I wasn't impressed either, I was really looking forward to it, but I'm just disappointed. At first I thought I might be struggling to get into it after just watching the last episode of Upstairs Downstairs (which was really good) but pretty soon I realised that it just wasn't very interesting.
It looked like there were 20 passengers aboard. Especially during the dancing scenes, I would have thought there was a ballroom or something on a ship that big, it just looked like they were having a party in someone's suite....it was a bit bizarre. I wonder what they spent the budget on?
I'll watch next week to see if it gets better but I'm not getting my hopes up. I think the narrative might have been easier to follow if the first episode had been about the ship's crew and the ship itself. That way we could have seen all the mistakes leading up to the sinking, followed by the passengers going about their business completely oblivious. Perhaps then it wouldn't feel like big chunks had been left out.
I watched it on plus one (had to watch Homeland!!) and nearly snoozed off. All I could think about was the story out yesterday about how the titanic may not have been the titanic but t he sister ship, Olympic...etc - Now that would be a story and a half...
I'm glad he didn't do Downton like this. You can do it yourself, though. Watch a 10 minute clip from each episode of Downton. Next week do the same with a different 10 minutes and so on! Flashbacks work well in a drama, look at Lost. But even they took time to try and establish characters.
As for the ITV Titanic mini series, I agree that the non linear approach has done this opening episode no favours whatsoever. I couldn't care less about any one of the characters because I have not been given time to care so the sinking lacks any sense of tragedy or emotion.
Say what you like about James Camerons Titanic but when I saw that film at the cinema the audience, me included, were visibly shocked by what we were seeing on the screen. These were real people (Jack & Roses & Family excluded) who died horribly and that made what we were seeing that much more moving and Tragic. I fear this mini series won't manage to pull off anything anywhere near as emotionally engaging.
^^^
This!
I think using the 'Non-Linear' method of telling the story has done this series no favours. All the characters seemed miserable/grumpy/angry with no explanation as to why. No doubt it will resolve itself as the series progresses, but it made for a very unsatisfactory (and, at times, confusing) first episode.
It was interesting to see the servants/crew aspect, and we could do with more of that, since their POV is often ignored in Titanic dramas.
The dog thing intrigued me, because it hadn't occured to me that there would have been dogs on board the ship (though saying that, I think I remember reading somewhere about a woman who tried to smuggle her dog onto a lifeboat - perhaps she was the basis for the Celia Imerie character?). When the scene on the deck with several dogs being walked was shown, I found myself wondering how they dealt with the dogs' poo - were there crew members on the deck armed with poop scoops?:D
There are four phases to the Titanic story imo:
1. The building, design, preparations, decisions about safety
2. The crash and sinking
3. The role of the Carpathia and California in particular the latter
4. The aftermath - first class bodies got coffins, the rest got tarpaulins, people had to pay to get bodies shipped home such was White Star Line's sensitivity and compassion. The USA and UK inquiries.
I think the 4 part series kicked off with First class seeing it from their perspective. I'm guessing we get second, third and officers/owners, in subsequent episodes. That's fine by me. The non linear is good, because the experiences for each class were so different, like a different sinking for each. so I don't want them blurred together necessarily.
BTW, The first class didn't panic, they got on the boats pretty calmly, there wasn't a lot of crockery breaking and things crashing, it was so quiet most people didn't notice anything wrong at all for about an hour. Men were allowed on on the Port side but got short shrift on the starboard side. The idea that it was 'women and children first' is utter tosh, it was 'first class passengers first'.
Well quiet apart from the noise of the steam venting. That was missing in this version. Reports said the shrieking and whistling made it difficult to hear what people were saying. Crew had to use hand signal to tell people what to do.
The Mail's review is shocking. I couldn't disagree with it more. To wit:
The Titanic’s sinking has attracted numerous myths, and Fellowes intends to puncture many of them. In the offices of the White Star Line, managing director Joseph Bruce Ismay and ship designer Thomas Andrews reveal the truth behind one of the thorniest questions: why were there too few lifeboats?
It wasn’t to save money, or because steerage passengers weren’t included in calculations. Ismay says he wants space left for promenading on deck and — the irony — not to ‘terrify the ladies out of their wits’.
Not exactly 'myth smashing' when the 1997 movie made the exact same point in equally clunky dialogue - 'It was thought by some that the deck would look too cluttered'.
Meet the middle classes. These two are Fellowes’s fictional creations — he feels the middle classes on board have been largely ignored in previous treatments.
Obviously the reviewer has never seen SOS Titanic, which featured real life 2nd class figure Lawrence Beesley and his (composite) lady-friend Leigh Goodwin as main characters.
Although the interiors are sumptuous,
Far from it - they are cramped, unfamiliar, and make the ship look like a yacht with only 30 passengers.
