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Reviews
The Famous Five (2023)
Five Waste an Hour and a Half of my Life
I will just say that as this is a 2023 BBC production, it is fair to say that my expectations for their adaptation of this classic twentieth century childrens' adventure story were not exactly high to start with and in this regard it did not disappoint.
However, starting with a positive, the beautiful location setting of this production with the picturesque coastal cottage could have been lifted directly from the pages of the original story even if it is clearly not Dorset. Beyond that, because this being the BBC in 2023, things start to go wrong very quickly.
The techno strobe electro pop opening credits for a start - who on earth thought that was an appropriate intro for a children's story set in the 1930s childrens? The horrible electronic incidental music continues throughout. Also, given the period setting, the presence of current day identity politics and race swapping, whilst no surprise, are nonetheless simply jarring and inappropriate. If you want to do preachy political stuff BBC, why not come up with something original instead of continually debasing classic literature.
In common with a lot of BBC adaptations these days, there is a near absence of any real humanity in any of it. The lead character Georgina is what we might once have called a tomboy. However, the race swapped obnoxious character presented here is simply a spoiled antisocial brat throughout. In the original books George finds Timmy the dog abandoned on the moors and adopts him - in this adaptation she simply steals him from a boat. They find a dead body on the beach which does not visibly bother any of the children one bit and is then not mentioned for the rest of the episode. There is a complete lack of any sort of emotion or feeling throughout. Even the scene where the children nearly drowned or where they became trapped in a church crypt, far from being perilous situations, gave the impression that they were just pieces of the script that had to be got through.
In fact, the acting in the whole thing is at the level of a bad amateur dramatic production particularly the villain of the piece, who for some reason, despite the 1930s setting, is dressed and has the hairstyle of a B list 1980s pop musician, is dreadfully portrayed by an actor who completely lacks the presence and gravitas for the role he is playing. Continuity errors abound such as scenes where the children's clothes revert to pristine a few minutes after they escape the cave/crypt/treasure chamber in a filthy state.
Ultimately a dull and uninspiring interpretation of a childrens classic which is not worthy of the original. Enid Blyton is no doubt spinning in her grave as we speak.
Murder Is Easy (2023)
Disappointing - Two Hours Of My Life I Will Never Have Back
This production did not get off to a promising start when, despite being set in 1954, a copy of the Racing Post, a publication not established until 1986, is dropped on the floor of the train.
The bizarre scene in the black community centre which focused on the negative aspects of colonialism in an attempt to insert current race politics into the narrative added nothing of value to the plot. In Fact, it only made it seem all the more implausible that in 1954 no-one bats an eyelid when a black man walks into their village and starts poking his nose into their affairs. Ditto the pub scenes. A thin premise is also contrived to shoehorn a couple of Asians in to the cast to tick another diversity box.
At one point a red kite is seen swooping on the main character which would have been impossible in the 1950s since these birds were virtually extinct in the UK at that time.
Death after death after death occurs in the village and none of the surviving villagers seem particularly bothered at all. In fact, the whole thing had the feel of a rather mediocre low budget amateur dramatic production which, while it lacked any real depth or substance, was certainly not short of garish colours for some reason. The actor playing Lord Whitfield in particular hammed the character up to a ridiculous level. The narrative was slow, tedious, completely lacking in suspense and punctuated with frequent lengthy silences which were presumably necessary to fill out the running time to the required 2 hours rather than the 45 minutes the salient elements of the rather weak script might have filled. It was a real shame that by far the best actor in the whole thing had her character killed off after only 8 minutes.
The person who wrote the screenplay for this, who has an almost unreadable foreign name, and the Indian director, clearly do not have any understanding of the sort of traditional English culture and customs that Agatha Christie's novels are steeped in. I am a huge fan of Christie's work but this has to be one of the worst adaptations I have yet seen.
Marriage (2022)
What Did I Just Watch?
Seriously, it contains neither drama nor comedy, so what is it? Throughout the whole first episode there is no apparent plot, little or no meaningful dialogue and effectively no meaningful context because so many of the scenes do not properly explore or explain the scenarios they purport to depict.
The first five minutes is taken up with an argument about a sausage roll and the episode just steadily went downhill from there. There was a pointless five minutes of them silently filling a dishwasher for some reason. And, without any given reason, this white middle aged couple have a black daughter whom one can only assume is adopted. However, that only adds to the implausibility because any local authority would surely deem such an adoption culturally inappropriate. And that god awful theme tune, WTF?
It just shows how far the BBC have fallen when they are commissioning banal rubbish like this.