Mark Cunliffe 🇵🇸’s review published on Letterboxd:
Written by Roy Minton and directed by Alan Clarke, Horace is a 1972 TV play that tells the story of a man with learning difficulties and diabetes who is befriended by an unruly adolescent boy who longs for his mac to be a magic cape that will keep him out of trouble.
A bit like Garage, which I reviewed yesterday, the film explores each character's desire for friendship in a manner which slowly signposts just how ill fated it will be. Clarke and Minton initially fool us by keeping things light overall (topped off with a typically children's TV sounding '70s jaunty guitar score) but the bittersweet air becomes increasingly more palpable and the story inevitably turns overwhelmingly sad and poignant. This development and the circumstances of it are perhaps best prefigured in the scene in which Horace finds a mole above ground on the moors during daylight and has to persuade his young friend to leave it their, explaining that it can't be tamed and needs to be free, rather than caged up.
Barry Jackson delivers a very strong and authentic performance in the title role and he would be reunited with Minton in the early '80s for a spin-off six part TV series entitled Horace, an episode of which can be viewed on YouTube
