Summer of Rockets, episode 6 review: the absurdities are all part of the fun
Summer of Rockets (BBC Two) concluded with a flourish and, of course, an extra 20 minutes to grant writer and director Stephen Poliakoff full rein. But unlike his recent efforts, such as Dancing on the Edge and Close to the Enemy, this felt like more than over-indulged “quality drama” for the BBC to present at licence fee negotiations.
His most enjoyable drama since 2003’s The Lost Prince, its preoccupations were as tightly tethered to the heart as the brain as an attempted military coup in Cold War Britain foundered and Anthony (Greg Austin), the long-missing son of war hero MP Richard Shaw (Linus Roache) and his wife Kathleen (Keeley Hawes), returned to the fold.
A clutch of fine performances orbited around Toby Stephens’s Samuel Petrukhin, who was dragged into the political plotting by dint of the fact that the bleeper he invented is immune to radio eavesdropping. Hawes, her character made brittle and desperate by her damaged family, yet still brimmed with affection and optimism. Timothy Spall exuded lugubrious, urbane villainy as the would-be kingmaker Arthur Wallington, scheming with Richard and a cabal of generals. Their beef? The wilful rollback of the British Empire and suspected Soviet infiltration of the corrupt establishment.
Poliakoff could have made hay with contemporary comparisons, yet his dramas remain stubbornly time-locked, for better or worse. In this case, it mattered little: it was this attention to the atmosphere of an era sputtering out amid paranoia and atomic dread that carried the story through the absurdities.
And what absurdities! For me, it was a dead heat between Anthony hiding pro-animal rights messages in an enormous mural, and the foiling of the attempted coup by a televised comedy sketch whose gags indicated the plans had leaked. These were extravagant twists no one else would have thought of, let alone dared to execute, but all part of the fun. Poliakoff is not like other dramatists and, on this occasion, it was cause for celebration.
