Piece of Cake is a six-part 1988 television miniseries depicting the life of a Royal Air Force fighter squadron from the day of the British entry into World War II through to one of the toughest days in the Battle of Britain (7 September 1940). The series was produced by Holmes Associates for LWT for ITV and had a budget of 5 million pounds.
Video Piece of Cake (TV series)
Synopsis
The series is based on the 1983 novel Piece of Cake, by Derek Robinson. In the book, the squadron is equipped with Hurricanes. The relative rarity of airworthy Hurricanes in the late 1980s precluded their use in the television series.
The squadron depicted is the fictional Hornet Squadron, which is equipped with Supermarine Spitfire fighters, and deployed to France, where it waits out the Phoney War in comfort and elegance, until the German attack on Western Europe in May 1940. One by one, nearly all of the original pilots are killed and as losses mount, the character of the squadron changes from a casual nonchalance to a fight for survival. By the end of the series, only four of the original fourteen officers have survived.
Some of the major themes explored in the script include: the snobbery and class-consciousness that existed in the RAF during the era; the belief cherished by many of the pilots that the war would be fought as a sporting gentleman's contest; the inflexibility and ineffectiveness of the tactics used by RAF Fighter Command in early 1940 and the poor gunnery skills and inadequate training of many of the British pilots in the early days of World War II. Like Robinson's original novel, the story spans the first year of the war, from September 1939 to the German Luftwaffe's first massed aerial assault on London on 7 September 1940.
Maps Piece of Cake (TV series)
Main cast
- Squadron Leader Ramsey (Pilot. Commanding Officer. Killed 1939) - Jack McKenzie
- Squadron Leader Rex (Pilot. Ramsey's successor. Killed 1940) - Tim Woodward
- Flight Lieutenant Marriott (Engineering Officer. Killed 1940) - Stephen MacKenna
- Flight Lieutenant 'Uncle' Kellaway (Adjutant) - David Horovitch
- Flight Lieutenant 'Fanny' Barton (Pilot and Flight Commander. Succeeded Rex as C.O. May 1940) - Tom Burlinson
- Flying Officer 'Skull' Skelton (Intelligence Officer) - Richard Hope
- Flying Officer 'Moggy' Cattermole (Pilot. Killed 1940) - Neil Dudgeon
- Flying Officer 'Pip' Patterson (Pilot) - George Anton
- Flying Officer 'Flip' Moran (Pilot and Flight Commander. Killed 1940) - Gerard O'Hare
- Flying Officer 'Flash' Gordon (Pilot. Killed 1940) - Nathaniel Parker
- Pilot Officer 'Fitz' Fitzgerald (Pilot. Killed 1940) - Jeremy Northam
- Pilot Officer 'Zab' Zabarnowski (Pilot. Killed 1940) - Tomek Bork
- Pilot Officer 'Sticky' Stickwell (Pilot. Killed 1940) - Gordon Lovitt
- Pilot Officer 'Mother' Cox (Pilot. Wounded in Action 1940) - Patrick Bailey
- Pilot Officer Hart (Replacement Pilot. U.S. Volunteer. Killed 1940) - Boyd Gaines
- Pilot Officer 'Dickie' Starr (Pilot. Killed 1939) - Tom Radcliffe
- Pilot Officer 'Moke' Miller (Pilot. Killed 1940) - Mark Womack
- Mary (Schoolteacher and wife to Fitz. Widowed 1940) - Helena Michell
- Pilot Officer Trevelyan (Pilot. Killed 1940) - Jason Calder
- Pilot Officer 'Dumbo' Dutton (Pilot. Killed 1940) - Sam Miller
- Pilot Officer 'Boy' Lloyd (Pilot. Killed 1940) - Timothy Lyn
- LAC Todd (Ground-Crew)- Neil Clark
- LAC Gullet (Batman)- John Bleasdale
- Medical Officer- Richard Durden
- Henri- (Cafe Owner)- Daniel Andre Pageon
- Air Commodore Bletchley - Michael Elwyn
Crew
- Director - Ian Toynton
- Producer - Andrew Holmes
- Associate producers - Adrian Bate and Robert Eagle
- Executive producer - Linda Agran
Episodes
Releases
The series (in its complete original format of six episodes) was released on Region-1 DVD through BFS Entertainment in a 3-disc set in 2000 and has been re-issued in a new edition (also via BFS and in Region 1) in March 2011.
When the series was screened on Network Seven in Australia in 1990, the original run-time of over 5 hours was shortened to less than 4 hrs so it could be shown in two 2hr episodes (plus commercials). In order to condense the series, a considerable amount of footage was cut, mostly from scenes on the ground including some entire scenes such as when Chris Hart invites one of the ground-crew LAC Todd to play squash and the press conference held on Hornet Squadron's airfield in France.
Production
Six mock-up Spitfires were built as static props. Some were purposely destroyed for the air-raid sequences.
Veteran display pilot Ray Hanna (1928-2005) performed the stunt where the Spitfire flies under the low bridge. The scene was filmed at a bridge at Winston near Barnard Castle. Hanna, a New Zealand born former RAF pilot and Red Arrows member, was 59 years old when he performed the stunt.
The series used footage from the 1969 motion picture Battle of Britain for many of the dogfight scenes. Air-to-air filming of the aerial sequences was done by a vintage B-25 Mitchell and an Augusta 109 helicopter, both of which served as camera ships for the shoot.
The production made use of three vintage Messerschmitt BF 109Es which were actually Hispano Ha 1112 Buchons, a Merlin-powered version of the Me 109 that was used by the Spanish Air-Force up until the late 1960s. These aircraft later appeared in the motion-picture Memphis Belle in 1990 and later in 2001 in the Battle of Britain sequence in Pearl Harbor. In addition, a Heinkel He-111 was also used, again a Merlin-engined version once used by Spain. In addition to the aerial scenes, the Heinkel was partially dismantled for the filming of the scene where Hornet Squadron visit the crash site of their very first 'kill'. The Heinkel, serial no G-AWHB, was flown to the UK from Spain in 1968 to be used in the filming of the movie Battle of Britain and later appeared in the film Patton.
For the scene where Cattermole and Steele-Stebbing destroy the German rescue aircraft, a vintage Junkers Ju-52 (registered CASA-353L) was used.
Scenes at the 'Chateau St. Pierre' were filmed at Charlton Park, Wiltshire, where the Earl of Suffolk has a private airstrip. The airfield used to represent 'RAF Bodkin Hazel' was the long-disused RAF Friston sited on the East Sussex coast alongside the imposing Seven Sisters cliffs. Some of the exterior filming was completed at the old airfield at South Cerney in Wiltshire UK which, in 1988, still featured several period hangars and a pre-war control tower.
For the French base at "Le Touquet", the producers filmed at Cambridge Airport.
In an interview in 2010, Derek Robinson, author of the original novel Piece of Cake remarked that when the novel was first published in 1983, the first edition sold poorly in the UK, although it did well in the US. He credits the 1988 LWT production with greatly reviving interest in the novel.
References
External links
- Piece of Cake on IMDb
Source of article : Wikipedia
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