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  • The Hanged Man

    (On Topic: | DVD | Episode Guide | Novel | Soundtrack | Index )

    He is a dead man running - toward his enemies

    Lew Burnett is at the top of the construction business - a cut throat occupation where enemies outnumber friends. He has built up the multi-million pound Burnett Construction empire after starting as a one-man operator. He has the respect of his colleagues, but few close friends...and many more enemies. Two attempts have already been made on his life when the brakes fail on a dumper truck he is driving and it crashes over a partly constructed sea wall. This prompts him to "play dead" and seek out his would-be executioners. Burnett is the hanged man of the fortune-telling Tarot cards who is pictured hanging by one ankle... "baptism and transition seem to be the paramount meanings".

    (Yorkshire TV, 15/2/75 - 5/4/75) The series was created and written by Edmund Ward and co-produced (with Ward) by Marc Miller. Eight hour-long episodes were presented. a spin-off series, Turtle's Progress (ATV, 1979-80; pr. Joan Brown and Nicholas Palmer), featured two small-time crooks who had stolen a hoard of safe deposit boxes.

    British Television Published by the BFI, 1994, ISBN 0-19-818336-4

    An introduction by Edmund Ward

    There have been three attempts to kill Lew Burnett. After the third, he decides to stay dead and re-live the past to find out who loved, hated and envied him enough to want him out of the way for good. Here in article from the Radio Times of 1974 where Edmund Ward, who wrote the series, sets the scene for this thriller series:

    I suppose The Hanged Man began for me in Casablanca in 1951. The Korean War was on and the Americans were building bases all over the world. Airfields in Morocco, roads in Afghanistan, naval bases in Spain, something they later called "moon stations" in the West Indies.

    The Moroccan job of building five airfields included me. It was over spent by billions of dollars and at various times was the subject of Congressional inquiries into waste, graft and inefficiency.

    Not all of it was my fault. I was younger then, fresh from a Swedish winter, anxious to follow in Humphrey Bogart's Casablanca footsteps, join the gravy train of the big construction world.

    I was designated as "local hire".

    This meant, in terms of pay and privileges, I was a white-skinned Arab. I couldn't do anything about the pay; but borrowed U.S. identification and an unconvincing Alabama accent-all the way from Nottingham-rapidly entitled me to the privileges.

    Casablanca was a boom town. Frontage along its main street, the Boulevard de la Gare, was more expensive than on the Champs Elyse's in Paris. One airfield alone-Nouaceur-displaced 6,000 Moroccan families. The U.S. Government also bought Casablanca's leading hotels.

    Senators and four star generals arrived, the harbour filled with Ships, construction stiffs reached under beds for bottles of bourbon for breakfast.

    I joined as a security guard, which involved good reflexes and a regulation club or baton. Then somebody found Out I was bi-lingual and my new job-in personnel liaison-was best described as elusive.

    I was in and out of the police stations and the local prison, mastered the gruesome red tape of shipping bodies back. to the States. There was a thriving red light district, and once I was approached by a co-operative of four madams to give English lessons to their employees.

    And, all the time, hard men tore up the earth with giant machines, got drunk, fought, told me stories. If they'd been turned loose here they'd have built the M1 in a week.

    That was where my fascination with the construction industry began.

    That was where Lew Burnett-the name of The Hanged Man-also began. From there, and on contracts like that, Burnett built up his construction empire.

    For me, the road was different but the fascination continued. A few years later, I was the editor of international architectural magazines published by a firm which still runs Interbuild, the world's largest building exhibition. Their enlightened encouragement to do my own legwork again took me along the path followed by Lew Burnett.

    I saw the clean, soaring concrete of Milan's Pirelli building; the razing of Paris shanty towns when the Algerian occupants of new flats could not afford their rent because the freedom fighters for their country's Independence met them outside the Renault factory on pay-night and extorted a cut of wages.

