Posted by Peter Ceresole on May 28, 2016 at 06:38:10 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: New S&A Film posted by Dave Thewlis on May 26, 2016 at 05:55:47:
I just looked (on Youtube) at an earlier adaptation under the peculiar "Swallows and Amazons for ever" title, which was actually BS. I'd always been puzzled about why they (the Beeb) had used that title for programmes that didn't feature any of the SAs at all, although there's a connection via the Ds. They were given a bit of understandable stick for that, and it had slightly put me off seeing the series.
But seeing this episode, I was happily surprised by how thoroughly good it was. The story was adapted all right, but well done, and the atmosphere was beautifully recreated; not "softly", in fact the old eel babber gave them a first hand history lesson of extreme poverty, people shooting bitterns for food and eating rats to stave off hunger. But the essentially local life, with its slow patterns and "everybody knows everybody", was nicely conveyed. It wasn't quite AR, but it was close and it was delightful.
It was also interesting to me that if you hadn't read the books, it'd be quite hard to make out what was really happening.
I think the BBC are making these things because they'd like to, and it gives me some hope that it'll be the case this time round too.
An incidental pleasure; as the titles rolled, it was nice to see the names of old technical colleagues coming up, editors, sound men and cameramen, and Sophie Neville of course, familiar on line and none the worse for that.
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