''Harry's Game'' is a British television drama mini-series made by
Yorkshire Television
ITV Yorkshire, previously known as Yorkshire Television and commonly referred to as just YTV, is the British television service provided by ITV Broadcasting Limited for the Yorkshire franchise area on the ITV (TV network), ITV network. Until 19 ...
for
ITV
ITV or iTV may refer to:
ITV
*Independent Television (ITV), a British television network, consisting of:
** ITV (TV network), a free-to-air national commercial television network covering the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islan ...
in 1982, closely based on the 1975 novel ''Harry's Game'' by
Gerald Seymour
Gerald Seymour (born 25 November 1941 in Guildford, Surrey) is a British writer of crime and espionage novels.
Early life
Gerald Seymour was born to William Kean Seymour and his second wife, Rosalind Wade.Belfast
Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdo ...
in
the Troubles
The Troubles ( ga, Na Trioblóidí) were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it is sometimes described as an "i ...
.
Its lead actors were
Ray Lonnen
Raymond Stanley Lonnen (18 May 1940 – 11 July 2014) was an England, English stage and television actor. His most prominent roles include Willie Caine in the ITV cult classic Cold War, Cold War-era spy drama series, ''The Sandbaggers'' (1978 ...
,
Derek Thompson and
Benjamin Whitrow
Benjamin John Whitrow (17 February 1937 – 28 September 2017) was an English actor. He was nominated for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actor for his role as Mr Bennet in the 1995 BBC version of ''Pride and Prejudice'', and voiced the role of Fow ...
. The series was well-received, and added to the channel's reputation for producing quality TV drama.
The drama is noted for its closing music, "
Theme from ''Harry's Game''", by the Irish musical group
Clannad
Clannad () is an Irish band formed in 1970 in Gweedore, County Donegal by siblings Ciarán, Pól, and Moya Brennan and their twin uncles Noel and Pádraig Duggan. They have adopted various musical styles throughout their history, including f ...
. The music was used in trailers and later commercially released, reaching the top five of Irish and British singles charts, bringing the band its first major international exposure.
The drama, filmed in
West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. It is an inland and upland county having eastward-draining valleys while taking in the moors of the Pennines. West Yorkshire came into exi ...
,
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...
and the
Republic of Ireland
Ireland ( ga, Éire ), also known as the Republic of Ireland (), is a country in north-western Europe consisting of 26 of the 32 counties of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, on the eastern side of the island. A ...
has been released under five other names in other countries.
Synopsis
The British government
cabinet minister
A minister is a politician who heads a ministry, making and implementing decisions on policies in conjunction with the other ministers. In some jurisdictions the head of government is also a minister and is designated the ‘prime minister’, ...
Henry Danby is murdered by an
IRA
Ira or IRA may refer to:
*Ira (name), a Hebrew, Sanskrit, Russian or Finnish language personal name
*Ira (surname), a rare Estonian and some other language family name
*Iran, UNDP code IRA
Law
*Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, US, on status of ...
gunman, Billy Downes, in front of his wife and children outside his home in
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
. Downes then escapes to
Belfast
Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdo ...
. Army officer Harry Brown is sent undercover into Belfast's Catholic community to track down the assassin.
Brown is chosen for the mission because he is an
Ulster
Ulster (; ga, Ulaidh or ''Cúige Uladh'' ; sco, label= Ulster Scots, Ulstèr or ''Ulster'') is one of the four traditional Irish provinces. It is made up of nine counties: six of these constitute Northern Ireland (a part of the United King ...
man who has previously done similar work in
Oman
Oman ( ; ar, عُمَان ' ), officially the Sultanate of Oman ( ar, سلْطنةُ عُمان ), is an Arabian country located in southwestern Asia. It is situated on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and spans the mouth of t ...
.
Given the cover identity of
merchant seaman Harry McEvoy, he finds lodgings in the
Falls Road area and secures a job in a scrapyard. He dates a Catholic, Josephine Laverty, and unknowingly encounters Downes in a local club, which is raided by the British Army. A British soldier recognises Harry but ignores him and arrests Downes, who is interrogated but set free. Harry tips off his superiors that the killer was at the club and that Theresa, a girl at whose family home Billy stayed the night while on the run, knows his name. Theresa is arrested, but caught between the police interrogator Rennie and her fear of the IRA if she talks, she hangs herself in prison before revealing Downes' identity. When Josephine realises that Harry must have passed on the information about Theresa, she tells him to leave while he can, but he refuses, saying Danby's killer cannot be allowed to get away with the murder.
At a restaurant in Belfast, a waiter overhears two senior army officers discussing Harry's presence in the city, and passes this information on to the IRA. The local IRA leaders start checking all new arrivals, including Harry.
The IRA start to hunt Harry down.
[ With two other gunmen, Downes ]ambush
An ambush is a long-established military tactics, military tactic in which a combatant uses an advantage of concealment or the element of surprise to attack unsuspecting enemy combatants from concealed positions, such as among dense underbru ...
es Harry, who shoots the gunmen and forces a passing driver to chase their car as Downes escapes. Harry follows Downes to his own home, which is under surveillance by the army. Harry shoots Downes in the street in front of his wife and is himself shot by the soldiers watching the house, who think that he is a terrorist. Injured and bleeding in the street, Harry is confronted by Downes's wife, who then shoots him in the head using Harry's own revolver.
The series closes with a narrator reading a part of a poem written by the daughter of real-life IRA victim William J. Staunton, a 46-year-old magistrate shot dead in 1973: "Don't cry, Mummy said. They're not real, but Daddy was, and he's not here. Don't be bitter, Mummy said. They've hurt themselves much more. They can walk and run, Daddy can't."
