to the screens by Westdeutscher Rundfunk four years after it was first broadcast. The editor responsible, Hartwig Schmidt, spoke of the "best he has seen in a long time in series".
The television critic of the Süddeutsche Zeitung saw a “gripping dramaturgy of dark nuclear visions”. The “complex story” blurs “the line between good and bad”. The "dramatic escalations" are "more than just showmanship".
At a time when German television had long been dominated by US series such as Dallas and Miami Vice , Am Rande der Finsternis showed passages like in the first episode, as “in detail and without the usual series haste of the shock, horror and grief of the Father ”was presented. Even as the “pace increases”, the film remains “detailed” and “unusual”, according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
It was possibly due to these circumstances that the series failed to achieve great public success in Germany. Many references to British politics were not familiar to the German audience and important nuances and subtleties were lost in the synchronization.
Awards
The prestigious BAFTA awards from the British Film Academy stand out among the prizes . Edge of Darkness won the main prizes for the best series, the best leading actor, the best music, the best sound, the best camera work and the best editing at the 1986 awards ceremony. Five other nominations had been received.
At the awards ceremony of the British media journalists Broadcasting Press Guild, two main prizes were awarded for series and leading actor as well as a nomination.
Versions and DVD releases
In Germany, after being broadcast on ARD, the series hit the home video market under the title “The Plutonium Affair” in VHS format.
An edition of the BBC with extensive additional material has been available as DVD since 2003 and only has an English soundtrack. A German version of the DVD with a German and English soundtrack has also been available since 2011.
Web links
- At the edge of darkness in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Edge of Darkness. In: DVD Times. (English.)
Individual evidence
- ^ Troy Kennedy Martin : Introduction . In: Edge of Darkness . Faber and Faber, London 1989, ISBN 0-571-14193-3 (accessed April 2, 2010).
- ↑ a b Michael Reufstock / Stefan Niggemeier: Das Fernsehlexikon . Goldmann: Munich 2005
- ↑ a b K.W. (Klaus Wienert): As a couple against the atomic mafia. “On the edge of darkness” - start of a six-part. In: Frankfurter Rundschau , October 9, 1989, p. 14
- ↑ a b c Christof Boy: The unreal world of invisible threat. "On the Edge of Darkness" - start of the six-part BBC series. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , October 9, 1989, p. 34
- ↑ a b Veronica Taylor: 15: Edge of Darkness - Number 4 in the Drama Series / Serial category . British Film Institute. Archived from the original on November 24, 2005. Retrieved October 14, 2009.
- ↑ Scott Mathewman: The 50 greatest TV dramas . The Stage. March 7, 2007. Archived from the original on March 8, 2007. Retrieved October 13, 2015.
- ↑ The One Hundred ... Greatest TV Characters . Channel 4. Retrieved April 6, 2007.
- ^ Awards Database - The BAFTA site . British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Retrieved October 14, 2009.
- ↑ BBC: Edge of Darkness (DVD). 2003. Special Features.