The 39 Steps Lead to Complaints

It formed part of the BBC’s festive hits, however the remake of classic tale ‘The 39 Steps’ has been met with a backlash of complaints from keen-eyed viewers.

A highlight of the Christmas schedule the programme has been branded a disappointment due to the production team’s lackluster commitment to historic accuracy.

While many may have enjoyed the piece as pure drama, many viewers felt let down by the sheer number of historical errors contained within the scenes. The most notable was the final segment, which the BBC had used in its festive promotions, in which actor Rupert Penry-Jones was chased across moorland by a biplane.

This would have been factually fine, however the BBC decided to add some further drama to the proceedings by having the plane fire rounds at the character of Richard Hannay from a set of twin machine guns attached to said plane.

The piece is set just before the start of the First World War, in June 1914, and at the time no biplane had been fitted successfully with such guns; all previous attempts had seen the bullets shoot off the propellers.

Other gaffs noted by viewers include a 1920s Art Deco style building featuring, a set of 1950s railway carriages – baring the non-existent, until 1948, British Railways branding, a 1927 steam train and Wosley car, a 1924 Morris Oxford car and a submarine surfacing in a loch rather than the sea.

Nearly 30 viewers contacted the BBC to complain about the ‘shoddy quality of the historic references’ within the programme.

The BBC’s Points Of View website noted a comment from one disgruntled viewer:

“The plane had a machine gun, the train was from the wrong company, the submarine seemed to come up in a freshwater loch.”

While another stated the show had: “Very poor historical research.” Adding: “The cars appear to be postwar.”

Fans of The 39 Steps were also unhappy about the show being ‘nothing much like the book’ especially disappointed by the beeb’s ‘meddling’ with the story to add a female spy to the proceedings.

Its reported the cars were sourced from a later era deliberately due to the versions from 1914 not being ‘fast enough’ for producers who wanted a ‘dramatic’ car chase.