MovieChat Forums > When the Boat Comes In (1976) Discussion > Jack Ford: One Of TV's Most Memorable Vi...

Jack Ford: One Of TV's Most Memorable Villains?


He's hard and cruel and he knows how to hurt: he's a bosses man, a traitor to his own class and would sell out anyone to get ahead. But, though we may not like him, we want to know what happens to him. This is partly because of James Bolam's performance: he shows the hardness in Jack's character, but also why somebody like Jessie might know who he is and still be attracted to him. But it is also the writing: James Mitchell shows he cruelty, cynicism and indifference of English society, and how it creates people like Jack Ford, who see that nobody is looking out for them and determine to look out for themselves.

A similar anti-hero is Percy Toplis in Alan Bleasdale's "The Monocled Mutineer", except he had a little more heart than Jack. If you liked When The Boat Comes In you should look out that series, from when the BBC cared about the working class instead of making cookery and "Look-at-me-I-bought-a-house-in-Ibiza" programmes.

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Hi there,

Thought you might be interested in the official James Mitchell (writer of 'Callan' and 'When the boat comes in' website. www.writerjamesmitchell.co.uk

Many thanks,

Charlotte

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He did give up a good job to work for the union.I'd say he was a good friend but a very bad enemy.Might he have been Terry Collier's grandfather?

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[deleted]

The thing about Jack Ford's character is you're never quite sure where you are with him - one moment he does something great for the 'underdog', the next he cheats his own kind to get the best deal for himself.

That's what makes his character such an interesting and realistic one - is anyone all good or all bad?

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He is a real anti-hero. He is brilliantly written as a charming but ruthlessly ambitious guy and Bolam plays him perfectly. His performance in WTBCI is possibly the best I have ever seen on TV or film.
As an actor he is truly versatile and can do comedy as well as drama. It is a wonder to me that he was never given the chance to shine on the silver screen. I guess he was not archetypically goodlooking so he was not considered. Their loss and poor judgement.

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What absolute tosh. Did you actually see the series? In episode 1 he fights hard for the welfare of a shell shocked veteran, in later episodes he actually steals sheep to feed the hungry and all the while looking after his comrades. When did he ever sell out any of them? As for being a ‘class traitor’ what on earth does that mean? If it means he would rather be rich than poor or well fed than hungry why is that such a bad thing?

To compare the fictional Jack ford with the actual Percy Toplis is ridiculous. Percy Toplis was a cowardly career criminal who served two years for attempting to rape a 15 year old girl. His later criminal career also encompassed desertion, fraud and black marketeering. He murdered an elderly taxi driver and later shot and wounded an unarmed police officer and civilian. He was a despicable character whose only good deed was saving the taxpayer the cost of a trial by dying in a shootout with police - who this time were armed.

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bob-1135 is absolutely correct. He makes money on Wellesley Street but insists that Colefax accepts Union rates for his factories. Even leaves the decision up to Matt even though he might lose all his money... He blows the fuse on the mansion himself with the fake coin toss because cannot risk Tom's life. The examples are numerous throughout the whole series.

He gets on with guile but never forgets his roots or to pass on something to the workers on the way up. To say he was a villian is simplistic nonsense, he was a clever and complex go-getter, no comparison with Toplis at all, and this complexity and Bolam's magnificent performance is what makes the character so compelling.

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Do you remember how Jack makes his money in Murmansk? And how he betrays Les Mallow in the union elections? And how he knows council tenants are being forced to buy flowers for their gardens at inflated rates from the council and blackmails Les into keeping quiet about it? And how he cheats on Dolly while she is expecting their child?

I will agree, though, he's not an out-and-out villain: he is capable of kind actions sometimes, but he's quite happy with the system as it is, as he tells Jessie. He could have made a real difference for his fellow workers, as Jessie keeps telling him, but he would rather be, as the title of the last episode in Series One puts it: "A Kind-Hearted Rat With A Life-Belt." "They'll get their share" he says, talking of the people who have put him in power "Eventually."

But that we can take two such different views of the character shows the complexity of the writing.

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He cheated with Lesley Anne Down.Who wouldn't?

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The point about this character is that he is complex and ambiguous, like human beings in real life. Dramatists seem to have forgotten the art of writing characters whose motivations are uncertain and whose actions and attitudes are unpredictable. Too many fornicating soaps and not enough real drama has left us watching a series from 35 years ago. If the Beeb were sent the script of When the Boat Comes In today they wouldn't even look at it.

To answer the question posed by the OP, Jack Ford was not a villain, not by any measure.




Hie thee hither, that I may pour my spirits in thine ear.

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Midnite, I agree that Jack wasn't a villain.. He was possibly an anti hero, but he did have some truly heroic qualities... he was out for himself but he wanted to bring his class alogn iwth him some of hte way...
I agree that tehy would not look at the script today, FAR too wordy and not enough sex...
but there was a line in an ep I saw last week that I think would not have been written today! Jack is tlaking to the Labour MP's agent about taking money for hte party and he says that people would be angry if teh agent took money, even if ti was a donation to party funds.. because the labour movement are "poor but they're honest"...

On watching it again, I think there are a few weak actors and some weak scripts, but overall it is very good and worth watching

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Through my misty eyes I don't see weak characters or poor scripting and will leave it that way so that I continue to enjoy this programme. I should have liked to have seen the rest of the Seatons in the fourth series - ie Bill, Bella and Tom - and would have liked a fifth series. In the last 35 years I have not come across any series which I enjoyed as much as this one: some have come close, such as the Tinker, Tailor set, I, Claudius and the evocative Brideshead Revisited, but nothing in the last twenty years. The Beeb and ITV seem to be producing more and more dross, which is depressing.