    I went to the rebuilt East End of London-the equivalent of five new towns - where planning officers avoided a restaurant scheduled for demolition because they thought the proprietor was capable of poisoning them. To Chicago's South Side: You want urban decay, we got it. All else you gonna get is a lump on the head. Then the bar at La Salle and closely studying contract figures and wondering.

    I experienced Havana under Castro when the non-political I.U.A. Congress was held there and Hurricane Flora joined in. And the secret police. And my Interbuild publisher from London flew to Mexico City prepared to make the British Consul there swim to Cuba to collect me.

    Utrecht, Halifax, Prague, Glasgow, Dusseldorf, Chipping Camden; Corbusier, Sir Basil Spence, Nervi, Ernest Marples, Councillor Amold Thwaites from Netherfield, The privilege of listening, reporting, learning.

    It was the same route Lew Burnett, took. He built it, I watched it. And wrote novels.

    Then came television. After The Plane Makers and The Power Game for ATV, I moved to Yorkshire Television at the instigation of the Head of Drama, Peter Willes. The Main Chance, Grady, The Challengers. The Law, union militancy, politics. To me, they were important subjects and I thought people would be interested. Thankfully, they were.

    During The Main Chance, another fascination cropped up - disappearance, The number of unsolved murders, the futile claims for maintenance because of an envelope marked "No known address", the simple statistic of thousands of men who walk out of their front doors and are never seen again. Boredom? Accident? Enemies?

    They say a drowning man sees his past life as he goes down for the third time. Nobody knows for certain. By then, the man is dead. The Hanged Man is the story of a man who is not dead. He can find out; he has a second chance to go' back down his past.

    The Hanged Man is Lew Burnett. There have been three attempts on his life. At the third one he decides to stay dead-so that he can stay alive.

    He begins a desperate search down his life to find out who loved him, hated him, and envied him enough to destroy him. He is on the run-but towards his enemies, not away from them. There is no power, no money, Just the same wits and hands that built a small empire in the international construction industry. A background which forms the world's most dangerous, and sometimes most profitable industry.

    Three fascinations, at least for me: construction, disappearance, television.

    The Hanged Man took 18 months to plan, research and write, a lot of it abroad. Germany. Switzerland. Italy. Sweden, Belgium, Canada. The current ramifications of international construction -and the people. My own journey down what might have been Lew Burnett's life on the run.

    I discovered the way guns and ammunition are smuggled into Switzerland. How immigrant labour in an Essen ghetto raises money to send a dead man home for burial. How fake flight plans for light aircraft are filed. There were Iron Curtain building politics, and the Brussels bars where mercenaries past and present exchange nostalgia and futures.

    Thousands of miles and a lot of hotel room tables for eight hours of television-The Hanged Man. To build an empire in this sort of jungle, Burnett had to make enemies-and some friends. Corrupt politicians, hired policemen, contract hooligans, fast speculators, paid militants, prissy Swiss accountants all wander the jungle 'for high stakes.

    Invention or fact? Both. Read the newspapers: prominent architect admits bribery; British ex-Cabinet minister joins American real estate wizard; ex-U.S. Vice President said to be considering job as contact man for a construction firm; police suspect flyover foundations as graves during protection gang war; shoddy construction kills 80 in Italian high-rise fiat scandal. And a few more that never get into print.

    This is where Lew Burnett must retrace the past 20 years of his life to find his murderers. In the process, he is also forced to look hard in the' mirror of himself.

    Which is where The Hanged Man meets its Tarot card definition, checked after the title was devised:

    "The Hanged Man is not being hanged though he is hanging ... is in a state of conversion ... and the eyes of the figure on the card are open. Baptism and transition seem to be the paramount meanings."

    The enemies who form a net of menace from Burnett's past, step from unexpected places. And Bumett running towards these enemies, still hunted, still on borrowed time- has to put together the pieces of a dangerous jigsaw puzzle - his life. The second chance all of us might like.

    After writing came production. The Hanged Man is produced by Marc Miller and myself-very much in that order-with Peter Willes as executive producer. Marc directed four episodes, Tony Wharmby the other four.

