Play for Today Beloved Enemy (1970–1984) Online

Alan Clarke had just made a documentary called 'Vodka-Cola',

about the creeping influence that the big corporations were

gaining over world politics,and I suppose he felt that people

wouldn't really get what the whole thing was about unless he

dramatised it - so we got this remarkable movie. Graham Crowden runs a multinational that wants to expand into

the USSR (still, of course, officially the enemy in 1981). Tony Doyle

is his smoothly thuglike right-hand-man. Steven Berkoff is Doyle's

opposite number in the Russian delegation. We see some

beautifully observed scenes evoking the mind-numbing boredom

of high-level business dealings, contrasted with the foul-mouthed

energy of the behind-the-scenes action. The story really kicks off,

though, when it turns out that the Russians will play along, but only

if the company gives them access to their state-of-the-art laser

technology... which can, of course, be used as weaponry... The film portrays politicians as being alternately bullied and bribed

by big business, ultimately colluding in the destruction of their own

native industries in order to save money for the 'greater good' -

globalisation. All this twenty years before Naomi Klein's 'No Logo'. But I shouldn't make it sound like a dry dissertation of a movie - the

performances, as always with Clarke, are superb, and it's great to

see the late Tony Doyle's powerhouse performance. could British TV ever make something as intellectually challenging

today....?