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The Three Musketeers
UK 1966/67
produced by William Sterling for BBC
directed by Peter Hammond
starring Jeremy Brett, Brian Blessed, Jeremy Young, Gary Watson, Mary Peach, Richard Pasco, Edward Brayshaw, Billy Hamon, Milton Johns, Kathleen Breck, Michael Miller, Simon Oates, Carole Potter, Patrick Holt, John Carlin, Tony Handy, Godfrey James, Paul Whitsun-Jones, Michael Bilton, Sydney Bromley, Sebastian Breaks, Pauline Collins, Delia Corrie, John Kelland, John Caesar, Vernon Dobtcheff, Clive Graham, Michael Hall, Christopher Hodge, Alf Joint, Kaplan Kaye, Sarah Lisemore, Declan Mulholland, Kim Peacock, Roy Purcell, Steven Scott, Ralph Watson, Ian Wilson, Betty Woolfe, Myrtle Moss, Kevin Stoney
screenplay by Anthony Steven, based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas
TV-Miniseries Three Musketeers
review by Mike Haberfelner
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France 1625: Young D'Artagnan (Jeremy Brett) travels from Cascogny to
Paris to become a Musketeer, with nothing but a small allowance, a sword,
and the ill advice from his father (Roy Purcell) to not let anybody insult
him. And thus along his way, D'Artagnan challenges everybody along the way
who only looked at him crooked to a duel, makes an enemy of the mighty
Cardinal Richelieu's (Richard Pasco) second-in-command Rochefort (Edward
Brayshaw), and sees himself having to duel Musketeers Porthos (Brian
Blessed), Athos (Jeremy Young) and Aramis (Gary Watson) all the same day,
a triple-duel that's cut short when the Cardinal's guards intervene. And
as D'Artagnan fights along them to chase off the guards, Porthos, Athos
and Aramis decide to take the young man under their wing. Rather by
chance, D'Artagnan manages to save Constance (Kathleen Black), wife of his
landlord Bonacieux (Paul Whitsun-Jones) who's also seamstress with the
Queen (Carole Potter) from the hands of the Cardinal's guard - and he
immediately falls in love with her. But this way he also becomes entangled
in the love affair of the Queen with the Duke of Buckingham (Simon Oates),
something that's supposed to be top secret, and yet the Cardinal knows of
it and wants to find proof to weaken the Queen's position at the court.
Now after one of their secret meetings, the Queen gives Buckingham a
priceless necklace as a token of appreciation when he returns to London,
so the Cardinal arranges for his accomplice Milady de Winter (Mary Peach)
to steal a couple of gems from the necklace to create a perfect scandal,
then he persuades the King (John Carlin) to hold a ball in the Queen's
honour where she's to wear the necklace - so even if it returned to France
in time it'd be incomplete, with the Cardinal holding the missing gems to
prove her infidelity. But D'Artagnan dashes to London to retrieve the
necklace, with his Musketeer friends having his back, and he finds a
jeweller to replace the missing stones even, so the Cardinal's plan
backfires. Milady de Winter is so brought up by this that she persuades
her brother (Patrick Holt) to challenge D'Artagnan to a duel - which
D'Artagnan wins, but he refuses to kill de Winter and they become friends
instead, which in turn gives the Milady an in-road to D'Artagnan - and
D'Artagnan really falls for her charms ... until he finds out she only
plans to use him. And then he even finds out she wears the brand of a
criminal, and above all else is Athos' evil believed-dead wife - and just
like that they become bitter enemies, as the Milady wants D'Artagnan dead
because of his knowledge, and even persuades the Cardinal to condemn him
to the guillotine. But a small-scale war against British conpirators has
broken out in La Rochelle that temporarily keeps D'Artagnan out of
Milady's reach. In the meantime, Milady de Winter has traveled to England
where she was made prisoner by her brother, but there persuades one of the
guards, Felton (John Kelland) to do her bidding and kill Buckingham. With
Buckingham dead the war ends, and Milady de Winter returns to France to
have her revenge on D'Artagnan - by poisoning Constance, who has since
found refuge in a monastery. D'Artagnan arrives at the monastery only
minutes to late, and Constance dies in his arms, but he, his Musketeer
friends and Lord de Winter catch up with the Milady and condemn her to
death - and they have brought their executioner (Kevin Stoney), the very
man who branded the Milady back when, with them to chop off her head ... To
adapt source material as epic as The Three Musketeers on a
budget for television is an ambitious enterprise for sure - and one that
was really doomed to fail, as the scope of the story was just too big for
1960s TV standards, and of course the lack of funds doesn't help. What
remains then is a version of The Three Musketeers that seems
very cut down and as a result, many major plotpoints are only hinted at,
told in voiceover, or just robbed of all grandness. So as a result the
epic saga about war, love and heroism seems like little more than a
chamber play, heavy on dialogue but low on action, with all the fights and
chases one comes to expect disappointing almost routinely. And the
overacting of many of the involved give this 10-parter even more of a
stagey atmosphere. That said, the last episode that's really more about
intimate moments, when Milady de Winter coldly poisons Constance and event
ells her what she has just done, and then being captured in a house
riddled with spiderwebs and executed in the marshs, actually really packs
a punch, as director Peter Hammond really captures the creepiness of these
scenes and puts an emphasis on atmosphere. It's really a chilling and
somewhat downbeat coda to a miniseries that never achieved such heights
previously.
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