BBC One: Decline and Fall

[eighthobstruction]

....same sort of train crash as the Blandings effort a while back....i.e codswallop....poor direction/direction....even John Suchet floundering for a character to play....cartoons really....poor beyond belief....no basic understanding of Waugh's intention....nor of our expectation....

[kernelbogey]

I'n delighted that some found it worth watching. Sorry, but I am not giving ground on this: Waugh's irony, satire is all the more telling because it is NOT pantomime, but set up as if normal happenings YOU are at liberty to judge. This TV serial TOLD you how to react in every shot. It bullied you, smacked you in the face with OTT in overdrive.

And I am still steaming over the AGE of the pupils: that was NOT a prep school, which instantly changes the whole balance of those episodes and lost the subtlety of kids on the edge of knowing into in yer face adolescent posing - a trick Alan Bennett pulled off with far greater subtle aplomb and humour than here.

I'm relieved that my 14 minutes was enough to recognise what others who persisted have written. Caricature, pantomime, dumbing down etc all there.

For those who don't know Waugh I would tentatively recommend Sword of Honour, his condensation of three earlier discrete novels based on his WWII experiences as a serving officer. I think there were some casually racist obiter dicta at which I winced on my recent re-reading (after about 40 years). But if one can overlook (if not forgive) that, it does provide an intimate picture of how war was for the ordinary serving officer. The irony and humour are often pin-sharp, but overall I found it something of a period piece frozen in time - not just the subject, but the social attitudes and snobbery, for which Waugh is famed personally as much as he is as a writer.

Scoop is a period piece too, founded on one central joke of a newspaper sending the wrong chap to report on an African war. Plenty of scope, therefore, for casual thoughtless racism, which jars in today's world. There are two or three other extended comic pieces, but I almost didn't want it on my shelves any longer (and it will soon go to a charity shop... or somewhere. )

[ardcarp]

Scoop is a period piece too, founded on one central joke of a newspaper sending the wrong chap to report on an African war. Plenty of scope, therefore, for casual thoughtless racism, which jars in today's world.

There was IIRC a quite good Radio4 play [or was it a serialisation?] based on Scoop. Must be some years ago.

Late Ed.

Scoop was a Classic Serial and is still up there on the BBC website:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00hhflv

...but sadly no longer available.

[gurnemanz]

I can understand some people not liking it but I greatly enjoyed it on its own terms ... it was meant to be fun. The Guardian dscribed it as "companion" to the novel. Obviously, if you want the novel, read the novel. Just been reading the Observer, which found it "superb". I will stick with it. I read somewhere that each episode will be different in tone.

[muzzer]

This was fine as tv but far from subtle. Nor funny.

[Richard Tarleton]

I can understand some people not liking it but I greatly enjoyed it on its own terms ... it was meant to be fun. The Guardian dscribed it as "companion" to the novel. Obviously, if you want the novel, read the novel. Just been reading the Observer, which found it "superb". I will stick with it. I read somewhere that each episode will be different in tone.

Thanks gurnemanz - I've been keeping a low profile since so many people including my fellow hosts gave Episode 1 such a a good kicking .... Whoever does the adaptation, whether it be a Tom Stoppard, an Andrew Davies, whoever - it immediately becomes something else - like it or loathe it. Mention is made above of The History Boys (and yes, the transition from prep to public school is questionable) - but that is what it is, it's a play/film.

At the risk of stating the bleedin' obvious, it's worth reflecting what a TV adaptation involves. Whoever writes it, you're jettisoning the bulk of the prose (narrative, description), and handing over to the casting director (who chooses what your beloved characters look like), location manager, director, cameraman. All you're left with is action and dialogue (altered or not), and a fraction of the original dialogue at that (War and Peace in 6 hours, anybody?). Large parts of Waugh's biting humour is in the descriptive or narrative passages. Thinking of Scoop - referred to above - a hysterical passage early on is when we are told William's sister Priscilla altered his wildlife column on the badger, substituting "great-crested grebe" for "badger" before it goes off to press. This is told in narrative - do you dramatise this or leave it out? It's a different art form.

In reply to muzzer - well, I found it funny. There was some inspired direction, and laugh-out-loud (at least in my house) gags - I think of the village band piling into the tiny tent, the hammer-throwing contest - only a second or two of screen time in each case, but brilliant visual gags, the latter on a level of surreality with cleft sticks. I thought the acting (Fagan, Grimes, Prendy, Philbrick) did justice to the originals.

I sense we're not going to agree , but I'll be sticking with it. It could of course go downhill from here.

[DracoM]

How close are broadsheet critics to adapters / producers / writers on TV?

[gradus]

To my mind the dramatization was extremely funny, well cast and well directed. I am impatient for the next episode.

[Richard Tarleton]

How close are broadsheet critics to adapters / producers / writers on TV?

