the times | Tuesday July 28 2020 2GM 3
News
Sky will make its arts channel free to fill
a void in cultural programming caused
by cuts to BBC Four.
The pay-TV broadcaster will allow
viewers to watch Sky Arts on Freeview
without a subscription from
September.
Arts discussion series such as Lord
Bragg’s The South Bank Show and
competitions such as Portrait Artist of
the Year and Landscape Artist of the Year
will be accessible to a much wider
audience.
Sky said that it made the decision
to help to increase participation in the
arts at a vital time for the cultural
sector, which has been hit hard by the
pandemic.
The BBC has cut funding to BBC
ring failed she put out an appeal on
Facebook last Monday.
That’s when Shane Newbold, 32, a
gym worker and hobby metal detector-
ist, came to the rescue. Within an hour
of starting a search, he found the ring
and called Mrs Enever with the news.
“I immediately burst into tears,” she
said. “It was so kind of him.”
Mr Newbold, a father of two, has
found 15 wedding and engagement
rings on the beach in two years and
managed to reunite all but one with
their owners.
“It gives you a proper good feeling
knowing you have found it and can
return it,” he said. “They are just
speechless.”Treasure hunter with a
heart of gold to the rescue
Neil Johnston
Free Sky arts shows to challenge BBC
Four, which specialises in culture and
science, as it diverts funding to youth-
focused services such as BBC Three.
Almost all Sky channels require a
subscription to watch. The main excep-
tion has been Sky News, which is avail-
able free-to-air on Freeview and other
platforms.
Sky has also begun striking content-
sharing partnerships with terrestrial
broadcasters. Channel 4 has shown the
Sky drama series Tin Star and Formula
One highlights as part of a deal
between the two companies.
Stephen van Rooyen, chief executive
officer of Sky UK and Europe, said: “As
a creative business, we believe it’s
important to have a thriving cultural
sector. By making Sky Arts free for
everyone we want to give more artists
and arts organisations a platform tocreate and share their work and to bring
more art and culture to everyone across
the UK.”
Sky said that audiences to Sky Arts
had increased by 50 per cent during the
lockdown, with Portrait Artist of the
We e k reaching a total of 4.6 million
people. The company describes Sky
Arts, which runs advertising, as the
UK’s only channel dedicated to arts and
culture. BBC Four has a wider remit, in-
cluding overseas dramas.
Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake, the
Ring Cycle and Cats are among the Sky
Arts theatrical performances that will
be broadcast without charge on Free-
view, which is used in 18 million British
homes. Viewers will require a Sky or
Now TV subscription to watch the
channel’s back catalogue of archive
content on demand.Matthew Moore
When her late husband’s wedding band
flew off her finger at the beach, Lynda
Enever feared she would never see it
again.
Less than a week later she has been
reunited with the £9,000 gold ring
thanks to the efforts of an experienced
metal detectorist.
Mrs Enever, 69, was playing with her
nine-year-old grandson Sean on Cleet-
horpes beach, near Grimsby when the
ring came off and vanished into the
sand. It had belonged to her husband,
Roy, 73, who died in May after contract-
ing coronavirus.
After desperate efforts to find theblinding that they don’t see anything
else. Their world is about to dis-
integrate.”
The centrepiece of the series is a
recreation of the Battle of Slim River, at
which the Japanese decisively routed
two brigades of the British Indian
Army. Tom Vaughan, the director,
described filming the battle scenes as a
logistical nightmare, not least because
the team’s efforts to import authentic
Japanese tanks were rebuffed.
“We tracked some down to Thailand
but there was no way we could bring
them across an international border,
that sort of thing doesn’t go down too
well,” he said. “In the end our art
department had to build a Japanese
tank from scratch — they got the book,and got the kit. It was like a giant Airfix
model.”
The line-up includes Jane Horrocks,
Luke Treadaway and Elizabeth Tan, but
non-human cast members may steal
the show. Meaney, who plays Major
Brendan Archer, complained of being
out-acted by The Human Condition, a
decrepit canine character used by Far-
rell to symbolise the fallen state of man.
