[ftv]

If you believe the article in The Sun today - which admittedly is a bit thin on facts - the sinking of the Titanic was all the fault of Winston Churchill

[nancy1975]

And women playing cards in the library/smoking room/lounge whateverthehellitwas!

The annoying thing to me is how he's gone out of his way to blast JC, when he's done the same thing in putting fictional characters in, far less engagingly to boot, and he can claim no superiority at all in attention to detail. Far from it. I've been a member of Titanic Societies for 25 years and I saw Titanic in the cinema 12 times. Some fluff, but it tells a story...very well.

[cymbeline_1]

Was looking forward to Titanic on ITV HD, it only took 5 mins to be disappointed in all respects, Pictures were drab, sound wooly, I won't even bother with script. Any thoughts

[Doctor_Donna]

Originally Posted by Kat1985

I can't believe it cost £11 miliion pound to make.

Did it? What on earth did they spend it on?

[nancy1975]

Originally Posted by Doctor_Donna

Did it? What on earth did they spend it on?

Certainly not on the sets!

[Britt_Ishrael]

Even worse than the film (the Di Caprio one) . Dire, just dire

[penelopesimpson]

Originally Posted by Dai13371

Well, it was the first episode just to introduce all the posh nobs on the voyage. They are hardly going to broadcast the money shots on episode 1. I like the idea of it covering the collision and sinking every week but from different view points.

Yeah, sideways, from the top, the bottom and all the way round again. Or perhaps we could have the dog's perspective?

[penelopesimpson]

Originally Posted by rfw1

Did ITV turn the colour down or something ?

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.....

My woodburner takes more work

[Dai13371]

Originally Posted by 21stCenturyBoy

I am still in shock at this.

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.

He was British. Northern Irish to be precise, but that is still British. Did you mean English?

A lot of people on this thread obviously expected everything to happen in the first episode. I am sure the sinking, the floods, the deaths, the panic, the Carpathia (don't do a Cameron and just have it turn up out of the blue please Julian) etc will feature in the next episodes.

[penelopesimpson]

Originally Posted by Nesta Robbins

I didn't mind it, but only wish that after introducing 45 characters in the first 2 minutes, I had a clue who anyone was!

Didn't think there were 45 people on the boat - and that's including the crew. Mr. Fellowes has entirely missed the point of the Titanic - it was big - and any film has to reflect that sense of bigness. This is more like a few people in a hotel in Torquay.

[penelopesimpson]

Originally Posted by Dai13371

He was British. Northern Irish to be precise, but that is still British. Did you mean English?

A lot of people on this thread obviously expected everything to happen in the first episode. I am sure the sinking, the floods, the deaths, the panic, the Carpathia (don't do a Cameron and just have it turn up out of the blue please Julian) etc will feature in the next episodes.

floods? Can the sea flood?

[2shy2007]

Originally Posted by penelopesimpson

floods? Can the sea flood?

The compartments were flooded , sinking the ship, so, yes it can.

[penelopesimpson]

Originally Posted by 2shy2007

The compartments were flooded , sinking the ship, so, yes it can.

AH! i'm with you now. But not with the programme I'm afraid, which is so totally bad I cannot think of a single decent comment to make other than that I am mega disappointed. How nobody saw this was a turkey in the making is beyond me.

[Dai13371]

Originally Posted by penelopesimpson

Yeah, sideways, from the top, the bottom and all the way round again. Or perhaps we could have the dog's perspective?

Hooray, a comic.

[Dai13371]

Originally Posted by penelopesimpson

floods? Can the sea flood?

Another gem! Laughing hard now.

[DrPL]

Originally Posted by penelopesimpson

Didn't think there were 45 people on the boat - and that's including the crew. Mr. Fellowes has entirely missed the point of the Titanic - it was big - and any film has to reflect that sense of bigness. This is more like a few people in a hotel in Torquay.

And which of the characters is Basil Fawlty then?

[Blofeld]

I read it was filmed in Budapest, but I;m 100% certain I saw them filming this in Belgrade. They had closed off a street in the old town and some people in clothing relating to the period of the Titanic were walking about. A crew member was directing us all around them, he was wearing a t0shirt with "Titanic" written on it, as well as a thing round his neck with a picture of the Titanic.

So, did I have some kind of episode, or was it filmed in Serbia?



