Sorry that this is posted a little late but Film4 showed 'Comrades' at 12.20am on March 20th 2009, complete with advertisements unfortunately.

The announcer said "now for a rare screening of a British epic", too right, I estimate it hasn't been on TV for 20 years.

They do tend to show films more than once so it might be repeated in the next few weeks, probably in a graveyard slot again.

Not sure if I enjoyed it as much as the first time around but the location filming and Dorset landscapes are stunning.

Seeing as they released the Bill Douglas 'Trilogy' on DVD last year perhaps a release for this overlooked epic is in the pipeline?

This opens with someone getting brained by a militia man but if you`re expecting a Steven Segal action fest ( And what Steven Segal movie hasn`t opened with someone getting killed by a militia man ? ) you`re going to be bitterly disappointed since COMRADES is a movie documenting in fine detail the story of the Tolpuddle martyrs , a group of labourers from 19th Century England who were deported to Australia because they committed the crime of starting a trade union

The Tolpuddle martyrs are folk heroes in the modern British labour movement. If you`re only vaguely aware of who they were or have a passing interest in how things were in 19th century Britain but want to know what things were like in a pre Marxist era then you could do a lot worse than watch this movie . However there is a problem and that`s just like ZULU DAWN it works far better as a history lesson than as a movie which means history students will rate this movie far more than prolific cinema goers which explains why 40% of the voters have given COMRADES ten out of ten while the IMDB regular voters have only given it an average of 4.6 out of 10

There is something very memorable about this movie and unfortunately I don`t think it`s a good thing with Scottish actor Alex Norton playing multiple roles throughout the narrative and it wasn`t until he appears in about his fourth role that I realised he was playing different characters . This was highly confusing to me since I thought he was playing the same role previously . Norton later plays a labour boss in Australia overseeing a work detail and in a highly disgusting scene goes into a hut and gets a dog to perform oral sex on him . It`s all done in a rather disciplined way with the camera locked onto Norton`s face as he gasps " good boy " but it still doesn`t make the scene any less shocking and I guess it brings a whole new context to the phrase " Give the dog a bone "