“He was an incredibly expressive dog
but he wasn’t always co-operative,”
Meaney recalled. “We had one scene
where he was supposed to follow me
and he just would not do it. I wrapped
catgut around his collar and tried to
pull him along behind me. The little sod
took off like a shot and almost took my
finger with him. I had a few momentswith The Human Condition. He nearly
altered my human condition.”
Tan, a former Coronation Street ac-
tress, plays Vera Chiang, a Chinese re-
fugee, in one of the few non-white lead
roles. She was captivated by one of her
co-stars in particular, a long-tailed
macaque. “He was able to do all these
facial expressions — one looked like a
Mexican wave with your eyebrows.”
The Singapore Grip is expected to be
broadcast on ITV on Sundays from
September. The scheduling ensures
that it will not clash with A Suitable Boy,
a BBC drama that started last weekend.
Farrell won the 1973 Booker Prize for
The Siege of Krishnapur, the second
book in his trilogy. He died in a fishing
accident in 1979, aged 44.How it happened
6 The fall of Singapore on February
15, 1942, brought a catastrophic end
to the British Empire in the Far East.6 The Japanese were significantly
outnumbered but advanced at
speed. Their planes and tanks gave
them an advantage. Historians
believe that the British did not
appreciate the sophistication of
their enemy’s technology.6 With food and ammunition
running out, and civilian casualties
mounting, Lieutenant-General
Arthur Percival, the garrison
commander, took the decision to
surrender.6 About 80,000 troops, including
Britons, Indians and Australians,
became prisoners of war, enduring
brutal treatment in Japanese camps.6 General Tomoyuki Yamashita later
admitted that his attack on
Singapore was a bluff. The British
could have beaten back his much
smaller force, he believed.According to Winston Churchill it was
the “largest capitulation” in British
history — yet the fall of Singapore in
1942, unlike the retreat from Dunkirk,
never seared itself into the public
consciousness.
That may change this autumn when
a new ITV drama chronicles the incom-
petence and self-delusion of Britons in
the military stronghold as Japanese
tanks rolled towards them. The defeat
marked the end of British influence in
the Far East and was a high-water mark
in the fortunes of the Axis powers.
The Singapore Grip stars David
Morrissey, Colm Meaney and Charles
Dance and is based on JG Farrell’s 1978
novel of the same name, part of his
Empire Trilogy, which explored the
consequences of colonialism. The book
has been adapted by Sir Christopher
Hampton, best known for his Danger-
ous Liaisons screenplay, which won an
Oscar.
Hampton described Farrell’s book as
a “novel about people who don’t know
what’s about to hit them”, saying the
British defeat demonstrated the “folly
of self-righteousness and unjustified
self-belief”.
The fall of Singapore, which led to
the capture of nearly 85,000 Allied
troops, would be better known today
had it not been overshadowed by the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor two
months previously, he suggested.
“It was almost the darkest moment of
the war,” said Hampton, whose uncle
fled the region in one of the last boats to
leave British Malaya. “Churchill
said there was to be no
surrender — that people
should die rather than
surrender — and so
when they did sur-
render it was an
absolutely awful
moment.”
It is accepted
that British mili-
tary command-
ers underesti-
mated the threat
posed by the
Japanese, with some
historians accusing
the Allies of “racial
arrogance”.
The six-part drama, filmed on
location in Malaysia, does
not shy away from
depicting the
prejudices of the
era. Morrissey,
who plays Wal-
ter Blackett, a
rubber mer-
chant, said
that he found
his character’s
racism and
sense of entitle-
ment “mon-
strously” fascin-
ating.
“He’s a victim of his
own world view,” he said.
“The [British] arrogance is sotobe no
people
than
so
r-me
ing
racialma, filmed on
location in
not shy
depict
preju
era
wh
te
r
c
th
h
ra
sen
men
strou
ating.
“He’s a
own world v
“The [British] arrTV captures Britain’s worst defeat
The Singapore Grip stars Charles Dance and Elizabeth Tan, below. Top right, British soldiers surrendering to the Japanese
ITV; MONDADORI/GETTY IMAGESA new drama reveals
the incompetence and
folly behind the fall
of Singapore in 1942,
writes Matthew Moore