Tenko

Tenko is a television drama, co-produced by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) and the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). A total of thirty one-hour episodes were produced between 1981 and 1984, followed by a telemovie, Tenko Reunion, in 1985.

Tenko Reunion

In 1985, a telemovie, Tenko Reunion, was produced. It picked up a story thread from the final episode of the series, in which the surviving prisoners of war, on the eve of their repatriation from Singapore, had made a promise to reunite five years later, at Raffles Hotel - a fixture in their pre-war lives, which also served as a repatriation centre during the liberation of Singapore.

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Tenko Reunion featured Marion Jefferson (Ann Bell) now divorced from Clifford; Dr Beatrice Mason (Stephanie Cole) and Christina Campbell (Emily Bolton) now working in a community centre in Singapore, Dominica Forster-Brown (Elizabeth Chalmers), the now happily re-married Mrs Van Meyer, nurse and now doctor-in-training Kate Norris (Clare Oberman), young Alice Courtney (Cindy Shelley) and working class girls Dorothy Bennett (Veronica Roberts) and Maggie Carter (Elizabeth Mickery), now a successful businesswoman and married mother of two, respectively.

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The reunion examined how each of their lives had changed, and how life in Singapore was also changing. In a dramatic twist, the women are held at gunpoint at the planatation of estate of Domenica Forster-Brown - after one among them passes information that there is a cache of guns on the estate to a band of local communist rebels.

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It featured Teddy Forster-Brown (Robert Lang), Christina Campbell's boyfriend, Lau Pend (Swee Hoe Lim) and a young doctor who catches Kate Norris's eye, Duncan Fraser (Christian Rodska).

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The major twist of the Tenko Reunion was the revelation of which among the women had betrayed them to the communist rebels. The spy was revealed to be Christina Campbell, whose difficulty adjusting after life in the camps had been developed in detail in the third series.

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Christina's experience with racism - from Sylvia Ashburson's "Raj"-style disdain for her in the first series, to the difficulties of being caught between the British establishment in Singapore, and her Chinese appearance, had stoked the fires of rebellion in her. She secretly worked for the rebels, hoping to trigger independence for Singapore on their terms.

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The series concluded at a subsequent reunion, this one at Christmas, at Marion's home in London, attended by Dominica, Alice, Jake, Stephen, Bea, Marion, Maggie, and Dorothy, with brief glimpses of Kate, Ulrica, and Duncan serving Christmas dinner to the poor at the community centre in Singapore, and Christina - alone and unrepentant - in her prison cell.

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