Certainly not one of Ratigans best screenplays.Not really helped by the casting of the 60 year old Jack Warner as a test cricketer in his forties.There are some really odd things about this film.Warner inviting to dinner one of the match umpires,the day before he bats.Later going into a pub at 1030pm,albeit just to romance Brenda Bruce who is about 25 years younger than him.They seem more like grandfather and granddaughter than lovers.Then there is a batsman who is out sauntering about the dressing room in a tie and suit.All very archaic.Good to see many of the heroes of the 1953 ashes winning team,Dennis Compton,Len Hutton and Jim Laker.How we could have done with them in Australia.
12 Reviews
Enjoyable, gentle comedy
tlloydesq17 April 2014
Sam Palmer (Jack Warner) is playing his last test for England's cricket team and his form has been below average recently. Then, as now, the Aussies are pouring on the agony for England and Sam desperately wants to sign off on a high note.
This is a gentle comedy with a touch of drama. If you want to see how comedy works (and you understand cricket) watch the first 5 minutes. Senator Stanley Maxted arrives in England and makes his way to the Oval where he poses a few questions to deadpan Richard Wattis. The questions are standard cricketing enquiries (you mean they play for 5 days and it might still be a draw?) which could be cheesy but the delivery and Wattis' "matter of fact" responses make you laugh.
Sam's cricketing prowess does not extend to his son who is more interested in poetry and this forms the backbone of the movie – does the son care enough about dad to watch his final innings? At the same time, does dad care enough about his son to appreciate his interests.
Sam not only gives the umpire a lift to the ground but entertains him for dinner the night before (they wouldn't allow it these days you know). Sam also pops down to the local for a drink around closing time during the middle of the game - but he only drinks lemonade so that's alright then. Robert Morley (wearing a rather fetching jump suit) spices up the last third of the film as a vain, muddled poet.
This is a gentle comedy with a touch of drama. If you want to see how comedy works (and you understand cricket) watch the first 5 minutes. Senator Stanley Maxted arrives in England and makes his way to the Oval where he poses a few questions to deadpan Richard Wattis. The questions are standard cricketing enquiries (you mean they play for 5 days and it might still be a draw?) which could be cheesy but the delivery and Wattis' "matter of fact" responses make you laugh.
Sam's cricketing prowess does not extend to his son who is more interested in poetry and this forms the backbone of the movie – does the son care enough about dad to watch his final innings? At the same time, does dad care enough about his son to appreciate his interests.
Sam not only gives the umpire a lift to the ground but entertains him for dinner the night before (they wouldn't allow it these days you know). Sam also pops down to the local for a drink around closing time during the middle of the game - but he only drinks lemonade so that's alright then. Robert Morley (wearing a rather fetching jump suit) spices up the last third of the film as a vain, muddled poet.
Pitch Perfect
writers_reign14 November 2015
Warning: Spoilers
Terence Rttigan and Noel Coward were the two outstanding masters of the 'well-made' play in the first half of the twentieth century in England; both gay they wrote (and in Coward's case co-directed and acted in) the two finest films about World War Two actually produced in wartime, In Which We Serve and The Way To The Stars. Both were highly versatile writers but whereas Coward was victorious in terms of novel, short story and non-fiction Rattigan had more success adapting other writers (Graham Greene, Janes Hilton) for the screen and writing original works for both big and small screens and indeed The Final Test began life s a television play which Rattigan adapted himself for the big screen working with long-time collaborator Puffin Asquith. Seen today it's little more than a finger exercise but Rattigan is such a consummate artist that he raises it by one or two notches. Arguably it holds more interest today as a time-capsule of a lost age, the 1950s with all the cast putting in first class work.
Jack's last stand
Oct16 October 2004
Like Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, playwright Terence Rattigan was a cricket devotee. But non-fans need not shun "The Final Test": it contains little cricketing action, and the game's mysteries are sent up by having a baffled visiting American senator interrogate a supercilious Richard Wattis about them. The Test of the title is much more one of loyalty and of the relationship between an older and younger man, like weightier Rattigan works such as "The Winslow Boy", "The Browning Version" and "Man and Boy".
