Patrick Stewart's Captain Ahab Took His Sermon From Gregory Peck, the Ahab Before Him
Once Star Trek made him famous, Patrick Stewart spent the late nineties and early 2000s in furs, crowns and whaling coats, making the television films that let a classically trained actor play the classics in front of millions. He had been here before, as King Leondegrance in Excalibur, but in 1981 he was a supporting player. By the late nineties he was the name above the title.
These films get lost between his franchise blockbusters and his stage work (his Hamlet and A Christmas Carol come up elsewhere in this issue). Two of them are as good as anything he made, and one is better than almost anyone remembers.
The ghost who wanted to rest
Start small. In The Canterville Ghost (1996), from the Oscar Wilde story, Stewart plays Sir Simon de Canterville, a ghost doomed to haunt his family hall until he is redeemed. Neve Campbell is Ginny, the American teenager who figures out he is not a monster but a man drowning in guilt. It is a family film, and it plays like one, but watch for the scene where the two of them stage a bit of Hamlet to convince her father ghosts are real, with Sir Simon as the ghost of Hamlet's father. Stewart starts it as a prank and lets it fall apart into grief. It is the best scene in the film.
Ahab, two years after Picard quoted him
In Star Trek: First Contact Picard reaches for Melville and the white whale. Not long after, Stewart was playing Ahab himself in the USA Network's two-part Moby Dick (1998), executive produced by Francis Ford Coppola and shot in Australia. The casting coup is Gregory Peck, who had played Ahab for John Huston in 1956 and here appears as Father Mapple, in what became his final screen role. Peck won a Golden Globe for it; Stewart was nominated for both an Emmy and a Golden Globe. His Ahab is less thunder than you expect, and more frightening for it.
The western you never heard of
King of Texas (2002) moves King Lear to the Republic of Texas in the 19th century, with Stewart as John Lear, a cattle baron who splits his land between his elder daughters and is thrown out by both. Marcia Gay Harden and Lauren Holly play the daughters, Roy Scheider the Gloucester figure, and David Alan Grier folds Kent and the Fool into a single character called Rip. The western setting makes Lear's question, what is an old man worth once he has given away his power, land in plain American terms, and Stewart, earning a Satellite Award nomination, plays him as a rancher first and a tragic king only when the storm comes. It won the Western Heritage Award for best television feature.
The best of them
Then the crown. The Lion in Winter (2003), directed by Andrei Konchalovsky and filmed at Spiš Castle in Slovakia, puts Stewart's Henry II at a Christmas court in 1183, fighting with his imprisoned queen and three sons over who inherits. His queen is Glenn Close as Eleanor of Aquitaine, and she won both a Golden Globe and a SAG Award for it. Stewart was nominated for a Golden Globe too, and as an executive producer he shared in the Emmy nomination for the film itself. The two of them circle each other like old boxers who still love the fight. It is the purest pleasure on this list.
A decade later he turned up in The Hollow Crown (2012), the BBC's Shakespeare histories, as John of Gaunt in the opening Richard II, directed by Rupert Goold, with Ben Whishaw winning a BAFTA as the king. It is a supporting part in one episode, and he makes it the gravest voice in the room.
Where to start tonight
If you have one evening, watch The Lion in Winter, Stewart and Close trading blows across one Christmas court. If you have a second, make it King of Texas, the one nobody talks about and the one you will want to tell people about. Save Moby Dick for a weekend, it is two long parts, and keep The Canterville Ghost for a night with the kids.
