So. The BBC's great colonial drama, Rhodes, came and went at the end of last year. It was greeted with almost universal loathing by the critics, and audience figures dropped from a staggering 7.9 million for the first episode to a decidedly disappointing 3.2 million towards the end. It was accused of distorting history, of a deliberate intention to shock, of dragging the reputation of a Great British Hero through the mud, of sexual muck-raking, and of being both anti-British and anti-white.

Even worse, the general opinion was that it committed the most unpardonable of TV drama sins; it was dull! Indeed, perhaps the most surprising thing about the series was that, as a main-stream prime-time drama, it aroused the sort of furore of indignation usually reserved for the more exotic of Channel Four's late-night offerings.

Large Color Photos of Rhodes

Since we previewed the series in Colonial Conquest, it is probably fair to ask the question - was it as bad as everyone said? The answer is of more than passing curiosity, since Rhodes' poor performance in the UK - it will, of course, be sold around the world, and who knows how well it will do there? - is likely to have a very negative effect on the production of similar dramas on colonial themes, and possibly even documentary coverage of the imminent centenary of the Anglo-Boer War.

Two Camps of Criticism

Public criticism of the series fell into two main camps; that it was poor as drama, and that it was poor as history. Certainly, as drama the subject matter of Cecil John Rhodes' life is challenging. His career was set against the back-drop of the 'scramble for Africa', when rival European empires sought to carve the continent up between them. Rhodes' story is inextricably bound up with the industrialisation of southern Africa, which many modern historians see as foreshadowing the apartheid era.

Rhodes came to the country shortly after the great wave of wars of the 1870s when the British broke up the surviving African kingdoms south of the Limpopo river, such as the Zulu and the Pedi. The exploitation of the diamond mines at Kimberley - where Rhodes made his fortune - marked the beginning of the migrant labour system for Africans, which was to become so much a part of the history of the region in the early twentieth century. Rhodes himself was directly responsible for the destruction of the Ndebele (Matabele) kingdom north of the Limpopo, and for eighty years the country was known as Rhodesia after him. His attempts to secure access to the gold reserves of the Witwatersrand were one of the factors which led to the Anglo-Boer War. During the war itself, Rhodes was holed up at Kimberley, making a thorough nuisance of himself by interfering in the conduct of the war.

To tell such a story in a compelling and entertaining way, even in eight hours, is no easy task, and it is probably true that Rhodes did not rise to the challenge as well as it might. On a personal level, the idea was clearly to follow Rhodes' progress from young idealist to his ultimate fall from grace as a cynical, corrupt and manipulative megalomaniac.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this approach. Rhodes himself is probably fair game; he was a great hero in the days of Empire, but opinions change (in his review of the series in the Daily Mail, Paul Johnson - not a critic who would readily answer to the title 'liberal' - headlined his piece, without any apparent irony, "He created modern Africa, so why is TV smearing him as a sadist and a sexual pervert?"), and it is perfectly acceptable to take up a critical stance towards him now, in much the same way as the 1930s bio-pic Rhodes of Africa, reflecting the spirit of those times, glossed over his considerable faults.

Attitudes in the 1890s were very different from today; men like Rhodes believed implicitly in the superiority of British culture, and had few qualms about the means they used to achieve them, since the advantages of the end seemed to them all too obvious. We may find it difficult today to understand how men like 'Chinese' Gordon, or even Anthony Durnford, of Isandlwana fame, could admire foreign cultures while at the same time being prepared to destroy them in the name of Christian progress, yet most would not have seen any contradiction about this.

To Rhodes the sacrifice of an African kingdom or a backward Afrikaner republic was as nothing compared an Imperial vision of Africa linked from north to south by a corridor of red. Nevertheless, the passage of a century entitles us to make new judgements. Rhodes chose to concentrate on the damaging legacy of his career, the boadroom scheming and fighting, the political corruption, not to mention the bloodshed and exploitation which Rhodes inflicted upon Africa. If this is a valid point of view, but it didn't endear the series to middle-brow and essentially conservative (small 'c') critics, and there can be no doubt it is problematic dramatically. To ask an audience to respond to the ups and downs of an increasingly unpleasant character for eight hours is, perhaps, expecting a bit much.

