And "5 flights a day" which would all have to be military because airlines / lease companies can't do ut.
We got civil operators to fly into Basra, Baghdad and Mosul on behalf of the UK government during the height of festivities there when there were SAMs and drones flying around. Shonky African operator + Russian crew + lots of money = nobody gives a fuck.
It's a lot simpler to do it with military aircraft and crews because they can be more easily coerced but the civil option isn't impossible even at the 5 flights/day scale.
Where does that sit on capacity?
Mr Farage doubled down on 500k-600k per annum deportations.
Is that doable on 5 flights a day, presumably on aircraft up to the size of a Globemaster or a Voyager, bearing in mind security personnel, load factor etc ?
500k a day is 1300 people a day so minimum 6 flights and probably more if you have any unwilling travellers...
And I don't see how the logistics works.
Also we don't exactly have 500k people arriving by boat so exactly who else is he planning to remove from the country...
Apparently they will be rounded up like in the USA with an ICE style unit .
I really do not see this happening
Stop the boats absolutely, but a US style purge is not acceptable
So how do you remove illegal immigrants who have melted into the ether if not with border force raids. They already happen fairly regularly at businesses suspected of using illegal labour, are you suggesting that we shouldn't be doing these either?
Weak willed liberals and their unending empathy for criminals and illegal immigrants are more dangerous for this country than the criminals and illegals.
I am not a weak willed liberal but what is going on in the US is unacceptable
By all means raid businesses suspected of employing illegal immigrants and I have no problem with everyone having a mandatory ID card
Can you tell us in detail exactly what's happening in the US that you wouldn't want to bring to the UK. As I see it they're using the same tactics as here, just more aggressively than we currently do and they're enforcing deportation rather than doing a catch and release as the UK does.
I think you've been watching too much nonsense on the news about the "horrors" of the US deportation programme when the reality is that even now Trump is still behind the deportation rate of Obama.
That's the point, is it not ? Obama didn't spend tens of billions militarising ICE as a private army, or disappear law abiding long term residents with families.
Obama didn't have to contend with sanctuary cities and those long term residents are still illegal, they don't have citizenship or legal right to remain in the US. Whether they've been there for 5 days or 5 years they should be removed. Obama also deported them too fwiw, he was known as the deporter in chief after all.
The polling suggests quite a large majority in the US disagrees with you on that.
Obama spent a good deal of his presidency trying to broker bipartisan agreement on regularising the law abiding, Legislation like the Dream Act has been around for well over two decades: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DREAM_Act
And the large majority of those he deported were recent arrivals across the southern border.
And yet people voted for Trump's deportation plan. People like to say things to pollsters that they don't believe and then vote for the things they do believe.
The voted to deport "the worst of the worst" - Trump's most used phrase on the issue - murderers, rapists and drug dealers. They did not vote to deport their hard working law abiding neighbours.
..Wall Street Journal (July 2025): 51% of respondents said “President Trump’s efforts to deport illegal immigrants have gone too far,” while 23% said “not far enough” and 24% said “about right.” CNN: (July 2025): 59% oppose and 23% support “Arresting and detaining undocumented immigrants who have resided in the United States for years with no criminal record.” As CNN polling editor Ariel Edwards-Levy wrote, “That echoes a theme seen in much immigration polling this year — support for immigration enforcement tends to erode when pollsters specify that people without criminal records or longtime residents will be among those affected.” Quinnipiac (July 2025): 59-38% disapproval of Trump’s handling of “deportations.” And by a 57-39% margin, voters disapprove of “the way U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, is enforcing immigration laws.” CBS/YouGov (July 2025): By a 51-49% margin, Americans disapprove of the “Trump administration’s program to deport immigrants illegally in the U.S.” In February, the same pollsters found 59-41% support when asking the same question. Washington Post/Schar School (June 2025): Americans disapprove of “the way President Trump is handling immigration enforcement, including deportations,“ by a 52-37% margin. Point 2: When gauged head-to-head, legal status for undocumented immigrants is decidedly more popular than mass deportation. Americans consistently prefer a path to legal status instead of mass deportation – and are measurably swinging in favor of legal status in recent months.
Fox News (July 2025): When asked about preferred policy for undocumented immigrants, Americans prefer a path to citizenship over mass deportation by a 59-29% margin. The question offered three options – “deport all illegal immigrants,” “deport only those illegal immigrants who have been charged with crimes but allow others to remain in the U.S. and eventually qualify for citizenship,” or “allow all illegal immigrants to remain,” with the final option receiving 11% support...
The other day you accused me of being obsessed with the Lib Dem’s.
Your every other post is about Donald Trump 🤷♂️
And with that I’m off to tackle a large and unwieldy bush as my grass clippings bin is being collected tomorrow having to pay extra for the pleasure. Fuck you Durham Council.
Hey, I didn't start this current discussion.
And of course, the LibDems are unlikely to shake the foundations of the NATO alliance, US democracy, and the world economy in the next couple of years.
Context is all.
No, but they have an influence on UK politics. It is fair to discuss their outbursts.
I know you didn’t start the discussion but you’re like Joe Hendry. Say his name and you will appear 😉
Those Lib Dem and Green figures are far too high for two parties which between them are getting about 1% of the media coverage of the Big THree. I live in England and I have seen more coverage of the SNP than I have of the Lib Dems (although that's probably because of Ms Sturgeon's literary endeavours.)
It's the other way around.
The 1% media coverage of the LDs and Green is much too low for their current market shares. The media are underestimating LD/Green support.
Just wait until the media coverage of LDs/Green increases around the 2026 locals and the next GE.
I suspect we’re just biased by exposure to local and US media.
I think if you order by country the USA is kicking it out of the park. Can’t comment on their ethnicity mind.
I again wonder if this is a bias in reporting of such crimes. Certainly the claim that “almost all serial killers have been white men” doesn’t seem correct.
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
If you can have actors as black Anglo Saxons you can have an actor as a white Mandela
A nicely thoughtful post there by @isam. I need to watch this as it is the 2nd one of yours I have liked today.
I disagree with you @HYUFD on Nelson Mandela and agree with @isam. Mandela being black is rather fundamental to the whole point of the story. Normans and Anglo Saxons being white is not. OK they clearly weren't black. They also have the wrong haircuts*, and speak the wrong language for the time, but we overlook that. We can overlook (with difficulty I grant you as it is obvious) black Anglo Saxons. It is a bit more difficult to overlook a white Mandela.
* A review I read said it was confusing flipping between the Norman and the Anglo Saxon locations and would have been a lot easy if they had the correct haircuts for the time.
All historical movies and TV shows are inaccurate to a greater or lesser degree. Mary Queen of Scots spoke with a French accent but she’s invariably given a Scottish one. Jesus of Nazareth was considerably darker than Robert Powell or indeed most of his other European and American visual representations. Picking on the skin colour of actors in history pieces set in Europe is a bit of a double standard. Suspension of disbelief is necessary in any dramatic production.
I agree. It is only relevant if key to the plot. I don't care if someone is black or white, thin or fat, tall or short, when playing a roles,but there are obvious exceptions when it is key to plot:
A white Mandela, a thin Billy Bunter, a short Giant in the beanstalk.
One only has to apply common sense.
I will try asking you as JJ didn’t answer at the time of writing - if the epic series “Shaka Zulu” is remade do you think it’s fine to cast white actors as Zulu Impi, or do you think it would be utterly ridiculous?
If you think it’s ok then please explain why, and why the Zulu nation shouldn’t be livid about it, if you think it would clearly be ridiculous then please explain why we also should accept colour blind casting in other situations.
