Episode 1:  Original Airdate June 4, 1988

Episode 2:  Original Airdate June 11, 1988

Episode 1:  Original Airdate June 18, 1988

Episode 1:  Original Airdate June 25, 1988

The One Game

Fantasy Flashback

by Jane Killick

Episode One

The sewers.  Magnus, shabbily dressed and soaking wet, sits down among the rats and carefully picks up one of the creatures.  He wraps himself in a blanket and walks to a large empty country house.  He feeds the dogs and eats some of their dog food before sitting in front of the television with a bottle of wine.  The guest on a tv chat show is Nicholas Thorne, "a man who's made big bucks out of the games people play".  Magnus throws the bottle of wine at the screen which explodes in a shower of sparks.

Nick Thorne is a maverick young millionaire who got lucky marketing games.  He wears jeans and an open-necked shirt to his high-tech office while his business associates are in suits.  His life is punctuated with occasional flashbacks of a woman's hand reaching from a lake, as in the Arthurian legend.  

Magnus hires a smart-talking computer hacker to tap into Nick's business, Sorcerer.  The hacker steals £2.1 million for him, then pulls a knife on Magnus.  Magnus pushes the hacker out of the window, killing him.  Magnus dumps the body in the canal and tosses the knife into water, like Excaliber.

A package labelled 'game no 1' has arrived at Nick's home.  Inside is a computer disk with a simple puzzle, which has to be solved 'initially'.  His girlfriend, Fay, tells him to take the initial letters from each word to find the message 'shopwise precinct at nine'.  At the precinct, Nick sees his ex-wife, Jenny, bundled into a taxi and driven off by a couple of men.  Another package is dropped behind the taxi and reads, 'The One Game instructions for player'.

The package contains a video tape of Magnus recorded in Nick's office.  For the first time in the episode, Magus speaks:  "We've got a new game to play, you and I.  It's called The One Game, the reality game that really works.  And we're going to play it.  In fact, we've already started, haven't we?"

Episode Two

The 'One Game' is the ultimate game that takes part in real life where anyone might be a player or an innocent bystander.  You could be playing it every minute of the day and not know it.

The video tape tells Nick to 'start at the beginning' and he returns to the dilapidated shop where his business first started.  Inside are memories of idyllic times when he, Magnus and Jenny ran the business together, and of a visit to a lake with Magnus and a mysterious woman in a white dress.  Outside, a motorcyclist is waiting for him.  It leads him to a warehouse where he finds a parcel marked 'game no 2'.

Nick's Financial Director, Tom, has taken it upon himself to try to save the business.  He approaches Lord Maine, a business rival with a grudge against Nick and a passion for Civil War re-enactment.  They arrange a deal to bail out the company.

Game no 2 is a jigsaw map which leads Nick to a bus stop where a bus driver leaves a parcel for the nearby village.  Nick carries it to the village which appears to be deserted until a machine gun fires at him.  He runs into an abandoned house for shelter and the parcel he is holding falls apart.  Inside is a gun which he handles like an amateur.  Venturing outside again he meets a man who's been shot in the arm.  Together they escape and Nick gives him a lift.  As the man says goodbye, he rips off his false sleeve with fake blood on it and thrusts Game no 3 at him.

The third game is a type of jigsaw which Fay helps him unravel.  It spells the name of a pub, 'The George and Dragon'.  A gang of motorcyclists at the pub force Nick into the woods.  He takes a lance and motorbike provided for him and they joust in a medieval-style fight on bikes.  Nick knocks off his opponent who turns out to be Magnus.  Magnus tells him the game is all about "remembering".

Episode Three

Tom returns to Lord Maine to see if he is ready to bail out the company.  Instead, Maine has betrayed Tom and instigated a take-over.

Nick takes Fay into his office.  He tells her of how he saved the company when Magnus drove them near bankruptcy with his obscure ideas for games.  Nick had to shut out Magnus and bring in the money men.  As they talk, another puzzle appears on the office computer screens.  It is a line of obscure symbols which when cut down the middle are the numbers 1-7.  Nick completes the puzzle with number 88 and the computer displays the picture of the church where he married Jenny on 8/8/1980.  This moment alienated Magnus from the previously triangular relationship.

While Nick goes to the church, Fay goes to the warehouse.  There she meets Magnus and it is clear she has always been on his side.

A box is put in Nick's car while he is inside the church, but he decides not to play by the rules any more and goes looking for clues at Jenny's flat.  He walks in and is jumped on by Jenny's boyfriend Gavin.  Together they go to Magnus's old mansion to find Jenny.  Everyone has left apart from the dogs.  One rushes at Gavin and pushes him over the upstairs banister.  Nick is powerless to stop it and has a flashback of trying to rescue a woman who fell in the lake.  He panics as she sinks into the water, reaching her hand into the air like the Arthurian Lady of the Lake.  Magnus jumps in to save her, but the woman is dead.  Back in the present, Gavin is also dead.

