The Shooting Party

If you are a devotee of BBC Edwardian dramas then this unassuming little film based not on Anton Chekov's 1884 novel of the same name but rather Isabel Colegate's 1980 novel "The Shooting Party" about a group of upper class types gathering for a weekend of game shooting at the estate of Sir Randolph Nettleby (James Mason in a role originally intended for Paul Scofield, who broke his leg in an accident on the first day of filming), will be your thing.

Although notable as Mason’s final film and a fine swan song it is (substantially because he plays the benign face of the aristocracy) it has a first class ensemble cast of British character actors including Edward Fox, Gordon Jackson, Sir John Geilgud and Robert Hardy and provides an elegant portrait of the manners and mores of a world about to disappear forever beneath the gathering storms of World War I. .

FYI: The manor used for the main location was Knebworth House near Stevenage in the English county of Hertfordshire. 

 

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