The Final Test

Talking Pictures TV briefly brought into its schedule Terence Rattigan's film based on his own teleplay, his first written directly for the screen. The Final Test stands on its own as more than just a period piece, with a central performance by the underrated Jack Warner and with other stars, both of the screen and cricket field. Sadly, the film seems to have been taken out of the Talking Pictures repertory just as the Test series against the old enemy from Down Under is proceeding, but it will surely be back before too long.

There is, though, a case for a revised version. Two things have happened since the original. Firstly, the distinction between amateur and professional players has disappeared to be replaced by a new distinction between home-grown cricketers and talent imported from the Commonwealth. Not only that, but there are players born here whose immediate ancestry is Caribbean. I would see the latter-day Sam Palmer as a man of Jamaican heritage who qualified for England either by birth or by residence.

Secondly, homosexuality is no longer a criminal offence. The gay Rattigan lived long enough to see the decriminalisation of homosexuality but the Sexual Offences Act was fourteen years away when he wrote The Final Test. It seems to me that the choice of poetry, then the most effete of arts, as the source of conflict between father and son was significant. (Critics have drawn attention to a gay sub-text in many of Rattigan's plays.) A modern version, without being too crude, could be more explicit. Jamaican machismo would be a factor.

The only major criticism of the original Final Test that I can recall was that Jack Warner was rather too old for the part. True, fitness was not pursued so fanatically in the 1950s as now, but Warner was just too portly to be totally convincing. At least that is something that can be redressed in a 21st century version.