Product Tag - John Hallam

Wings is a drama series about the Royal Flying Corps that ran on BBC television from 1977 to 1978. It stars Tim Woodward as Alan Farmer, a young blacksmith turned fighter pilot in World War I.

Nicholas Jones played his teacher and mentor, Captain Triggers, and Michael Cochrane played his upper-class friend, Charles Gaylion, who began a relationship with Farmer’s girlfriend while Farmer was believed dead, shot down over France.

The series reveals that the British pilots are struggling with aeroplanes which are both unreliable and inferior to the German machines, and with an Establishment that classes voicing an opinion to that effect as being tantamount to cowardice. The airmen must also face the resentment of British soldiers who see them having an ‘easy’ life. It highlights the rigidity of the British class structure when Farmer becomes an officer in the second series – he faces resentment both from some COs because of his class and NCOs because of his new rank. As an officer with a working-class background he is neither fish nor fowl – the fact that he has risen on merit never seems to cross most characters’ minds. The series takes great care with historical accuracy, covering the early days of the parachute, the fitting of weaponry to British biplanes and the horrors of trench warfare. Wings depicts a Britain that is, in some areas, struggling to adapt in the face of change, at a period that was a turning point for many people’s way of life.