Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
As a society we look upon the criminal fraternity with a mix of fear and incredulity, the same contempt at times we reserve perhaps for members of government, but there was a time when a certain kind of forbidding figure would be lauded by many, praised, admired and have songs written about them that would be known the length and breadth of the country.
There was a time though when Britain’s Outlaws: Highwaymen, Pirates and Rogues were as famous as the rock stars of today, the footballers and the celebrity who sells their soul for a minute of airtime and then pleads for privacy when the heat becomes unbearable, they had the same entertainment value, if not more, they were popular amongst the masses, and they had one bountiful, redeeming feature to which modern day criminals overlook, they were a true thorn in the backsides of those in positions of power.
Today’s criminal preys without due reckoning to the misery they create in a society already beleaguered by a new way of thinking, the power to steal millions at a touch of a button, to push someone to the depths of despair because they have stolen a pensioner’s life savings with a simple phone call; there is no romance within such a way of life, no ballads should be sung to the creation of a system which can destroy a life without the other person being able to fight back and defend their property, or their life.
Over the course of the three-part series, Dr. Sam Willis explores how the anti-hero of the 17th and 18th Century, people such as Captain Kidd, Blackbeard, Mary Read and Anne Bonny who took advantage of the expansion of European colonialism, the forgotten soldiers of the Civil War who turned their expertise at planning and execution to a new direction as devilish knights of the road, and those to whom in modern terms would be considered extraordinary enough to warrant being a star, a true and incredible scoundrel.
In a time when the creation of a new class in society was making headlines and on the verge of exerting more power, the mill owners, the writers, people who neither fell into the social strata of the poor or the landed gentry and royalty, it was perhaps inevitable that people such as thief and perpetual escapee Jack Sheppard and the fraudster Mary Toft would become household names. The country had changed dramatically during this period, and so the perception of the thin line of moral outrage was also going to adapt and change with it.
As with many a modern television historian, Dr. Sam Willis makes history, not just entertaining but inviting, injecting personality into a subject that by rights we should all enjoy but to which for some has left an indelible mark of stuffiness and dark formality that has put a generation off investigating with their own minds. Dr. Sam Willis brings this rogues’ gallery to life, reminding the viewer that they were not just people who had sought a life outside the law, but who had reasons for crossing the line.
It is not enough to know the date of an event to declare that you know enough about a subject, you must immerse yourself into the detail to truly see how history has been shaped, and for television historians such as Dr. Sam Willis, history is as important as today, for how else do we spot the modern rogues who prey in the darkness, who seize what is ours, maybe not with cutlasses and pistol, but with the same despicable intention.
A wonderful three-part series, Britain’s Outlaws: Highwaymen, Pirates and Rogues, when criminals had songs etched in stone and became legends, history showing us once more that it can illuminate with colourful characters and stories.
Ian D. Hall