Churchill's Secret will air tonight on ITV and here are some comments from some of the newspapers and magazines:
RadioTimes: Meet the Cast of Churchill's Secret
Randolph Churchill (Matthew Macfadyen)
Churchill's eldest son comes to Chartwell uncertain of whether Winston will pull through. He was keen to follow his father into a career in politics, but by 1953 his reputation was already pretty hopeless as he hadn’t been in parliament for nearly a decade.
Where Have I Seen Matthew Macfadyen Before?
He was Tom Quinn on the BBC spy thriller Spooks, but since then has starred in the ongoing Ripper Street and the Channel 4 adaptation of William Boyd’s Any Human Heart. A regular in period dramas, he's taken on the role of Mr. Darcy in the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice and has been equally dashing in The Three Musketeers and Anna Karenina.
Sunday Express:
“You have this impossible act to follow, someone you both resent and adore,” says Matthew Macfadyen who plays the troubled Randolph. “It’s very difficult, like being the children of megastar musicians or movie stars. Churchill was an iconic, mythologised figure in an age before celebrity.”
Randolph found it difficult to live up to his father’s reputation, having only a five-year career in politics as MP for Preston and died aged 57 in 1968.
He was famously difficult company and after he had a benign growth on his lung removed, writer Evelyn Waugh said:
“It was a typical triumph of modern science to find the one part of Randolph which was not malignant and to remove it.”
Macfadyen says: “Hopefully, the audience will have a little sympathy for Randolph. He was obviously not in a good place, and turns up at his father’s sick bed terribly upset about Churchill’s illness. He doesn’t know how to deal with it and is full of anger and bitterness but you see his vulnerability.”
RadioTimes: Pick of The Week:
The most involving scenes centre on the fractious Churchill children —
particularly Sarah (Rachael Stirling), Diana (Tara FitzGerald) and Randolph
(Matthew Macfadyen) — disappointed people whose lives have been hobbled
by failure to live up to the Churchill name. ALISON GRAHAM
Churchill's Secret will also be available on DVD at amazon.co.uk on March 7th.
