Music, Style & Culture

Birdsong: Episode One

Eddie Redmayne battles the horrors of The Great War and his love for a married woman.

Starts 9pm 22nd January, BBC One.

When a book is so beloved that even the money men of Hollywood cannot bring themselves to condense it into a two-hour feature film, it becomes likely that a screen adaptation will remain on the great “unfilmable" list. So it was with joy and not a little astonishment to discover that the BBC would tackle Sebastian Faulks’s epic opus.

Taking the decision to make a two-part drama clocking it at 90 minutes apiece is inspired and wholly necessary - some things just simply cannot be rushed.

We begin in the beautiful, serene surroundings of a pre-war Amiens, France. Callow youth Stephen Wraysford (a mesmerising Eddie Redmayne) arrives to spend the summer working in the office of factory owner René Azaire, also staying in his sprawling family home. Here he meets Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) the luminescent young wife of the older René. It doesn’t take a genius to see the furtive glances between Stephen and Isabelle will lead to a passionate affair.

What separates Birdsong from the average romance is the flipping from one time-frame to another. Woman of the hour (and indeed The Hour) writer Abi Morgan (Iron Lady, Shame) took the decision to operate in the two time-frames and it’s one that works magnificently. In a heartbeat, proceedings in the scenic Amiens are replaced by the brutal, filthy trenches of The Western Front. With the previously wide-eyed Stephen reduced to a hollow shadow of his former self, his innocence not only shattered by the brutalities of war but by his all consuming love for Isabelle.

The scenes in the trenches - and the claustrophobic, two-foot-wide subterranean crawl spaces - are amongst the very best in Birdsong. Redmayne thrives as the bitter, emotionally unreachable Stephen, but it is Joseph Mawle as the thoroughly stoic, decent tunneller Jack Firebrace who is the true heart of Birdsong. He recognises Wraysford’s inner turmoil and empathises with his sharp, unyielding superior. Mawle conveys so much in his flinty eyes that the audience find themselves wishing away the love story flashbacks and wanting to return to the war and the men fighting it.

This is in no way to discredit the beautifully played scenes between Poésy and Redmayne, for they make an electric pair, but director Phillip Martin (Wallander) has given us a truly mesmeric and tense war, one that draws us in and holds us to its bloody, muddy bosom.

Able support in the trenches comes from Game of Thrones’ own Robb Stark (the charming Richard Madden, with an amusing array of hand knitted sweaters) as Captain Weir, the closest thing to a friend the damaged Wraysford has, and the elegant Matthew Goode (Watchmen, A Simple Man) makes an all too brief appearance as Captain Gray.

A high quality production, Birdsong will, for two weeks at least, fill the Sherlock-sized hole left in the Sunday night TV schedule.