Cast
* Ray Lonnen
Raymond Stanley Lonnen (18 May 1940 – 11 July 2014) was an England, English stage and television actor. His most prominent roles include Willie Caine in the ITV cult classic Cold War, Cold War-era spy drama series, ''The Sandbaggers'' (1978 ...
as Harry Brown
* Benjamin Whitrow
Benjamin John Whitrow (17 February 1937 – 28 September 2017) was an English actor. He was nominated for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actor for his role as Mr Bennet in the 1995 BBC version of ''Pride and Prejudice'', and voiced the role of Fow ...
as Davidson
* Nicholas Day as Bannen
* Geoffrey Chater
Geoffrey Michael Chater Robinson (23 March 1921 – 16 October 2021) was an English film, television and stage actor. He appeared in the crime drama series ''Callan'', ''Foyle's War'' and '' Midsomer Murders''.
Biography
Geoffrey Michael Chat ...
as Col. George Frost
* Sean Caffrey
Sean, also spelled Seán or Séan in Irish English, is a male given name of Irish origin. It comes from the Irish versions of the Biblical Hebrew name ''Yohanan'' (), Seán (anglicized as ''Shaun/ Shawn/ Shon'') and Séan (Ulster variant; anglici ...
as Insp. Howard Rennie
* Derek Thompson as Billy Downes
* Ian Bleasdale as Waiter
* Tony Rohr
Tony Rohr (born 1940) is an Irish actor.
Career
Rohr played Grandad in '' The Lakes'' and Solomon Featherstone in ''Middlemarch''. He has also appeared in ''The Bill'', ''The Long Good Friday'', '' McVicar'', '' Softly, Softly'', ''Crown Court' ...
as IRA Brigade Commander
* Linda Robson
Linda Patricia Mary Dunford ( Robson; born 13 March 1958) is an English actress and television presenter. She is best known for playing Tracey Stubbs in the sitcom '' Birds of a Feather'' (1989–1998, 2014–2020) and her appearances as a weekl ...
as Theresa McCorrigan
* Charles Lawson
Quintin Charles Devenish "Charlie" Lawson (born 17 September 1959) is an actor, from Northern Ireland, who is best known for playing Jim McDonald on the long-running ITV soap opera, ''Coronation Street''.
Early life and education
Lawson was bo ...
as Seamus Duffryn
Production
Locations
Most of the time filming was spent in Leeds
Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...
, in Yorkshire, England, on now-demolished housing of Meanwood and at Leeds Studios
The Leeds Studios (also known as the ITV Television Centre, Yorkshire Television Studios or YTV Studios) is a television production complex on Kirkstall Road in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. ITV plc had proposed to close the studios in 200 ...
. This stood in for Northern Ireland.
The rest of footage, filmed in Ireland, include shots of the Falls Road, broader views as where Harry is frisked on entry to Belfast city centre (there was a permanent checkpoint for pedestrians there for many years) and the final scenes overlooking the cityscape were in Holywood
Holy Wood or Holywood may refer to:
Places
* Holywood, County Down, a town and townland in Northern Ireland
** Holywood, County Down (civil parish), a civil parish in County Down, Northern Ireland
** Holywood railway station (Northern Ireland)
* ...
, County Down
County Down () is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the traditional thirty-two counties of Ireland. It covers an area of and has a population of 531,665. It borders County Antrim to the ...
and close to the military/MI5 barracks. Scenes were also filmed in South County Dublin
"Action to match our speech"
, image_map = Island_of_Ireland_location_map_Dublin.svg
, map_alt = map showing County Dublin as a small area of darker green on the east coast within the lighter green background of ...
including in Ballybrack
Ballybrack () is a residential suburb of Dublin on its Southside, located in Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, Ireland. It is south of Killiney, northeast of Loughlinstown, east of Cabinteely and north of Shankill.
Population
The population of ...
.
Music
Clannad
Clannad () is an Irish band formed in 1970 in Gweedore, County Donegal by siblings Ciarán, Pól, and Moya Brennan and their twin uncles Noel and Pádraig Duggan. They have adopted various musical styles throughout their history, including f ...
's closing music became an international breakthrough. Incidental music was sampled or created by Mike Moran.
Broadcast and distribution history
The series screened on the ITV
ITV or iTV may refer to:
ITV
*Independent Television (ITV), a British television network, consisting of:
** ITV (TV network), a free-to-air national commercial television network covering the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islan ...
network as three 52-to-54 minute episodes over consecutive nights from 25 to 27 October 1982, and was later edited into a single 130-minute programme titled ''Harry's Game – The Movie''.
;Outside of Britain and Ireland
*The film was not widely seen in the US or widely available on video; sold in Canada titled ''Belfast Assassin''. The original, unedited three-part serial was released on DVD in the United Kingdom in 2005.
*The box set of DVDs has been distributed in the Netherlands and Belgium.[
*In Finland it has featured as ''Ajojahti'' (''Chasing'') and ''Vastaisku'' (''Retaliation'').][
*In France Harry's Game was released in 2008. Its DVD bears title ''Le tueur de Belfast'' (''The Belfast Killer'').][
*In Germany it was released before unification of Germany as ''Das tödliche Patt'' (''The Deadly Stalemate'').][
]
Character redeployment
Rennie appears in Seymour's other books ''The Journeyman Tailor'' and ''Field of Blood'' (and screen adaptation '' The Informant'').
References
External links
* {{IMDb title, 0084053, Harry's Game
Television series by Yorkshire Television
Television series by ITV Studios
1980s British television miniseries
Films about The Troubles (Northern Ireland)
Films about the Irish Republican Army
ITV television dramas
Television shows based on British novels
1982 British television series debuts
1982 British television series endings
1980s British drama television series
English-language television shows