Quickly filmed after being one of the earliest British TV plays by an established writer, "The Final Test" is a cheap and cheerful comedy. Documentary footage of real play at the Oval, South London, is hardly up to "Zelig" standards in melding into the studio shots. The film stocks do not match, and the crowd's rush into the ground is evidently back-projected. The setting is less grand than one associates with Rattigan. It is Cowardesque in the vein of "This Happy Breed", with a sauce bottle on the dinner table: the hero, Sam Palmer, is a professional batsman who has done well enough to give his son a fee-paying education. The only "posh" character besides Wattis is Robert Morley's pompous poet and playwright, whom the literary-minded son would rather visit than watch his dad play his last innings against the Australian tourists. Luckily Morley proves to be a cricket maniac and all ends well.
Jack Warner's remarkable, belated rise from fairly blue music hall comic and Maurice Chevalier impersonator to one of Britain's leading character actors is consolidated here. He can be humorous, gruff, judicious... and all in the same scene if required. There is no trace of the over-expressiveness of so many comedians trying to act. Though pushing 60, Warner looks no older than the real doyen of the English side, Cyril Washbrook, who along with a handful of colleagues nervously plays himself (no role is harder for a non-pro). The widowed Warner has a fancy for a barmaid at his local pub, the gaunt Brenda Bruce, and he has his own retirement dilemmas to resolve: should he marry a woman who may have a past, and should he take a job coaching boys at Eton when his son is about to go to Oxford and mingle with Etonians on level terms?
"The Final Test" therefore has a few gentle remarks to drop about changing social values and snobberies in post-war Britain. Sam's captain, Len Hutton, urges him not to fuss so much about the pecking order: an amusing way of using a real-life character, since the great Yorkshireman was England's first professional cricket captain and would soon be knighted. Morley's TV play "Following a Turtle to My Father's Tomb", which Sam's son watches in rapture and which drives Sam out to the pub, is a spoof of the middlebrow poetic drama (TS Eliot, Christopher Fry) then in vogue, which Rattigan did not admire. One line, "the great dome of discovery that men call the sky", takes off the exhibit of that name in the recent Festival of Britain.
The deserved rehabilitation of Rattigan, with the likes of David Mamet doing him homage, gives fresh interest to a script which takes the boulevard playsmith outside his usual range. No doubt the film technicians' union approved the democratic spirit, since this was one of its occasional efforts, via ACT Films, at keeping its members in work. Director "Puffin" Asquith, though the son of an earl and ex-prime minister, was a keen union activist. Sam Palmer was Jack Warner's last big film part for a decade. He was soon to resurrect his slain copper from "The Blue Lamp" and become TV's most famous PC in "Dixon of Dock Green."
Quickly filmed after being one of the earliest British TV plays by an established writer, "The Final Test" is a cheap and cheerful comedy. Documentary footage of real play at the Oval, South London, is hardly up to "Zelig" standards in melding into the studio shots. The film stocks do not match, and the crowd's rush into the ground is evidently back-projected. The setting is less grand than one associates with Rattigan. It is Cowardesque in the vein of "This Happy Breed", with a sauce bottle on the dinner table: the hero, Sam Palmer, is a professional batsman who has done well enough to give his son a fee-paying education. The only "posh" character besides Wattis is Robert Morley's pompous poet and playwright, whom the literary-minded son would rather visit than watch his dad play his last innings against the Australian tourists. Luckily Morley proves to be a cricket maniac and all ends well.
Jack Warner's remarkable, belated rise from fairly blue music hall comic and Maurice Chevalier impersonator to one of Britain's leading character actors is consolidated here. He can be humorous, gruff, judicious... and all in the same scene if required. There is no trace of the over-expressiveness of so many comedians trying to act. Though pushing 60, Warner looks no older than the real doyen of the English side, Cyril Washbrook, who along with a handful of colleagues nervously plays himself (no role is harder for a non-pro). The widowed Warner has a fancy for a barmaid at his local pub, the gaunt Brenda Bruce, and he has his own retirement dilemmas to resolve: should he marry a woman who may have a past, and should he take a job coaching boys at Eton when his son is about to go to Oxford and mingle with Etonians on level terms?
"The Final Test" therefore has a few gentle remarks to drop about changing social values and snobberies in post-war Britain. Sam's captain, Len Hutton, urges him not to fuss so much about the pecking order: an amusing way of using a real-life character, since the great Yorkshireman was England's first professional cricket captain and would soon be knighted. Morley's TV play "Following a Turtle to My Father's Tomb", which Sam's son watches in rapture and which drives Sam out to the pub, is a spoof of the middlebrow poetic drama (TS Eliot, Christopher Fry) then in vogue, which Rattigan did not admire. One line, "the great dome of discovery that men call the sky", takes off the exhibit of that name in the recent Festival of Britain.
