The war had made a man of him: Benedict Cumberbatch stars in Parade’s End

Dazzling neckties? A celebration of English romanticism? The occasional rabble-rousing suffragette? No, it’s not Danny Boyle’s Opening Ceremony but Parade’s End, the BBC’s most eagerly anticipated costume drama of the autumn. Sir Tom Stoppard has adapted the Ford Madox Ford book for a cast that stars sometime consulting detective Benedict Cumberbatch, intellectual pinup Rebecca Hall, ever reliable fop Rupert Everett and Shameless star Anne-Marie Duff. Cumberbatch plays Christopher Tietjens, the last bastion of Toryism in a changing world, a civil servant tied to a faithless wife, Sylvia (played absorbingly by Hall). The situation is complicated by Tietjens affair with a young suffragette Valentine Wannop (a vibrant Adelaide Clemens - Stoppard picking her out as the “blonde one in the cap” in the pilot). Much has already been made ofCumberbatch criticising aspects of rival period dramaDownton Abbey  (context free highlight: “we won’t talk about that series because it was, in my opinion,  f****** atrocious”) but it certainly appears this is a more considered TV than waiting for Maggie Smith to drop another bon mot.
Indeed, Parade’s End’s strength lies not just in the detailed dialogue of  Stoppard’s taught script but also the stunning work by Cumberbatch and Hall - the latter’s captivating beauty makes us in many ways just as enamoured to her as her lover, Major Perowne.Cumberbatch - who apparently had to work on his already distinguished accent to make him seem a believable turn-of-the-century gentleman - also executes the role well. Director Susanna White said that Tietjens is a difficult individual to get right as “he’s such a buttoned-up Englishman who doesn’t show his emotions. Yet you have to fall in love with him and want to follow his journey.” Of course, remember that Cumberbatch might not have even been in the programme. The show has been in development for nearly three years; when parties from both the BBC and HBO met in the Ivy a few years back, the American broadcaster asked “Who is this Benedict Cumberbatch?”
Parade’s End is a must for those of us looking for slightly more in our TV viewing than watching Mel and Sue make jokes about baps. As White says, “people like demanding television: television that makes you think. There is another type of television now, which people revisit on box set, where they really like engaging with something that makes your mind work.” Stoppard says that Cumberbatch’s character “appeals deeply to me, because he says something that is very central. ‘When you live an outmoded code of honour, people take you to be a fool, and I’m coming round to their opinion.’ This is a man who falls in love with a young woman, whose wife has gone off with someone, and he says: ‘It makes no difference. Monogamy, chastity, I’m not talking about it.’ There’s something interesting in a man who describes him that way and tries to live those principles.” Put it this way: such extra-marital drama is the only reason to stay in on Friday night…
 Parade’s End starts this Friday at 9pm on BBC2.

source: sporadic-random-thoughts: