G.B.H.

A POLITICAL 7 PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER THAT'LL DRIVE YOU MAD
I was drawn into this story and could not pause between episodes, which may make me as loony as the crazies depicted in this series. GBH is the story of urban England political confrontation, how it draws and drains the sane and bewildered. A dialogue line sums it up best: "All of us are capable of being crazy at one time or other." A GBH understatement.

Michael Murray (Robert Lindsay) is a newly successful Labour Party council leader with a mysterious past that haunts him. He lords his power over particular people of his childhood. Mr. Weller, childhood headmaster, is targeted. Murray used psychological means of attack, & thugs when needed. A city-wide strike, Murray led, has one flaw, Jim Nelson (Michael Palin-"Monty Python"), headmaster to a school for special-needs kids. Pickets were not placed at that school through an error. Murray takes it personally and adds Nelson to his "get-him" list. Nelson doesn't need this, since he's already dealing with hypochondria and a...

Worth wading through a slow start
A slow start at first, with a real opportunity to take potshots at Robert Lindsay's occasional sinking into stereotype. Actually turns into a moving study of what happened to Labour just prior to the Blair ministry, as well as a well-handled, often comedic, more often tragic, study of the sinking of the lead corrupted Labour figure.

Astonishing
I haven't even begun to come to terms with this movie, nor am I quite sure that I understand what happens in it. New characters keep appearing, and it's sometimes hard to tell whether they are sympathetic or not, or to be sure of their relationships with the other characters. Mysteries from the past are important but obscure. All very confusing. Yet the acting is so compelling, from the entire cast, the passion of the movie so strong, that in our home we sat mesmerized throughout. It's a very bleak, disturbing, and comic portrait of Britain and British politics, in the final quarter of the 20th century, but not so different from that portrayed more gently in Judge Deed or Kavanaugh Q C, a political system corrupted by those close to the very top, Thatcherism in its worst form. (Much more lightly, the same theme is treated comically in Brassed Off, which closes with a moving attack on harsh, utilitarian, greedy government). GBH goes deeper and is tougher, in several senses, than...

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