    Colin Blakely plays Lew Burnett, real as a sledge-hammer coming down. Michael Williams is Crowe, the ex-mercenary officer who does not believe Burnett is dead. Gary Watson is the hired assassin, John Quentin, a dangerous puppet dangled on telephone strings by unknown masters.

    Eight months of teamwork, with cast, directors, crews working almost in a telepathic private language.

    Big international construction is not an Industry for the marzipan men. It is the sweat on explosives at •risky temperatures, greasy catwalks 20 floors up, the pay-night arguments, the tons of concrete falling, the cheques worth millions pushed casually across desks.

    The Hanged Man is thriller land.

    Action. Adventure. Fact and invention based on the genuine excitement of a very real world.

    Visitor's Recollections

    Mike Mclester recalls:

    The first episode is still fairly vivid. It was similar to The Prisoner insomuch as elements from the episode (the assassination attempt upon Burnett's life) were edited down to form the title sequence (Sound only - 548Kb Mp3) for the series...

    I remember also Burnett's first meeting with Mr Crow-superbly played by the late Michael Williams. Other highlights include a brutal fight between Burnett and a character played by Jack Watson. (Why they had to fight each other I cannot recall.) and an episode set behind the Iron Curtain in which Burnett winds up in a pretty nasty prison.
    I recall that the identity of Burnett's hidden nemesis was quite a surprise but in case you don't already know it I won't give the game away...well you never know...someone might be smart enough to rescreen it one day though don't hold your breath.

    Philip Williams adds:

    I remember a fight on the construction site of a motorway.... a fine central performance by Colin Blakely.

    Review

    A little learning... A review from The Times of London

    The Hanged Man, Yorkshire

    Derek Parker

    The Hanged Mall, Edmund Ward's new thriller series for Yorkshire Television, is clearly an excursion into Frederick Forsythe-land: this is educational television. By the end of episode one, screened on Saturday, Colin Blakely has shown us how to booby-trap a handbag. and has held a chum in a Croatian nose.hold long enough to have us all trying it on our, wives after the show; Tenniel Evans has given a little lecture on obtaining a foreign passport from someone else's luggage at London Airport, and Gary Watson (crazed by reading 100 much Donne on Radio 3) has demonstrated a lethal sandbagging (" Catch the spinal column correctly, it's like breaking pencils" said his victim with feeling).

    Mr Blakely drove off a pier during the credits. and Mr Wat son (watching him, and everyone else, through binoculars) was obviously up to no good. By the suave way he dropped a mechanical shovel on another gentleman In Act II, he is going to carry on that way. Ex-guards-man ex-mercenary Michael Williams has the determined air of someone who is coming into his own in episode two, and Angela Browne passed the driving test, only her star billing promising that there will eventually be some sort of love interest.

    Now these are first rate players, and were extremely well supported; Brian Croucher. and Peter Miles, for instance, contributed two splendid little cameos. But a man pretending to be dead in order to snare his would-be killers? Even Mr Ward's characters didn't really believe it. and the dialogue provided laconic evidence that it is plotting and acting that will carry the series.

    The director (Marc Miller) will have to watch the public service information spots. The handbag demonstration almost completely stops the play, and there is no evidence that what pulled in a million readers for Day of the Jackal will pull in a million viewers on the small screen, Well, I thought that the dullest book I've ever read, so Yorkshire may be in for a considerable success. But if so, I'd still promote the casting director.

    Thanks

    Most of the information about The Hanged Man on this site comes from the programme listings in back issues of the New Zealand Listener. The two main sources on the web used were an entry in the TV Chronicles Guide to British Television and the  IMDB, with some added information from Dave Rogers' ITV Encyclopedia of Adventure.

    Thanks are due to the following fellow fans for their help with these pages:

    Bruce Banner, Aton Adair, Mike Mclester, Philip Williams, Nick Gilbert for his now defunct TV Times cover gallery, and Peter Mussell.