[Afamilyatwar-list] John Finch's 'A Family at War' (Part 4)

[Veit, Richard]

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(What follows is the fourth part of John Finch’s recollections of ‘A Family at War,’ as excerpted from his forthcoming autobiography.)

John writes …

I’m not sure whose the decision was that the pilot episode should be Episode Three and should be the first to be made. Nor am I entirely clear as to the reasoning behind it, though I am aware of the various arguments that are put forward on either side. I would have preferred the first episode, not because I had written it, but because it was almost completely devoted to revealing the family to the viewer, which was my intention when I wrote it. It was to be as much about a family as it was about the war.
By the time these kinds of decisions were being made (and I was privy to most), I was furiously engaged in writing and in planning—in as much detail as was possible at that stage—the overall storyline of the first thirteen episodes. Along with Richard Doubleday, I was also reluctantly involved in casting some of the major characters.
“Why thirteen episodes?” the average viewer might ask. The explanation is simple. There are fifty-two weeks in the year, and thirteen represents a quarter of the annual output that requires overall planning. What the pilot episode did give rise to was the decision, taken at a high level, that the actor of one of the very major family characters was miscast. In actual fact, it was not the initial casting that was at fault, but the replacement casting of that character. We were well into production before I actually saw the character in action. I am not, as I have said, the world’s best at casting, but the actor playing the part was so totally different to the character as I had conceived it that I was totally despairing, as I suspect were Richard and Michael Cox.
I forget whether we had reached a decision at this point as to whether we would aim for twenty-six or fifty-two episodes, but faced with writing/editing a series with anything like these dimensions—particularly given this main characterisation fault—made me very despondent. I felt aware that Richard and Michael had the same reaction. The relationship between this particular character and other members of the family was completely at odds with the whole concept of the series in terms of the family. This, and a later “development” involving a member of the cast, required, where it was possible, a significant re-think of the overall story. There are instances where major flaws in production set-backs can actually lead to positive improvements, but I do not regard the first of these as being one of them. The second, as I will reveal later, is debatable. In either case, the twists and turns of characterisation can result in mistakes in the efforts to recover, which are potentially disastrous to those involved. Television is an enormously expensive business, and those who described the introduction of independent TV as a licence to print money, might have added that in the wrong hands it can also be a licence to lose money.
The burden of coping with the finances of ‘A Family at War’ largely rested on the shoulders of Richard Doubleday, and Richard depended on my cooperation at the script level—all in addition to coping with the cast, extravagant directors, and moody writers. Some writers can actually be more careless with the demands of a budget than some directors. This is part of being a responsible producer: aware that there are often two ways of creating the same effect, and that the most expensive actors, designers, what have you, are not necessarily the best.
My credit at the end of the programme, and in the TVTimes, was “Devised and edited by John Finch.” That ‘edited by’ credit was often an understatement. We initially set out to have as tight a writing team as possible, with a strong preference for writers with a wartime background, for obvious reasons. We were quickly disillusioned. Those with the ideal background were often not the best writers, and often the writers we considered were young and with entirely inaccurate views on what living through a war was like—being for most a question of survival rather than a political experience.
With the object of maintaining an overall conception, more akin to the novel, I found myself doing more than I had anticipated in the editing field. Since I also wrote no fewer than twenty-nine of the fifty-two scripts, it was a tall order and not entirely successful. I had always believed that the credit “Edited by….” meant what it said, and here I was, re-writing large chunks of somebody else’s script, which must have been more than irritating for the original writer.
At the end of the series, I said to Denis Forman that I would never be a script editor again, and I meant it. I’m sure that there are many good editors, even editors who may be capable of making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, but count me out. In my view, the best television series—with the exception of the adaptation, which is something else again—are one-writer series/serials with a good producer.
There are many counter arguments to this. A writer would have to be commissioned far ahead of a production date, in order to make it possible within the drama budgets of most production companies. Some critics may point to the fact that I wrote all thirty-nine episodes of my serial “Sam” (1973-1975), and so I did, a feat that has been described as a unique achievement in British television. But the demands it made on me were such that when afterwards I said, “Only someone very stupid would try to do that again,” I meant, of course, with the kind of tight scheduling that television—of necessity perhaps—demands, or certainly at that time demanded.
As the day for the dress rehearsal approached, there was a marked tension in the atmosphere. The necessity for re-casting had not helped morale. Actors are hypersensitive to this kind of thing, and no doubt some would be ringing their agents prophesying doom.
Richard Doubleday decided that a couple of days away from the somewhat fraught atmosphere might clear our minds, to the good of the series. I suggested we spend them up at Black Leach, which I had already started to use as a refuge when writing was constantly interrupted by production problems. Before departing, we had the good news that a title for the series had been decided. I had no expectation that my original title, ‘Conflict,’ would be agreed. It was too obvious, and in any case gave no hint that the series should concentrate as much, if not more, on the family rather than the war. The new title, arrived at after much disagreement and an absolute litter of alternatives, was ‘A Family at War’. It was the brainchild of Denis Forman, and once it appeared, almost everyone associated with the programme approved. As Derek Granger pointed out, the words ‘War’ and ‘Family’ were probably the most evocative we could have used.
The background to the opening titles was originally credited to one of the younger directors. But in actual fact, the idea of a sandcastle with a flag on the top came from me, in one of my brighter moments. The title music, an excerpt from the first movement of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Sixth Symphony, was chosen by Richard Doubleday. Using a 1949 recording, with Sir Adrian Boult conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra, it was an inspired choice.

(To be continued…)
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