The deserved rehabilitation of Rattigan, with the likes of David Mamet doing him homage, gives fresh interest to a script which takes the boulevard playsmith outside his usual range. No doubt the film technicians' union approved the democratic spirit, since this was one of its occasional efforts, via ACT Films, at keeping its members in work. Director "Puffin" Asquith, though the son of an earl and ex-prime minister, was a keen union activist. Sam Palmer was Jack Warner's last big film part for a decade. He was soon to resurrect his slain copper from "The Blue Lamp" and become TV's most famous PC in "Dixon of Dock Green."
I Learned Everything I Know About Cricket From Caldicott & Chalmers
boblipton29 April 2021
It's Jack Warner's last appearance as a cricket player in the Test Match with the Australians. Unhappily, his son, Ray Jackson, doesn't want to be present; he wants to be a poet, you see, and he has been invited to meet with his idol, poet Robert Morley, who's leaving the next day for America, so Jackson has to go.
It's directed by Anthony Asquith from a script by Terence Rattigan; originally it was broadcast by the BBC with an entirely different cast. Although Warner and Morley are wonderful, with Morley playing another of his very English eccentrics, it's a little too neatly drawn a script to be among Rattigan's best; in fact, at times it seems derivative of movies like PRIDE OF THE YANKEES. It even has an American character in an effort to let the transatlantic audience have some cultural understanding of this game.
I don't know how successful it was in the theaters, but there's little doubt that when Morley or Warner are on screen, they're lots of fun.
It's directed by Anthony Asquith from a script by Terence Rattigan; originally it was broadcast by the BBC with an entirely different cast. Although Warner and Morley are wonderful, with Morley playing another of his very English eccentrics, it's a little too neatly drawn a script to be among Rattigan's best; in fact, at times it seems derivative of movies like PRIDE OF THE YANKEES. It even has an American character in an effort to let the transatlantic audience have some cultural understanding of this game.
I don't know how successful it was in the theaters, but there's little doubt that when Morley or Warner are on screen, they're lots of fun.
The only film ever made about a cricketer?
shell-2620 February 2000
The Final Test is probably unique in that it revolves around the final match in the career of an old cricketer. Jack Warner (of Dixon of Dock Green/The Blue Lamp fame) plays the cricketer who has had the misfortune to have fathered a poet.
His son wriggles out of watching his fathers final match in order to visit his own hero a poet played by the wonderful Robert Morley.
It is a charming light comedy which deals with the father/son relationship. Morley steals the show, as expected and the ending is suitable happy.
The real tragedy is that this is practically the only film to feature cricket when dozens have been made about baseball. Cricket contains all the metaphor and allegories that exist about life and the universe. In fact it is itself a branch of philosophy which can teach humankind the true path to enlightenment. It is not just an interesting way to hit a ball with a stick!
This film should have been the thin end of a very large and wonderful wedge. John Boormans "Hope and Glory" contains an excellent cricket scene. If anyone can suggest any other films with a cricketing theme I would be pleased to hear from you.
His son wriggles out of watching his fathers final match in order to visit his own hero a poet played by the wonderful Robert Morley.
It is a charming light comedy which deals with the father/son relationship. Morley steals the show, as expected and the ending is suitable happy.
The real tragedy is that this is practically the only film to feature cricket when dozens have been made about baseball. Cricket contains all the metaphor and allegories that exist about life and the universe. In fact it is itself a branch of philosophy which can teach humankind the true path to enlightenment. It is not just an interesting way to hit a ball with a stick!
This film should have been the thin end of a very large and wonderful wedge. John Boormans "Hope and Glory" contains an excellent cricket scene. If anyone can suggest any other films with a cricketing theme I would be pleased to hear from you.
The Final Test
henry8-317 January 2019
Interesting oddity centring on Jack Warner as a professional cricketer who is past his prime and is playing in his final test match.
