Play for Today Pilgrimage

  The Lie, I discovered after watching it, was originally broadcast in Swedish, so that the Play for Today version was a translated work rather than, as I imagined, something commissioned from Ingmar Bergman especially for Play for Today. That explains why nothing about it seemed English - not the architecture, nor the settings, nor the clothes. Possibly not even the way the characters behaved - although I think it would be unfair to the people of Sweden to imagine they all live their lives along the lines of what one was shown in this play. The action opens on a shot of a one-story house, built around the 1960s I would guess. Conveniently for the cameraman the people inside the house sleep with their curtains open so we are able to peer through the windows to meet the main characters, each in their bed in their separate bedrooms. The husband gets up and does a few cursory physical jerks, the wife lies under the covers and expertly fends off her rather sweet little boy, who comes i...

I enjoyed this odd little play. The opening scene is fairly unpromising. A Royal Mail van comes flying round the corner into a suburban street, a postman gets out to empty a pillar box, remarking on how cold it is, a woman watches him through her mullioned window and calls her child, saying it is "time for your programme", adding to herself, discontentedly, "time for MY programme." A young man comes rapidly down the street singing about Zion. He stops to chat to the postman who asks him why he isn't freezing, given that he is wearing sandals and bare feet, jeans, a cotton shirt and a striped blazer and nothing more. The newcomer replies, "It's winter my friend" and continues with a small sermon about how extraordinary it would be if all that we had ever said remained in the air above us, reminding us of the good and the bad utterances we have made. He explains to the postman that he is an angel and tries to get him to accept the present of a dead l...