The racial dimension in South African history in "Shaka Zulu" still very much feeds through to the country's situation today. In comparison, any racial dimension in "King & Conqueror" has long ceased to be relevant. Thus, the two are not directly comparable.
You do realise Shaka Zulu is about the rise of the Zulu against other black South African tribes of the time, pre Anglo-Zulu war and large scale white settlement and so the racial black/white dimension to the story isn’t relevant to the country’s situation today?
Also, we continue to hear a great deal about the superiority of the Normans, thinly disguised as the aristocracy and royalty.
I’ve not watched it, but surely a missed trick not having the Normans played by surly Gallic actors with in-built shrugs constantly saying “bof” and “du coup”.
And "ces salauds anglo-saxons sur cette colline de merde". Presumably they'd moved on from saying "de angelsaksiske røvhuller på denne lortebakke" but I'm not too sure when.,
Sounds as if speaking French all the time would have been better. The subtitles would be needed - but would have made the point of the alien language being imposed on the A/S. Unless the aim or the film was to glorify William and the Norman Conks?
Surely speaking Norman French not French.
Oh, not the same-ish then? All the more strange to modern ears then.
Serial killers in dramas are almost always white men.
Serial killers usually are white. At least the ones I can think of are.
I think we can distinguish between two or three types of drama.
For the historical epic, I think visual and other types of immersion are important. We look to such pieces to lose ourselves in a different time. Race blind casting makes no sense here. It’s a woke disruption. In fact it usually tells me that the director has no real understanding of what they’re doing, and I avoid such films or shows entirely.
For fantasies, such Bridgerton, it doesn’t matter, even if the nod is to Regency Britain, the whole point is that it’s an obviously-made up reinterpretation.
A third category perhaps encompasses the works of Shakespeare. We don’t really watch Othello to “feel” 16th century Venice, not in most versions - we watch to savour the language and individual performances. It doesn’t really matter if Hamlet is black.
This is from a pro govt account, so using these quotes as implied criticism of Reform, but I am of the opinion that it is the bogus asylum seekers who are to blame for any genuine refugees being stranded in dangerous places, not a foreign government who is refusing to accept the premise that 50,000 young men dossing in France must be taken in as if we owe them a favour.
Cathy Newman, "How does this sound to someone from Afghanistan who is facing torture or even death?"
Gawain Towler, member of Reform UK board, "We are not responsible for the whole world's problems.. I don't care about the whole world"
There’s a X account that digs in to who funds/who is behind other accounts, Charlotte Gill, and she is on Farrukhs case. Apparently he is in cahoots with , Campbell, Vorderman, etc to push stuff on social media
She will get a lot of,stick but her digging into who funds these AstroTurf groups is good work
Just proves to me the left, and hard left, are better organised than the right in getting shills to plug their message
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
I'd tend agree with you, though I'm not entirely persuaded about title characters necessarily being "provocative".
I saw an all black production of The Importance of Being Ernest a couple of years ago. I anticipated it being a bit of a gimmick, but the cast was excellent, which is what mattered. One of the best productions I've seen.
Certainly the casting was making something of a point, but in the event, the point was that it was just very good.
I think an all black cast of any play would be no problem at all, the provocation, if there is any, is when a black person plays Queen Victoria for instance. That seems like a bit of a statement. But does it really matter? I’m not as sure as I was
Wouldn’t get one cast as Adolf Hitler though!
I suspect that in the end, the only thing that matters is how good any given actor is.
Cross cultural casting works only when the actor can inhabit the role. Depending on the circumstances, that can be another hurdle for the actor to have to overcome.
True to extent but what’s the point in making a historical drama that isn’t bothered about being accurate? Why didn’t the makers of the new 1066 effort think to have the Normans with their bowl haircuts and the Anglo Saxons with their longer hair and moustaches? Easy for the viewer to work out what’s going on as an added benefit. Why not strive for accuracy?
If the makers had wanted to make a point about modern society then write something where two CEOs, one from France and one from England battle over some giant company and then you can weave in arguments about broken promises, expected inheritances and have the cast reflect the world it exists in. Christ even have the Harold character being rescued by William whilst they have some macho boat race and promising to support a takeover whilst they are drinking whisky later - it’s easy so no need to mess with the past.
Just don’t screw up a very compelling and important story through laziness or trying to be clever by adding a veneer of today’s sensibilities.
Can you imagine the reaction if the recent remake of Shogun had cast Japanese characters in it with white or black actors - people would have laughed at it and it would have pissed off a lot of people and probably mortally offended the Japanese because, even though it’s a fiction, it’s set in a very real period of their history and it’s fair to respect the reality of how it was. Yet it seems very much that we are supposed to laugh it off or wave it away when our history or past is breezily misrepresented.
I'd say Shogun is different. The main point of the story was that he was different. Even today, the white population in Japan is absolutely tiny.
The UK is a much more diverse country now, and a few black faces in a period drama that don't affect the actual story, isn't a big deal in my eyes. An entirely white cast, even if more historically accurate, would be as likely to stand out as a distraction to many people.
It's an age thing I think. I still find non white actors in costume dramas a bit jarring, even though I don't have any ideological objection to it, because I've grown up watching all white costume dramas. My kids don't find it jarring at all because they have grown up in a much more diverse environment than I have and this is reflected in the TV and film they have grown up with too. They are mixed race themselves so I would imagine they like seeing themselves represented on screen. I guess on some level it is anachronistic but all costume dramas are anachronistic on a whole load of levels, from costume to speech to the appearance of the actors, and the entire set up is artificial as all art is. If you listen to archive recordings people even just seventy or eighty years ago talked quite differently to how they talk now but we don't mind people speaking modern English in 21st century accents in dramas set hundreds of years ago. Let alone speaking English when they are Russian or whatever, eg Chernobyl.
I generally have no problem with casting different races in any role. Tho sometimes it can get ridiculous - if half the actors in a drama about Vikings are black or Middle Eastern it’s so odd it distracts from the drama (even more so if the writers bend history to explain it - “oh they’re freed slaves from Mali”)
However the woke flip the argument on its head sometimes, and say “only a trans person can play a trans role” or “only a black writer can write about black experiences”
Sod off with that. The whole point of acting and fiction writing is the ability to get inside someone else’s head. If you can do it you can do it
Imagine saying to Shakespeare “sorry you can’t write othello” or “you were never a young virgin girl in Verona”
That's true (about acting) but it can help to have a head start which is what being of the same essence as your character gives you. Even assuming I had thespian skills (which I don't) I'd struggle to play a person with an illogical and reductive reactionary mindset. I could give it a go, probably would if I were paid, but I don't think I could nail it. There'd certainly be no Oscar nomination. But if you cast me as an empathetic progressive thinker with a deep sense of mission about spreading that credo I'd be very believable in the role. It's that old chestnut about playing yourself, I suppose. Eg Roger Moore. That's all he ever did.
That is because you are not an actor. I had this very discussion with my sister in law who is an actor. I can stand up in front of a large audience and give a presentation. I have done it loads of times. I can't do the same if I am expected to be out of my own character. I really struggled even to role play on managerial courses. My sister in law on the other hand is exactly the opposite. She has to get into a role and not be herself.
Ah, interesting. I've never tried acting so I can't be sure but my feeling is I wouldn't be good. On speeches, though, I am much better with a large audience than a small one. If I'm speaking in an intimate setting I feel self-conscious because I can sense the attention of each individual on me and I don't like that. Worse if I know the people. But speaking to a large crowd of faceless strangers, that's quite ok. That's where I come alive.
