ITV1's Titanic discussion thread
boogie woogie
Posts: 16,400 Forum Member
✭✭
I know that it is months before this new Julian Fellowes drama goes to air but I think that it would be good to get some discussion going on around this show as it's marking the centenary of the disaster. It has definitely grabbed my interest as it boasts an impressive cast- Linus Roache (Law & Order, Batman Begins), Geraldine Somerville (The Harry Potter films, Survivors) Celia Imrie (Bridget Jones’ Diary, Kingdom), Toby Jones (Captain America, W.), Perdita Weeks (The Promise, Four Seasons), Lee Ross (Centurion, EastEnders), Jenna- Louise Coleman (Waterloo Road, Emmerdale), Sophie Winkleman (Peep Show, The Palace), Steven Waddington (Sleepy Hollow, The Tudors), James Wilby (Gosford Park, Clapham Junction), Lyndsey Marshal (Hereafter; Being Human; Rome), Mark Lewis Jones (Robin Hood; The Other Boleyn Girl; Troy), Ruth Bradley (Primeval, Love/Hate) and Peter MacDonald (The Damned United; City Of Vice). The trailer looks suitably epic and I like the fact that the narrative is looking at several different plot strands involving several disparate groups of people from different social classes. The potential for some gripping drama is there and I'm just hoping that it materialises when the drama hits our screens in April.:D
0
Comments
I can't wait for the inevitable live commentary thread on here tearing it to shreds.
Actually if it turns out to be good I'll be quite disappointed:D
I expect this to be Downton Abbey on the Rocks. :rolleyes:
I'm looking forward to it myself.
The trailer was awful, wasn't it? Very cheap looking. I can forgive that because I imagine that when it was made, the effects were still at an early stage of production. However, I am incredibly disappointed to see that they appear to be including scenes of third class passengers locked below decks behind steel gates (as in the 1996 movie). This has been pretty much rubbished by historians - steerage passengers may have been left in some confusion, but they were NOT trapped below decks like animals left to drown. It makes me wonder what other highly questionable cliches they're going to peddle as true - gun-toting officers, a love story between classes, a yippie-yi-yo-ki-yay Margaret Brown (who will call herself Molly, despite the fact the real Margaret never did), a boozing chief baker, a dastardly J. Bruce Ismay, a man dressed as a woman in a lifeboat or some reference to Titanic being thought of as unsinkable?
Exactly! It looked stuffed with the exact same cliches which made James Cameron's movie such excrement. The bit in the trailer with the third-class passengers trapped behind a door made me LOL and roll my eyes all at the same time. It looks utter rubbish!
Couldn't agree more...ITV has quite a good record when it comes to quality drama-
Unforgiven
Collision
Bouquet of Barbed Wire
Marchlands
Place of Execution
The Children
Whitechapel
It's funny, but despite its 50s effects and occasional historical slip-ups, A Night to Remember still trumps every Titanic movie that has come since. It made only sparing use of fictional characters (and even then, some were proxies or amalgamations of real people), it stuck rigidly to the drama inherent in the sinking (rather than focusing on a silly love story) and it accurately depicted the period and subtle class distinctions of 1912. Furthermore, it avoided cliches like a catatonic Captain Smith, a grasping and ambitious Ismay and gangs of women and children barricaded below decks. Instead, it adhered in the main to Walter Lord's excellent (if now outdated) non-fiction book on the subject, which portrayed a decisive if increasingly incredulous Smith, a jocular if excitable Ismay and a third class which were misinformed by a poorly organised crew, but met only locked doors when they got lost wandering the ship in confusion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh_T09NmiAY
......which was nice!
The most interesting aspect was the women and children first bravery of those men aboard the ship. Would this still happen in this day and age? I wonder.
Don't forget the scene in A Night to Remember in which Edith Evans, on reaching a lifeboat with only one space left, tells another woman to take the seat 'because she has children waiting at home'. It was the last lifeboat. The scene is factual, and Mrs Evans' body was never found.
It is wrong to assume that bravery is a gendered construct. There are brave men and women just as there are 'cowardly' men and women, and who knows how anyone would react when faced with a dreadful death. As to 'women and children first', it is no longer sea-going practice, as far as I know.
God no. I'd probably lash some women and children together to form some kind of rudimentary raft.
"Evil sectarian hatred" works both ways you know.
Indeed - and I can confirm that at least one of those I mentioned earlier (aside from the steerage passengers locked below decks) is definitely making yet another appearance in this production. An actress called Linda Cash will be playing 'Molly' Brown. Apparently the writer either does not know or does not think any viewers will know that Margaret Brown wasn't labelled 'Molly' until a musical was made about her in the 60s!
I must admit that I really wish they had omitted the Molly Brown stereotype but who knows- maybe in this version she'll prove to be a more dignified presence!:rolleyes:
You mean more dignified than Debbie Reynold's version?
Don't even start me on Cloris Leachman's 'wacky' Mrs Brown or Marilu Henner's cigar-chomping, hard-drinking version. In fact, apart from being unnecessarily shoe-horned into the fictional narrative (and once again called 'Molly' rather than Maggie :mad:) Kathy Bates' version of the character was relatively sedate and realistic!