The News Benders 1968
Warning: full synopses contain ‘spoilers’ which give away key
plot points. Don’t read on if you don’t want to know the ending!
Robert Larkin, a successful BBC documentary film director, has
an appointment with the mysterious ‘JG’ at the office of CWNS
(Classified World News Service). CWNS operates between
government and media companies, supplying news footage and
stills. After detailing Larkin’s career, JG reports on details
of his private life, including an affair. He reveals that Larkin
had been fitted with a miniature transmitter during a surgical
procedure some years earlier, through which he has since been
monitored. From this data, CWNS identified Larkin as being
suited to working at their organization. Larkin is disbelieving
and about to leave until JG plays back a recording of him in a
private moment with his mistress. JG tells Larkin that he wants
him to help invent new stories for 1973. JG shows Larkin through
to a studio containing models and miniature films sets depicting
a moon landing, scheduled for 1973. JG plays him the film with
commentary that they have already recorded. Elsewhere in the
studio are models of an orbital weapons system and models and
film of the results of a projected Chinese nuclear attack on an
Indian border village. Larkin begins to realize that the public
will accept the news of such remote objects and incidents of
which they would never have had their own experience. Larkin is
shocked to learn that the worrying new American Intercontinental
Ballistic Missile ‘Boy Wonder’ is just a model, the story has
been set up to capture his attention. JG reveals that deceptions
such as these have been going on since the atomic bombing of
Hiroshima and that the H bomb does not actually work. Returning
to his office, JG explains that the organization thinks Larkin
would be suited to working on more ‘soft’ news items, such as a
proposed anti-teenage movement or a religious revival. JG plays
a further extract from Larkin’s conversation with his mistress
to illustrate the qualities the organization admires in him. JG
explains that since failures to develop new weapons after the
Second World War, the Americans, British, and Russians have
collaborated on the deception of the cold war. The Chinese
follow a similar strategy and it is hoped they too will come on
board. JG goes on to explain that all the crises which could
lead to the deployment of these fictitious weapons are also
invented and stage-managed. CWNS sits above the civil servants
and the military, controlling all. Larkin is angry at this use
of scare tactics and JG goes on to explain that it is not just
fear but the money they use to control the population, by
managing the economy. They can stimulate the economy with
threatening news stories, provoking spending. He reveals that
his department was also responsible for the development of LSD
to counter the activities of protest movements. Larkin is
incredulous to learn that higher up in the building, and
therefore in the hierarchy of the organization, is a computer.
JG offers Larkin a starting salary of £250,000, rising to £1
million once he reaches a position in the Ministry of Morality.
Despite this, Larkin remains disgusted at the idea of CWNS and
declines the job offer. As Larkin tries to leave, JG uses an
example surgical transmitter to demonstrate the devices’
explosive properties. He explains that it may be operated
remotely. JG informs Larkin that he will be starting on Monday.
BBC2’s Thirty-Minute Theatre (1965-73) was an attempt to
reintroduce live drama to British television at a time when most
program-makers had – gratefully – put the method behind them.
However, the live element didn’t last long, being phased out in
favor of the convenience of pre-recording. Even so, a handful of
the series’ plays remained live until 1968, ‘The News-Benders’
being one of the last. The News-Benders is directed by Rudolph
Cartier, who had made his name in the 1950s with ambitious live
productions. The story is essentially a two-hander, performed
entirely within a handful of sets but, for all its simplicity,
Cartier’s direction is stylish and assured. The continuity of
the action is disturbed only once, with a brief cutaway shot of
JG’s secretary covering the actors’ move from one set into
another. The live production method may be backward-looking, but
Desmond Lowden’s script is prophetic in several respects.
Although its predicted date of the moon landing significantly
overshoots the reality, it strikingly pre-empts subsequent
conspiracy theories which suggested the event was faked in a
film studio. It also prophesies the rise of politically powerful
global media organizations and the surveillance culture that
inspired many later conspiracy dramas.
http://screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1403399.
Donald Pleasence: Blythe ‘The Forger’ in The Great Escape
(1963) Ernst Stavro Blofeld in You Only Live Twice (1967) Dr.
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