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
If you can have actors as black Anglo Saxons you can have an actor as a white Mandela
A nicely thoughtful post there by @isam. I need to watch this as it is the 2nd one of yours I have liked today.
I disagree with you @HYUFD on Nelson Mandela and agree with @isam. Mandela being black is rather fundamental to the whole point of the story. Normans and Anglo Saxons being white is not. OK they clearly weren't black. They also have the wrong haircuts*, and speak the wrong language for the time, but we overlook that. We can overlook (with difficulty I grant you as it is obvious) black Anglo Saxons. It is a bit more difficult to overlook a white Mandela.
* A review I read said it was confusing flipping between the Norman and the Anglo Saxon locations and would have been a lot easy if they had the correct haircuts for the time.
All historical movies and TV shows are inaccurate to a greater or lesser degree. Mary Queen of Scots spoke with a French accent but she’s invariably given a Scottish one. Jesus of Nazareth was considerably darker than Robert Powell or indeed most of his other European and American visual representations. Picking on the skin colour of actors in history pieces set in Europe is a bit of a double standard. Suspension of disbelief is necessary in any dramatic production.
I agree. It is only relevant if key to the plot. I don't care if someone is black or white, thin or fat, tall or short, when playing a roles,but there are obvious exceptions when it is key to plot:
A white Mandela, a thin Billy Bunter, a short Giant in the beanstalk.
One only has to apply common sense.
I will try asking you as JJ didn’t answer at the time of writing - if the epic series “Shaka Zulu” is remade do you think it’s fine to cast white actors as Zulu Impi, or do you think it would be utterly ridiculous?
If you think it’s ok then please explain why, and why the Zulu nation shouldn’t be livid about it, if you think it would clearly be ridiculous then please explain why we also should accept colour blind casting in other situations.
The racial dimension in South African history in "Shaka Zulu" still very much feeds through to the country's situation today. In comparison, any racial dimension in "King & Conqueror" has long ceased to be relevant. Thus, the two are not directly comparable.
You do realise Shaka Zulu is about the rise of the Zulu against other black South African tribes of the time, pre Anglo-Zulu war and large scale white settlement and so the racial black/white dimension to the story isn’t relevant to the country’s situation today?
Also, we continue to hear a great deal about the superiority of the Normans, thinly disguised as the aristocracy and royalty.
I’ve not watched it, but surely a missed trick not having the Normans played by surly Gallic actors with in-built shrugs constantly saying “bof” and “du coup”.
And "ces salauds anglo-saxons sur cette colline de merde". Presumably they'd moved on from saying "de angelsaksiske røvhuller på denne lortebakke" but I'm not too sure when.,
Sounds as if speaking French all the time would have been better. The subtitles would be needed - but would have made the point of the alien language being imposed on the A/S. Unless the aim or the film was to glorify William and the Norman Conks?
Subtitles worked well for ‘Apocalypto’.
I was actually thinking of the Japanese in Tora! Tora! Tora! but had never heard of Apocalypto - and a Mel Gibson movie no less. From this sample it seems very, erm, striking - complete with, I notice, an atlatl in use.
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
I'd tend agree with you, though I'm not entirely persuaded about title characters necessarily being "provocative".
I saw an all black production of The Importance of Being Ernest a couple of years ago. I anticipated it being a bit of a gimmick, but the cast was excellent, which is what mattered. One of the best productions I've seen.
Certainly the casting was making something of a point, but in the event, the point was that it was just very good.
I think an all black cast of any play would be no problem at all, the provocation, if there is any, is when a black person plays Queen Victoria for instance. That seems like a bit of a statement. But does it really matter? I’m not as sure as I was
Wouldn’t get one cast as Adolf Hitler though!
We had a black Anne Boleyn. I always got the impression that was stunt casting to generate publicity for a minor channels output which it did quite well.
I doubt we will ever see a white MLK or Mandela these days.
Harry Enfield played Mandela in prosthetics in his comedy show. Has been savaged by the usual suspects for it, suffice to say, several years after the event and has said he wouldn’t do it now and doubts it would happen.
Quite frankly this so called colour blind casting is pretty pathetic box ticking stuff but I cannot say I care a great deal as I don’t watch the stuff the BBC puts out these days anyway. Its drama output is dire, mind you ITV isn’t much better.
I suspect if Farage wins the next GE he could pass a law saying if black actors can play historical white parts so white actors must also be able to play historical black parts, so you could have white actors playing Mandela and Obama
He wouldn’t need to, they can anyway. There is just no will from the right on TV production companies to do that.
In interesting climate change news (not the Met Office data showing this summer was the UK’s warmest on record, that’s fairly bog standard), the ITCZ over Africa has jumped way north of its average position as it reaches the annual max. That’s the second year in a row we’ve seen tropical seasonal rainfall extending into Northern Chad and Niger, and as far as Southern Algeria and Libya.
Unlike last year it’s not been north of average most of the season, but it’s the peak extent in late August and early September that really matters. This determines whether the Sahel and Southern Sahara are desertifying or greening.
And it’s set to head even further in the next fortnight: most of Mauritania, Algeria (though there were looking at enhancement from a subtropical trough) and all of Mali.
Lake Chad has been recovering. It should recover further this year.
Sahel greening is one of the modelled benefits of global warming. Yes it also means flooding, as we saw last year (and possible albedo impacts that accelerate warming globally), but there is already evidence of increased productivity across the belt in the last decade, helped by multilateral initiatives to plant trees too, and it should if all goes well bring greater stability to an area that’s one of the largest sources of geopolitical risk in our neighbourhood. Unlike the Med basin and Middle East where there trends all point to worsening chronic drought.
I had heard - though this may be bollocks - that Sahel greening is also benefitting from increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. Plants love that stuff.
I don't know about the Sahel, but increased vegetation from higher CO2 concentrations in some areas is both predicted and observed. It obviously depends to what extent CO2 is the limiting factor on growth. Every cloud has a silver lining, but, overall, the effects of climate change on crop growth are predicted to be mostly negative.
Tory source: “Graham Simpson is a pathetic nasty little man who won’t be missed. Just last year, he had to apologise to a young female member of staff for acting in a totally inappropriate, bullying and intimidating way towards her…”
At this rate, the SCons will suffer enough defections to lose their status as the official opposition. Only 6 more defections to go AFAIK.
"Taliban: We’re ready to work with Farage on migrants Senior official says they will not take money but instead accept aid to support any Afghans deported under Reform plans"
"A California couple is suing OpenAI over the death of their teenage son, alleging its chatbot, ChatGPT, encouraged him to take his own life.
The lawsuit was filed by Matt and Maria Raine, parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine, in the Superior Court of California on Tuesday. It is the first legal action accusing OpenAI of wrongful death.
The family included chat logs between Mr Raine, who died in April, and ChatGPT that show him explaining he has suicidal thoughts. They argue the programme validated his "most harmful and self-destructive thoughts".
In a statement, OpenAI told the BBC it was reviewing the filing."
If anyone is a fan of The Count of Monte Cristo, the 2024 French film adaptation is sublime. It takes a few liberties with the start, and the final scene is a little overblown, but the second half is beautiful, recreating important chapters from the book that other screen versions didn’t bother with at all.
I’m working my way through the book in French, for some reason it comes in two separate books, it’s my favourite story and read the best translation in English so thought I would read again in French to get the brain working.
There is a lot in the book left out of screen versions for reasons I don’t understand as, however long the book is, there is no fat in it to cut.
Have tried to watch the new series but something leaves me cold so far - must be because they haven’t cast a real Marseillais as Edmond Dantes.