Anyway, having an interest in the Titanic, I was looking forward to this and while it wasn't amazing, I wasn't that disapointed. If people are just going to compare it to JCs Titanic, then it will come off looking awful, but there have been far worse things about the ship made, for example that crap starring Tim Curry and Catherine Zeta Jones* and a Nazi propaganda film. One of the most annoying things to me is Thomas Andrews' accent, he should have a broad Belfast accent, not an upper class English one.

*Although I'm sure JF has taken the stuff about Alice the babysitter straight from that version, both actresses seem to be playing the character the exact same way.

[cantelpit]

Originally Posted by penelopesimpson

Didn't think there were 45 people on the boat - and that's including the crew. Mr. Fellowes has entirely missed the point of the Titanic - it was big - and any film has to reflect that sense of bigness. This is more like a few people in a hotel in Torquay.

absolutely!

There was no sense of occasion or excitement either for a ship that size on its maiden voyage. The first episode seemed to dwell for far too long on the pecking order of the passengers - with the subtlety of a sledgehammer,

[jy1541]

Originally Posted by Dai13371

He was British. Northern Irish to be precise, but that is still British. Did you mean English?

Northern Ireland did not exist as a concept until after his death, so he definitely wasn't Northern Irish.

I wasn't impressed with this programme at all. The only highlight for me was Maria Doyle Kennedy, hopefully she is featured more in the next episode.

[Alvar Hanso]

it was about as involving and emotionally engaging as 3 estate agents on holiday in skegness

titanic in a broom cupboard basically

the 5 or 6 shots of the actual ship and ocean were a nice change though

[21stCenturyBoy]

Originally Posted by Dai13371

He was British. Northern Irish to be precise, but that is still British. Did you mean English?

A lot of people on this thread obviously expected everything to happen in the first episode. I am sure the sinking, the floods, the deaths, the panic, the Carpathia (don't do a Cameron and just have it turn up out of the blue please Julian) etc will feature in the next episodes.

I meant spoke with an English accent, but I'm pretty sure he was registered as an Irish citizen when he died, so technically he wasn't British.

[myss]

Originally Posted by Blofeld

Anyway, having an interest in the Titanic, I was looking forward to this and while it wasn't amazing, I wasn't that disapointed. If people are just going to compare it to JCs Titanic, then it will come off looking awful, but there have been far worse things about the ship made, for example that crap starring Tim Curry and Catherine Zeta Jones* and a Nazi propaganda film. One of the most annoying things to me is Thomas Andrews' accent, he should have a broad Belfast accent, not an upper class English one.

*Although I'm sure JF has taken the stuff about Alice the babysitter straight from that version, both actresses seem to be playing the character the exact same way.

BIB: I think some people are only making such a comparison because apparently the JC version wasn't a great one but now appears superb compared to this so-called straight record setting version.

[21stCenturyBoy]

If anything, I wish the drama had focused more on real characters- I find those infinitley more fascinating than fictional ones. I know a lot of the characters last night WERE real but there are so many true stories from the Titanic that would be great to dramatise, but they never get focused on.

[woot_whoo]

Originally Posted by 21stCenturyBoy

If anything, I wish the drama had focused more on real characters- I find those infinitley more fascinating than fictional ones. I know a lot of the characters last night WERE real but there are so many true stories from the Titanic that would be great to dramatise, but they never get focused on.

Fellowes also portrayed the real characters in some very odd ways. For example, I can't recall ever hearing that Madame Aubart was treated as a social pariah by the likes of J Bruce Ismay, nor that Dorothy Gibson was viewed as a drunken prostitute, nor that American servants were treated with disgust by British servants. Does Fellowes base these portrayals on anything other than his obsession with ramping up the 'class warfare' aspect he perceives to have dominated history? All the first and second class passengers shown last night seemed concerned with nothing else other than resenting each other and making snide remarks about class - even when the ship was going down.

[malpasc]

For what was the largest ship in the world at the time they've managed to make the Titanic look the size of a canal barge. Everyone squashed into tiny spaces!

The sets looked exactly like sets too - no signs of motion. Even on a dead calm sea there would be some movement of light fittings, curtains etc caused by the vibrations of the ship.

I also like the way that the lines were delivered in such a way as to ensure the viewer knew what period of the 20th century they were watching at all times - "Germany wants a war".... They might as well have added "It wont be long now unil we have the first world war"...The BBC soap Eldorado had better scripting than is old tripe!

It was so dreadful I cannot wait for next week's episode.