Eddie struggles to make sense of a world in which even his closest friends have betrayed him. On one final quest for answers, will he ever know what led him into this mess? And if he does learn—will he keep the secret?
About
The fourth episode of Dead Head, ‘The Patriot’, aired on the 5th February 1986 on BBC Two. Made in-house at the BBC by Pebble Mill, it was written by Howard Brenton, directed by Rob Walker, and produced by Robin Midgeley. This episode stars Denis Lawson as ‘Eddie Cass’, Lindsay Duncan as ‘Dana Cass’, George Baker as ‘Eldridge’, Leonie Mellinger as ‘Angela’ and Tim Potter as ‘Teddy’
Availability: Out on DVD in the UK since 2013. Howard Brenton did a commentary for the first two episodes which serves to illuminate how it ended up so bizarre.
The Patriot
Eddie, reeling from a series of betrayals, declares everyone to be traitors. No one is to be trusted. Given everything that’s happened… he’s probably quite right to think this.
Reading the papers, Eddie discovers that the spooks have put Mary Campbell’s killing on Caractacus, who left a ‘suicide note’ claiming responsibility. Eddie finally realises: they have no idea what they’re doing. So he attempts to tell someone, anyone—public radio, newspapers, even trying to turn himself in at the police station.
Eddie desperately tries to recollect the number and address that Stoker told him. Tearing up the phone book and generally being a public nuisance, he eventually finds something. Sneaking round the backs of some very posh London houses, he wonders if he’s found someone who can answer all his problems. A young woman wanders out the house, and Eddie follows her.
Despite looking very posh and well put together, she leads him to a rundown scrap heap. It appears she’s snuck out for a liaison, which Eddie crashes. After tossing the man she’s busy having an affair with out, Eddie learns the girl, Angela, is the daughter of a lord. And she is clueless about all the goings on happening around her. So Eddie tells her the entire story.
She has news for him: another woman’s body was found, assaulted, in similar circumstances to Mary Campbell’s. It’s in the papers. Eddie is horrified. He demands she takes him to go and see her father, the Lord. She takes to the entire jolly with abandon—she’s a bored socialite who’ll go for anything if it entertains her.
Finally, Eddie seems to have a woman who’s actually interested in him. How long that interest lasts, is another matter, but at least she seems a little less likely to abandon him to be tortured.
Back in the countryside, Angela’s directed him back to Ludlow Hall. Eddie watches closely as the upper echelons come out to play, and finally spots the man he’s looking for: Eldridge. There’s a tussle, which Eddie somehow manages to win, and he drags Eldridge away through the forest. Eddie is quick to demand answers. Eldridge merely describes it as sport. They have orders not to touch him—Dana has made that very clear. She’s been protecting Eddie.
But Eddie still wants answers to his chief question: who is the man they are protecting? Who has caused all this to happen? Who is so important that it’s worth ruining so many lives? Unfortunately, Eldridge dies before any answer can be given.
Eddie flees and returns to Angela. She calls her boyfriend, who’s in the army, to come and rescue them. Teddy claims that the army is above politics all together. But he’ll get in touch with army intelligence, see if he can find out anything, and he’ll rendezvous with them in two days.
Two days later, Angela and Eddie end up in Glasgow, on a burnt out housing estate, waiting for Teddy. Teddy appears in a tank. In the most bizarre sequence in the show—and that’s saying a lot—Teddy and Angela then seem to attempt to mow Eddie down in said tank. Whatever Teddy found out, it didn’t put him on Eddie’s side.
Stumbling about, drunk and wayward once again, Eddie stumbles across a theatre—and Dana. She ignores him, but her driver gives Eddie a note. And Eddie finds her again in a worn down abandoned building. It’s a hidey-hole, meant for Dana to get away.
Eddie doesn’t care for her problems. He only wants to know who the bastard in who caused all this. But Dana is still not providing answers. And she drugged the champagne she gave Eddie for good measure.
When Eddie wakes, he finds another hatbox sitting on a table in Dana’s hidey-hole. He’s clearly shocked by what he finds inside, though we don’t see.
An elderly man finds Eddie there. He’s one of the minders. He views the impulse the murder as a curse, that it’s not the real him, that he can be cured of the impulse. He says he regrets that Eddie has become caught up in all of this. And then he gives Eddie the answer Eddie’s been seeking: the name of the man who did this.
Eddie takes this surprisingly well. He agrees with them all; that man is someone to be protected. He’s a patriot, after all.
The end.
Or not, because this show has never once followed convention. It opens again to Eddie and Dana in a tropical paradise. They now own a hotel, and seem to be doing quite alright for themselves.
Verdict
Let’s be real: if you had reached the fourth episode of this crazy show and expected it to all make sense in the end… I don’t know what to tell you. There are no real answers—not for the audience at least. Eddie gets some, in the end, but we are left in the dark about exactly who committed these terrible crimes. (The implication is very much that it’s a member of the royal family, but who exactly they’re trying to implicate is beyond me. Eddie recognises the name, and although he’s a royalist, that would indicate someone fairly senior… but like, I’m still clueless. The flirtation with Dana would suggest someone unmarried, and after checking the state of that, I don’t really believe they were trying to pin this on Prince Edward, the only nice one.)
There’s still time for a couple of wild diversions before Eddie gets to a place where he has the answers though. It’s not surprising at all that he finds another girl—the series couldn’t end without another bizarre erotic scene. Angela is the epitome of bored, and it’s clear that she thinks Eddie will bring some excitement into her life.
Her boyfriend, Teddy? He’s an odd addition. His sole purpose seems to be to provide some extra drama. There are a lot of flummoxing sequences in this show, but none more out of place than the scene with the tank. Has Teddy been ordered that Eddie is no good and has to go? Or did he just not bother looking for any answers, and saw fit to reclaim his girlfriend and have a little fun with the lower-class bloke down on his luck? No answers are forthcoming there, either.
And of course, the very last scene refuses to be topped. As bizarre as everything else, Eddie starts speaking directly to camera, breaking the fourth wall. He and Dana appear to have settled their differences. They’ve received quite a payout and are living a life of luxury. All of Eddie’s protests, railing against a country that would allow this to happen to him, they’ve all gone away. For Queen and Country, he’ll keep his mouth shut—just like everyone else.
For all it’s faults of being the episode with the least substance, I think Lawson is at his most attractive in this episode. The bomber jacket from episode three is retained. There are several scenes where he seems to have given up on shaving, at least for a few days. And generally he’s lit better. (Although the quality of the footage generally seems to be not so good on this episode—there’s at least one scene outside where they look like they’re filming onto magnetic tape, not film, and there’s a few times where the camera struggles with the lack of light.)
All in all? Just. What the fuck is going on with this series. I don’t know. I’ve watched it multiple times. I’ve listened to the commentary—which goes some way to explaining exactly how it ended up so bizarre, but doesn’t provide any actual answers to any of the questions you might have after watching this series. Honestly, you’d get just as much out of it if you edited together all of the good Lawson moments, and it would make about as much sense.
Do I recommend this? If you really like Denis Lawson, you’ll get your mileage out of it. It’s not tedious, and it’s entertaining enough to watch—I can think of worse things in his filmography. If you like mysteries, crime noirs, and conspiracies, you’ll also get a lot out of it. If not? Give this one a miss.
Next time
Not had enough of Lindsay Duncan? Good, because we’re off to the second series of Kit Curran, where she’s part of the main cast. Radio Newtown has closed down and Kit faces a new challenge: convince Les and Damien to stick with him and his crazy schemes. All that and more in Kit Curran: One Door Closes.