I was left cold by the new series, and stopped at E3. The film changes the events leading to Edmond’s imprisonment and I was not happy about that at the time, but the second half is absolutely wonderful, and the changes to the plot are justified in my opinion. It keeps in many of the subplots that other adaptations leave behind, I thoroughly recommend watching
I have read the Robin Buss translation half a dozen times, which is the one you consider the best? I bought the book in French with the idea of reading it one day, but never have
The Robin Buss for me too - I have given a few copies to people as presents where appropriate too. It’s very hard to stop reading and put it down. I think my French edition must have been released to go with the French screen adaptation as they share a cover/marketing image photo.
Tory source: “Graham Simpson is a pathetic nasty little man who won’t be missed. Just last year, he had to apologise to a young female member of staff for acting in a totally inappropriate, bullying and intimidating way towards her…”
At this rate, the SCons will suffer enough defections to lose their status as the official opposition. Only 6 more defections to go AFAIK.
No such thing as the official opposition at Holyrood - the whole idea of the LD/Lab scheme was to avoid that simple-mindedness (as shown in the arcuate, rather than bilaterally symmetrical au Westminster, seating scheme). It's something Ms Davidson made up IIRC.
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
If you can have actors as black Anglo Saxons you can have an actor as a white Mandela
A nicely thoughtful post there by @isam. I need to watch this as it is the 2nd one of yours I have liked today.
I disagree with you @HYUFD on Nelson Mandela and agree with @isam. Mandela being black is rather fundamental to the whole point of the story. Normans and Anglo Saxons being white is not. OK they clearly weren't black. They also have the wrong haircuts*, and speak the wrong language for the time, but we overlook that. We can overlook (with difficulty I grant you as it is obvious) black Anglo Saxons. It is a bit more difficult to overlook a white Mandela.
* A review I read said it was confusing flipping between the Norman and the Anglo Saxon locations and would have been a lot easy if they had the correct haircuts for the time.
All historical movies and TV shows are inaccurate to a greater or lesser degree. Mary Queen of Scots spoke with a French accent but she’s invariably given a Scottish one. Jesus of Nazareth was considerably darker than Robert Powell or indeed most of his other European and American visual representations. Picking on the skin colour of actors in history pieces set in Europe is a bit of a double standard. Suspension of disbelief is necessary in any dramatic production.
I agree. It is only relevant if key to the plot. I don't care if someone is black or white, thin or fat, tall or short, when playing a roles,but there are obvious exceptions when it is key to plot:
A white Mandela, a thin Billy Bunter, a short Giant in the beanstalk.
One only has to apply common sense.
I will try asking you as JJ didn’t answer at the time of writing - if the epic series “Shaka Zulu” is remade do you think it’s fine to cast white actors as Zulu Impi, or do you think it would be utterly ridiculous?
If you think it’s ok then please explain why, and why the Zulu nation shouldn’t be livid about it, if you think it would clearly be ridiculous then please explain why we also should accept colour blind casting in other situations.
The racial dimension in South African history in "Shaka Zulu" still very much feeds through to the country's situation today. In comparison, any racial dimension in "King & Conqueror" has long ceased to be relevant. Thus, the two are not directly comparable.
You do realise Shaka Zulu is about the rise of the Zulu against other black South African tribes of the time, pre Anglo-Zulu war and large scale white settlement and so the racial black/white dimension to the story isn’t relevant to the country’s situation today?
Also, we continue to hear a great deal about the superiority of the Normans, thinly disguised as the aristocracy and royalty.
I’ve not watched it, but surely a missed trick not having the Normans played by surly Gallic actors with in-built shrugs constantly saying “bof” and “du coup”.
And "ces salauds anglo-saxons sur cette colline de merde". Presumably they'd moved on from saying "de angelsaksiske røvhuller på denne lortebakke" but I'm not too sure when.,
Sounds as if speaking French all the time would have been better. The subtitles would be needed - but would have made the point of the alien language being imposed on the A/S. Unless the aim or the film was to glorify William and the Norman Conks?
Subtitles worked well for ‘Apocalypto’.
I was actually thinking of the Japanese in Tora! Tora! Tora! but had never heard of Apocalypto - and a Mel Gibson movie no less. From this sample it seems very, erm, striking - complete with, I notice, an atlatl in use.
Serial killers in dramas are almost always white men.
Serial killers usually are white. At least the ones I can think of are.
I think we can distinguish between two or three types of drama.
For the historical epic, I think visual and other types of immersion are important. We look to such pieces to lose ourselves in a different time. Race blind casting makes no sense here. It’s a woke disruption. In fact it usually tells me that the director has no real understanding of what they’re doing, and I avoid such films or shows entirely.
For fantasies, such Bridgerton, it doesn’t matter, even if the nod is to Regency Britain, the whole point is that it’s an obviously-made up reinterpretation.
A third category perhaps encompasses the works of Shakespeare. We don’t really watch Othello to “feel” 16th century Venice, not in most versions - we watch to savour the language and individual performances. It doesn’t really matter if Hamlet is black.
Agree with all that.
Shakespeare works because it is now widely accepted as a study of characters, primarily. The setting is secondary, as shown by the wide variety of very successful adaptations that place the drama in different periods.
Edit: I should also add that at the time the plays were written a lot of the historical elements were anachronistic and very much not written with accuracy in mind.
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
If you can have actors as black Anglo Saxons you can have an actor as a white Mandela
A nicely thoughtful post there by @isam. I need to watch this as it is the 2nd one of yours I have liked today.
I disagree with you @HYUFD on Nelson Mandela and agree with @isam. Mandela being black is rather fundamental to the whole point of the story. Normans and Anglo Saxons being white is not. OK they clearly weren't black. They also have the wrong haircuts*, and speak the wrong language for the time, but we overlook that. We can overlook (with difficulty I grant you as it is obvious) black Anglo Saxons. It is a bit more difficult to overlook a white Mandela.
* A review I read said it was confusing flipping between the Norman and the Anglo Saxon locations and would have been a lot easy if they had the correct haircuts for the time.
All historical movies and TV shows are inaccurate to a greater or lesser degree. Mary Queen of Scots spoke with a French accent but she’s invariably given a Scottish one. Jesus of Nazareth was considerably darker than Robert Powell or indeed most of his other European and American visual representations. Picking on the skin colour of actors in history pieces set in Europe is a bit of a double standard. Suspension of disbelief is necessary in any dramatic production.
I agree. It is only relevant if key to the plot. I don't care if someone is black or white, thin or fat, tall or short, when playing a roles,but there are obvious exceptions when it is key to plot:
A white Mandela, a thin Billy Bunter, a short Giant in the beanstalk.
One only has to apply common sense.
I will try asking you as JJ didn’t answer at the time of writing - if the epic series “Shaka Zulu” is remade do you think it’s fine to cast white actors as Zulu Impi, or do you think it would be utterly ridiculous?
If you think it’s ok then please explain why, and why the Zulu nation shouldn’t be livid about it, if you think it would clearly be ridiculous then please explain why we also should accept colour blind casting in other situations.
The racial dimension in South African history in "Shaka Zulu" still very much feeds through to the country's situation today. In comparison, any racial dimension in "King & Conqueror" has long ceased to be relevant. Thus, the two are not directly comparable.
You do realise Shaka Zulu is about the rise of the Zulu against other black South African tribes of the time, pre Anglo-Zulu war and large scale white settlement and so the racial black/white dimension to the story isn’t relevant to the country’s situation today?
