‘The English’: in praise of Hugo Blick

Hugo Blick’s new drama series, The English, was first shown on BBC2 in November and December but is still available on BBC iPlayer. It is perhaps his greatest series yet and confirms his place as one of the best TV drama writers and directors of our time.

It is the fourth of a remarkable group of series that started with The Shadow Line (2011), which begins with the murder of a drugs baron, Harvey Wratten, but becomes a dark story about morality and corruption. The Wratten murder case is given to DI Jonah Gabriel (a wonderfully biblical name for a morally ambiguous character), who has returned to work with a bullet lodged in his brain after a bungled undercover job left his partner dead. He has lost all memory of the event, but finds a case containing hundreds of thousands of pounds hidden in his own home. Like all of Blick’s best work, it had an extraordinary cast, including Chiwetel Ejiofor, Christopher Eccleston, Rafe Spall, Lesley Sharp, Antony Sher and Stephen Rea.

After The Shadow Line, Blick’s work took a more international turn, addressing big historical subjects. His second major series was The Honourable Woman (2014), an eight-part spy thriller, about a wealthy Anglo-Jewish businesswoman and philanthropist, Nessa Stein (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who becomes increasingly involved in the murderous politics of the Middle East because of an ambitious project to connect the West Bank with optical fibre cables. Her relationship with Atika Halabi, a Palestinian translator/housekeeper, becomes increasingly complicated and nuanced. Again, the cast was outstanding: Gyllenhaal, Stephen Rea, Janet McTeer, Eve Best and an astonishing performance from Lubna Azabal as Halabi.

Next came Black Earth Rising (2018), another eight-part series, a co-production between BBC2 and Netflix, this time about the prosecution of international war criminals in Rwanda, but the real subjects again are moral ambiguity, violence and coming to terms with the past and as ever Blick’s cast is superb, including John Goodman, Michaela Coel, Harriet Walter and Lucian Msamati.

Now we have The English, a BBC/Amazon Prime co-production, starring Emily Blunt, Chaske Spencer, Rafe Spall, Stephen Rea, Toby Jones and Ciaran Hinds. It is largely set in the Wild West between the 1870s and 1890s. From the beginning the film is brutally violent. Its subject is revenge and how the present is haunted by the terrible past of the central characters, involving rape, murder  and even genocide. Beautifully filmed and superbly acted, the series brings together two completely different characters, Lady Cornelia Locke (Blunt) and a Native American army veteran, Wounded Wolf/Sergeant Eli Whipp (Spencer), who join forces in their increasingly violent search for revenge. Rafe Spall, in particular, gives an astonishing performance as one of television’s most terrifying characters, David Melmont, one of the English from the title, for whom the Wild West becomes a perfect home for his psychopathic violence.

Blick’s four major series have a number of features in common. First, most obviously, the extraordinary actors he brings together and the performances he manages to get from them. Emily Blunt, Rafe Spall and Nichola McAuliffe (as the terrifying Black Eyed Mog) in The English have never been better. Actors like Antony Sher, Stephen Rea, Ciaran Hinds and Toby Jones have all been superb in small but perfect cameos.

Then there is the violence. These series all begin with a murder and from then on mayhem follows. It’s not just the crimes, it’s the psychopathic violence of creations like Jay Wratten (Spall again) in The Shadow Line, Black Eyed Mog, Melmont and Corporal Jerome McClintock in The English. In all of these four series he gives great parts to Black, Palestinian and Native American characters and has never been afraid to cast little-known actors in major parts who go on to give astonishing performances – Atika Halabi in The Honourable Woman,  Michaela Coel in her first major drama role in Black Earth Rising and Chaske Spencer in The English.

Blick is always drawn to big historical subjects: Israel in The Honourable Woman, Rwanda in Black Earth Rising and the Wild West in The English. In each case the present is haunted by terrible events in the past. History is always dark and remorseless and erupts into the present, with victims piling up as the relentless violence deepens. It is no coincidence that two of his best series are about genocide, in Rwanda and in the Wild West.

Blick is a master of violent thrillers, mysterious, full of moral and historical complexity, unfolding over six to eight hours of prime time, moving between past and present, sometimes hard to follow, but always compelling. The viewer is drawn in by unresolved questions. Who killed Harvey Wratten and why? Why does Inspector Gabriel have a case full of cash hidden in his house? Who is Lady Cornelia Locke and why is she seeking revenge so far from home? And who is her target? These dramas, part mystery thrillers, part historical morality plays, are unlike anything else on television today. Blick is less well known than  contemporaries such as Jed Mercurio (Line of Duty) or Sally Wainwright (Happy Valley, Last Tango in Halifax and Gentleman Jack), but for his devoted followers he is the outstanding writer/director of his generation.

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