Producer: Mick Jackson.

Cast: Jeff Goldblum (Jim Watson); Tim Pigott-Smith (Francis Crick); Alan Howard (Maurice Wilkins); Juliet Stevenson (Rosalind Franklin).

Approx. 105 minutes | In colour | PAL

This dramatised account of the discovery of DNA's structure was first broadcast by the BBC on 27 April 1987. It was released shortly afterwards in the USA with the title 'The race for the double helix'.

Taking its cue from Watson's personal memoir, 'The Double Helix', the drama starts in 1951, when the 23-year-old Watson attended a conference in Naples. There Maurice Wilkins of King's College, London, showed an X-ray diffraction photograph of DNA which reportedly stimulated Watson's interest in X-ray crystallography.

The story follows Watson to England, where he teamed up with Francis Crick at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. Practical studies using X-ray diffraction took place at King's in London, however. Although Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins found it difficult to work together, with PhD student Ray Gosling, Franklin obtained some spectacular photographs of both the A and B forms of DNA. She concentrated most of her energies on a painstaking mathematical analysis of the A form pictures. Unknown to Franklin, Watson was shown a photo of the B form by Wilkins [precise data from the London group was also handed to the Cambridge team by Max Perutz in February 1953].

Prompted by fears that American chemist Linus Pauling was closing in on a solution, Watson and Crick were given the 'green light' to try to solve the structure by the head of the Cavendish, Sir Lawrence Bragg. Bragg was keen not to be beaten over the DNA structure as he had been with the alpha-helix of proteins. Fortunately, Pauling's proposed DNA triple helix was clearly wrong and the duo gained a few valuable weeks.

By the first week of March 1953, Watson and Crick had won the 'race' and announced it to bemused drinkers in 'The Eagle' pub. The film ends with a somewhat overdramatic finalé as Watson and Crick's metal plate and retort stand model appears to rotate to celestial music.

CRICK'S COMMENTS ON THE FILM

Francis Crick devoted the best part of a chapter in his book 'What mad pursuit' to the BBC production. Although several incidents had been shifted in time and space to enhance the drama, Crick considered it to be a reasonably accurate account and a success. He thought that the sympathetic portrayal of Rosalind Franklin in particular was well-observed, although the scriptwriter had put careless words into her mouth that she, in his opinion, would not have said (Crick and his wife Odile came to know Rosalind quite well before her death). Goldblum's gum-chewing portrayal of Jim, however, Crick thought too manic (Jim Watson had refused to co-operate with the BBC over the production, saying that the film would be too dull. Perhaps this partly explains why Watson, a left-hander, is portrayed as right-handed by Goldblum).

In one scene, though, Watson was underplayed. He was asked, at a fancy-dress ('tarts and vicars') party, whether he was a real clergyman. In the film, Goldblum is mute, but in real life, Crick recalls, Watson replied that he was and sustained a half-hour long conversation with his young American questioner. Crick recounts her annoyance when she eventually discovered that Watson was not a priest at all.

WHERE CAN I BUY A RECORDING?

A VHS video recording of the programme was sold from 14 September 1994. Although this is no longer generally available, a tape can be obtained for bona fide educational or business use from BBC Worldwide (search for 'Lifestory'). Please note that this recording is very expensive -- the most recent price from the BBC is almost GBP 500! (August 2004).

FOOTNOTES

In November 2002, 'Life Story' won the European Midas prize for the best TV drama on a scientific subject made in the last 50 years.

The DNA model (a reconstruction of Watson and Crick's original) made for the film by Claudio Villa was reportedly stolen piece-by-piece by souvenir collectors at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in which it came to be housed.

Readers may be disappointed to learn that, contrary to rumour, the 'Hogwarts Express' was not used by the BBC in this film; the train used runs on 'The Bluebell Line' in Southern England.

Copyright © National Centre for Biotechnology Education, 2006 | www.ncbe.reading.ac.uk