Also, we continue to hear a great deal about the superiority of the Normans, thinly disguised as the aristocracy and royalty.
I’ve not watched it, but surely a missed trick not having the Normans played by surly Gallic actors with in-built shrugs constantly saying “bof” and “du coup”.
And "ces salauds anglo-saxons sur cette colline de merde". Presumably they'd moved on from saying "de angelsaksiske røvhuller på denne lortebakke" but I'm not too sure when.,
Sounds as if speaking French all the time would have been better. The subtitles would be needed - but would have made the point of the alien language being imposed on the A/S. Unless the aim or the film was to glorify William and the Norman Conks?
Subtitles worked well for ‘Apocalypto’.
I was actually thinking of the Japanese in Tora! Tora! Tora! but had never heard of Apocalypto - and a Mel Gibson movie no less. From this sample it seems very, erm, striking - complete with, I notice, an atlatl in use.
All the actors were Mayan, although to my mind, the society that is depicted is Aztec, rather than Mayan. It's a very good film, IMHO.
It is good. Don’t want to start down the ‘can bad uns make good art’ line, but despite being a boozy, antisemitic virtually fascistic Catholic, Gibson can make a good movie, and act well.
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
If you can have actors as black Anglo Saxons you can have an actor as a white Mandela
A nicely thoughtful post there by @isam. I need to watch this as it is the 2nd one of yours I have liked today.
I disagree with you @HYUFD on Nelson Mandela and agree with @isam. Mandela being black is rather fundamental to the whole point of the story. Normans and Anglo Saxons being white is not. OK they clearly weren't black. They also have the wrong haircuts*, and speak the wrong language for the time, but we overlook that. We can overlook (with difficulty I grant you as it is obvious) black Anglo Saxons. It is a bit more difficult to overlook a white Mandela.
* A review I read said it was confusing flipping between the Norman and the Anglo Saxon locations and would have been a lot easy if they had the correct haircuts for the time.
All historical movies and TV shows are inaccurate to a greater or lesser degree. Mary Queen of Scots spoke with a French accent but she’s invariably given a Scottish one. Jesus of Nazareth was considerably darker than Robert Powell or indeed most of his other European and American visual representations. Picking on the skin colour of actors in history pieces set in Europe is a bit of a double standard. Suspension of disbelief is necessary in any dramatic production.
I agree. It is only relevant if key to the plot. I don't care if someone is black or white, thin or fat, tall or short, when playing a roles,but there are obvious exceptions when it is key to plot:
A white Mandela, a thin Billy Bunter, a short Giant in the beanstalk.
One only has to apply common sense.
I will try asking you as JJ didn’t answer at the time of writing - if the epic series “Shaka Zulu” is remade do you think it’s fine to cast white actors as Zulu Impi, or do you think it would be utterly ridiculous?
If you think it’s ok then please explain why, and why the Zulu nation shouldn’t be livid about it, if you think it would clearly be ridiculous then please explain why we also should accept colour blind casting in other situations.
The racial dimension in South African history in "Shaka Zulu" still very much feeds through to the country's situation today. In comparison, any racial dimension in "King & Conqueror" has long ceased to be relevant. Thus, the two are not directly comparable.
You do realise Shaka Zulu is about the rise of the Zulu against other black South African tribes of the time, pre Anglo-Zulu war and large scale white settlement and so the racial black/white dimension to the story isn’t relevant to the country’s situation today?
Also, we continue to hear a great deal about the superiority of the Normans, thinly disguised as the aristocracy and royalty.
I’ve not watched it, but surely a missed trick not having the Normans played by surly Gallic actors with in-built shrugs constantly saying “bof” and “du coup”.
And "ces salauds anglo-saxons sur cette colline de merde". Presumably they'd moved on from saying "de angelsaksiske røvhuller på denne lortebakke" but I'm not too sure when.,
Sounds as if speaking French all the time would have been better. The subtitles would be needed - but would have made the point of the alien language being imposed on the A/S. Unless the aim or the film was to glorify William and the Norman Conks?
Subtitles worked well for ‘Apocalypto’.
I was actually thinking of the Japanese in Tora! Tora! Tora! but had never heard of Apocalypto - and a Mel Gibson movie no less. From this sample it seems very, erm, striking - complete with, I notice, an atlatl in use.
This is from a pro govt account, so using these quotes as implied criticism of Reform, but I am of the opinion that it is the bogus asylum seekers who are to blame for any genuine refugees being stranded in dangerous places, not a foreign government who is refusing to accept the premise that 50,000 young men dossing in France must be taken in as if we owe them a favour.
Cathy Newman, "How does this sound to someone from Afghanistan who is facing torture or even death?"
Gawain Towler, member of Reform UK board, "We are not responsible for the whole world's problems.. I don't care about the whole world"
There’s a X account that digs in to who funds/who is behind other accounts, Charlotte Gill, and she is on Farrukhs case. Apparently he is in cahoots with , Campbell, Vorderman, etc to push stuff on social media
I wouldn't exactly characterise Charlotte Gill as a reliable source ; she deliberately provokes and does not engage. (You may differ.)
Her writing credits are The Sunday Telegraph, the Critic, the Sun and the Mail on Sunday. And she learnt her trade as a producer at GB News.
She's modestly on my radar as one of a fairly small number of obsessive ranters-about-cycling, and features a couple of times a year on the Roadcc spot. My particular beef is that she creates "cyclists vs disabled / elderly people" narratives; I think that when she finds out that mobility scooters and electric wheelchairs use 'cycle tracks' aka mobility tracks, her head will explode.
eg Charlotte Gill @CharlotteCGill Feb 13, 2024 This is what’s happening all over London. @willnorman is turning it into CycleLand for himself and his cycle freak friends. Who cares about the elderly and people with mobility needs? I guess they can just hop on a unicycle. And forget the idea of emergency services getting past.
Leo Gibbons @Layo_FH Feb 13, 2024 Good cycle infrastructure is great for ppl who use hand-operated tricycles or mobility scooters.
And you’re much more likely to find older cyclists when there’s good infrastructure. Nearly a quarter of all trips made by Dutch over-65s, are cycled.
Serial killers in dramas are almost always white men.
Serial killers usually are white. At least the ones I can think of are.
I think we can distinguish between two or three types of drama.
For the historical epic, I think visual and other types of immersion are important. We look to such pieces to lose ourselves in a different time. Race blind casting makes no sense here. It’s a woke disruption. In fact it usually tells me that the director has no real understanding of what they’re doing, and I avoid such films or shows entirely.
For fantasies, such Bridgerton, it doesn’t matter, even if the nod is to Regency Britain, the whole point is that it’s an obviously-made up reinterpretation.
A third category perhaps encompasses the works of Shakespeare. We don’t really watch Othello to “feel” 16th century Venice, not in most versions - we watch to savour the language and individual performances. It doesn’t really matter if Hamlet is black.
Well that's my point. Maybe they should be portrayed by other types of people for a change.
Race blind casting is not the only kind of woke disruption I can’t abide. Essentially any BBC (and more generally British) period drama is now thoroughly infested with a kind of weird didactic wokery that I seem to have a strong allergy to.
The recent Ruth Ellis drama was unwatchable just to name an example that springs to mind (and the lead actress was rubbish).
Compare with “The Wire”, “Shogun”, “Mad Men”, which address race and gender issues but don’t seek to blatantly re-write history or create “goodies and baddies” based on race, gender, or class.
"Taliban: We’re ready to work with Farage on migrants Senior official says they will not take money but instead accept aid to support any Afghans deported under Reform plans"
I imagine the Taliban will be very happy to welcome back those who have fled the country out of fear of the Taliban. Definitions of "welcome" may differ.
