Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Larry Hulme, Travis McMahon, Abe Forsythe, Caribe Heine, Peter Houghton, Clayton Watson, Dominic Gameau, Matthew Le Nevez, Ryan O’Kane, Brendan Cowell, Richard Davies, Alexander England, Nicholas Coghlan.

It could possibly leave younger viewers stumped at the fuss, however Howzat! Kerry Packer’s War is one of the finest pieces of television plays concerning cricket ever conceived for the medium. That though is not hard; as pretty much anything that tries to capture the intrigue, drama and microcosm of life that goes on within the test arena has been fairly awful. Unless it is one of those great documentaries narrated with elegance and knowledge of the game by the actor Jim Carter, then they tend to go the same way as the rather disappointing Bodyline miniseries from 1984, forgotten and not worthy of the moment in time it was ungraciously trying to capture.

Split into two parts and shown by the B.B.C. nearly a year after it was shown in Australia, Howzat! Kerry Packer’s War, deals with the period in which the sport was nearly torn apart. On one hand the players, deserving their fair pay for the entertainment they brought to millions were being courted by one of the richest men in the southern continent and on the other, the ones holding the purse strings, the laws of the game and a near pre-war zeal approach to the sport and for whom could see that the game was slipping away from them.

Younger viewers will have been reaching for Wikipedia, the holy bible of cricket of Wisden probably not being to hand in most houses these days, and wondering what sort of argument they were making and yet the game has gone down the route of day/night games, more television exposure than ever before, better and more exciting games…allegedly and yet this was revolution and perhaps the moment in which the game could have been buried in a quagmire of lawyers and court appearances. If the Bodyline series was a diplomatic incident, Mike Gatting and Umpire Shakoor Rana causing a near civil war in the sport, then Kerry Packer’s involvement, rightly or wrongly depending on your view point, could have seen the game die a slow lingering death.

Filmed with clever precision between what was caught on camera at the time, interviews with Sir David Frost, images from the 1975 tests for example and the modern actors playing the parts of the major players of the time, Howzat! Kerry Packers War showed what could be achieved if they didn’t show actors trying to recreate the actual game they were portraying. Only one film has really ever framed that perfectly and this was no Chariots of Fire, however it wasn’t trying to be, it was a near perfect representation of the pure drama that unfolded as Kerry Packer tried to buy himself into the world of cricket.

With excellent performances by Lachy Hulme as the media mogul Kerry Packer, Alexander England as the so called and harshly labelled ‘traitor’ Tony Grieg, Clayton Watson as Ian Chappell and Brendan Cowell as one of Australia’s finest wicket-keepers Rod Marsh, this is a seriously good account of the dark days that cricket faced. As Kerry Packer is reputed to have said, “There is a little bit of the whore in all of us, gentlemen. What is your price?”

It may not be cricket but this Australian made drama might be the only thing not consigned to the ashes this summer.

Howzat! Kerry Packer’s War concludes next Monday on B.B.C.

Ian D. Hall