Mo: Channel 4

[poliphilo]

Julie Waters is a very distinctive actor with a very distinctive voice. She's not the sort of actor who disappears into a role. And that's why it was all wrong to have her playing Mo Mowlam. I'm sure it was a lovely performance in all sorts of ways, but I couldn't for a moment suspend my disbelief.

Also I'm getting tired-  tired to the point of switching off whenever I encounter it-  of dramas about the recent past that stir real documentary footage into the mix. In this film, for instance, Mowlam, Trimble, McGuinness and Adams were all played by actors but Paisley and Blair got to play themselves.  If the intention is to create the illusion of reality I've got news for the programme makers.  It doesn't work. In fact the reverse is true. it smashes the flimsy illusion of reality you've been trying to create. Either give us documentary or give us cunningly-contrived fiction- but don't bat us about between the two. By showing the real Paisley you're drawing attention to the fact that your make-believe McGuinness is far too tall,  your make-believe Adams too morose and your make-believe Trimble too foxy-  well, you get my drift.

The schedules are choked these days with biopics. I don't like them. They're unsatisfactory as history- because of course they have to invent stuff- and unsatisfactory as drama because they're tied too closely to what really happened.  There's never yet been a biopic that wasn't thoroughly mediocre.

Comments

[qatsi.livejournal.com]

I didn't watch it because I thought it couldn't possibly live up to the hype given to it by Channel 4 and, in any case, I thought it was too soon.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I agree with both those points.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I don't like these biopics and the recent trend toward "faction" either. They're neither one thing nor another and fall hopelessly in between as far as I'm concerned.

I'm not that keen on historical drama at all, to be honest, but if it's far enough in the past, I'm not so bothered about the invented stuff and the parts where they've had to juggle with the facts to make it more exciting. I just don't like it when the events are still well within living memory.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Historical inaccuracy always gets on my nerves- even when the material is flagrantly ahistorical. For example, I've never become reconciled to the BBC's Merlin being set in a French renaissance chateau. I know it's a fairy story- but it's supposed to be a British fairy story- and no castle ever built in Britain- before the 19th century- looked even remotely like that.