So the core of the story is Warner, his relationship with his very different son (not very convincing) who wants to be a poet, his angst about retirement and getting a last big score and his relationship with barmaid Brenda Bruce - a bit odd this and somewhat uncomfortable to watch. All this is so so, what makes the film worth catching though is Rattigan's script and how the comedic elements are performed. This includes an American trying to understand the English and Cricket, which fellow test match enthusiast Richard Wattis tries to explain. Front and centre though are the scenes with Robert Morley playing a playwright hero of Warner's son. His performance perfectly suited to Rattigan's witty writing is hilarious - the main reason for watching this frankly.
So the core of the story is Warner, his relationship with his very different son (not very convincing) who wants to be a poet, his angst about retirement and getting a last big score and his relationship with barmaid Brenda Bruce - a bit odd this and somewhat uncomfortable to watch. All this is so so, what makes the film worth catching though is Rattigan's script and how the comedic elements are performed. This includes an American trying to understand the English and Cricket, which fellow test match enthusiast Richard Wattis tries to explain. Front and centre though are the scenes with Robert Morley playing a playwright hero of Warner's son. His performance perfectly suited to Rattigan's witty writing is hilarious - the main reason for watching this frankly.
An absolute belter
Welly-210 February 2008
This is a magnificent film and all the better for this being such a surprise. There's a quiet dread when you watch any film that claims to be about sport, especially when so many of its stars are credited to appear. Wooden and contrived come to mind. This throws all such stereotypes out of the window and is a wonderful and thoughtful classic.
There is humour and a great deal of emotion, there is also a splendid performance from Jack Warner who really surprised me with his sensitive portrayal of a proud cricketer and father. Robert Morley hams it up as usual and there is the delight of a Richard Wattis cameo to add icing to this wonderful cake.
All in all, this is a joy to watch; intelligent and witty thanks to Terrance Rattigan's sharp script. I love cricket, but those that know nothing of it will still get a great deal of pleasure from this cracking film.
There is humour and a great deal of emotion, there is also a splendid performance from Jack Warner who really surprised me with his sensitive portrayal of a proud cricketer and father. Robert Morley hams it up as usual and there is the delight of a Richard Wattis cameo to add icing to this wonderful cake.
All in all, this is a joy to watch; intelligent and witty thanks to Terrance Rattigan's sharp script. I love cricket, but those that know nothing of it will still get a great deal of pleasure from this cracking film.
Disappointing!
geoffm6029520 April 2019
The problems partly rest with the casting. Jack Warner who plays the ageing English cricketer is far too old for the part. He looks and moves as if he's the umpire! Then we witness Warner's romantic scene with a barmaid, who's frankly young enough to be his granddaughter! Then we have his son, Reg, who plays the part of a young man in his early teens, when in reality, he looks like a man in his early 20's! The dialogue between father and son made me wince and squirm, since it's more like the relationship between a public school master and a wayward student. Also, the incredible deference that the son displays to his father smacks of fear not respect. I'm almost expecting Warner to get the cane out to punish him for his son showing a lack of duty. The film intends to show the tension between parental loyalty and youthful ideas. However, it falls down badly as Warner comes across as a boring patriarchal figure, without any sense of humour! The film shows no emotional depth to the characters and as a result the characters are all one dimensional. I suspect the film was regarded as dated even before it was released in the early 1950's. The plot and the dialogue leaves little room for the audience to engage in a rather tiresome and stodgy film.
Are we going to see any excitement today?Oh good lord I hope not.
rogerblake-281-71881914 November 2012
Warning: Spoilers
Don Bradman's last Test Match was Terrance Rattigan's inspiration for his play "The Final Test".In the film version we have Jack Warner playing the veteran cricketer Stan Palmer who is playing in his final Test Match.Palmer is past his best and not worth his place in the side (he is out LBW second ball) but he is a living legend and the crowd rise up as one and give him a standing ovation.
Palmer,a widower,is hoping to get a coaching job at Eton.He is fond of Cora the barmaid at his local pub.He sometimes helps behind the bar.He hopes to marry Cora but as she has a bit of a reputation he wonders if she will be a suitable wife considering his new job.Cora as played by Brenda Bruce comes across as a charming attractive lady,Palmer should consider himself a lucky chap.
He also has an eighteen year old son played by Ray Jackson who can't stand cricket.He promises to watch his Dad at the Oval but slopes off to keep an appointment with poet/playwright Alexander Whitehead played by Robert Morley.
