Series 1 – Episode 7
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Marker
Arthur Gates Gregory Chambers Julie Len Freddie Sparks Iris John Roberts Customer Landlady Porter |
Alfred Burke
Peter Butterworth Willoughby Goddard Diane Clare Meier Tzelniker Peter Bowles Gretchen Franklin Charles Lamb Maurie Taylor John Rapley Edna Morris Bill Treacher |
Barman
Auctioneer |
Brian Tyler
William Moore |
Uncredited cast:
The rehearsal script also called for an unspecified number of dealers at the auction and customers in the pub, none of whom were credited in TV listings
The rehearsal script also called for an unspecified number of dealers at the auction and customers in the pub, none of whom were credited in TV listings
Production
Series based on an idea by Roger Marshall & Anthony Marriott
Theme Music composed by Robert Earley Story Editor: Richard Bates Floor Manager: John Russell |
Stage Manager: Shirley Cleghorn
Production Assistant: Anne Summerton Designed by David Marshall Producer: Don Leaver Directed by Laurence Bourne |
Rehearsed from 11am on Thursday 10 December 1964 at Rehearsal Room 2A, ABC Television Studios, Broom Road, Teddington, Middlesex
Camera rehearsed from Tuesday 22 December 1964 at Studio 2, Teddington
Recorded on Wednesday 23 December 1964 at Studio 2, Teddington
Camera rehearsed from Tuesday 22 December 1964 at Studio 2, Teddington
Recorded on Wednesday 23 December 1964 at Studio 2, Teddington
TV World Synopsis
Tuesday 11 a.m.: Chambers – Portobello Road. “Reported to Chambers on shop assistant Arthur Gates, behaving oddly – investigate. Philip Marlowe wouldn’t touch it – I need the money.”
Click here for detailed synopsis
Click here for detailed synopsis
Transmission
Saturday 6 March 1965, 9.10pm (ABC Midlands, ABC North, Southern and Ulster)
Saturday 26 June 1965, 10.10pm (ATV London, Border, Channel and Westward)
Tuesday 24 August 1965, 10.35pm (Grampian)
Sunday 12 September 1965, 11pm (Scottish)
Tuesday 2 November 1965, 10.37pm (TWW)
Saturday 26 June 1965, 10.10pm (ATV London, Border, Channel and Westward)
Tuesday 24 August 1965, 10.35pm (Grampian)
Sunday 12 September 1965, 11pm (Scottish)
Tuesday 2 November 1965, 10.37pm (TWW)
Archive
Rehearsal script – held in the BFI Special Collections
Story Notes
This witty and intelligent tale came from Michael Cahill, who got his big break in television writing with an episode of the BBC’s Sunday-Night Theatre, entitled Gracie, in 1958. Further one-off dramas followed: A Chance to Live for BBC Television in 1960; The Way with Reggie, a 1963 episode of the BBC anthology series First Night; and Find Yourself a Mug, a 1964 ITV Play of the Week. A Harsh World for Zealots was Cahill’s only contribution to Public Eye, after which he moved into educational programming, writing What’s It All About, a ten-part Thames Television series about teenage pregnancy, in 1968; It’s Me, Eileen, a 1968 episode of the BBC Schools programme Scene; and all six episodes of the fourth series of the ITV teen drama You and the World in 1969. This fourth series, subtitled The Kick Off’s at Three and produced by Thames, appears to be the final television work of this particular Michael Cahill – though confusingly there have been numerous other writers and performers by the same name over the years.
The rehearsal script bears the working title The Good Fortune of Arthur Gates. Prior to recording, this was changed to A Harsh World for Zealots, words that are spoken by Julie during Act One.
References to the winter season suggest that Michael Cahill’s script is set at around the time the episode was recorded (23 December 1964). At the beginning of Act Two, snow and wind can be heard beating against the window outside Gregory Chambers’s office. A little later in the scene, Chambers says of Arthur, “Ten to one he’ll be dead by the spring.” In the next scene, Arthur’s landlady echoes Chambers’s implication that springtime lies in the near future: “I’m thinking of having it [Arthur’s room] painted for the spring,” she tells Marker.
