Parade's End

[eighthobstruction]

I'm sure BBC will congradulate themselves endlessly about this production....but it's a stacato clunking mess....comedy lines and situations wasted....the actors (while good in themselves) do not seem to be delivering a script that the director and editors can create into a cohesive whole back in the cutting room.....the scenes involving the cameo parts Lawson, Everett, Sewell, Duff, Graham, Richardson are a complicated muddled hotch potch of disparate disconnection............great book .............. very expensive poor production, full of cartoony throw away lines and scenes....will watch it till the end because I'm interested in how it is produced and adapted....


....I'm Jumping Jack Stoppard and it's a mess, mess, mess....

[Anna]

As regards sea eagles, the text following that which vinteuil quoted continually refers to an eagle so it's not up to the person doing the adaptation to change the species of bird in the text to fit the ornithological facts. However, I find The birds were driven to extinction in the UK by game preservers and collectors in the Victorian era, with the last individual bird killed in 1916 on a BBC bird website plus they have been reintroduced to Scotland and are also being reintroduced to Northumberland so it could well have been a sea eagle. I admit the cliffs did look like Sussex but I'm with ferney (above) and absolutely loving it and for those that aren't - well, Downton Abbey will soon return!

[vinteuil]

I'm with ferney (above) and absolutely loving ....

... yes, I'm enjoying it a lot, for what I had always thought wd be an unfilmable book. There are some stunning visual moments.

I am occasionally perturbed by the lovely Cumberbatch's accent, which can veer wildly - but this is a quibble.

The precarious balance between tragedy and comedy in the book is being well transferred to the screen.

[gurnemanz]

I admit the cliffs did look like Sussex but I'm with ferney (above) and absolutely loving it and for those that aren't - well, Downton Abbey will soon return!

Also loving it despite having to live pause it last night while my other half had an essential 45 minute phone conversation with my sister. However, I agree with Mr Cumberbatch about Downton, which I won't be watching.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/downton-abbey/9480067/Benedict-Cumberbatch-Downton-Abbey-is-sentimental-cliched-and-atrocious.html

I also assumed the cliffs were South Coast.

[Serial_Apologist]

Also loving it despite having to live pause it last night while my other half had an essential 45 minute phone conversation with my sister. However, I agree with Mr Cumberbatch about Downton, which I won't be watching.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/downton-abbey/9480067/Benedict-Cumberbatch-Downton-Abbey-is-sentimental-cliched-and-atrocious.html

I also assumed the cliffs were South Coast.

I haven't watch this, which turned out to be concurrent with a 2-parter with some thematic similarities on another channel, last week, and featuring Cumberbatch, in the latter as one who turned out by the end to be a child rapist. Again the White Cliffs of Dover seemed to be presented as part of Yorkshire - though maybe geography got mixed up with plot in my addled mind. Having read the above though, my view of Cumberbund, very much coloured by a Sherlock characterisation I'd found unlikely but probably in character, I have quite changed my views on him.

[Richard Tarleton]

As regards sea eagles, the text following that which vinteuil quoted continually refers to an eagle so it's not up to the person doing the adaptation to change the species of bird in the text to fit the ornithological facts. However, I find The birds were driven to extinction in the UK by game preservers and collectors in the Victorian era, with the last individual bird killed in 1916 on a BBC bird website plus they have been reintroduced to Scotland and are also being reintroduced to Northumberland so it could well have been a sea eagle. I admit the cliffs did look like Sussex but I'm with ferney (above) and absolutely loving it and for those that aren't - well, Downton Abbey will soon return!

Tietjens actually referred on screen to a "fish eagle", not a sea eagle, and the image was a library shot of an osprey, which is not an eagle at all - the last osprey (until 1952) disappeared from Scotland in the first decade of the 20th century. It's white-tailed or sea eagles which are being reintroduced right left and centre (for a while there was talk of reintroducing them to the Suffolk coast, but there was an outcry from the pig farmers. But that's another story).

It's clear from vinteuil's quote that the author has been short-changed by the adaptor in this instance, and not helped by the picture editor. Perhaps we're being left to fill too many gaps. I realise my two ornithological observations belong in pedant's corner, or the letters column of the Torygraph, and yes Downton is probably more my level at least I can follow what's going on.