Jack Warner became a national treasure playing veteran policeman George Dixon in the film "The Blue Lamp" where he is shot and killed.He was resurrected and played the part on TV for twenty five years.But as a cricketer he is horribly miscast,he was pushing sixty and was quite frankly portly.In real life he would have been lucky to get a game with Limpsfield Chart seconds.John Mills would have been ideal in the role,a muscular wiry man in his mid forties.Stan Palmer comes across as a bit of a self righteous prig.Brenda Bruce's Cora might have gingered him up a bit.
Having said all that Rattigan was a very good playwright and fair play to Warner and Stevens the father and son strained relationship is well acted and makes for good drama.
There are many delights to savor,several Test cricketers of the day have cameos,Dennis Compton,Alec Bedser,Jim Laker,Godfrey Evans,Cyril Washbrook and Len Hutton who has quite a few lines of dialogue which he delivers with a mixture of his native Yorkshire and a kind of strangled home counties posh,priceless.The Director,a tolerant Anthony Asquith,gets them all to speak clearly and to avoid falling over the furniture,great stuff lads.
The film has a brilliant opening when an American senator played by Stanley Maxted arrives at Victoria Station on a fact finding mission.He is greeted by newspaper placards screaming "England facing heavy defeat/no hope for England/England's last stand".He is a bit worried until a taxi driver explains that England are playing Australia in the final Test at the Oval and are facing a heavy defeat.He decides to go to the Oval to see what all the fuss is about and finds himself sitting next to a typical English gentleman played by the wonderful Richard Wattis."Morning Buddy" says the senator "are we going to see any excitement today?" to which a horrified Wattis replies "Oh good lord I hope not" then good naturedly explains to him what is happening.
The best bit of the film has to be Robert Morley's larger than life portrayal of Alexander Whitehead.When young Palmer comes for his interview he at first refuses to see him,he is sulking because of bad reviews of his TV play the night before,an opus entitled "Following a turtle to my father's grave" I think I would have given it a miss as well.Then he goes from pompous snob to excited overgrown schoolboy when he realises the identity of young Palmer's Dad.When he finds that young Palmer can get him into the Oval they jump into Whitehead's car and rush off to the game at breakneck speed telling the young man that his father has been his (Whitehead's) hero since childhood and that his biggest regret is that he was an absolute duffer at cricket.They find themselves sitting next to the American senator and Mr Wattis just in time to see Stan Palmer's duck and subsequent ovation.The senator says that he has learned something of the English character that day and he is deeply grateful.A nice little nod to Anglo/American relations.
Whitehead gets invited round for dinner that night and its a job to know whether he or Stan Palmer is the most nervous.The ice is soon broken and in an amusing scene Whitehead almost wrecks the room practicing cricket strokes with a poker."Oh I say I'm most frightfully sorry".
Father and son are soon reconciled and there is a quietly happy ending.I cannot think of a more quintessentially English film.Like the good senator if anyone wants to know what makes the English tick this film is a good start.Morley spent the rest of his life appearing on chat shows saying that he really didn't like cricket much and funnily enough to this day nobody believes him.
How does one rate this film?I have been a little harsh on Jack Warner who makes the best of rather a staid character.Any film which contains a Richard Wattis cameo is always worth a star in itself as is anything with Robert Morley.I think 9 is a fair mark.
Incidentally in 1953 when the film was made we were actually playing the Australians and at the Oval we won The Ashes back after a gap of twenty years.You have to be an Englishman to appreciate the significance of it.
Palmer,a widower,is hoping to get a coaching job at Eton.He is fond of Cora the barmaid at his local pub.He sometimes helps behind the bar.He hopes to marry Cora but as she has a bit of a reputation he wonders if she will be a suitable wife considering his new job.Cora as played by Brenda Bruce comes across as a charming attractive lady,Palmer should consider himself a lucky chap.
He also has an eighteen year old son played by Ray Jackson who can't stand cricket.He promises to watch his Dad at the Oval but slopes off to keep an appointment with poet/playwright Alexander Whitehead played by Robert Morley.
Jack Warner became a national treasure playing veteran policeman George Dixon in the film "The Blue Lamp" where he is shot and killed.He was resurrected and played the part on TV for twenty five years.But as a cricketer he is horribly miscast,he was pushing sixty and was quite frankly portly.In real life he would have been lucky to get a game with Limpsfield Chart seconds.John Mills would have been ideal in the role,a muscular wiry man in his mid forties.Stan Palmer comes across as a bit of a self righteous prig.Brenda Bruce's Cora might have gingered him up a bit.
Having said all that Rattigan was a very good playwright and fair play to Warner and Stevens the father and son strained relationship is well acted and makes for good drama.
There are many delights to savor,several Test cricketers of the day have cameos,Dennis Compton,Alec Bedser,Jim Laker,Godfrey Evans,Cyril Washbrook and Len Hutton who has quite a few lines of dialogue which he delivers with a mixture of his native Yorkshire and a kind of strangled home counties posh,priceless.The Director,a tolerant Anthony Asquith,gets them all to speak clearly and to avoid falling over the furniture,great stuff lads.
The film has a brilliant opening when an American senator played by Stanley Maxted arrives at Victoria Station on a fact finding mission.He is greeted by newspaper placards screaming "England facing heavy defeat/no hope for England/England's last stand".He is a bit worried until a taxi driver explains that England are playing Australia in the final Test at the Oval and are facing a heavy defeat.He decides to go to the Oval to see what all the fuss is about and finds himself sitting next to a typical English gentleman played by the wonderful Richard Wattis."Morning Buddy" says the senator "are we going to see any excitement today?" to which a horrified Wattis replies "Oh good lord I hope not" then good naturedly explains to him what is happening.
The best bit of the film has to be Robert Morley's larger than life portrayal of Alexander Whitehead.When young Palmer comes for his interview he at first refuses to see him,he is sulking because of bad reviews of his TV play the night before,an opus entitled "Following a turtle to my father's grave" I think I would have given it a miss as well.Then he goes from pompous snob to excited overgrown schoolboy when he realises the identity of young Palmer's Dad.When he finds that young Palmer can get him into the Oval they jump into Whitehead's car and rush off to the game at breakneck speed telling the young man that his father has been his (Whitehead's) hero since childhood and that his biggest regret is that he was an absolute duffer at cricket.They find themselves sitting next to the American senator and Mr Wattis just in time to see Stan Palmer's duck and subsequent ovation.The senator says that he has learned something of the English character that day and he is deeply grateful.A nice little nod to Anglo/American relations.
Whitehead gets invited round for dinner that night and its a job to know whether he or Stan Palmer is the most nervous.The ice is soon broken and in an amusing scene Whitehead almost wrecks the room practicing cricket strokes with a poker."Oh I say I'm most frightfully sorry".
Father and son are soon reconciled and there is a quietly happy ending.I cannot think of a more quintessentially English film.Like the good senator if anyone wants to know what makes the English tick this film is a good start.Morley spent the rest of his life appearing on chat shows saying that he really didn't like cricket much and funnily enough to this day nobody believes him.
How does one rate this film?I have been a little harsh on Jack Warner who makes the best of rather a staid character.Any film which contains a Richard Wattis cameo is always worth a star in itself as is anything with Robert Morley.I think 9 is a fair mark.
Incidentally in 1953 when the film was made we were actually playing the Australians and at the Oval we won The Ashes back after a gap of twenty years.You have to be an Englishman to appreciate the significance of it.
Jack Warner impresses again.
g-hbe3 September 2020
Up until the last few years, I've only ever seen Jack Warner in 'Dixon of Dock Green' and a few of his higher-profile films such as 'The Blue Lamp' etc. However, since the advent of the excellent TPTV channel, several of his films have been given a good airing. 'Jigsaw' and 'Emergency Call' spring to mind as showcases for his fine acting abilities. The Final Innings is a wonderful film full of good, solid British character actors working wonders with a fairly thin story. The short scene of Sam's final innings and his exit from the pitch to rousing cheers from the crowd and even the opposing side is heart-warming indeed. I don't know much about Cricket, but then the film is barely about cricket at all, more about making allowances, moving on and finding the next chapter in life, which in Sam's case is with the pretty Cora. See this film if you get a chance, especially if you like old-fashioned, homely drama about real people.
