‘A warship is a microcosm of society’: how the BBC’s controversial HMS Brilliant rocked the boat

In 1995 the BBC broadcast a new kind of programme, a documentary that took a warts and all look at life on a warship. Over six hour-long episodes, HMS Brilliant followed a cast of dozens of crew members on a Type 22 frigate during a four-month tour off the Yugoslavian coast in 1994. The sailors were shown in every state, from battle stations to battered drunk on shore leave.

The result was a huge hit, which at its peak attracted 10 million viewers. (King Charles’s coronation last year, in a different television era, got 12 million.) It launched the career of its creator, Chris Terrill, who also wrote a bestselling book about his time aboard. He has become one of Britain’s preeminent documentary makers, but he made his name with Brilliant. Twenty-eight years later, following Terrill’s most recent series, The Warship: Tour of Duty, which chronicled life on HMS Queen Elizabeth, the Royal Navy’s new aircraft carrier, the BBC is re-airing the landmark 1990s series over the next three weeks. 

“Because we’re an island, the navy and the sea are part of who we are as Britons,” says Terrill. “It’s important to look back and see how things were and how things have progressed, and also to see what we liked about the past, and what we should keep and celebrate, but also what needs to change. A Royal Navy warship is a microcosm of society. It’s a little Britain.” 

The series made stars of its cast, not least Micky Goble, an affable and straight-talking Leading Seaman. We see him shepherding drunk shipmates back onboard after a night out, and then on a night out himself. In the fourth episode he gets a massage in Istanbul, a sequence that was once voted the funniest of the Nineties. 

“When Chris came aboard we didn’t really know what kind of a programme it was, so we just carried on as we normally did while he filmed around us,” says Goble. “We pretty much ignored him; we were quite rude to him at times. He broke new ground. His genius was seeing a genre of film that hadn’t been seen before. He’s an anthropologist by training and used that training to spot the right time to film and ask pertinent questions. You could have filmed that on any of the frigates or destroyers in the Navy at that time and it would have been absolutely identical. It was a programme of that time, for that time. 

“It was a life-changing event for me,” he adds. “There I was doing my job on a ship and someone comes along and films it. I’m still proud of it. At some points after it came out, the reaction from the public was almost overwhelming. Strangers would come up and talk to me and I would sign body parts in nightclubs.” He and Terrill are friends to this day. 

HMS Brilliant was controversial, too, especially its third episode, Rocking the Boat, which addressed the then-new presence of women in deployed warships. In that episode, Commander Robert – Bob – Hawkins, said that “any country that elects to send their women to sea is morally bankrupt.” The line became famous within the navy and Hawkins struggled for promotion afterwards. He died recently; Terrill, who remained close friends with him, attended his funeral. Re-watching it in 2023, Hawkins’ comments – which he stood by – are not even the most startling sequence. That goes to the ending, in which the plucky young female recruits sing a version of I Will Survive, while the braying mass of men chant “get your t–ts out for the boys.” 

Viv Leake was one of the women featured. Today she runs a pub in Derbyshire but has happy memories of the series. 

“My time in the navy was the best time in my life,” she says. “I loved it. We were one big family. There were some stick-in-the-muds who didn’t like the Wrens being there, but at the end of the day we had a job to do and got on and did it. We paved the way for the Navy of today. We made our stand and stuck in there. If I could go back 30 years, I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.” 

She says that despite his comments, Hawkins respected women. “He was a lovely man,” she says. “Regardless of what people thought, he respected women. He thought they shouldn’t be doing that job. He was one of the nicest officers and people you could meet.” 

“I’ll probably be sat on my own watching [the re-runs], because of the memories it will bring back.” 

The Navy was initially wary of being portrayed with such frankness, especially when it comes to drunken antics. The Royal Navy is unusual in still allowing sailors to drink moderately onboard – and less moderately ashore. In one sequence a man is seen carrying his paralytic mate back up the gangway. 

“The captain said he didn’t think I should use that sequence,” Terrill recalls, “but I said I would because there’s a message there – that gunner carrying his oppo up the gangway will carry the same man if he’s injured. It’s about looking after your shipmates. That’s the thing I was intrigued by – the sense of being shipmates.” 

“The programme was honest, raw and authentic. Naval PR is usually about showing everyone in smart uniforms, obeying the rules, with everything shiny and bright and nothing out of place. Certainly not revealing the extremes of naval humour. 

“They thought I’d revealed too much, but then there was a huge spike in recruitment,” he says. “Even now I meet people – commanders, captains and even commodores – saying they joined up because of HMS Brilliant. The public aren’t idiots. They know when they’re being sold an advertisement as opposed to the real deal. It’s the real deal that made people want to join up. They liked the work and the sense of purpose and duty, and loved the comradeship and togetherness.” 

For the ship’s captain, James Rapp, opening his decks to the camera crew was not without risk. “I felt I was being quite brave, but it was for the greater good,” he says. “I did experience some awkward reactions from within the Navy around the time it was shown. But I was greatly reassured by the reaction I was getting from the public.”

“I had some misgivings. But the bigger picture is that we got eight million people watching it every week, and a lot of people joined the Navy because of it. I feel happy that it was positive for the Navy overall.” 

Goble says for years afterwards, until he left the Navy, he’d find himself serving alongside people who had joined up because of the programme. “There were times I was on a wet and windy gangway at three in the morning, soaked through, and the bloke next to me would say he joined because of me,” he says. “The navy set me up for life: my thinking, my attitude. That programme is a snapshot of it: young blokes and girls working hard to get the job done.”

“I think the series will amuse people, because sailors are entertaining, open-hearted people,” Terrill says. “But there will be astonishment about how people acted and thought, particularly in relation to things like women at sea, which remains a controversial issue. We can learn from these things. This is not to say all the issues to do with equality have been answered, but we are a lot further along the road than we used to be.” 

HMS Brilliant starts Nov 7 at 10.05pm on BBC Four and will be available on BBC iPlayer