Well - since the death of the great AA Gill (in whose case the answer would have been "not at all", but what he would have made of it we'll sadly never know) the Sunday Times has been rotating its TV critics, so a job for said adapters etc to know who to be close to. Louis Wise (Asst Culture Editor) today says "As a Waugh fan, I was sceptical, but I have to say the cast are doing well so far, and many of the author's lines remain as funny on the screen as on the page. I fear, though, that any TV version will make this too cosy, too cartoonish. The book is certainly a caper, but it's rendered superior by Waugh's dark, cruel underlying tone. If we lose that, it's just fancy dress".

The consensus I've seen so far (ST, Times, Observer, DT) has been cautiously favourable, with the Graun very favourable indeed. I don't think one needs to suspect foul play here.

[vinteuil]

.

I last read the book over forty years ago.

I am quite enjoying the telly version - in its own right...

[eighthobstruction]

[QUOTE= I don't think one needs to suspect foul play here.[/QUOTE]

....and then they came for the Conrads, and they said "We'll just jazz him up a bit, make him less tortured"....and then they came for....

[Ferretfancy]

I think I've read most if not all of Waugh, some (this, Scoop), several times over 50-odd years, even B'head Revisited at least twice.... Very few comic greats survive the transition to the screen (think Cold Comfort Farm, my Desert Island read ) and have to say I didn't find this too bad at all. I recognised some passages/lines from the book - prize for the longest essay regardless of any possible merit (but wasn't that in Paul's first lesson? - maybe not). Readers would have recognised the mise en scène (grotesque prep school), it was contemporary, whereas today it is a historical relic - I went to one such, complete with a succession of Paul Pennyfeathers, Mr Prendergast and a Captain Grimes character who...well as the veil of anonymity is thin, let's just say firearms were involved (I realise that was Philbrick, this chap was a sort of amalgam of the two ). I was quite prepared to be disappointed, but soon relaxed and in the end thoroughly enjoyed it. The characters are gargoyles, exaggerated grotesques.... One or two lovely lines missing - Philbrick's scar (no, Saturday night in the Edgware Road...)....

PS....astute review from Hugo Rifkind in today's Times - "...the whole thing threatens, sometimes, to get a bit wacky. Whereas Waugh isn't wacky. He is dark, bleak and hurt, and his best humour is positively suicidal. It's the howl of a moralist adrift among blithe savages..."

Very difficult to transfer to screenplay/script.

We visualise the characters in our mind's eye and find ourselves disappointed when the actors don't fit our imagination. For that reason I think I enjoyed the radio version, especially with the fate of poor old Prendy. Nonetheless I thought the TV version worked pretty well.

Looking forward to the Lucas Dockery experiment!

[kernelbogey]

... Large parts of Waugh's biting humour is in the descriptive or narrative passages. Thinking of Scoop - referred to above - a hysterical passage early on is when we are told William [Boot]'s sister Priscilla altered his wildlife column on the badger, substituting "great-crested grebe" for "badger" before it goes off to press...

And the immortal line from Boot's country life column:

"Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole".

[Nick Armstrong]

....same sort of train crash as the Blandings effort a while back....i.e codswallop....poor direction/direction....even John Suchet floundering for a character to play....cartoons really....poor beyond belief....no basic understanding of Waugh's intention....nor of our expectation....

I feared exactly that, thinking of the Blandings effort when I saw the cast... but

I last read the book over forty years ago.

I am quite enjoying the telly version - in its own right...

Same here (substituting 'thirty' for 'forty'). I don't have a clear recollection of the characters, so some of the turns on view here are a treat - Suchet especially, brilliant, and also Douglas Hodge (the give-away lapse into the camp in the pub as he smoothed his hair on the line "I don't think by nature I was meant to be a schoolteacher... because of my, er, temperament" )

Large parts of Waugh's biting humour is in the descriptive or narrative passages.

Indeed. Standard-issue footage of hoorays destroying a dining room is no substitute for the line from the book which I've remembered after all those years: "the sound of English county families baying for broken glass"

But I too will stick with it, as there were more than enough laughs to compensate. And I may well read the book again for the rest.

[Nick Armstrong]

....same sort of train crash as the Blandings effort a while back....i.e codswallop....poor direction/direction....even John Suchet floundering for a character to play....cartoons really....poor beyond belief....no basic understanding of Waugh's intention....nor of our expectation....

I feared exactly that, thinking of the Blandings effort when I saw the cast... but

I last read the book over forty years ago.

I am quite enjoying the telly version - in its own right...

Same here (substituting 'thirty' for 'forty'). I don't have a clear recollection of the characters, so some of the turns on view are a treat - Suchet especially, brilliant, and also Douglas Hodge (the give-away lapse into the camp in the pub as he smoothed his hair on the line "I don't think by nature I was meant to be a schoolteacher... because of my, er, temperament" )

Large parts of Waugh's biting humour is in the descriptive or narrative passages.

Indeed. Standard-issue footage of hoorays destroying a dining room is no substitute for the line from the book which I've remembered after all those years: "the sound of English county families baying for broken glass"

But I too will stick with it, as there were more than enough laughs to compensate. And I may well read the book again for the rest.



.

"Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole".