View previous topic :: View next topic |
Grant
|
|
|
|
Shawn Evans says he never watched John Thaw in the canonical programmes (good academic language there!) but if that’s true it shows what a pompous ass he is. And it shows why it’s impossible to imagine him morphing into old Morse.
I’m not bothered because I could never believe in John Thaw anyway.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Grant
|
|
|
|
Isn’t it interesting how when young screenwriters write about a period of history one actually lived through, it’s totally unconvincing. And this might only be a few decades ago. They get the cars right and remove the satellite dishes, but so much is still wrong.
Was watching a Netflix series about post-war Berlin but had to stop when the American policemen kept using four-letter words to girls in the typing pool. Wouldn’t have happened in 1976 let alone 1946. It totally broke the spell
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
Endeavour is now the same age as Morse was when he started, clearly a case of IPO. On the other hand, as I pointed out at the time, Sheila Hancock (Thaw's widow) read Shawn Evans' fortune in an early episode, so they may be using genuine cryogenics. Further to your other remarks I forgot to mention
Black mark #5: protesting students going on about prominent university donors being merchants of death. There was even a slave trade reference. For Chrissake, black people hadn't even been invented in the sixties.
However, watching Special Branch (made in the seventies) it appears the police have always been bastions of liberalism. Some British traditions are timeless eg scriptwriting.
PS: IPO = Impersonating a police officer. This used to be a well-known phrase, there were even IPO gangs, but now I see from Googling stands for Initial Public Offering (of stock market shares). Still a crime but on a larger scale.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Grant
|
|
|
|
The same age! I’ll tell my wife who is a big fan of Morse.
I suppose that’s why he’s suddenly developed an interest in Jags. They’ve got to morph him into John Thaw soon.
Apparently in the books Morse is a porn addict. Presumably it gives him something to do when he’s listening to Wagner
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
|
|
|
|
Grant wrote: | Was watching a Netflix series about post-war Berlin but had to stop when the American policemen kept using four-letter words to girls in the typing pool. Wouldn’t have happened in 1976 let alone 1946. It totally broke the spell |
There was a murder mystery on TV set in Oxford in the '50s (it may have been an Agatha Christie story) that was making fine if predictable progress until an actress in the role of an Oxford academic came out with 'ree-search'. It sounded wrong to me, would Brits have been Americanised in that era? Not rarefied Oxford academics surely.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Grant
|
|
|
|
Always surprises me that writers have such tin ears when it comes to appropriate dialogue and pronunciation.
It’s a bit like hairstyles and make-up. No matter how much they spend on cars and scenery, the actors still look like they come from the present.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
This is a common misapprehension. Programmes set in the past are not concerned with authenticity, they are concerned with entertainment and it is we, the audience, that sets the limits. Take your 'hair and make-up'. (No thanks, I don't need Grecian 3000, I'm distinguished enough already.) If the male actors had authentic haircuts we wouldn't be able to tell them apart because they would all have brylcreemed skull-hugging short back and sides. The women would either look like Kathy Kirby or be wan to to the point of alarm. Everyone would look at least ten years older than their character and speak in lah-de-dah accents if educated or in impenetrable local dialect if not.
Why put production costs through the roof to achieve total bewilderment when Shawn Evans will do that for free on the evidence of the first ten minutes which is as far as I got. Let me guess, it was Baader-Meinhof on a student exchange.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
|
|
|
|
Mick Harper wrote: | This is a common misapprehension. Programmes set in the past are not concerned with authenticity, they are concerned with entertainment and it is we, the audience, that sets the limits. |
History programmes on TV are not concerned with authenticity, they are about entertainment and it is we, the audience, that sets the limits.
See Rome Empire on Netflix.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
That is not entirely fair. Or possibly too fair. The history is entirely authentic -- in the sense of being orthodox history -- and the reconstructions are very entertaining. The only reason I didn't persist with the Roman Empire series is the overfamiliarity of the plotlines.
For commercial reasons nobody will spend money on televisual history other than (a) Rome from Caesar to Commodus (b) Britain from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I and (c) the American Civil War. All of which I know backwards, forwards and sideways.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
I was both heartened and disheartened by the Newsnight piece on how urban Indians are coping with the New Normal of extreme heat. They are painting their flat rooves white. Southern Europeans have been doing this with their whole houses since time immemorial so are we smart or are they dumb?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Chad
In: Ramsbottom
|
|
|
|
Southern Europeans have been doing this with their whole houses since time immemorial |
Except for those heat absorbing, midday sun facing, terracotta tiled rooves. (Now who's dumb?)
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
Die Warheit über Franco (Netflix)
"Franco is the Jürgen Klopp of the military, a lucky manager." Professor Sir Paul Preston MBE, historian and Franco biographer. |
How far can one trust the judgement of someone who dismisses Jürgen Klopp as a 'lucky manager'? How far can one trust the judgement of the leading British Franco authority who cheerfully acknowledges that his judgement on both Jürgen Klopp and Francisco Franco was fatally warped from the off?
Preston was born in 1946 in Liverpool. Preston said in an interview that he has sympathy for the Second Spanish Republic: "I came from a fairly left-wing family. You could not really be from working-class Liverpool and not be left-wing. Emotionally, in my feeling for the Republic I think there is an element of indignation about the Republic's defeat, solidarity with the losing side. Maybe that's why I support Everton, although Everton wasn't the losing side in my day. |
Honestly, these people. They're actually proud to be biased to the point of stupidity.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
|
|
|
|
Hunting and infiltrating Nazi groups is brilliant and makes for good TV
Hunters (Netflix)
Jaguar (Netflix)
Ridley Road (BBC)
Hunting pedophiles less so. I mean that would be irresponsible vigilantism.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
|
|
|
|
Ridley Road has turned into a soap opera with a bit of Nazism for extra edge. Meanwhile BBC4 is airing French Canal +'s 'Paris Police 1900' on the Antisemitic League's activities just prior to Dreyfus' retrial. In contrast to Ridley Road this is a pacy production, and far more gripping.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
It all started with Cowboys and Indians. On a backlot in Los Angeles a bloke in a stetson shoots a bloke in a feather headress harking back to a few years in the American south-west when this sort of thing might have happened but probably didn't. Next thing you know, the whole world is watching movies along the same lines and kids in south London playgrounds are arguing over who's going to be the Indians.
There's no rhyme or reason except the less there is of it historically, the more there will be in the modern media. You wouldn't believe how many Nazi cells there are today. And how many TV researchers are required to track them down. Meanwhile a hundred-year-old man goes on trial in Germany for being a guard at a non-extermination camp. We're soon going to have to use holograms.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|