Rent The Last Post (2017)

Excellent series - The Last Post review by MI

Captures the last days of Aden superbly. A little known corner of history beautifully explored. Shame there wasn’t a second season.

Watchable 6-Part 2017 TV Drama about Port City of Aden, British until 1967 - The Last Post review by PV

This is a watchable drama with strengths and weaknesses.

First, the history. Aden is a port city in Yemen which the British had visited since 1609. The Ottoman empire ruled Yemen then and the tribes who lived in and ran the port city did not want to be ruled by them or the imams/Sultans who replaced them. The British signed a treaty in 1802 and the Aden Peninsula was ceded to Britain in 1838. In 1839, Royal Marines landed at Aden to secure the territory and stop attacks by pirates against British shipping to India. The position of Aden mattered and matters, as with the recent Yemeni attacks on ships by the Houthi - the Red Sea is a shipping route to the Suez Canal. Aden was part of British India until 1937, then became a Crown Colony for 30 years. The British created the State of Aden post WWII to prepare it for independence. Remember, the British gave away their empire, did not fight for it like the French for example in Algeria or Viet Nam. In 1964, Britain announced its intention to grant independence to the FSA in 1968, but that the British military would remain in Aden.

Despite this, there were brutal terrorist attacks by the NLF who were communists - in the Cold War - allied with USSR, which is never mentioned in this drama which rather sympathises too much with them. They socalled Aden emergency when these terrorists massacred scores of British soldiers in ambushes meant the UK evacuated women and children, all military families. No need for it, as the Brits had planned to leave in 1968 and grant independence - just revenge, racist maybe, anti-White maybe anti-Christian. Yemen also used to have a population of Jews - not any more. Like most countries in the region, the Jews were attacked and expelled from their ancient homelands.

To judge an empire, just look what came before and after it. Well, look at Aden and Yemen now... Civil war, Islamists trying to make it an Islamic state, tens of thousands dead, chaos...

Honestly, only the BBC and British TV could make a TV drama which blames the British for everything. Sadly, this is the perpetual pose of those desperate to be seen as liberal and progressive, and it is woefully misguided.

But as a drama it works, but is overlong, with way too much time dedicated to some rather irritating wives on the base and issues with babies and romances. Expected from TV drama these days of course. But rather eye-rollingly irritating and dare I say it, boring.

Tom Glynn-Carney is excellent as Armstrong though the relationship shown is beyond unlikely, as is the female photojournalist WHO NEVER EXISTED. TV dramas and films always do that these days, make up female characters and parachute them into real stories. I find that morally wrong really, with true stories, as they did with the Kim Philby ITV drama recently. With fiction, well, inventing a female character for the new Name of the Rose made it woke and metoo pc BUT the initial film without her is way superior.

Filmed in South Africa, and the short BONUS films are interesting. It all looks authentically sandy and hot, with the usual desert moonscapes (well Yemen is next door to Saudi Arabia). Enjoyable to a point.

3.5 stars rounded up. I dare say a version made now would be even more pc and woke, so...