This had nothing to do with the acting of Martin Shaw or his son Joe, who were both rather good in the part; the fact remains that while the real Rhodes could be charismatic, he was a bully and a blusterer when it suited him. The spitting rages shown in the series were real enough, but it made it difficult to remain sympathetic to him throughout, or to care what ultimately happened to him.

Bad Linking

The use of Princess Radziwill as a linking device was also unfortunate. It was the opportunity to allow other characters to give a perspective on Rhodes, which was not a bad idea, but the Princess' involvement became increasingly pointless. Rhodes determinedly kept the real Princess at arms' length; although the series did not suggest anything else, this story-line because rather irrelevant once it was clear she was not going to ensnare him. In terms of pacing, the series spent rather too much time exploring Rhodes' relationships, most of which never went anywhere.

The implication that he was a latent homosexual - which caused most critics to froth at the mouth - was actually something of a red-herring, since the series made it clear that Rhodes probably never fully understood his own inclinations, let alone acted upon them. The effect of so many stunted story-lines, however, exaggerated the central problem -that it was difficult to identify and warm to any of these characters. At times, too, the editing was odd, with dramatic events suddenly unfolding without much warning, leaving the viewer confused as to what exactly was going on.

At times, watching Rhodes was quite hard work, and this is surely the real reason why so many viewers succumbed to the more accessible delights of ITV's Sunday-night flagship, London's Burning, which was screened at the same time on the opposite channel.

If the series was anti-Rhodes, it is not really fair to suggest it was anti-white. If it showed Rhodes and his followers as adventurers and opportunists, it none-the-less went out of its way to suggest that there was a liberal tradition in white South African politics, even at that time, which was opposed to Rhodes. Many of Rhodes followers - Merriman is the obvious example - turned against him once his aims and methods became obvious, and if anything the series as a whole championed their viewpoint.

Nevertheless, the 1890s was an age of filibustering in southern Africa, and it is hard not to feel a sense of unease about this today. This is perhaps another reason why the series did not catch the public imagination; it remains difficult history, with a number of uncomfortable and unresolved issues regarding the dispossession of black Africans and the break-up of the Boer republics. These issues are likely to surface again in the next couple of years; to many people the Anglo-Boer War remains Britain's Vietnam, a war fought in a dubious cause and by questionable methods. It certainly doesn't make for thrilling Boy's Own adventure TV, like Sharpe!

Distort History?

This brings us to the big question; to what extent did Rhodes distort history? Well, the answer is quite a bit, but it should always be remembered that drama and documentary are two very different media; a film like Zulu, for example, manages to convey a great deal of truth about the essence of the Rorke's Drift story without bothering too much about specific detail.

So it was with Rhodes; it captured pretty well the atmosphere of the time and place, of the machinations, schemes and sheer audacity of men like Rhodes who were prepared to take over whole continents simply because they could. That said, a lot of the specific incidents in the series were distorted, and sometimes in odd ways. Events which would have fitted the programme's stance - and been just as easy to film - were sometimes changed without apparent reason. The clash between the Ndebele (or Matabele; two different versions of the same word) and Company troops outside Fort Victoria on the eve of the Matabele War was, if anything, less creditable to the Company than it was shown in the series. In the series, Frank Johnson (who wasn't involved in real life) provoked the Matabele to attack him, then gunned them down; in fact, the Company troops just rode among the Matabele, shooting them down without resistance.

Perhaps the most regrettable aspect of the manipulation of history was a certain heavy-handedness in the way it depicted the British empire and its actions. It's always a good rule of thumb when judging any programme like this to see how they treat British army officers; if they are portrayed as caricatures, you can bet the programme will miss the mark. Sure enough, most officers in Rhodes were depicted as pompous idiots or blithering twits, quaffing G&Ts in preposterous sun-helmets and speaking the language of Billy Bunter and Bertie Wooster. It is curious that television, which can so often come up with wonderful period drama in civilian settings, has so much difficulty when it comes to presenting the military in a convincing manner. If the British army was run by so many twits, how is it that in the Victorian era its record was so uniquely successful?

One episode in particular demonstrates the heavy-handedness I mean. After a battle with the Matabele, the Company troops wander over the battlefield, looking for wounded. They are led by Jameson himself, who deliberately pulls out his revolver, and shoots a wounded warrior. Taking this as their cue, the rest of the troops do likewise, despite the protestations of a missionary accompanying the column.

Now, it was certainly not unknown for British troops to finish off the wounded when campaigning in southern Africa; it happened a lot, for example, in the battles following Isandlwana in the Zulu War. It may have happened in the Matabele War; there is a curious absence of references to the fate of Matabele wounded in Company accounts; if they were not shot, they faced an equally unpleasant alternative in any case- a lingering death, left out on the battlefield. Nevertheless, the idea that a pistol-packing 'Doctor Jim' himself would have set the tone is absurd, an example of pile-driver subtlety.

It's interesting, too, to consider Rhodes' attitude towards the man's enemies. The series clearly wanted to show the Ndebele as victims of Rhodes' aggression, and there is some justification in this. Certainly, Lobengula was plagued by concession-hunters, much as the series depicted; he did resist the pressure from his younger warriors who wanted to destroy the whites, only to find himself betrayed and forced into a war by Rhodes.

The poignant simile, quoted in the film, in which Lobengula likened himself to a fly, and Rhodes as a chameleon, stalking him, was indeed how Lobengula saw himself. Some critics found something vaguely patronising in the way that a powerful African kingdom was portrayed as manipulated by a handful of whites, and pointed out that Lobengula's regime was a far from liberal one. Yet the Ndebele kingdom - like the Zulu one from which it grew - was always more complex than many outsiders understood, and the image of it which has survived into modern times - that of a military state existing only through preying on its neighbours - is a largely shaped by Company propaganda. The Company justified its intervention in 1893 by claiming that it was liberating the Shona from Ndebele tyranny, but it's interesting to note that, during the rebellion three years later, most Shona groups preferred to side with their Ndebele overlords rather than with the Company.

It is difficult not to see Lobengula as an essentially tragic figure, the head of an old order which was doomed to pass in the face of European expansionism. Washington Sixolo gave an impressive performance as the Ndebele king, who was at once autocratic, but caught up in events which he could only dimly understand, and was powerless to control.

Reasonable Impression

The series gave a reasonable impression of life at the Ndebele court, Bulawayo, although the limited scope of the small screen did rob the royal court of some of its grandeur. The real Bulawayo was a complex of several hundred huts; here it looked like a small provincial town. On the whole, some effort had been made to get the Matabele warriors to look reasonably authentic, and a number of the royal body-guard at court were wearing the black ostrich-skin capes and headresses for which the late Matabele army was famous.

However, ever since Shaka Zulu, back in the mid-80s, there has been a regrettable tendency to depict the Zulu and their associated peoples in a flamboyant caricature of their real costume. It worked in Shaka Zulu, because that series deliberately tried to invest Shaka's reign with a mythical quality, turning it into an African version of the King Arthur story, but it sits less well with the more cynical tone of Rhodes. Not only were the costumes of many of the Matabele figures over the top, but the idea that they wore them on all occasions is absurd. The scenes showing Lobengula's councillors sitting around, wearing particularly silly headresses and bobbing about like children, were rather undignified. The same applies to the costume of the ordinary warriors; on the whole, this gave a fair impression of the real thing, though quite why they all had shammy-leathers slung over their shoulders, like so many window cleaners having a lunch break, is a mystery only the costume designer could explain.