Nick breaks open the box and finds a card:  'Game no 5 -- her place or mine?' and realizes he has been playing the game despite trying to avoid it.  On the other side of the card is an invitation to a medieval banquet.  It is being held in a castle where a woman who looks like Jenny needs a champion to free her.  Nick takes the offer of a sword and fights a knight in shining armour.  He loses and is dragged off to the dungeons.  He calls to Jenny as they lead him away and the woman takes off her blond wig -- it is Fay.

Episode Four

Nick is released from the dungeons and is forced to watch his friends answer Magnus's questions about him behind a one-way mirror.  Only Jenny defends him.  When they have gone, Nick escapes by covering his head and hands with his coat and smashing through the glass.  He finds game no 6, a puzzle which leads him back to their first shop.  As he drives away, a car with Jenny in the back passes by him.  He chases it until it crashes, bursting into flames.  He tries to get Jenny out but the flames are too hot.  Then he sees it is a wax model of Jenny which melts in the head of the flames.

Nick returns to the office to collect the keys to the shop and stumbles in on a board meeting where Lord Maine is instigating a take-over bid.  Nick impresses no one with his half-crazed rantings about the games and the take-over goes through.  Nick finds an 'end game' package where he usually keeps the keys.  It is a video in which Magnus tells him where to find Jenny.

Nick collects Jenny and they go looking for answers at an asylum where Magnus had spent the previous years.  The doctor confirms that he was mad, and says he committed suicide seven months ago.

Thinking the game is over, Nick takes Jenny back to his house.  In the bathroom Nick finds Fay's towel and swimming band and realizes it's not finished.  He rushes to the swimming pool and sees Fay standing on the top diving board with lead weights trapped to her body.  She nods at Magnus, jumps into the pool and sinks to the bottom.  Nick screams at Magnus that he can't do anything, just as he couldn't do anything on the lake.  Nick eventually jumps in.  He swims underwater among river weed towards the lady of the lake.  He struggles and brings her to the surface.  Magnus thanks Nick for rescuing his daughter and says he had to put her at risk to allow Nick to pay the debt he owed him.

Nick returns to the lake with Jenny.  He tells her the woman who drowned all those years ago had been someone special for Magnus and although they never mentioned it, it was always between them.  Nick pledges to start again and there is a suggestion this means with Jenny.  As they walk away, three men who played the One Game watch them from the trees.

Background

The One Game appeared on British tv in the late Eighties when Fantasy and Science Fiction were scarcely seen.  It combined rich atmosphere, flashbacks, unusual dreams, medieval imagery and the cut-throat world of hi-tech business.  It was a delicate balance the producers worked hard to achieve.  "We broke down barriers between straight forward thrillers and surreal fantasies," said Producer Deirdre Keir at the time.  "We had to make sure everything that happens in The One Game could occur in real life.  We wanted to ensure that we didn't slip off into something like Star Wars."

It is a complex story, with each move taking Nick further into the game and reminding him more of his past.  It was written by John Brown who injected glimpses of the Arthurian legend.

"I had in mind that Nick was King Arthur and Magnus was Merlin the Magician," he explained.  "On this level the action of The One Game shows what would happen if Arthur said to Merlin after he'd helped set up the Kingdom, 'Get lost.  I don't need you any more.'  In The One Game Nick gets rid of Magnus once the games company is established.  That's why I called Nick or Arthur's wife Jenny or Guinevere.  Fay is Morgan Le Fay and Jenny's boyfriend is Gavin or Sir Gawain."

Central to the story is the enigmatic figure of Magnus played with menace and mystery by Patrick Malahide.  His first scene was filmed in a disused glass furnace where all the crew had to have tetanus injections because of the rats.  "There were shards and splinters of glass everywhere but I had to be barefooted," Patrick said shortly after filming.  "The rats weren't too keen on the cold.  When I sat on the floor of the tunnel they clustered round me to keep warm."

The tense and mystical atmosphere of the series is heightened by the theme song and incidental music sung in Patagonian Welsh.  Composer Nigel Hess chose the ancient Celtic language to reflect the Arthurian theme.  It was released a single, but was difficult to get hold of.  The One Game was filmed for Central TV in winter 1987/1988 with most of the crew righting off a bout of flu.  They had a three day break for Christmas which most of them spent being ill in preparation for returning to work.  It was shown on ITV 4th-25th June 1988 and was claimed to have invented a new genre of the 'Fantasy thriller'.  Despite engaging characters, intriguing mystery, brooding atmosphere and the undercurrent of English legend, The One Game wasn't quite the success it deserved to be and sadly the Fantasy thriller became a forgotten tv genre.