Donald Trump claims UK in for 'bad awakening' thanks to Starmer's energy policy Trump's comments come despite the UK's reliance on fossil fuels being one of the factors driving up energy costs, with wind power being significantly cheaper than nuclear, gas or coal https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/donald-trump-claims-uk-bad-35798659
Ye Gods, They just censored my comment.
I saw this story about illegal parking and wondered if you were the new Leon: PB by day; Fleet Street by night:-
Highway Code rule break mistake 'most drivers' are making
Drivers throughout Britain are being alerted to an obscure Highway Code regulation that could see them slapped with a substantial penalty, purely based on how they position their vehicle overnight. The Highway Code states that it's against the law to park facing against the direction of traffic flow once darkness falls, except when positioned within a designated parking space.
The rationale centres on visibility concerns: car headlights are engineered to bounce light off a vehicle's rear, rather than its front end. When parked incorrectly, cars become significantly more difficult to detect, heightening the chances of a collision. https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/uk-news/highway-code-rule-break-mistake-35794413
I knew that BUT only because I am preparing to take my advanced driving test. One I didn't know and got my knuckles rapped on is going around mini roundabouts. Rule 188 states you must pass around them unless you are physically unable to do so. I do, but have been known to cut off a small section and got told off for doing so. It is an offence, although I was told you are unlikely to get pulled up for it by the Police unless you are involved in an accident.
I tend to use mini roundabouts more as a suggestion as to who has right of way.
I don't believe the "facing the direction of traffic" thing is enforced.
Not enforced normally, but if you have an accident on a mini roundabout while doing it then a fine and penalty points will be coming your way and that was from the traffic cop sitting next to me in the car at the time.
If there are other cars you give way as normal, rather than try to cut across before the car on your right
Well I can only tell you what a traffic policeman sitting next to me told me when I did it and we all make mistakes, no matter how good a driver we are so you can get caught out.
Yes I'm aware that you are supposed to go round a mini roundabout as if it was a normal one, but if there is no-one else around you are not going to cause an accident. A bit like cutting the corner when you turn right - what is wrong is when cars cut the corner despite the fact there is a car in the way at the end of the road they are turning into
For me, it's the danger of getting into a habit and doing it without thinking. Ditto signalling - the IAM say "don't signal when there is no one there to see" (or they did), but I might have missed seeing something, and I'd rather be in the habit of signalling, rather than not-signalling.
Very good point @MattW . Interesting you brought up the signalling thing because I thought the same and asked the question of my instructor. He did not advocate not signalling if there is no one there to see you which was interesting. What he said was you need to be aware of whether your action could cause more confusion than impart accurate information. So yes you should indicate if there is no one there to see it, but not if it will confuse. I was criticised for indicating too early for instance which could give misleading information. I was told to look at drivers faces if you can and their car positioning to also determine what they are doing.
The training is excellent. It is all common sense, but reinforces what you know. The police handbook, Roadcraft is excellent and recommended reading.
I don't know the current IAM position; I did a few sessions with the local branch some time ago (meaning decades), and read Roadcraft in my early 20s after I passed my test at 17. I had several collisions in my first year of driving, of which the first was my fault, and involved spinning the family car off a motorway junction roundabout whilst exploring where the limit of grip was.
Aha - THERE ... FUCKETY-FUCK ... CRUNCH. Austin Maxis are not very good for catching front wheel skids.
Darling sister demonstrated that for VW Polos soon after in my first car in the snow.
I'm not wholly at ease with what I understand to be the IAM "drive to the speed limit where you can" ethos; I think we under-emphasize possible consequences of "minor" hazards, such as not being able to see behind things or in low sunlight.
I do not think they advocate driving to the speed limit. Again it tends to the common sense of driving to the conditions. Not too slow, not too fast. What I found refreshing about IAM and Roadcraft is none of it is prescriptive. For instance the hand position on the steering wheel and crossing is all dealt with sensibly. Nothing banned, but do it properly or in the right circumstances. There is some quite clever stuff on anticipation.
The Telegraph article makes the Taliban sound all warm and cuddly . The main difference between the controversial German scheme and the one proposed by Farage is the former are sending back failed asylum seekers and criminals versus the latter in which all Afghans arriving by boat would be sent back .
I know we’re currently living in a climate of zero empathy or humanity but do the British public want to send people back who could be executed as soon as they arrive , are they willing to send back women to be stoned to death ?
Tory source: “Graham Simpson is a pathetic nasty little man who won’t be missed. Just last year, he had to apologise to a young female member of staff for acting in a totally inappropriate, bullying and intimidating way towards her…”
Sounds like he was the very model of a SCon. However he also sounds a perfect fit for Reform, which is probably part of the SCon problem.
If the Scottish Conservatives aren't for Graham Simpson, nor Jeremy Balfour, nor Jamie Greene, just who the hell are the party for?
Has there been any detailed, electorate based, analysis of possible outcomes given the way current polling is going?
MRP-style?
I’m assuming that Reform will top the polls, but they will be far short of a majority, and a Labour/LD coalition looks most likely. But I haven’t seen any good analysis on this, only comments that say things like “Wow, Tories will lose ALL seats using this defunct swing-based web tool!”
Tory source: “Graham Simpson is a pathetic nasty little man who won’t be missed. Just last year, he had to apologise to a young female member of staff for acting in a totally inappropriate, bullying and intimidating way towards her…”
At this rate, the SCons will suffer enough defections to lose their status as the official opposition. Only 6 more defections to go AFAIK.
I dunno if there is an 'official' opposition at Holyrood in the same way as westminster. The Tories would lose rights at FMQs etc if they kept losing MSPs, Colin Smyth has helped them in that respect
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
If you can have actors as black Anglo Saxons you can have an actor as a white Mandela
A nicely thoughtful post there by @isam. I need to watch this as it is the 2nd one of yours I have liked today.
I disagree with you @HYUFD on Nelson Mandela and agree with @isam. Mandela being black is rather fundamental to the whole point of the story. Normans and Anglo Saxons being white is not. OK they clearly weren't black. They also have the wrong haircuts*, and speak the wrong language for the time, but we overlook that. We can overlook (with difficulty I grant you as it is obvious) black Anglo Saxons. It is a bit more difficult to overlook a white Mandela.
* A review I read said it was confusing flipping between the Norman and the Anglo Saxon locations and would have been a lot easy if they had the correct haircuts for the time.
All historical movies and TV shows are inaccurate to a greater or lesser degree. Mary Queen of Scots spoke with a French accent but she’s invariably given a Scottish one. Jesus of Nazareth was considerably darker than Robert Powell or indeed most of his other European and American visual representations. Picking on the skin colour of actors in history pieces set in Europe is a bit of a double standard. Suspension of disbelief is necessary in any dramatic production.
I agree. It is only relevant if key to the plot. I don't care if someone is black or white, thin or fat, tall or short, when playing a roles,but there are obvious exceptions when it is key to plot:
A white Mandela, a thin Billy Bunter, a short Giant in the beanstalk.
One only has to apply common sense.
I will try asking you as JJ didn’t answer at the time of writing - if the epic series “Shaka Zulu” is remade do you think it’s fine to cast white actors as Zulu Impi, or do you think it would be utterly ridiculous?
If you think it’s ok then please explain why, and why the Zulu nation shouldn’t be livid about it, if you think it would clearly be ridiculous then please explain why we also should accept colour blind casting in other situations.