As for 'poor but honest', it is true that that could not be said today of the Labour movement. The likes of Keir Hardy would be rotating in their graves if they knew what had happened to their party.




Hie thee hither, that I may pour my spirits in thine ear.

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I've just now realised that the Mandrake house blowing up was th end of the SECOND series. I thought that it had the look of a "climax" scene....

I think the third series is good in terms of most of the acting but it has its weak points. Dolly and Tom come across as really annoyingly stupid in the divorce story, why could he not understand why he had to stay away from her until the divorce came through? Dolly seems mean minded in her increasing hostility to Jack. Doesn't she realise that he was doing her a favour not divorcing her for adultery with Tom nad letting her divorce him?
Another slight thing I have is a certain lack of belief in Caroline and Jack. She might have a fling with him but they seem to be together for quite a while... and Im not sure if that is convincing...

Midnite I do agree with you though that evne wtih its weak points it is still streets and streets ahead of the usual stuff nowadays....and I find that most of the shows you mention, when seen again, such as Claudius etc are very watchable and enjoyable, mostly well written well acted and well directed...

I think the fourth seriss was problaby enough though. I dont know if I'd have wnated to see more of Bill Bella etc now that they have become "capitalists" and while I can understnad the writers bringing back Jessie and Billy, I find them rather unlikable....
I can remember one good line from the 4th series, which I guess will be on next week - talking about politics Jack tells a woman that he's not interested but then says "Fascism is not politics bonny lass, its just assault and battery"

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Yep, the destruction of Mandrake is the end of the second series. It's at that point that Lady Caroline ceases to be Isla Blair and becomes another actress whose name I can't immediately recall.

Dolly and Tom's divorce troubles are remarkable: I'm quite sure there were ways of them 'being together' other than at night. I think people then were less aware of the law and regarded themselves as virtually invisible to 'the authorites' and found it difficult to accept that they could be watched in their homes by court officials. Nowadays we are all well aware of local authority surveillance by all manner ofmeans.

Lady Caroline was a widow who sought male company and had little time for the men available in her own 'class' esp in a region as remote as Northumberland where the aristocracy were few and far between. I never had a problem with her association with Jack who was simultaneously discrete and dispensible.

The drama on offer today is lamentable. I miss the effort put into Brideshead and Tinker, Tailor, for instance; and everything is either dumbed down or sensationalised or both.

The fourth series you will find disjointed: one minute Jack is dealing on the street market in Gallowshield and the next he's coming home at dawn to a stylish art deco apartment in the west end of London. I still enjoyed it. He has a couple of flings with posh ladies and ends the series living with Judy Loe (Kate Beckinsale's mum if I remember rightly, and her mother is played by Emma Thompson's mother. Talk about keeping it in the family). I enjoyed the fourth series and was only sorry it came to an end there.




Hie thee hither, that I may pour my spirits in thine ear.

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I remember the 4th series better actually becuase I saw it all the way through...I dont really remember it as disjointed, I thought that Jack made soeme money and then moved down south?

still think the whole Dolly adn Tom thing was not very well done. I rather think thaht as a lot of people knew that she had left her husband to live wiht Tom, there would have been major difficulites with her getting a divorce - unles she had had a "pretend reconcilation" iwth J first....and also, I think that she would have had to keep away from Tom for the whole 6 months, even day time visiting might have looked "iffy".....
But can you work out what happened with the child's birth and his name? I may have missed a bit but I think that Billy said that as he had been born prematurely, he would have to put him down as a "Ford" and Jack's child, although it would nt. be up to him to register the child anyway? but in the next ep it seems that D and Tom are married and the baby is a Seton..

I suppose Tom could have adopted him legally and given him the Seton name...

well Looking forward to the 4th season but I think that 4 was enough.. better to keep it shorter and good!

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The baby was registered as Ford, then re-registered - they have a brief exchange about it, but the process for doing this isn't explained. There must be a process because mothers, for instance widowed mothers, can change their names and can presumably alter their children's names at the same time.





Hie thee hither, that I may pour my spirits in thine ear.

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I think that registration of a birth is up to the child's parents, and it has to be doen within say a week of the birth. Billy would have to put down that the baby was born to Mrs Ford... and Jack would be presumed as the father, but that would be the case anyway, surely? Dolly had to say she was pregnant by Jack, not Tom...
but TOm could legally adopt the baby after 1926 when Adoption became legal.. and give him his name.

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It is the mother who is responsible for registering the birth, though whether that was true at the time I don't know. Logically this makes sense since the father may be gone or unknown or away at war or working away or dead. I think they made a lot of the notion of it being born 'Ford' for dramatic purposes, but I couldn't understand the fuss.




To whom it may concern: Rosslynglen speaks no Gaelic and cannot play the bagpipes.

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Would have liked to know what became of Tom Dolly and the kid? When Jessie said that Tom's son was "at my husband's school" she presumably meant his older son Tommy .

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I'm pretty sure they couldn't bring back the Seaton's or Matt Headley for the fourth series. I think they wanted Jack Ford to start again from scratch as he left for New York with a loan to Bill and Tom of £600 while Matt was his marrow and wouldn't left him penniless either. Obviously James Bolam agreed to return the role in they didn't repeat the same plot lines. If memory serves Jack was always going to die and Jessie and Billy had reasons to dislike him.

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The.actor who played Tom died in 1980. Perhaps they should have included Matt in the fourth series but said that Tom had drowned?

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the thing I found quite unbelievable about Jack ford was him getting that woman pregnant and marrying her. I don't believe someone as clever as Ford woukdn't know how to prevent that happening. it annoyed me at the time and still does whenever i think of it.

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