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When broadcast in 1964, The Other Man was ITV's longest and most ambitious
drama presentation. Running for nearly two and a half hours, broken only for a
news bulletin, the play had a cast of 200, with 60 speaking roles.
It was epic not just in terms of its production, but also of its subject and
scope. Giles Cooper's story depicts an alternative history in which Britain made
peace with Germany in 1940 and was absorbed into the Third Reich. With this
setting, Cooper articulates his disturbing central premise that within each of
us is another, who, in certain circumstances, is capable of decisions and
actions that we would normally find morally repugnant.
British officer George Grant (Michael Caine, just after his breakthrough in
Cy Enfield's Zulu) is personable and apparently decent until he finds the way to
career advancement open when his unit comes under German control. As the play
progresses, Grant passes through successively more troubling episodes, becoming
first tacitly, then actively, complicit in Nazi crimes.
The play's mounting horror culminates in an appropriately devastating
conclusion. Finally cracking under the weight of his actions, Grant tries to get
himself killed in battle, only to be revived as a war hero of the Reich through
a miracle of Nazi medical science. Like Hitler himself, he has been sustained
through the transplanting of organs harvested from the prisoners of war he can
see from his hospital window.
Despite its horror, the play is not without a strain of Cooper's typically
dry humour. Eccentric senior officer 'Nanny' Norris maintains a very British
composure in the face of Nazi fanaticism, replying to each 'Heil Hitler'
greeting with a genteel 'good afternoon', and acts the buffoon as he chairs an
enquiry into the loss of a German weapon that he himself has stolen with a view
to resistance. However, set against the chilling world of Cooper's play, he
doesn't last long.
The Other Man illustrates how decent people can be turned onto unpalatable
courses, but, crucially, neither excuses nor mitigates their choices. Although
encouraged along his fascistic path, Grant is not forced. Like Norris and other
characters, he could have resisted. The play therefore conveys not only the
power of circumstances, but also the responsibility that comes with free
will. The play was critically lauded following transmission and,
though now sadly incomplete, remains compelling and thought-provoking
viewing.
Ollie Wake
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1. A toast (5:00)
