Screen One: Nineteen 96 // GF Newman // Karl Francis // Shoot-to-kill

[DaveCinzano]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097983/

...a BBC1 Screen One drama that relocated the Stalker inquiry to a future fictional Wales in the year 1996 and combined it with some elements of the Kincora boy's home scandal, with Keith Barron as the investigating officer. Written by G. F. Newman and directed by Karl Francis, it was screened on BBC1 on 17 September 1989.

(Wikipedia)

Does anyone have this or know where one might find it? I've looked in the usual places, but to no avail. All help gratefully received.

 

[DaveCinzano]

Am still very interested in seeing this...

BFI Screenonline: Nineteen96 (1989)

 

[DaveCinzano]

Anyone? Anyone?

Nineteen 96 is based on G.F. Newman's 1987 novel The Testing Ground, in which a senior policeman investigates RUC officers accused of murdering IRA suspects in a shoot-to-kill policy. The novel also described how senior officials in the province were involved in a sex scandal at a boy's home. When Newman came to adapt the novel, he originally planned to retain its contemporary Northern Ireland setting, but the BBC worried about real-life parallels to Deputy Chief Constable John Stalker's mid-1980s investigation into shoot-to-kill allegations (dramatised as Shoot to Kill, ITV, 1990), and consequently asked for the drama to be rewritten and set in a near-future Wales.

BFI Screenonline: Nineteen96 (1989) Synopsis

Would really like to see this - Karl Francis' Giro City is on the BFI Player, but not this

Giro City (1982)

 

[DaveCinzano]

*BANGS SCREEN*

 

[DaveCinzano]

Seriously, does no one have a copy?

 

[DaveCinzano]

Seriously, does no one have a copy?

Well yes, director Karl Francis has whacked it up on Vimeo:



Finally watched it last week. It was pretty decent for a Screen One made-for-telly thing, some solid world-building touches, though definitely suffered from trying to pile too much into a 90 minute sideways-version of then-contemporary parapolitical Northern Ireland (shoot to kill! MI5-MI6-Special Branch turf war! Kincora! Freemasons! Stalker! PTA!).

Keith Barron makes a good self-satisfied high-flying-but-head-down Met detective sent over to the troubled Welsh Province to whitewash investigate claims of a shoot to kill policy against political activists (who appear to include Les Battersby), but is not as compelling as Jack Shepherd's turn as John Stalker in Shoot To Kill.

Odd moments include a subplot moment in which bent copper Keith Allen beats up stand-up comedian Stephen K Amos.

The climax is both staggeringly anticlimactic, and entirely in keeping with the pessimistic tone.

 

[Elpenor]

Listened to an old bbc arts programme via bbc sounds which had an interview with the director the other day. Can’t remember what it was though

 

[DaveCinzano]

Listened to an old bbc arts programme via bbc sounds which had an interview with the director the other day. Can’t remember what it was though

Plugging Giro City perhaps?

Meridian - Philip Glass interview - BBC Sounds

Composer Philip Glass, film director Karl Francis, poet John Clare

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Elpenor]

It was this one

Night Waves - Scorsese, Ashmolean, Kosminsky, Creativity - BBC Sounds

Anne McElvoy interviews film director Martin Scorsese about his new film Hugo.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[bellaozzydog]

Bookmarked.

 

[DaveCinzano]

Listened to an old bbc arts programme via bbc sounds which had an interview with the director the other day. Can’t remember what it was though

So the director of a different film then?

 

[a_chap]

Well yes, director Karl Francis has whacked it up on Vimeo:

Liked for persistence...

 

[Elpenor]

So the director of a different film then?

A director of one of the films mentioned in the thread