Again, it was a great shame that the warriors did not seem to change their costumes from one year to the next; the real Matabele army looked very different during the war of 1893, for example, when the royal regiments went into battle wearing at least some of their ceremonial regalia, to its appearance in the rebellion of 1896, when most turned out in their every-day clothes.

If the Matabele emerged in reasonable order from the series, what about the Boers? Here the series' political stance was most apparent and most negative. The Transvaal republic was portrayed entirely as a victim of Rhodes' scheming. Paul Kruger was shown as a homely and devout patriot, whose only objective was to defend his lands against Rhodes' acquisitiveness. This does not do justice to Kruger's rather more complex character and aims and objectives, and it ignores other causes of Anglo-Boer conflict.

It is, moreover, decidedly ironic that Kruger is placed in exactly the position as Lobengula, given that the Transvaal had done its own fair share of dispossessing black Africans over the years! Unforgivably, in its assessment of the effects of Rhodes' life at the end of the series, the programme listed the number of Boer casualties in the Boer War, but not those of the British, who might also reasonably be considered as victims, even within the programme's own perspective.

Military Aspects

What about military aspects of the series? Certainly, in this regard, the series didn't stint, giving us something of the Matabele War and Rebellion, the Jameson Raid, and the Anglo-Boer War.

On the whole, however, it could have done with more rigorous advice from a military historian. The Boer War scenes were rather rushed through, and the British army, during the triumphant entry into Kimberley, looked rather less military than an average team of majorettes. A couple of fascinating incidents were thrown away in a flurry of gun-shots and explosions, among them the last stand of the Wilson patrol in the Matabele War and the Jameson Raid itself.

Although the uniforms of Rhodes' Pioneer troops were quite accurate for the 1890 period, they were over-used (very few were still around in 1893 in reality, for example), while some of the guns and bandoliers were anachronistic. Fort Victoria looked like something the Foreign Legion might have built in Beau Geste rather than the earthwork it actually was.

That said, the main battle-scene, an attack on a Company laager by the Matabele, was well done. It was actually a conflation of two historical actions - the battles of Shangani and Bembesi - although the scene where the pickets were caught in the open was based on a true incident from the battle of Bembesi.

This was one of the best action sequences in the whole series; suddenly finding himself outside the laager at the start of the attack, the picket dashes for safety with the warriors in hot pursuit. He is spotted in the nick of time by machine-gunners inside, who scythe down the warriors only a few yards behind him. Indeed, the scenes showing machine guns in action were very well done, and highlighted the tragic futility of Matabele attacks in the face of superior weapon technology. In one nice little cameo a warrior who has lost his shield dashes forward and picks one up from a corpse lying on the ground, only to fall a second later as a line of Maxim bullets stitches across it.

Final Analysis

In the final analysis, then, Rhodes was not so much a disaster as a missed opportunity. If you missed it at the time, should you bother to buy the video, or the accompanying book (Making Rhodes, by Fliss Coombs, BBC Books, 9.99), then? In my opinion yes; the book has lots of nice, inspiring colour pictures of costumes and locations, and there is still much to enjoy in the series itself. Fast-forward through the business wranglings and personal stuff, and enjoy the out-door scenes.

At its best, Rhodes did conjure up something of the spirit of the 1890s in South Africa; the music is great, and some of the shots of the golden veldt (no one ever films in the wet season, when the grass is green!) are breathtaking. Set aside reservations about historical accuracy, and enjoy the shots of columns on the march, or Matabele warriors running through the hills. The clash between mounted volunteers and Matabele may not quite reflect the incident it is supposed to represent, but it does suggest how dozens of real skirmishes in a score of actual wars might have looked. And anyone interested in the period really should see that Matabele War battlescene at least once. Here's hoping producers and film-makers are not put off by Rhodes' poor response, and that we may see more - and yes, perhaps better - in the future.

Rhodes: A Preview

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