Of the numerous novels that Plater adapted for the screen, only a handful had been recently published and were set in the present day. And the only examples of serial adaptations with contemporary settings that I can think of are the two thrillers The Consultant (1983) and A Very British Coup (1988). Both were based on debut novels that had grabbed attention with their provocative and plausible plots - about, respectively, computer fraud, and political intrigue – but were nobody’s idea of classic literature. In other words, a far less daunting prospect for Plater than taking on Trollope, Lawrence or even Agatha Christie.
The author of The Consultant was John McNeil (1939-2004), who had a unique CV. Prior to becoming a novelist and TV screenplay writer, he was a pioneering figure in the UK computer software industry. Logica, the company he co-founded in 1969, was the first major UK software company, but by 1977 he had joined Data Logic, where he oversaw the establishment of a consultancy division. Published in 1978, The Consultant, like his other subsequent three novels, was promoted and recognised as an insider’s take on the shadowy world of computer crime. By the 1980s, his profile was that of full-time writer, and he did the screenplay for the BBC’s five-part IRA-themed drama Crossfire in 1988; he also became chair of the Writers Guild of Great Britain.
Plater’s four-part adaptation of The Consultant is very faithful to McNeil’s book, even beginning with the same scene, and drawing liberally from its dialogue – although I need to check whether a humorous confusion of Karl and Groucho Marx at one point is Plater’s invention or not: I’d like to think it was. Hywel Bennett plays the appropriately named Charles Webb, a charismatic computer expert with a legitimate enterprise helping clients to uncover fraud occurring in their systems. Except he’s not really legitimate at all. With help from some of his partners, he has a lucrative side hustle identifying the fraudulent programming of others, then routing their profits to himself undetected: ‘stealing other people’s crime’, as he says. So far his scamming has been small-time, but he still has debts to pay, so when he lands a consultancy gig at a big fat London bank, an opportunity arises to detect their in-house fraudster (Phillip Jackson) and beat him at his own game.
One difference between the novel and Plater’s adaptation is that it is clearer from the very start of the TV version that Webb has no moral scruples for what might seem like a victimless kind of crime. But unlike his junior side-kick Jake Kennedy (a young Jonathon Morris), who comes round to seeing their activities as ideologically justified, Webb is in it just for the money, and the thrill.
I found The Consultant gripping, if not exactly thrilling. Most of the series takes place in offices, boardrooms and the lairs where computer-geeks do their work. I watched an off-air recording that someone has fortuitously uploaded onto Youtube. Annoyingly, the last episode has the opening section cut off, but it looks as if the first third is pretty much just Webb and Kennedy explaining to each other, with the help of a flip chart, how a particularly complicated form of bank fraud has been occurring. It’s hardly The Wolf of Wall Street, despite a subplot about Webb sleeping with one of his colleagues at the bank he’s investigating/robbing. And it actually transpires that the fraud that drives the whole plot has come about because a scruffy and closeted computer programmer has unrequited affection for a colleague, and is trying to procure the funds for a romantic cruise with them (I think so, anyway, as I did drift off slightly towards the end).
The only really pulse-quickening moment comes in the third episode, when Webb turns to his trusty computer for advice to solve a tricky problem – and is instructed by the machine to become a murderer. In McNeil’s book, it’s apparent that Webb is in the habit of devising programmes to help determine his actions, but also that the computer’s verdict chimes with what he’s already thinking. In the TV series, it’s more ambivalent – I wasn’t sure whether Webb had rigged the outcome of the computer’s decision, or whether the machine was displaying a degree of malignant sentience, and we were getting into 2001 territory.
However, I wonder whether the novelty/shock factor of computer-based crime had diminished in the five years since the publication of the source novel. In the meantime there had been giant strides in both the development of the personal computer and of CGI technology on screen. John McNeil’s 1983 novel Little Brother (his third) moved away from the topic of corporate crime, instead homing in on vogue-ish fears about the insidious possibilities of technology in the domestic sphere (and specifically the effects upon children). The same year would also see the release of War Games (1983), starring Matthew Broderick as a young hacker who finds his way into a military super-computer. It’s therefore hard to think that The Consultant looked and felt very futuristic in 1983, not least because it represents the world of computing as being as much about reams of printed-out paper as about blinking cursors.
You can't help but be charmed by the opening titles, where a ‘wireframe’ computer animation of Bennet’s head is morphed into a London cityscape (which you can view and read about here). But there’s a bewildering few seconds where Bennett taps stiffly away on his keyboard whilst the monitor screen remains blank – bless him, he doesn’t look very handy with the old QWERTY. The show also has a very 1983-sounding musical score – all funky-bass and ear-worm synth runs – that adds a contemporary sheen to the mostly studio-based action, but starts to pall if you’re bingeing the show (and it’s actually quite bingeable). The composer is Mike/Michael Moran, whose Wikipedia page joins the dots between all manner of things you’d never thought to connect before: the Eurovision Song Contest (he was the guy singing ‘Rock Bottom’ with Lynsey de Paul), Time Bandits (1981), Death Wish 3 (1985), Kenny Everett’s ‘Snot Rap’ (1983), Freddie Mercury and Monsterrat Caballé’s ‘Barcelona’ (1987), New Tricks (2003-15), Chain Letters (1987-97) and much more.
Somewhat against expectation, The Consultant is a thematic bridge of sorts between the self-devised Plater series that preceded and followed it, namely Middle Men (1977) and The Beiderbecke trilogy of the later 1980s. It shares their fascination with what we might call the black or shadow economy of activities taking place beyond mainstream commerce and regulation. To be certain, Charles Webb is an amoral murderer, played by Bennett with a blank glamour, but he’s also a charismatic blond anti-hero taking on the corporate, elitist world of the grey suits.
As much as I enjoyed The Consultant, the experience of watching was undoubtedly enhanced by the somewhat degraded quality of the version circulating currently on YouTube, an off-air recording replete with closely-microphoned presenter, and black-screen gaps between the programme and the advert for the next instalment: blimey, TV really flowed slower then. But it also got me on a nostalgic train of thought about my own, rather less malevolent, interactions with computers as a young kid in the 1980s.
At the start of the decade, the BBC had launched a computer literacy project that led to the emergence of the BBC Micro (developed by the Acorn Computers), and was soon producing educational series like The Computer Programme (1982) to introduce aspects of computer use and operation (you can read and watch more at the astonishingly comprehensive Computer Literacy Project archive website). Not long after The Consultant was broadcast in 1983, the Acorn Electron home computer, a lower-cost alternative to the BBC Micro, went on sale – and happened to be the model that my parents bought for me to do primitive coding (Basic) and play harmless time-wasting games like Jet Set Willy. Although The Consultant made me feel a bit grubby, I soon got over it by going down a Fred Harris wormhole on YouTube.
OK, I’m getting off-topic here, but I think the point I’m groping for is that The Consultant is too much of its time to attempt an objective assessment of. But if you fancy a nostalgic, slightly dour trip to the early 1980s, it’s definitely worth a look. Although I reckon that an episode of Me and My Micro (1985) would give a far more authentic account of what your average computer programmer was up to in those days. As per the picture above, they certainly don’t look much like Hywel Bennett, that’s for sure….
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