Popski's Army

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 462, 30 April 1948, Page 12

Popski's Army

SUFFERING as I was from a bad case of Listeners’ Lassitude last Sunday night (from having my radio tuned in from power-cut onwards), the BBC programme Popski’s Private Army roused me like a reveille. For this was an inspiring subject for the BBC’s inspired talent for documentation. Vladimir Peniakov himself is as romantic a figure as was ever granted to radio scriptwriter-as mysterious as Lawrence and as single-mind-ed as Dinos Vawr. Seemingly anachronistic in the middle of a highly mechanised modern war, Popski and his Private Army might have sprung fully armed frém the brain of a Hollywood ideaee and subsequently seen the light of a million screens under the direction of Franz Lang or another of his calibre (Mr. Gary Cooper as Popski, of course), But Popski’s Private Army is fact, not fiction. The BBC production has neither touched-up nor played down its material, — but by careful selection, cunning narre-‘ tion, and flashes of directoral brilliance} (the Italian sentry’s singing of Santa Lucia in the silence preceding the attack) the producer has contrived a programme as dashing as its subject. My only regret was that the action ended so abruptly, in the middle of Popski’s drive through Venice after the liberation of Italy. What has since been the lot of Major Vladimir Peniakov? Artistically it was fitting for the programme to end where it did, but I for one would have welcomed an historic footnote bringing our information up to 1948.