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BBC Radio 4, 2-6 August 2010
Famously filmed in 1984 with James Mason in his final role, The Shooting
Party tells of one day in the life of the landed gentry and their staff, as they organize a shooting party in 1913, a
year before the outbreak of World War One. Jessica Dromgoole's production included a wide variety of personalities, including
the host Sir Randolph Nettleby and wife Cicely (Sam Dale, Ellie Kendrick) - two ill-matched partners fond of their
own company who formed an uneasy family unit; two good shots, one old - Gilbert Hartlip (Sean Baker) - and one young (Lionel
Stephens, played by Michael Shelford), who are insanely jealous of one another; an animal rights campaigner Cornelius Cardew
(Jude Akuwudike); a precocious child Osbert (Joshua Swinney); and an amorous servant John (Michael Shelford again) finding
an unusual turn of phrase to declare his love in epistolary form.
The adaptation looked at life above and below stairs at the close of the Edwardian
period; that so-called 'Golden Age' before the outbreak of World War One when it seemed that the sun would never set on the
British Empire. Told in five episodes, each comprised of a series of interlinked plots, The Shooting Party depicted
a world of apparent moral and social certainties, with everyone apparently knowing their place, which nonetheless seemed rotten
to the core. None of the gentry knew that the mayhem they were causing by shooting anything that moved - birds, rabbits,
or other small animals - would soon be reproduced on an horrific scale on the Western Front within two years. Human life became
as worthless as an animal's; life-expectancy was minimal for thousands of young men forced to go 'over the top' and be mown
down by enemy guns. The ambience of Colegate's novel might be genteel; but D. J. Britton's adaptation
transformed it into a powerful anti-war polemic.
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