(no subject)

[nineveh_uk]

Watching Emma, I wonder if perhaps it isn't a good thing that the Wimsey books have not been televised for twenty years. It might be possible for less of Austen's dialogue to have been included, but it would have been hard work.

And why is no-one wearing a cap or hat?

Oh! Finally Mrs Weston has stopped being wet and has put on a cap.

Oh God! Jonny Lee Miller appears to be acting entirely by waving his forefingers.

And Robert Martin isn't supposed to be a clodhopper - Emma merely convinces herself that she is.

Urgh. And all the waving. Emma might be enthusiastic and eager for exciting, but she is supposed to have a good deal of dignity.

Aargh! And it could be a good cast, of only the script weren't so bloody awful.

The men are waving, too. Stop it! Stop it!

In short, Lost in Austen, which I was re-watching on DVD the other night, has ten times more subtlety, appreciation of period, and better dialogue than this supposedly "straight" adaptation.

I feel a letter to the BBC coming on.

Comments

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

Andrew Davies is presently at work on "South Riding"

Nooooo!! I can't imagine what he is going to do to it. Well I can but I would rather not.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Some of the things that Davies has done, I think he has done very well. Others less so. I almost feel that there is a bit of a pattern - the first thing of a type that he does is really good, and they go downhill thereafter. If SR is the first of its type that he's done (at least for a while) it stands a chance of being OK. Maybe.

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

I love A Very Peculiar Practice and liked his P&P and at some point must get hold of the rest of Bleak House, but I wouldn't want to let him loose with Sarah Burton and Robert Carne in a hotel bedroom (or anywhere).