Holiday TVS rant

[awanderingbard]

It's been a nice Christmas season on TVO for costume drama lovers like my mum and I. On Christmas eve, they showed Persuasion (the newest one, the one that has Rupert Penry-Jones and is shot pretty much entirely up Sally Hawkins' nose), followed by The Old Curiosity Shop (I missed most of it due to struggling with my sweet potato recipe for Christmas dinner), followed by Oliver Twist. Mum and I watched the first part of Oliver, but the second came right after and was on until 2:00AM, so we dvr'd it and watched it on Christmas night. It was wonderful! It had Timothy Spall as Fagan, Sophie Okenado as Nancy and Tom Hardy as Bill Sykes. Tom Hardy blew me away. I've never seen him in anything before, but he was wonderful in a very thankless role. He was the perfect handsome asshole and though you never sympathized with him, he managed to play it so that he was a human and not just a moustache-twirling villain. I was very impressed

Last night was a documentary on the history of costume dramas on TVO, followed by the new Doctor Who Christmas Special on Space, which I loved mightily. It says something that my favourite Eleven stories are the ones that feature Amy the least. I really think Matt Smith came into his own as the Doctor in last series' finale and I'm starting to like him a lot. He's got his timing down really well and I like his absent-minded, all-over-the-place-and-back-again energy. The story was bittersweet, in fine Who tradition, and probably the Christmassy-ist Christmas special we've had. I thought the special effects were way better than I've seen before, too.

Tonight on TVO they started the Little Dorrit marathon, which is continuing for most of the week. We'd seen it on PBS when they showed it, but missed the first episode and were kind of lost throughout it, so we thought we'd watch it from the beginning this time. However, during the second episode we discovered that PBS had cut out huge chunks of the story, which explains why it never made sense to us.

So, with The Old Curiosity Shop, Oliver Twist, a Whovian take on A Christmas Carol and Little Dorrit, it's been, appropriately, a very Dickens Christmas.

Comments

[bookblather.livejournal.com]

Ugh, I hate that version of Persuasion. Much prefer the 1995 version, although I must say Anthony Stewart Head is a surprisingly fabulous bit of casting.

I have heard so many excellent things about the Christmas special, though! Cannot wait to see it.

[awanderingbard.livejournal.com]

I remember starting to watch the 1995 Persuasion when I was younger and getting bored and turning it off. I might give it a try now that I'm older. I've only just recently discovered that I can read Austen now and follow it, so perhaps some of the less 'ooh sparkly' adaptations will be more appealing to me.

I think the newer version would be so, so much better if they hadn't decided to shoot it like a documentary. Shaky-cam and Austen do not go together. And, like I said, the whole thing was shot up Sally Hawkins' nose.

[bookblather.livejournal.com]

Oh, definitely. I don't really have a problem with the cast, necessarily (although I do have issues with the people they cast as the Crofts, but that's a long story), but the directing style was all wrong for Austen. They were constantly playing up the OMGZ DRAMAH, and even if Persuasion was one of Austen's more dramatic works (which prize, IMO, goes to Northanger Abbey), Austen is not really the OMGZ DRAMAH type of author. Just didn't work all around.