Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Eddie Izzard, Karl Davies, Laura Frazer, David Hayman, Alex Jennings, Julian Rhind Tutt, Tim McInnerny, Iain McKee, Joe Bone, Stephen Chance, Nick Elliott, Lesley Harcourt, Carl Heap, Celyn Jones, Arron Tulloch.
It is perhaps appropriate that on the week the country remembers the 75th anniversary of Britain’s entry into the Second World War that the B.B.C. should show the story of how Britain was saved in the early days of The Battle of Britain by no small measure of ingenuity, sacrifice and imagination from the fathers of RADAR, Robert Watson Watt and Skip Wilkins.
In Castles In The Sky, the story of one man’s impassioned belief in building something so intricate and monumentally historic was captured with the same level of careful consideration that saw a handpicked set of weathermen become the first heroes of Britain’s stoic defence against the tyranny and evil of Fascism.
The story placed before the television audience was one in which could have been over-elaborated, convoluted to suit a generation in which the Second World War is a distant to them as the thought of The English Civil War was to those living in Edwardian splendour or downcast amongst the bullets that fired over the trenches at the Somme. However, it was played at the right pitch, respectful to men such as Robert Watson Watt and Skip Wilkins as the nation should have been to heroes and intellectuals such as Alan Turing.
Where the programme hit the highs was in the relationship between Watson Watt’s and his wife Margaret. This loving couple torn apart by duty and loneliness, of strife and signed secrets dissolved before the viewer’s eyes and it was with certain sadness that the Government war machine claimed two other lives in the build up to World War Two.
In Eddie Izzard, Laura Fraser, the superb Karl Davies, David Hayman as the dislikeable war mongering Oxford Professor Frederick Lindemann and Alex Jennings, Castles In The Sky came to life in a way that harked back to the very best of history dramas that the B.B.C. used to do so well and even the odd sight of Tim McInnerny portraying Winston Churchill was in a way unconceivably good to the point where the unlikely addition didn’t detract from the viewing pleasure.
The programme makers should be congratulated for bringing the story of the discovery and practical applications of RADAR back to the public’s attention, without it the British Air Force would have been taken apart easily during the first few weeks of the war that the consequences don’t bear thinking about. It was time and hope that gave the rest of the world the breathing space to come to terms with the atrocities of the Nazi regime in Germany that allowed Russia to give its millions of men and then persuaded America to give its money which stalled the advancement in the face of tyranny. If not for Skip Wilkins and Robert Watson Watt, the very nature of society could be so disturbingly different today.
Ian D. Hall