Absalom and Achitophel advice of the double agent Hushai over the good advice of Achitophel. Achitophel, realising that the rebellion is doomed to failure, goes home and hangs himself. Absalom is killed (against David's explicit commands) after getting caught by his hair in the thick branches of a great oak tree: "His head caught fast in the oak, and he was left hanging between heaven and earth, while the mule that was under him went on" (NRSV 2 Sam. 18:9). The death of his son, Absalom, causes David enormous personal grief. A second allegory in the poem, beginning on line 425, is the
Caught on a Train Television Award and other plaudits in 1980. Having previously been available on VHS, the play was released on DVD by BBC Worldwide in 2004, with an audio commentary by Poliakoff and the producer, Kenith Trodd. Caught on a Train Caught on a Train is a critically successful British television play written by Stephen Poliakoff and directed by Peter Duffell, based on an overnight train journey across Europe, and following the route of a journey that Poliakoff had himself made from London to Vienna. It was first shown, on BBC2, on 31 October 1980, and was re-shown in 2001 and 2006.