While Fellowes has ingeniously mixed real and imaginary characters in his cast, it is his fictional creations who dominate the story.
Ingeniously?! Every other Titanic movie and miniseries ever created has mixed fictional characters with real ones!
I also wanted to point out some of the ridiculous diaglogue. Not only was Ismay's chat about the lifeboats extremely expositional, but Madame Aubart barking at Lightoller that 'It's women and children FIRST not women and children ONLY!' was a clear and jarring case of a 1912 character speaking like a modern person who has just read a book about the sinking. No one at the time would have questioned Lightoller's misinterpretation of Captain's orders - it's only with hindsight that we realise his mistake. There were also far too many silly 'Have you met Mr Guggenheim, the American millionaire?' style lines. Dire.
Well I've seen the first episode (it aired in Canada, so...um) and I found it almost aggressively bad. I was coming down with a stomach flu at the time, so my perceptions could have unconsciously been influenced by how crappy I felt, but I don't think so.
Most of the characters appear to be expys from Downton Abbey. There's the imperious Countess who verbally takes down her enemies, the seemingly upstanding Lord of somewhere or other who is clearly a Julian Fellowes self-insert (he is even taunted by a lower class dude so we can feel sorry for him), the Lord's spirited suffragette daughter who falls ridiculously quickly for a young man beneath her station (but he's American not Irish, so totally different, right?), and the Lord's valet and Lady's maid who seem destined to fall in love before the end.
Maria Doyle Kennedy basically plays Vera Bates with a few tweaks, though she is so good hissing and spitting and generally camping it up that she's one of the few bright spots.
Another highlight for me were Lyndsey Marshal and Lee Ross as Watson and Barnes. They managed to keep my interest despite the silly scenes they were given to do
At one point Barnes decides to grab her book because he is four years old and this is his attempt at flirting, and then some jerky Americans (of course:rolleyes:) decide to play keep away, and end up ripping her book, which was lovingly inscribed by her father from when she was a child. Also, it appears that Watson was planning on stealing jewelry from her mistress, which seems very out of character, and no doubt due to some secret she's hiding, so that development should be interesting.
Oh and Jenna Louise Coleman, the new Doctor Who companion, was believable in the small role she played, which believe me, was an improvement on most.
So basically there were a handful of performances that I enjoyed. But other than that? Cringe city. The dialogue was LAUGHABLY bad in some places, and basically set piece after set piece filled with cliches. I spent the majority of the time watching it like this: :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes: "Oh Julian...you get paid to do this?"
I hear the second episode is supposed to be better, and each episode focuses on different characters, though the others are still seen and heard in the background. This means a lot of people are given significant looks and pieces of dialogue and the audience is sat there going, "Who was that? Was that somebody I'm supposed to know?" Maybe that confusion will lessen each week, and then one can look back from the beginning and piece it all together, but I just don't know.
Now after seeing it last night, and despite not ever watching Downton, I fully agree with you. I was so underwhelmed by it all - I'm glad to see it wasn't only me. In fact I've just read through the whole thread and of the 21 pages, I think I saw only 2 and half positive comments about it. I watched this straight after the last episode of Upstairs Downstairs on BBC1 and was so already in the zone to be entertained by another yesteryear drama.
I don't know why they bothered to call it Titanic when it featured none of the designs we attribute to the ship- ie, no glass dome, no shots of the first class dining room that ran the entire length of the ship, no shots of the Grand Staircase (which actually broke away from the ship during the final minutes of the sinking, so savage was the force of the water).
Captain Smith was portrayed to be blustering, Thomas Andrews was British, Ben Guggenheim was not very nice to his valet (something all records show to be completley false)
I wish they had hired proper researchers for this.
I still don't understand why ITV bothered to make yet another version of Titanic. Based on the opening episode it brought nothing new to the story, it was just a typical Julian Fellowes ''multi-layered plot'' extravaganza which we can see every week on Downton (if we wish). No wonder the Americans got rid of it in one night:eek:
I didnt see it but did it have chirpy Irish people dancing merrily down in steerage? They might not have much but they have a good time....
Probably in the coming episodes. This one was about first class. The rebellious daughter, the too posh wife and the affable lord something or other. One minute we were discussing that it isn't the done thing to change frocks on the first night, the next we'd hit an iceberg and it was time for the fond farewells and the 'I'm staying with you, no matter what' stuff.
It might pick up next week, but it was too busy. it was impossible to get to know the characters, and I agree about it jumping from the first night to hitting the iceberg with nothing in between.
Comments
also
The boat is sinking.... the passengers have all been roused from their cabins .... and suddenly appear fully made up and with perfect hair...
However My favourite scene so far was the engine room when the ship hit the iceberg.
Showing ONE solitary bloke shovleing coal into the boilers.....
