TV Drama: Number 10 (Bloodline)

 

Number 10 was a 1983 British television series that aired on ITV and followed the life of a different Prime Minister in each of its seven episodes.

‘Bloodline’ followed the career of William Pitt the Younger who was the youngest PM in history when he took office aged 24 in 1783.

In this clip we meet William as a boy. He is considered to be of delicate health and so is not sent to school but tutored at home. His father (played by Alfred Burke, who we met as the headmaster in Home to Roost) decides the boy must experience the harshness of a flogging although he has done nothing to deserve one. He instructs a reluctant Errington, who (presumably) is a prefect at the elite public school Winchester, to cane William.

He taps the cane across the boy’s bottom.

The father is unimpressed, “That would scarcely bruise a flea ... Harder!”

All very odd.

Although now largely forgotten, the series is available on DVD.

Picture and video credits: Yorkshire Television.

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Comments

  1. If it's in the stables shouldn't it be a riding crop?

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