Originally broadcast on UK TV in December 1975, this Bafta-winning adaptation of Quentin Crisp’s best-selling autobiography, The Naked Civil Servant, boasts a career-best performance by the late John Hurt as Crisp – a flamboyant south London engineer's tracer turned artist's model living an openly gay lifestyle during the intolerant pre-war years, where he proudly challenges the authorities that seek to suppress him and his kind.
Blackly comic, poignant and yet also life-affirming, this courageous story about a very unconventional British eccentric is masterfully directed by Jack Gold (Escape from Sobibor), from a screenplay by Philip Mackie (TV's Raffles), and executive produced by Doctor Who’s Verity Lambert. It also boasts some colourful turns from the likes of Shane Briant as a cross-dressing male prostitute and Patricia Hodge as an Isadora Duncan-styled ballet teacher. But kudos go to Stanley Lebor as the tragic Mr Pole.
Voted fourth in BFI’s Top 100 TV programmes of the 20th Century, The Naked Civil Servant, which gave Hurt his first Best Actor Bafta, has been restored in high-definition from the original film elements, and is out on Blu-ray and DVD from Network on June 5 2017, with the following features: • HD feature version (HD Blu-ray exclusive), restored from the original film elements and presented in its original 1:33:1 picture ratio with the ad-breaks removed • Commentary with John Hurt, director Jack Gold and executive producer Verity Lambert • Seven Men: Quentin Crisp – a Granada profile from 1971 • Mavis Catches Up with Quentin Crisp: an interview from 1989 • Image gallery • Philip Mackie’s original script (PDF)
