NEW (COSTUME) DRAMA SERIES ON TV: PARADE'S END, THE PARADISE, DOWNTON ABBEY THREE AND AN AMERICAN SHERLOCK, ELEMENTARY.

Parade's End

It's been I while since I last posted about period drama or TV series. I hope you haven't been thinking that I have been neglecting one of my passions,  because I haven't. I have been watching several new series in fact, only I didn't have time to write about them. For example,  I watched all the five episodes of BBC2 Parade's End starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Adelaide Clemens, Rebecca Hall, Rufus Sewell and Rupert Everett among other great actors and actresses.

Adelaide Clemens as Miss Wannop

Tom Stoppard's adaptation of Ford Madox Ford's tetralogy,  Parade's End,  was broadcast on BB2 in September. The 5-episode series is intelligent, refined TV drama that I hope you'll come to see and appreciate sooner or later. I am not a huge fan of Mr Cumberbatch 's male charms but I do recognize his talent as an actor. I love his voice and his cerebral performances, especially as Sherlock, but I didn't watch this drama especially for him.  While I liked the series very much for its themes and its brilliant script (not an easy task to adapt modernist prose), and loved the costumes and beautiful locations as well, I couldn't sympathize with its hero. Not Mr Cumberbatch's fault, mind you,  but ChristopherTietjens's uprightness, stiffness and stubborness didn't let me feel any tenderness nor sympathy for the martyr of society he wanted to become. 

FRANKENSTEIN AT THE CINEMA - MY REVIEW

Dannis Boyle’s Frankenstein, the  pluriawarded 2011 theatrical production,  has been a terrific success live on stage at the National  Theatre in London and it has after that also been shown worldwide in movie theatres in the original language.  It arrived in Rome yesterday (Cinema Lux) and it’ll be on tonight too (Cinema Barberini).

I can’t imagine how exciting it must have been for the lucky ones  in the audience at the theatre, but it was amazing and enthralling to watch it on screen last night for me. It was like being on stage with the cast, so with  a really privileged perspective on the spectacular staging.

I’ve always been astonished by the idea of a 19th century woman, Mary Shelley, writing such a modern,  evergreen, disquieting  story and at her young age (19 years old).  However, Nick Dear, whose adaptation Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee - Miller brought on stage, surprised and moved me with his brilliant work, which turns the novel into a  touching play.

The originality of the show is in the idea of a symbiotic relationship between created and  creator, the monster and the scientist who gave him life, unusually rendered with Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee-Miller alternating and taking turns to play the two main roles, that of Victor Frankenstein and that of his unnaturally created monster.

The version I saw last night was with Cumberbatch as the creature and Lee-Miller as Victor Frankenstein.