To me it's a strange thing to get excited about. There is value in (say) cast colour reversal as a way of stretching perceptions, and making the audience think. That is a valid artistic purpose.
At one end there are the "Patriots" who can be satirised by pointing out that St George was probably Turkish.
Then we have the plays of Shakespeare which are about the human condition through the lens of Shakespeare's scripts-set-in-history. Should we be objecting to British actors being in "Two Gentlemen of Verona", or Shylock not being portrayed by a Jewish Actor? It's a non-issue. In fact imo varying ethnicity of actors in casts elucidates the play further, and is usefully mind-stretching for us.
At the other end we have the reality of our history, where famously there is black sailor George Ryan portrayed on the relief of the death of Nelson at Trafalgar on Nelson's Column, or the reasonably recent revelation that there was a black Conservative MP in the Commons
It wasn't so long since we were being told that Bernie Sanders and Diane Abbott were the first Black British MPs (iirc from the 1990s). But now we know that there were black (mixed race afaik without really digging out the detail) from the 18C.
If anyone is a fan of The Count of Monte Cristo, the 2024 French film adaptation is sublime. It takes a few liberties with the start, and the final scene is a little overblown, but the second half is beautiful, recreating important chapters from the book that other screen versions didn’t bother with at all.
I’m working my way through the book in French, for some reason it comes in two separate books, it’s my favourite story and read the best translation in English so thought I would read again in French to get the brain working.
There is a lot in the book left out of screen versions for reasons I don’t understand as, however long the book is, there is no fat in it to cut.
Have tried to watch the new series but something leaves me cold so far - must be because they haven’t cast a real Marseillais as Edmond Dantes.
I was left cold by the new series, and stopped at E3. The film changes the events leading to Edmond’s imprisonment and I was not happy about that at the time, but the second half is absolutely wonderful, and the changes to the plot are justified in my opinion. It keeps in many of the subplots that other adaptations leave behind, I thoroughly recommend watching
I have read the Robin Buss translation half a dozen times, which is the one you consider the best? I bought the book in French with the idea of reading it one day, but never have
The Robin Buss for me too - I have given a few copies to people as presents where appropriate too. It’s very hard to stop reading and put it down. I think my French edition must have been released to go with the French screen adaptation as they share a cover/marketing image photo.
In 1999,my Mum bought it for me after I watched the film Sleepers which it featured in as the boys favourite book. At 1100 odd pages I found it quite daunting, but was so hooked that I used to read it walking down the street on my way to getting the train in the morning!
Donald Trump claims UK in for 'bad awakening' thanks to Starmer's energy policy Trump's comments come despite the UK's reliance on fossil fuels being one of the factors driving up energy costs, with wind power being significantly cheaper than nuclear, gas or coal https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/donald-trump-claims-uk-bad-35798659
Ye Gods, They just censored my comment.
I saw this story about illegal parking and wondered if you were the new Leon: PB by day; Fleet Street by night:-
Highway Code rule break mistake 'most drivers' are making
Drivers throughout Britain are being alerted to an obscure Highway Code regulation that could see them slapped with a substantial penalty, purely based on how they position their vehicle overnight. The Highway Code states that it's against the law to park facing against the direction of traffic flow once darkness falls, except when positioned within a designated parking space.
The rationale centres on visibility concerns: car headlights are engineered to bounce light off a vehicle's rear, rather than its front end. When parked incorrectly, cars become significantly more difficult to detect, heightening the chances of a collision. https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/uk-news/highway-code-rule-break-mistake-35794413
I knew that BUT only because I am preparing to take my advanced driving test. One I didn't know and got my knuckles rapped on is going around mini roundabouts. Rule 188 states you must pass around them unless you are physically unable to do so. I do, but have been known to cut off a small section and got told off for doing so. It is an offence, although I was told you are unlikely to get pulled up for it by the Police unless you are involved in an accident.
I tend to use mini roundabouts more as a suggestion as to who has right of way.
I don't believe the "facing the direction of traffic" thing is enforced.
Not enforced normally, but if you have an accident on a mini roundabout while doing it then a fine and penalty points will be coming your way and that was from the traffic cop sitting next to me in the car at the time.
If there are other cars you give way as normal, rather than try to cut across before the car on your right
Well I can only tell you what a traffic policeman sitting next to me told me when I did it and we all make mistakes, no matter how good a driver we are so you can get caught out.
Yes I'm aware that you are supposed to go round a mini roundabout as if it was a normal one, but if there is no-one else around you are not going to cause an accident. A bit like cutting the corner when you turn right - what is wrong is when cars cut the corner despite the fact there is a car in the way at the end of the road they are turning into
For me, it's the danger of getting into a habit and doing it without thinking. Ditto signalling - the IAM say "don't signal when there is no one there to see" (or they did), but I might have missed seeing something, and I'd rather be in the habit of signalling, rather than not-signalling.
Very good point @MattW . Interesting you brought up the signalling thing because I thought the same and asked the question of my instructor. He did not advocate not signalling if there is no one there to see you which was interesting. What he said was you need to be aware of whether your action could cause more confusion than impart accurate information. So yes you should indicate if there is no one there to see it, but not if it will confuse. I was criticised for indicating too early for instance which could give misleading information. I was told to look at drivers faces if you can and their car positioning to also determine what they are doing.
The training is excellent. It is all common sense, but reinforces what you know. The police handbook, Roadcraft is excellent and recommended reading.
I don't know the current IAM position; I did a few sessions with the local branch some time ago (meaning decades), and read Roadcraft in my early 20s after I passed my test at 17. I had several collisions in my first year of driving, of which the first was my fault, and involved spinning the family car off a motorway junction roundabout whilst exploring where the limit of grip was.
Aha - THERE ... FUCKETY-FUCK ... CRUNCH. Austin Maxis are not very good for catching front wheel skids.
Darling sister demonstrated that for VW Polos soon after in my first car in the snow.
I'm not wholly at ease with what I understand to be the IAM "drive to the speed limit where you can" ethos; I think we under-emphasize possible consequences of "minor" hazards, such as not being able to see behind things or in low sunlight.
The only accident I have had in the last 23 years was caused by the windscreen fogging up unexpectedly. Fortunately I was going at very low speed.
Tory source: “Graham Simpson is a pathetic nasty little man who won’t be missed. Just last year, he had to apologise to a young female member of staff for acting in a totally inappropriate, bullying and intimidating way towards her…”
Sounds like he was the very model of a SCon. However he also sounds a perfect fit for Reform, which is probably part of the SCon problem.
If the Scottish Conservatives aren't for Graham Simpson, nor Jeremy Balfour, nor Jamie Greene, just who the hell are the party for?
I hope John Swinney asks that question at the next FMQs. It would also make a good poster for the other parties next year.
Race blind casting is not the only kind of woke disruption I can’t abide. Essentially any BBC (and more generally British) period drama is now thoroughly infested with a kind of weird didactic wokery that I seem to have a strong allergy to.
The recent Ruth Ellis drama was unwatchable just to name an example that springs to mind (and the lead actress was rubbish).
Compare with “The Wire”, “Shogun”, “Mad Men”, which address race and gender issues but don’t seek to blatantly re-write history or create “goodies and baddies” based on race, gender, or class.
What was the specific issue with the Ruth Ellis drama. We didn’t watch it.
Race blind casting is not the only kind of woke disruption I can’t abide. Essentially any BBC (and more generally British) period drama is now thoroughly infested with a kind of weird didactic wokery that I seem to have a strong allergy to.
The recent Ruth Ellis drama was unwatchable just to name an example that springs to mind (and the lead actress was rubbish).