An average film that fails to deliver sports, characters, a script or any sense of emotional involvement
bob the moo10 October 2004
An American Senator arrives in England to hear people talking of England collapsing and all the newspaper headlines talking of failure and 'being finished'. Concerned for this small island nation he looks for some optimism but finds from a taxi driver that it is all about the test match between England and Australia and not the country itself. Interested he goes along to watch the final days of the test match and joins the throngs there to see the great Sam Palmer plays the final overs of an illustrious career. However Sam is a bit distracted by his desire for his poet son Reggie to be in the crowd to watch him end his career, especially since Reggie is no real fan of cricket and has other things he wants to do namely meeting the famous playwright and poet Alexander Whitehead.
Listed on IMDb as a 'comedy', I must admit that the words of one character rang true with me when she said of a TV play 'I thought you said this was a comedy well it probably gets more comedy later on'. However I quickly realized that the listing on this site was wrong and that this is not in any shape a comedy, even if it has vaguely amusing moments in it; rather it is a drama about a father and son relationship against the backdrop of cricket. The potential was there for a well-written piece with a good script delivering good characters with hurts, longings and differences between them, but it really doesn't get anywhere near doing that. If I told you that Sam is slightly stern and repressed about his son's disinterest in the sport that he loves then I have probably done a better job at informing you of their character than the script actually does during the whole 90 minutes. Aside from the obvious scenes of vague tension and argument the film never really does anything to actually get to the core of their relationship.
On top of this we also have some other issues put in as well such as those around the barmaid Cora and the other stuff around Whitehead; neither of these really hit the mark either and just give the film a rather aimless feel. With a lack of teeth to any part of the film, a few laughs could have done the world of good but it doesn't really have any of them either, with only some amusing aspects that don't really do anything of any merit. This is not to say it is bad, just distinctly average. As a sports film it is a non-event with very little actual cricket 'action' to speak of but I imagine many viewers will enjoy the very English conclusion to Sam's career, typically downbeat and warming.
The cast is OK but they don't have a great deal to work with. Warner is stiff and looks like he has emotions just below his surface but the script gives him no help with this at all and his efforts are wasted with it. Jackson is an annoying little twerp and he does nothing to really make me interested in him or his character in the least. Bruce doesn't have a clue what she is supposed to be doing and it shows. Allen is OK, as are Maxted and a few others in support roles. Given a colourful character, Morley brings some much needed life to the film and steals all his scenes.
Overall this is an average film that is more notable for its missed opportunities rather than what it actually does well. Despite the nicely downbeat conclusion the film is pretty average and unmemorable, failing to deliver characters, a script or any real sense of emotional involvement.
Listed on IMDb as a 'comedy', I must admit that the words of one character rang true with me when she said of a TV play 'I thought you said this was a comedy well it probably gets more comedy later on'. However I quickly realized that the listing on this site was wrong and that this is not in any shape a comedy, even if it has vaguely amusing moments in it; rather it is a drama about a father and son relationship against the backdrop of cricket. The potential was there for a well-written piece with a good script delivering good characters with hurts, longings and differences between them, but it really doesn't get anywhere near doing that. If I told you that Sam is slightly stern and repressed about his son's disinterest in the sport that he loves then I have probably done a better job at informing you of their character than the script actually does during the whole 90 minutes. Aside from the obvious scenes of vague tension and argument the film never really does anything to actually get to the core of their relationship.
On top of this we also have some other issues put in as well such as those around the barmaid Cora and the other stuff around Whitehead; neither of these really hit the mark either and just give the film a rather aimless feel. With a lack of teeth to any part of the film, a few laughs could have done the world of good but it doesn't really have any of them either, with only some amusing aspects that don't really do anything of any merit. This is not to say it is bad, just distinctly average. As a sports film it is a non-event with very little actual cricket 'action' to speak of but I imagine many viewers will enjoy the very English conclusion to Sam's career, typically downbeat and warming.
The cast is OK but they don't have a great deal to work with. Warner is stiff and looks like he has emotions just below his surface but the script gives him no help with this at all and his efforts are wasted with it. Jackson is an annoying little twerp and he does nothing to really make me interested in him or his character in the least. Bruce doesn't have a clue what she is supposed to be doing and it shows. Allen is OK, as are Maxted and a few others in support roles. Given a colourful character, Morley brings some much needed life to the film and steals all his scenes.
Overall this is an average film that is more notable for its missed opportunities rather than what it actually does well. Despite the nicely downbeat conclusion the film is pretty average and unmemorable, failing to deliver characters, a script or any real sense of emotional involvement.
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