instead of the news, let's discuss...
Mar. 16th, 2020 06:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessBelgravia – episode 1
ITV launched its latest offering in the period drama/Downton Abbey slot, Belgravia being adapted from a novel from Julian Fellowes. Straight off, it’s not very good, which might not normally matter when I’m in a ‘Monday morning tomorrow’ slump, but the normal working pattern is going to change very soon, so I may have less patience for it, but on the other hand, I might welcome even this distraction.
Basically what was keeping me going was sympathy for Tamsin Grieg’s Ann(e?) Trenchard 90 per cent of the time. If we were not graced with Grieg’s Elinor Dashwood, then let us have this less well-written version. The only reason I was unsympathetic was her great love for her daughter Sophia, who I thought was a nincompoop, even allowing for teen brain.
Sophia kind of had Edith’s storyline but without the years of earned sympathy for always being second to Mary and repeatedly rejected by men. And if the big thing is going to be about telling the Duchess of Harriet Waltershire about her grandson, well, he’s still going to be illegitimate, so I can’t see them being able to acknowledge him, although his likely age makes sense of the leap forward in time. The Waterloo setting just made me grumble about the fact this wasn’t a Heyer adaptation, because the dialogue was pastiche at its best, and gobs of exposition at its worse.
Phillip Gleinster is fine as Mr Trenchard, the merchant who’s made a success of himself. It’s obvious their daughter’s mistakes (enabled by him) and death have ruined their relationship, plus their living son married a (rich) downer. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ann(e?)’s beloved dog dies in a freak accident…because Fellowes.
While there’s plenty of snobbery between the proper nobility and trade (rich or not), we only had one scene downstairs, which is even less than in Victoria, and feels odd in something by the pen behind Gosford Park (I so need to rewatch that) and Downton.
ITV launched its latest offering in the period drama/Downton Abbey slot, Belgravia being adapted from a novel from Julian Fellowes. Straight off, it’s not very good, which might not normally matter when I’m in a ‘Monday morning tomorrow’ slump, but the normal working pattern is going to change very soon, so I may have less patience for it, but on the other hand, I might welcome even this distraction.
Basically what was keeping me going was sympathy for Tamsin Grieg’s Ann(e?) Trenchard 90 per cent of the time. If we were not graced with Grieg’s Elinor Dashwood, then let us have this less well-written version. The only reason I was unsympathetic was her great love for her daughter Sophia, who I thought was a nincompoop, even allowing for teen brain.
Sophia kind of had Edith’s storyline but without the years of earned sympathy for always being second to Mary and repeatedly rejected by men. And if the big thing is going to be about telling the Duchess of Harriet Waltershire about her grandson, well, he’s still going to be illegitimate, so I can’t see them being able to acknowledge him, although his likely age makes sense of the leap forward in time. The Waterloo setting just made me grumble about the fact this wasn’t a Heyer adaptation, because the dialogue was pastiche at its best, and gobs of exposition at its worse.
Phillip Gleinster is fine as Mr Trenchard, the merchant who’s made a success of himself. It’s obvious their daughter’s mistakes (enabled by him) and death have ruined their relationship, plus their living son married a (rich) downer. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ann(e?)’s beloved dog dies in a freak accident…because Fellowes.
While there’s plenty of snobbery between the proper nobility and trade (rich or not), we only had one scene downstairs, which is even less than in Victoria, and feels odd in something by the pen behind Gosford Park (I so need to rewatch that) and Downton.
