#david main

The Main Chance - S2 A Time To Love, A Time To Die

RIP John Stride (11.7.1936 - 20.4.2018)

John Stride - who has sadly died, at 81 - was that rare thing in classic British TV; the star of a successful and long running cult classic who didn’t have to work his way up from guest spots and jobbing work in genre shows. Unlike, say, Alfred Burke, Edward Woodward or George Sewell (all playing leads whilst The Main Chance was on air, all with a clutch of guest appearances to their names), Stride seemed almost to come from nowhere and cement himself as a star overnight.

He hadn’t, of course. Born in London, 1931, to Margaret and Alfred, the working-class Stride had worked hard from childhood, winning scholarships to grammar schools and eventually RADA. The theatre was probably his natural home - fellow students included Peter O'Toole and Alan Bates, and Stride had a notable early role in one of Peter Shaffer’s early plays.

In 1960 he joined the Old Vic and became part of an iconic movement in 20th century drama. He played Romeo opposite Judi Dench’s Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s revolutionary production of Shakespeare’s tragedy, and followed the company to New York as Malcolm in Macbeth. Then it was over to The National, starring opposite Olivier and Maggie Smith in Othello, followed by the lead in Brecht’s Edward II.

Still greater was to come. In 1967, the 36 year old Stride became a part of theatre history, originating the role of Rosencrantz in Tom Stoppard’s incomparable, incredible Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. This was a new type of theatre, a move from the socially conscious, issue-heavy work of the Angry Young Men toward something that was simultaneously more irreverent and more universally urgent. It’s testament to Stride’s talents as an actor that his performance in the role is still written about.

There were some film appearances - an uncredited part in Sink The Bismarck! (1960) and a bigger part in Bitter Harvest (1963) - as well as spots in the more respectable type of evening television (Armchair Theatre, BBC Play of the Month). The lure of TV stardom was, however, now calling.

The Main Chance (1969 - 1975) - much like it’s near contemporaries Public Eye and The Power Game - belongs to a subset of classic TV that was hugely popular at the time and almost instantly forgotten once it had finished. All three are cult successes, of course, but considering their (comparative) lengthy and successful runs, none have remained in the public consciousness like, say, The Avengers, The Champions, Z Cars etc. Perhaps its no coincidence that all three are much more rooted in realism and the everyday - it’s difficult, too, to imagine any of the three being made today. Regardless, TMC was a notable success for Yorkshire Television, running for four series over six years and filming extensively on location - including trips abroad for the third series, to the Alps and Amsterdam (a pretty rare thing for 70’s TV).

The brain child of Edmund Ward, a key contributer to The Power Game, and solicitor John Batt (credited as John Malcolm and also, apparently, the composer of the frantic theme tune), the show charts the career of ambitious young David Main. Main is a solicitor, and a good one, who decides to branch out from his London practice by partnering with the more experienced - and more respectable - Leeds office of Henry Castleton. David is a fully developed, three dimensional character - often arrogant, but often right; sometimes ruthless but usually professional; repeatedly unfeeling and hard but never cruel. It’s a wonderful part for an actor, a complex, difficult, frustrating, compelling lead. The casting of Stride was a perfect choice.

The first series establishes an enviable ensemble of stalwart character actors - John Wentworth as the elder Henry, Margaret Ashcroft as his daughter and legal partner Margaret, Kate O'Mara as Main’s dissatisfied wife Julia, Anna Palk as secretary and confidante Sarah Courtney - but its Stride who dominates. He immerses himself fully in David Main, fills the screen, burning with intensity and passion. Over the four series he sees great success and utter failure, loses everything, wins it back and loses again. He is stoic and defeated, then furious and then vulnerable. It’s a bravura performance. The show isn’t perfect - I wrote, when I was watching it, how disappointed I was in the third series (which features entirely atypical sexism and casual racism). But elsewhere it is perfect. It deals with big themes - bigotry, racism, homophobia, ablism, abuse - and almost always in a way that feels surprisingly, shockingly even, considering the era, sensitive and thoughtful. Those issues never feel forced or like token references. There is a notable episode in the final series, after a traumatic turn of events, in which Main simply breaks down and weeps. It didn’t strike me until after I’d watched it just how rare that is - even now, but especially then - to see a ‘hero’ male lead simply breaking their heart crying in a popular TV show. It’s a genuinely moving moment.

The show, as I said, has some low points - but they are never Stride’s, who is mesmerising throughout. Main grows and changes with the series, adapts and tries and fails and wins. I should add, this isn’t at the expense of the other characters either (Margaret gets one of the best, most subtle arcs of a female character in all of classic tv, as she quietly matures and develops into a very different, but equally as talented solicitor as David). Like all the best shows, by the end they feel like a substitute family. You genuinely care about David, and his terrible decisions, and his regrettable actions, and his near manic obsession with The Law.

It couldn’t last forever, of course, and in 1975 the series ended. Stride used his new visibility to secure roles in some bigger, flashier films - notable supporting roles in Juggernaut, Brannigan (1975) and A Bridge Too Far (1977), as well as a brief appearance in The Omen (1976) - but his screen career would never again reach the millions of viewers who followed The Main Chance. There was one more leading role on television - Wilde Alliance (1978) with Julia Foster, as a husband and wife detective team - as well as starring in the last of the Ghost Story For Christmas’s, The Ice House (also 1978), but for much of the rest of his career John would concentrate on the area of his first successes; the stage.

In 1982 he won good reviews for his performance as Aleister Crowley in Snoo Wilson’s The Number Of The Beast, and three years later John finally worked with the RSC, as Claudius in Hamlet. By the end of the decade he was holding his own against Paul Scofield, in Jeffrey Archer’s Exclusive. Latterly, his career was very quiet and by the turn of the millennium he seems to have retired from acting.