[Anna]

Apologies to Richard for introducing red herrings in the form of sea eagles as fish eagles are, of course, entirely different and, of course, the fish eagle was allegorical in the context used wasn't it? Not to be taken literally. However, I think illustrating it with an osprey was ok as most people wouldn't know what the bird was except that it looked threatening.

Downton, being a soap, one can drift off and make a cup of tea, answer emails and still pick up the story. It's very undemanding but perfect Sunday night easy viewing I guess (I gave up watching) but was reading today the best upstairs downstairs drama was The Forsythe Sage (which I've never seen) because it had some bite to it.

[Nick Armstrong]

finding it quite difficult to be interested in any of these characters
hoping the war will wipe them all out
best line, episode 2, "the bishop turned out to be a christian"

I love the way this thread has gone! The diverging views, gurnemanz's family telephone call, Anna and Richard's ornithological musings (especially Anna's red-herring-eating fish eagles), and too many 'bons mots' to list

For those of mercia's homicidal urges, it's worth noting perhaps the Radio Times's comment that this series 'hits its stride in episode 3'. At the least, worth persevering with.

I'm half-way through Ep 1 for the second time and enjoying it more. Ready for Ep 2, to be recorded on HD this evening (though perhaps I should have recorded the BBC2 version of the sound's better... )

[Anna]

I'm half-way through Ep 1 for the second time and enjoying it more. Ready for Ep 2, to be recorded on HD this evening (though perhaps I should have recorded the BBC2 version of the sound's better... )

Hmm, ever considered your audio problem might just be your age Duckie? Or a mis-spent youth pressed up against the fourth trombone in the brass section damaging your timbres ....... The sexual tension in Ep 2 is really .... tense! And, I do recommend reading the Julian Barnes article posted above at the start of the thread. I intend to buy the book, but after the series ends, at over 800 pages it'll be a hefty read for the long Winter nights. I know frenchie has bought a copy, I wonder how she's getting on with it?

[Nick Armstrong]

Hmm, ever considered your audio problem might just be your age Duckie? Or a mis-spent youth pressed up against the fourth trombone in the brass section damaging your timbres ....... The sexual tension in Ep 2 is really .... tense! And, I do recommend reading the Julian Barnes article posted above at the start of the thread. I intend to buy the book, but after the series ends, at over 800 pages it'll be a hefty read for the long Winter nights. I know frenchie has bought a copy, I wonder how she's getting on with it?

Had me hearing tested at a recent medical - 20/20 ta v much, Ducks!!

There were never any such goings-on in my trombone section!

Yup I read the Barnes article - v good it is too.

[Richard Tarleton]

of course, the fish eagle was allegorical in the context used wasn't it? Not to be taken literally

Exactly - unfortunately, as vinteuil reminds/tells us, we lacked the important bit of information, which was what was going on in Sylvia's head - basically, this particular allegory, which was about the only one I've managed to latch onto so far, turned to ashes in the crucible of the adaptor's art (I borrowed that bit from a TV review by John Naughton a few years ago )

[Richard Tarleton]

Still on the subject of birds, I have my annual hearing test each spring - if I can still hear goldcrests and grasshopper warblers, I'm OK

[Anna]

Exactly - unfortunately, as vinteuil reminds/tells us, we lacked the important bit of information, which was what was going on in Sylvia's head - basically, this particular allegory, which was about the only one I've managed to latch onto so far, turned to ashes in the crucible of the adaptor's art (I borrowed that bit from a TV review by John Naughton a few years ago )

But did we lack the information as to what was in Sylvia's and Christopher's heads? I think not, it really was plain as day as to their two different interpretations of the soi-disant fish eagle was it not? Her sexual threat and his comprehension of the German threat?
Stick with it Richard and ditch John Naughton, you can find your own words!!

[Richard Tarleton]

Must go and finish mowing the lawn (literally)

[amateur51]

Apologies to Richard for introducing red herrings in the form of sea eagles as fish eagles are, of course, entirely different and, of course, the fish eagle was allegorical in the context used wasn't it? Not to be taken literally. However, I think illustrating it with an osprey was ok as most people wouldn't know what the bird was except that it looked threatening.

Downton, being a soap, one can drift off and make a cup of tea, answer emails and still pick up the story. It's very undemanding but perfect Sunday night easy viewing I guess (I gave up watching) but was reading today the best upstairs downstairs drama was The Forsythe Sage (which I've never seen) because it had some bite to it.

Who he?