The rehearsal script bears the working title The Good Fortune of Arthur Gates. Prior to recording, this was changed to A Harsh World for Zealots, words that are spoken by Julie during Act One.
References to the winter season suggest that Michael Cahill’s script is set at around the time the episode was recorded (23 December 1964). At the beginning of Act Two, snow and wind can be heard beating against the window outside Gregory Chambers’s office. A little later in the scene, Chambers says of Arthur, “Ten to one he’ll be dead by the spring.” In the next scene, Arthur’s landlady echoes Chambers’s implication that springtime lies in the near future: “I’m thinking of having it [Arthur’s room] painted for the spring,” she tells Marker.
Production Notes
A Harsh World for Zealots was the final episode of Public Eye to be completed in 1964, with recording taking place two days before Christmas. Production would resume in January 1965 with All for a Couple of Ponies.
The front cover of the rehearsal script notes that the episode had an expected running time (without commercials) of 47 minutes and 30 seconds.
Appropriately enough, given the events of the story, guest actor Willoughby Goddard, who played Chambers, had a passion for antiques, as was revealed in ABC promotional material for this episode: “Willoughby Goddard in private life is an enthusiastic connoisseur of antiques and old buildings, and he shares this interest with Public Eye star, Alfred Burke, who is a Thames-side neighbour of Mr Goddard at Barnes. Together these two actors often visit historic houses around London, pausing among the markets and antique shops, so this week’s story finds them very much in their element.”
The front cover of the rehearsal script notes that the episode had an expected running time (without commercials) of 47 minutes and 30 seconds.
Appropriately enough, given the events of the story, guest actor Willoughby Goddard, who played Chambers, had a passion for antiques, as was revealed in ABC promotional material for this episode: “Willoughby Goddard in private life is an enthusiastic connoisseur of antiques and old buildings, and he shares this interest with Public Eye star, Alfred Burke, who is a Thames-side neighbour of Mr Goddard at Barnes. Together these two actors often visit historic houses around London, pausing among the markets and antique shops, so this week’s story finds them very much in their element.”
Home and Away
The rehearsal script indicates that all of the exterior scenes in A Harsh World for Zealots were to be recorded in the studio. The list of sets at the beginning of the script includes both the exterior and interior of Chambers’s bookshop, the front door of a small house (belonging to Arthur’s landlady) and the door to the street of Iris and John’s house.
Many a Slip
In Act One of the script, Chambers receives his post twice. After entering the shop at the start of the episode, Arthur picks the mail up off the floor and places it in Chambers’s office. The office door appears to be open at this point (the script informs us that it “overflows with books and papers”) and it is certainly unlocked. Later in the scene, however, the door is closed and locked. After unlocking it, Chambers asks Julie to bring in the post. One assumes that this inconsistency would have been noticed and addressed (no pun intended) during rehearsals, and it has been adjusted in the detailed synopsis presented on this website. Presumably, Julie brings in only the items of mail that are addressed directly to Chambers, as she is later seen opening other correspondence out in the shop.
Who Wants to Be Told Bad News?
The Coventry Evening Telegraph made use of ABC’s press release for this episode as the basis for a small article (see left) on its Week-end Television and Radio page on Saturday 6 March 1965. The journalist, credited as ‘Monitor’, carried out little in the way of editorial changes. The equivalent text in the press release reads, “London’s famous Portobello Road, with its street market and its antique shops, is the setting for A Harsh World for Zealots. Gregory Chambers (Willoughby Goddard) owns a bookshop there, and is having trouble with his assistant, Arthur Gates (Peter Butterworth).” After explaining that Arthur has been behaving strangely of late and has suddenly handed in his notice after visiting a book auction, the source text adds that, “Chambers asks Frank Marker (Alfred Burke), who is negotiating a new shop contract for him, to investigate the reasons for Gates’s departure”.
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Some editions of TV Times, including those for the Southern and London regions, illustrated the programme billing with a photograph from the end of the episode (see above), showing Chambers and Arthur looking at the precious book while Marker prepares to take his leave. The desk and the sherry glasses do not appear in the scripted scene, which takes place in Iris and John’s living room. It is possible that this scene was relocated to Chambers’s office.
Following the London transmission of A Harsh World for Zealots on Saturday 26 June, Television Today published a glowing review (see right), entitled Perfect setting and team for another series, on Thursday 1 July. “The character of Frank Marker, as played by Alfred Burke, has become one of the most believable and likeable private eye creations,” wrote the reviewer, Bill Edmund. “Even in stories such as this one … in which he had a comparatively unimportant function, he is never entirely eclipsed. It’s always pleasant to know that somewhere, round some corner, that unglamorous idealist is about his business.” Edmund praised Michael Cahill’s “well-drawn” characters, considering them worthy of their own spin-off show: “Peter Butterworth really conveyed the sort of man your true booklover is – the man whose duty it is to sell the books and hates parting with one. Willoughby Goddard has been appearing a lot in television lately and, even though there is a lot of him, it can’t be too much for me. Both these two men make perfect foils for the other and, if a new series is wanted for television, then here is the perfect team and their bookshop the perfect setting.” There was also a place in the reviewer’s imaginary show for Diane Clare as Julie, whose interactions with Gates and Chambers “made her a real and amusing character.” Meanwhile, Peter Bowles as Freddie “was a sinister wide boy and Meier Tzelniker was an apparently good-hearted antique dealer who might not have been quite what he seemed.” The review concluded by noting that director Laurence Bourne “kept the story moving well.”
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Nobody Wants to Know
Michael Cahill’s well-researched script includes several specialist book collecting and bookselling terms:
The script makes reference to numerous real antiquarian books:
Chambers refers to Rudolf Nureyev (1938–1993), the Soviet-born ballet dancer and choreographer, considered by many to be the greatest male ballet dancer of his generation.
During their war of words in Act One, Chambers describes Arthur’s mood as stygian, meaning very dark. The word alludes to the murky and menacing waters of the River Styx, which forms the boundary between the land of the living and the world of the dead in Greek mythology.
A little later, Chambers calls Arthur a philistine, meaning a person who is hostile or indifferent to culture and the arts. The original Philistines were inhabitants of the ancient city-states of Philistia (situated in what is now the Gaza Strip and the southern Mediterranean coast of Israel) from the 12th century BC until 604 BC, when their confederacy was conquered by King Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. During the 17th century, as a result of the negative depiction of the Philistines in the Bible, the word philistine came to be applied figuratively to anyone regarded as an enemy. However, the modern sense of the term stems from slang used by German university students in the late 17th century. They used “Philister”, the German equivalent of philistine, to denote anyone lacking a university education and hence any uncultured or materialistic person. This definition was eventually picked up in English and was in common British usage by the 1820s.
Arthur responds by labelling Chambers a sybarite, meaning a person who is self-indulgent in their fondness for sensuous luxury. Like “philistine”, this noun is derived from the name of an ancient people, in this case the inhabitants of Sybaris, an ancient Greek colony in southern Italy, founded in 720 BC. Sybaris amassed great wealth thanks to its fertile land and busy port. The Sybarites became famous among the Greeks for their hedonism, feasts and excesses, to the extent that “sybarite” and “sybaritic” have become bywords for opulence, luxury and outrageous pleasure-seeking.
The barman in Act Two briefly refers to the Lee–Enfield rifle, commonly known as the .303 SMLE (Short Magazine Lee–Enfield) or just 303, a bolt-action, magazine-fed repeating rifle that has served the British military and that of the Commonwealth since 1904. Its forerunner was the .303 MLE (Magazine Lee–Enfield), nicknamed the “Emily”, which came into service in 1895.
- Calf is leather made from the hide of a calf, the commonest form of leather used in bookbinding. Old calf is a binding that is clearly not modern, but one which the cataloguer does not consider contemporary with the book and hesitates to date with any precision (whereas early calf denotes a book that was seemingly bound, or rebound, fairly soon after its publication).
- Engraving is a printing process in which lines are cut into a copper or zinc plate in order to hold ink. Paper (or whatever material is being printed on) is placed on the plate and compressed. When the paper is removed, the ink has been transferred from the plate to the paper.
- Folio (from the Latin “folium”, meaning leaf), has three interconnected but distinct meanings in the world of books and printing. First, it is a term for a common method of arranging sheets of paper into book form, folding each sheet only once to make two leaves, or four pages, and a term for a book made in this way. Second, it is an approximate term for the size of a book, and for a book of this size, having pages of the largest size, formerly made from such sheets – this is the sense used in A Harsh World for Zealots. Third, it is a general term for a sheet, leaf or page of a manuscript or book.
- An inscribed book is one that has a handwritten and signed message at the beginning, usually written for a specific named person, whereas a signed book specifically denotes the presence of the author’s signature, as in an autograph.
- Parchment is a writing material made from the specially prepared untanned skins of animals – primarily sheep, calves or goats. It has been used as a writing medium for more than two millennia.
- In book publishing, a plate is a full-page illustration or photograph that is printed separately from the text and bound in during production. For certain titles, plates are only included in first editions or deluxe editions, and they can often spread over entire sheets of paper.
The script makes reference to numerous real antiquarian books:
- The Oxonia Illustrata is a set of engravings by David Loggan (1634–1692) showing bird’s-eye views of all the colleges of Oxford. Published in 1675 (not 1678 as stated in the script), the book also includes an engraving of Winchester College, in deference to the fact that both Winchester and New College were founded by William of Wykeham (1324–1404). Elevated views from this era required a particular talent, as it was not until 1783 that it became possible for artists to ascend via hot air balloons and view the scenes they were depicting from above. Loggan therefore had to rely on his imagination when conceiving the views.
- The Shelley Family Documents is a collection of four legal documents pertaining to ancestors of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), the English Romantic poet and social reformer. Covering the period 1609–1791, the documents are indentures concerning the sale, lease or entailment of land owned by Richard Shelley (1583–1623), Timothy Shelley (1700–1770), Sir Bysshe Shelley (1731–1815) and Sir Timothy Shelley (1753–1844).
- The Biographical Dictionary of Medallists is an eight-volume guide to medallists, coin-, gem- and seal-engravers, and mint magistrates from around 500 BC to 1900, compiled by Leonard Forrer (1869–1953). It was published between 1902 and 1930, and is still regarded as an important work. A medallist is an artist who designs medals, plaquettes, badges, metal medallions, coins and similar small works in relief in metal.
- A History of the Birds of Europe is a nine-volume ornithological work published in 84 parts, each typically containing 56 pages of text and eight plates of illustrations, between 1871 and 1896. The text was written primarily by Henry Eeles Dresser (1838–1915), though Richard Bowdler Sharpe (1847–1909) co-authored the earlier volumes.
- Britannia is a county-by-county description of Great Britain and Ireland by William Camden (1551–1623). The first edition, written in Latin, was published in 1586. It proved very popular, and ran through five further Latin editions, published in 1587, 1590, 1594, 1600 and 1607 respectively, each greatly expanded from its predecessor in terms of both textual content and illustrations. The 1607 edition included for the first time a full set of English county maps, so it may be this edition that Arthur Gates refers to when he remarks that it is “with maps”. The first English-language edition, translated by Philemon Holland (1552–1637), appeared in 1610, again with additional content supplied by Camden.
- Oeuvres complètes de P.-J. de Béranger (Complete Works of P.-J. de Béranger) is a multi-volume collection of compositions by the prolific French poet and songwriter Pierre-Jean de Béranger (1780–1857), revised by the author and published in 1834. The first five volumes contained song lyrics, though the fifth volume, devoted to erotic songs, was quickly withdrawn and destroyed following a court ruling. Volume VI contained musical scores. Collections of the remaining volumes, with Volume VI renumbered as Volume V, were bound up into larger volumes during the latter half of the 19th century.
