MrsK and I began (and decided not to continue with the other seven parts of ...) The Count of Monte Cristo (the new one on U & Drama) the other night. The Radio Times had praised it for its faithfulness to Dumas' original, but we should have known that 'faithfulness to the original' can (but needn't...
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(as is demonstrated by the BBC's 1964 version starring Alan Badel...<autobiographical-note>
{which I remember watching [but not following or sticking with] as a recently-turned 13-year-old; its mournful theme tune [which in my mind's ear I hear as featuring a horn solo, though at that age I wouldn't have recognized the instrument, and it may be a figment of my imagination] didn't promise the sort of derring-do that might have held my attention at the time] and the names were all pronounced in a funny way [Badel pronounced his sweetheart à la française – stress on the last syllable – /mɛrse'dɛz/ : this clashed with my own understanding, honed as it was by my recent exposure to I Spy On the Road – I knew how to pronounce Mercedes (odd name for a woman though, I thought at the time)].</autobiographical-note>The IMDb page for the 1964 Count of Monte Cristo has many reviews (20 at time of going to press), all of which rate it very highly (and several of them mention faithfulness to the text – although at 12 x 25 mins it's shorter than the new one.)
</exception>
...) can lead to an adaptation that to quote the review in last Sarurday's Times ...
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(that's The Times, known in some parts of thr world as 'the London Times', but more memorably [at the time of the move from Fleet Street] as 'The Wapping Liar')
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...is 'clunky'. The characters are two-dimensional, the plot is advanced not by the action but by the stilted dialogue, and to make suspension of disbelief even less possible the foreign names are treated to the most ridiculous of San Ferry Ann pronunciations. The Château d'If is a lot less intimidating as the ' Castle d'If'; we should be grateful, I suppose, that it's not 'Deef Castle'. One of its inmates is promised to be Jeremy Irons, which might make it more watchable; but he didn't appear in episode one so we'll have to give him a miss.
l'Envoi
I usually enjoy The Rest Is Politics (both Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart;s original and the US spinoff with Katty Kay and Anthony ('the Mooch') Scaramucci (more robust than the Beeb's Americast), but recently they've been spoiled for me by the ads for HP, which offer a special TRIP discount. I don't want the discount; as an ex-employee I already get one. Rather than giving out discounts I'd prefer them to treat their older pensioners with a modicum of decency.
<administrative-background general- interest="nugatory">
By a quirk of UK pensions law, Defined Benefit pensions (the good sort, which most people don't get any more), if earned before 1997, are treated differently than pensions earned more recently. While recent pensions are legally required to be kept at a more-or-less steady value by annual increments, pensions earned before 1997 attract 'discretionary' increases (i.e. in practice, courtesy of HP, in the UK [though not in the USA, or anywhere else for that matter] more often than not, nothing). As an example, the first ⅔ of my service (1984-1997), earns less (or barely more – life's too short to do the sums – what do you take for, obsessional?) than the final ⅓ (1098-2004) , because the more recently earned pension has kept pace with inflation while the earlier period's earnings have increased, over more than 20 years, by a single figure percentage.This is immoral, and I would think barely legal, as it constitues discrimination on grounds of age. I am far from being on my uppers, but I'm much less well-off than HP pensioners in other parts of the world. So the HP ads rankle. Bitter? Moi?
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If you're really interested in this pre '97 stuff, you could start with this Lexology page.
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</administrative-background>
I'm missing the cricket again, so finita la commedia.
b