It looked like there were 20 passengers aboard. Especially during the dancing scenes, I would have thought there was a ballroom or something on a ship that big, it just looked like they were having a party in someone's suite....it was a bit bizarre. I wonder what they spent the budget on?
I'll watch next week to see if it gets better but I'm not getting my hopes up. I think the narrative might have been easier to follow if the first episode had been about the ship's crew and the ship itself. That way we could have seen all the mistakes leading up to the sinking, followed by the passengers going about their business completely oblivious. Perhaps then it wouldn't feel like big chunks had been left out.
^^^
This!
I think using the 'Non-Linear' method of telling the story has done this series no favours. All the characters seemed miserable/grumpy/angry with no explanation as to why. No doubt it will resolve itself as the series progresses, but it made for a very unsatisfactory (and, at times, confusing) first episode.
It was interesting to see the servants/crew aspect, and we could do with more of that, since their POV is often ignored in Titanic dramas.
The dog thing intrigued me, because it hadn't occured to me that there would have been dogs on board the ship (though saying that, I think I remember reading somewhere about a woman who tried to smuggle her dog onto a lifeboat - perhaps she was the basis for the Celia Imerie character?). When the scene on the deck with several dogs being walked was shown, I found myself wondering how they dealt with the dogs' poo - were there crew members on the deck armed with poop scoops?:D
1. The building, design, preparations, decisions about safety
2. The crash and sinking
3. The role of the Carpathia and California in particular the latter
4. The aftermath - first class bodies got coffins, the rest got tarpaulins, people had to pay to get bodies shipped home such was White Star Line's sensitivity and compassion. The USA and UK inquiries.
I think the 4 part series kicked off with First class seeing it from their perspective. I'm guessing we get second, third and officers/owners, in subsequent episodes. That's fine by me. The non linear is good, because the experiences for each class were so different, like a different sinking for each. so I don't want them blurred together necessarily.
BTW, The first class didn't panic, they got on the boats pretty calmly, there wasn't a lot of crockery breaking and things crashing, it was so quiet most people didn't notice anything wrong at all for about an hour. Men were allowed on on the Port side but got short shrift on the starboard side. The idea that it was 'women and children first' is utter tosh, it was 'first class passengers first'.
The Mail's review is shocking. I couldn't disagree with it more. To wit:
Not exactly 'myth smashing' when the 1997 movie made the exact same point in equally clunky dialogue - 'It was thought by some that the deck would look too cluttered'.
Obviously the reviewer has never seen SOS Titanic, which featured real life 2nd class figure Lawrence Beesley and his (composite) lady-friend Leigh Goodwin as main characters.
Far from it - they are cramped, unfamiliar, and make the ship look like a yacht with only 30 passengers.
Ingeniously?! Every other Titanic movie and miniseries ever created has mixed fictional characters with real ones!
I also wanted to point out some of the ridiculous diaglogue. Not only was Ismay's chat about the lifeboats extremely expositional, but Madame Aubart barking at Lightoller that 'It's women and children FIRST not women and children ONLY!' was a clear and jarring case of a 1912 character speaking like a modern person who has just read a book about the sinking. No one at the time would have questioned Lightoller's misinterpretation of Captain's orders - it's only with hindsight that we realise his mistake. There were also far too many silly 'Have you met Mr Guggenheim, the American millionaire?' style lines. Dire.
One review today said next week is much better! it could not get worse thats for sure.
http://www.paullee.com/titanic/jf2012goofs.html
I could go on n' on ..
No goofs for the flawless maid scenes? Nope? Okay.
Still looking hard-faced.
I don't know why they bothered to call it Titanic when it featured none of the designs we attribute to the ship- ie, no glass dome, no shots of the first class dining room that ran the entire length of the ship, no shots of the Grand Staircase (which actually broke away from the ship during the final minutes of the sinking, so savage was the force of the water).
Captain Smith was portrayed to be blustering, Thomas Andrews was British, Ben Guggenheim was not very nice to his valet (something all records show to be completley false)
I wish they had hired proper researchers for this.
I have no idea how authoritative this site is, but it has some interesting statistics:
http://www.titanic-titanic.com/titanic_passenger_ratio.shtml
Precentage of passengers saved:
1st Class Men 33% Women 97%
2nd Men 8% Women 86%
3rd Men 16% Women 46%
Crew Men 22% Women 87%
So a higher percentage of third class women were saved than first class men. And in number terms, more men from third class than from first.
Er, sorry, enlighten me??!!
Probably in the coming episodes. This one was about first class. The rebellious daughter, the too posh wife and the affable lord something or other. One minute we were discussing that it isn't the done thing to change frocks on the first night, the next we'd hit an iceberg and it was time for the fond farewells and the 'I'm staying with you, no matter what' stuff.
There's an understanding that the maid was the only 'good' element.