- Two books by clergyman Hugh Reginald Haweis (1838–1901) are mentioned: Music and Morals and My Musical Life. Published in 1871, Music and Morals is Haweis’s best-known work. It is, as Arthur says, more than just a collection of philosophical essays on music. It also takes an in-depth look at musical instruments and provides informative biographies of the great composers. Divided into four sections – Philosophical, Biographical, Instrumental and Critical – the book had reached its 16th edition by the time of Haweis’s death. My Musical Life (1884) is an autobiographical tour through Haweis’s career and his spiritual appreciation of music, documenting his awakening to music from an early age, his interest in various instruments and performances, and anecdotes about his meetings with the composers Richard Wagner (1813–1883) and Franz Liszt (1811–1886). In the script, the author’s surname is misspelled Howies.
- A Short History of the English People was written by John Richard Green (1837–1883) and published in 1874 by Macmillan. Having been given just six months to live and having fewer than 900 pages to write on, Green had to omit much of what he wanted to include. He intentionally excluded battles, feeling that they did not play a large role in the formation of the nation, stating that historians “too often turned history into a mere record of the butchery of men by their fellow men.” Instead, his book “is a history, not of English Kings or English Conquests, but of the English People.” An illustrated edition with colour folding maps was published in 1886, the date given in the script.
- Characters in the script also mention, by surname only, the English novelists Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) and John Galsworthy (1867–1933), and the English historians Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher (1865–1940) and George Macaulay Trevelyan (1876–1962).
Chambers refers to Rudolf Nureyev (1938–1993), the Soviet-born ballet dancer and choreographer, considered by many to be the greatest male ballet dancer of his generation.
During their war of words in Act One, Chambers describes Arthur’s mood as stygian, meaning very dark. The word alludes to the murky and menacing waters of the River Styx, which forms the boundary between the land of the living and the world of the dead in Greek mythology.
A little later, Chambers calls Arthur a philistine, meaning a person who is hostile or indifferent to culture and the arts. The original Philistines were inhabitants of the ancient city-states of Philistia (situated in what is now the Gaza Strip and the southern Mediterranean coast of Israel) from the 12th century BC until 604 BC, when their confederacy was conquered by King Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. During the 17th century, as a result of the negative depiction of the Philistines in the Bible, the word philistine came to be applied figuratively to anyone regarded as an enemy. However, the modern sense of the term stems from slang used by German university students in the late 17th century. They used “Philister”, the German equivalent of philistine, to denote anyone lacking a university education and hence any uncultured or materialistic person. This definition was eventually picked up in English and was in common British usage by the 1820s.
Arthur responds by labelling Chambers a sybarite, meaning a person who is self-indulgent in their fondness for sensuous luxury. Like “philistine”, this noun is derived from the name of an ancient people, in this case the inhabitants of Sybaris, an ancient Greek colony in southern Italy, founded in 720 BC. Sybaris amassed great wealth thanks to its fertile land and busy port. The Sybarites became famous among the Greeks for their hedonism, feasts and excesses, to the extent that “sybarite” and “sybaritic” have become bywords for opulence, luxury and outrageous pleasure-seeking.
The barman in Act Two briefly refers to the Lee–Enfield rifle, commonly known as the .303 SMLE (Short Magazine Lee–Enfield) or just 303, a bolt-action, magazine-fed repeating rifle that has served the British military and that of the Commonwealth since 1904. Its forerunner was the .303 MLE (Magazine Lee–Enfield), nicknamed the “Emily”, which came into service in 1895.
With thanks to Jonny Davies, Andrew Pixley, the BFI Special Collections, the British Newspaper Archive and Network Distributing.
The Missing Markers is a not-for-profit fan website written and edited by and copyright © Richard McGinlay. All rights reserved.
Public Eye (the ABC years) is copyright © StudioCanal. No attempt to infringe this copyright is intended.
The Missing Markers is a not-for-profit fan website written and edited by and copyright © Richard McGinlay. All rights reserved.
Public Eye (the ABC years) is copyright © StudioCanal. No attempt to infringe this copyright is intended.