By Ray Bennett
David Suchet (left), who is very good in the title role of the drama “Maxwell” tonight on BBC2 , says that he researched the life of Robert Maxwell for other characters he’s played.
He used the flamboyant businessman as the basis for playing Augustus Melmotte in Trollope’s “The Way We Live Now” in 2002. He told the BBC: “It was almost a carbon copy of Maxwell’s background, although obviously he was a different person.”
He said he used him for Gregor Antonescu in the West End production of Terence Rattigan’s play “Man and Boy.” He was a business man from Eastern Europe who also had a financial meltdown: “He had the same sort of background and he had the same sort of bullish attitude and ways.
The actor says there’s no doubt that Maxwell was smart and tough but his colorful ways were missed when he was gone: “I think what’s great about the script, and why I was drawn to it, is that it doesn’t just present him as the big bully and evil thieving man that he’s probably made out to be now because he stole the pension funds for himself and such like. This drama doesn’t do that. That’s there and one judges it according to how you feel about that, but then his other life is there as well. I think there’s a very good mix of sensitivity and bullishness and what was later found out to be criminal activity.”
Here’s how my review begins in The Hollywood Reporter:
LONDON — Conrad Black, now on trial in Chicago, was not the first newspaper mogul to run afoul of the law. Robert Maxwell, owner of the big-selling U.K. tabloid the Daily Mirror, siphoned off £350 million from his company’s pension fund in 1991.
Thousands of employees lost their life savings. He was never tried because he fell off his yacht and drowned in mysterious circumstances aged 68 shortly afterwards.
Writer Craig Warner’s BBC film “Maxwell” tells of those last days although a line at the beginning points out that some characters are changed, dates are shifted and some scenes are informed fiction. Still, producer and director Colin Barr has delivered a penetrating drama observing the power-hungry CEO scheme and connive to keep the reins on his debt-ridden empire.
David Suchet (“Poirot”) creates a vivid impression of the uncouth and ruthless tycoon who got out of Czechoslovakia in World War II and fought bravely enough for the British to win the Military Cross.
His family perished at Auschwitz and he was penniless when he landed in Britain but he had a shrewd eye for business. At his peak, despite his nickname the Bouncing Czech, he competed with Rupert Murdoch as the most rapacious and successful media baron in the U.K.
Time for national treasure Kate Moss to help the workers
By Ray Bennett
When Kate Moss was pilloried by the tabloids and began to lose contracts because of alleged drug use, CNN asked me on to talk about what she should do about it.
There was a guy from People Magazine on, too, and CNN clearly wanted me to agree with him that the supermodel should rush to confess her sins on TV or in one of the celebrity magazines or red tops. My advice was the opposite.
I said she should disappear, say nothing and keep working; things would come around. She did just that, and today she is back on top as she opens a new clothing line at Topshop. I say good luck to her.
Kate Moss doesn’t make awful pop records, shabby television shows or lousy movies. She doesn’t rabbit on to radio or TV interviewers. She just does her job, which is to look dazzlingly beautiful in advertisements, and she does it exceedingly well.
To spot her versatile and eye-catching features on posters and in commercials when traveling abroad is a sweet reminder of home. She is a national treasure.
Which is all the more reason she should follow the advice of Mary Riddell in the Observer Sunday and help improve the lives of the people who work so hard to make the clothes she hawks.
To add 10p to the cost of each item of clothing could double a ragtrade worker’s income, Riddell cries: “Come on Kate, lead the way.”
International Workers’ Day tomorrow, would be a fine time to do it. Come on, Kate!