Blade on the Feather

Blade on the Feather (1980)

A reclusive author is visited by a young admirer - but both men are more than they claim to be.

Date of release
1980-10-19
TMDB
5.8 / 10 (11)
Runtime
1h 22m
Genres
Action, Thriller, TV Movie
Director
Richard Loncraine

Casting

Interesting facts

Blade on the Feather is a television drama by Dennis Potter, broadcast by ITV on 19 October 1980 as the first in a loosely connected trilogy of plays exploring language and betrayal. A pastiche of the John Le Carré spy thriller and transmitted eleven months after Anthony Blunt was exposed as the 'fourth man', the drama combines two of Potter's major themes: the visitation motif and political disillusionment. The play's title is taken from "The Eton Boating Song".

Production

Blade on the Feather was originally conceived as a feature film to be produced by Potter and Kenith Trodd's own production company Pennies From Heaven Ltd., but problems with funding led to the drama being part of an arrangement with London Weekend Television as the first of nine single plays: all produced by PFH Ltd. and commissioned by Michael Grade for broadcast on ITV between 1980 and 1981.

In Potter on Potter, the dramatist told Graham Fuller that although Cavendish is more closely based on Kim Philby than any of the other Cambridge spies he is not intended to be a fictional version of that figure. Philby is mentioned several times throughout the play, as are Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean: all of whom in the drama were apparently recruited by Cavendish.

Director Richard Loncraine claimed he heavily rewrote several scenes in Potter's original script because they were unusable.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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