A moving BBC drama reunites the Busby Babes
Jack O'Connell stars as a young Bobby Charlton in United, BBC Two's new one-off drama about the Manchester United side of 1958. Olly Grant reports.
Jack O’Connell is thinking about football: the adrenaline surge of the through-ball, the intoxicating charge towards goal. “Sometimes, on set, I motivate myself with it,” he says, recalling the thrill of hearing his dad cheer him on as a youngster. “Every time I went one-on-one with the keeper, he’d be going, ‘Go’ooon, Jack!’ ” He smiles. “It’ll never leave me.”
O’Connell, 20, has footballer written through him like a stick of rock. He grew up wanting to be one. He had trials with Derby County as a child. His grandfather, Ken Gutteridge, actually was a pro, and later a manager. All of which bodes well for a new BBC drama, United. O’Connell plays Bobby Charlton, a man who knew a bit about goal scoring himself.
Told largely from Charlton’s perspective, the film retraces the events of the 1958 Munich air crash, when 23 passengers, including eight members of Manchester United’s “Busby Babes” squad, were killed as they returned from a European Cup game in Belgrade.
It’s a powerful, moving film, less about football than the tragedy of young life cut short, the arbitrary cruelty of disaster. Co-starring David Tennant and Dougray Scott (as coach Jimmy Murphy and manager Sir Matt Busby), it also explores the painful “what ifs” that pepper the Munich saga. What if the Football League had delayed the team’s next fixture, giving them longer to return home? What if the plane hadn’t refuelled in snowy Munich? What if the flight had been abandoned before the third takeoff attempt, when the wheels hit slush and prevented lift-off? What if chance had taken another course? “Why us?” Charlton asks in the film. “Why did we survive?”
In fact Charlton’s survival probably hinged on his seating position. After the second failed take-off, some players moved to the back, believing it to be safer. It wasn’t. After careering off the runway the aircraft struck a nearby house, tearing off the wing and part of its tail, which caught fire. Charlton, sitting next to Dennis Viollet, remained further up. They were blasted out of the aircraft onto the snow. (The film opens with a shot of them unconscious on the ground.) Coincidentally, O’Connell’s grandfather knew Viollet, who also survived. “They were pals,” he says proudly. “I’ve got a T-shirt from him, that Viollet passed on to my granddad.”
O’Connell wasn’t able to meet Charlton but spent hours watching YouTube footage of him. “His body language told me a lot,” he says. Like what? “That he was very humble. Not eccentric. Warm. That’s what the accounts of him were. That he was a nice man to be around.”
At Tottenham’s training ground, Spurs manager Harry Redknapp also gave him an insight into the rawness of Busby-era football, recounting tales of men who “broke necks” but carried on playing. “He said, ‘That was what it was about. If you stayed down, the other geezer won. Some of these [indicating the Spurs players], they break a toenail and they want to come off…’ ” He laughs heartily.
Looking back, O’Connell is glad that niggling injuries scotched his own footballing aspirations. “If I had made it as a professional, I’d be an absolute ----head,” he says frankly. “I’d take it all for granted. I’m glad I had time to learn my lessons and mature before I started doing well.”
For those who have watched O’Connell develop, that growing maturity is one of the most exciting things about him. He is best known for playing Jack-the-Lads: a scamp in This Is England, self-destructive Cook in Skins. But if you were lucky enough to catch him in last year’s Dominic Savage drama, Dive (he played a teen dad), you’ll have seen something else. He was a revelation; nuanced, understated, wise beyond his years. Perhaps, in fairness, others had already noticed it. Michael Caine shouted “star of the future!” at him when they shared a scene in 2009 film Harry Brown.
O’Connell ascribes his new focus, in part, to a personal tragedy. In 2008, while filming Dive, he watched his 57-year-old father succumb to cancer. “Pancreatic cancer,” he says, “so it was very rapid.” He pauses. “It’s weird how it works. It’s not quick enough, but then sometimes it’s too quick.” The worst part of it was that his dad “didn’t get a chance to retire.” So what he feels now, two years on, is a mixture of anger (“though I’ve no one to blame, so I just deal with it”) and drive – the latter through necessity. “Mine is the only income coming into the house, because of what happened. My mum had to stop working. I’ve got a little sister. My money is very important to the upkeep of our house now.” Success? It means something else. “One day my ambition is to put my mum under the sun somewhere, where she lives life with no worries, eats fine food all the time,” he smiles. “That literally is the centre of my ambition.”
If his performance in United is anything to go by, that day shouldn’t be long arriving. He knows it, really. “I’m in this lucky position where I can still make my dad proud,” he muses. “People used to tell me that through the thick of it: he’s still going to be proud of you, no matter what. I mean, I don’t believe in an afterlife. But I can just imagine his face, hearing that I got Bobby Charlton. And suddenly I’m hearing that “Go’ooon, Jack!” again. Bless him.”
'United' is on Sunday 24 April on BBC Two at 9.00pm
Telegraph