The Gallows Pole is, as the BBC publicity machine tells us, the “remarkable true story of the rise of David Hartley and the Cragg Vale Coiners”. Keen student of economic history though I am, I wasn’t previously familiar with this 18th-century legend, and it seems eminently well-suited to a television adaptation. Set in the atmospheric moorlands of Yorkshire, the drama follows the enigmatic Hartley (played by Michael Socha) as he assembles a gang of local home weavers and farm labourers to embark upon a massive counterfeiting exercise, which, some claim, threatened to capsize the economy and become the biggest fraud in British history. A fascinating fragment of history, then, set in the Promethian dawn of the Industrial Revolution, based on the book by Benjamin Myers, and fictionalised by Shane Meadows – award winners both. I do hope that it lives up to its promise over the course of the next couple of (weekly) episodes, but, by heck, it gets off to unbearably sluggish and sometimes bizarre start.
Forgers and fraudsters usually make for some excellent, pacey cat’n’mouse action, often infused with some sardonic humour along the way; think of Catch Me if You Can (2002), The Counterfeiters (2007), or Private Shultz (1981), to offer a few memorable examples of producers getting it right from the start. The problem with episode one of The Gallows Pole is that the viewer has not an inkling of what excitement may follow.