Compare with “The Wire”, “Shogun”, “Mad Men”, which address race and gender issues but don’t seek to blatantly re-write history or create “goodies and baddies” based on race, gender, or class.
I’m not sure if this is a particularly British phenomenon insomuch as part of a wider decline in the quality of decent scriptwriting and what gets brought forward to be broadcast now. There’s plenty of American drama which also suffers badly from all sorts of similar issues.
The main problem is that scripts often feel inorganic. It’s getting harder and harder to find things that set out to tell a good story with thoughtful messaging. There is often a “written by committee” feel to some of it - it must have a scene that does X, it must have a character who is Y characteristic, it must show person X dealing with a situation better than person Z” - it is often rather lazy, and any messaging it retains is less thoughtful and nuanced than blatant and “right-on”.
It perhaps feels more disappointing that the BBC has fallen foul of a lot of this - partly because their history has seen them make so much thoughtful, diverse, interesting and thought provoking drama over the years.
Tory source: “Graham Simpson is a pathetic nasty little man who won’t be missed. Just last year, he had to apologise to a young female member of staff for acting in a totally inappropriate, bullying and intimidating way towards her…”
Sounds like he was the very model of a SCon. However he also sounds a perfect fit for Reform, which is probably part of the SCon problem.
If the Scottish Conservatives aren't for Graham Simpson, nor Jeremy Balfour, nor Jamie Greene, just who the hell are the party for?
The deferential rustic knuckling of the forehead to the tweed-clad folk in the big house? A Scottish version of HYUFD's (erstwhile?) vision of society as based on the (albeit modernised) manorial system. Difficult to see what else is left. And yet one can do a lot with 13% as already discussed.
Has there been any detailed, electorate based, analysis of possible outcomes given the way current polling is going?
MRP-style?
I’m assuming that Reform will top the polls, but they will be far short of a majority, and a Labour/LD coalition looks most likely. But I haven’t seen any good analysis on this, only comments that say things like “Wow, Tories will lose ALL seats using this defunct swing-based web tool!”
Donald Trump claims UK in for 'bad awakening' thanks to Starmer's energy policy Trump's comments come despite the UK's reliance on fossil fuels being one of the factors driving up energy costs, with wind power being significantly cheaper than nuclear, gas or coal https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/donald-trump-claims-uk-bad-35798659
Ye Gods, They just censored my comment.
I saw this story about illegal parking and wondered if you were the new Leon: PB by day; Fleet Street by night:-
Highway Code rule break mistake 'most drivers' are making
Drivers throughout Britain are being alerted to an obscure Highway Code regulation that could see them slapped with a substantial penalty, purely based on how they position their vehicle overnight. The Highway Code states that it's against the law to park facing against the direction of traffic flow once darkness falls, except when positioned within a designated parking space.
The rationale centres on visibility concerns: car headlights are engineered to bounce light off a vehicle's rear, rather than its front end. When parked incorrectly, cars become significantly more difficult to detect, heightening the chances of a collision. https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/uk-news/highway-code-rule-break-mistake-35794413
I knew that BUT only because I am preparing to take my advanced driving test. One I didn't know and got my knuckles rapped on is going around mini roundabouts. Rule 188 states you must pass around them unless you are physically unable to do so. I do, but have been known to cut off a small section and got told off for doing so. It is an offence, although I was told you are unlikely to get pulled up for it by the Police unless you are involved in an accident.
I tend to use mini roundabouts more as a suggestion as to who has right of way.
I don't believe the "facing the direction of traffic" thing is enforced.
Not enforced normally, but if you have an accident on a mini roundabout while doing it then a fine and penalty points will be coming your way and that was from the traffic cop sitting next to me in the car at the time.
If there are other cars you give way as normal, rather than try to cut across before the car on your right
Well I can only tell you what a traffic policeman sitting next to me told me when I did it and we all make mistakes, no matter how good a driver we are so you can get caught out.
Yes I'm aware that you are supposed to go round a mini roundabout as if it was a normal one, but if there is no-one else around you are not going to cause an accident. A bit like cutting the corner when you turn right - what is wrong is when cars cut the corner despite the fact there is a car in the way at the end of the road they are turning into
For me, it's the danger of getting into a habit and doing it without thinking. Ditto signalling - the IAM say "don't signal when there is no one there to see" (or they did), but I might have missed seeing something, and I'd rather be in the habit of signalling, rather than not-signalling.
Very good point @MattW . Interesting you brought up the signalling thing because I thought the same and asked the question of my instructor. He did not advocate not signalling if there is no one there to see you which was interesting. What he said was you need to be aware of whether your action could cause more confusion than impart accurate information. So yes you should indicate if there is no one there to see it, but not if it will confuse. I was criticised for indicating too early for instance which could give misleading information. I was told to look at drivers faces if you can and their car positioning to also determine what they are doing.
The training is excellent. It is all common sense, but reinforces what you know. The police handbook, Roadcraft is excellent and recommended reading.
I don't know the current IAM position; I did a few sessions with the local branch some time ago (meaning decades), and read Roadcraft in my early 20s after I passed my test at 17. I had several collisions in my first year of driving, of which the first was my fault, and involved spinning the family car off a motorway junction roundabout whilst exploring where the limit of grip was.
Aha - THERE ... FUCKETY-FUCK ... CRUNCH. Austin Maxis are not very good for catching front wheel skids.
Darling sister demonstrated that for VW Polos soon after in my first car in the snow.
I'm not wholly at ease with what I understand to be the IAM "drive to the speed limit where you can" ethos; I think we under-emphasize possible consequences of "minor" hazards, such as not being able to see behind things or in low sunlight.
The only accident I have had in the last 23 years was caused by the windscreen fogging up unexpectedly. Fortunately I was going at very low speed.
Which leaves us all wondering what happened 23 and a bit years ago?
This is from a pro govt account, so using these quotes as implied criticism of Reform, but I am of the opinion that it is the bogus asylum seekers who are to blame for any genuine refugees being stranded in dangerous places, not a foreign government who is refusing to accept the premise that 50,000 young men dossing in France must be taken in as if we owe them a favour.
Cathy Newman, "How does this sound to someone from Afghanistan who is facing torture or even death?"
Gawain Towler, member of Reform UK board, "We are not responsible for the whole world's problems.. I don't care about the whole world"
I think you are being a little disingenuous there saying but they have a YouTube that is lifestyle so they can't be pro government.
If you look at the actual twitter account, the timeline is even less varied in posting nature than Scott n Paste. Its 90% politics clips pretty much always supporting the government or attacking Tory / Reform. They are perfectly entitled to do that, and plenty of other accounts have followed a similar approach on Brexit or anti previous government or anti-current government, and gained large followings doing so. Social media algorithms seems to reward these highly "focused" accounts that are on message from whichever side of the political spectrum or issue.
I didn't actually say "they can't be pro-Government". I asked for elucidation as to why the were pro-Government.
Looking at it, I think he's echoing a couple of feeds, perhaps from live politics blogs with a bit of post-processing, given that it is scores of tweets per day.
There is also some arguably anti-Govt content, such as drawing attention to energy prices.
I ran a headline feed or two for years on my Twitter account once I found a cross-partisan feed, to give me 5 or 6 headlines a day to bulk out personal content. I'd say it's a version of that.
Donald Trump claims UK in for 'bad awakening' thanks to Starmer's energy policy Trump's comments come despite the UK's reliance on fossil fuels being one of the factors driving up energy costs, with wind power being significantly cheaper than nuclear, gas or coal https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/donald-trump-claims-uk-bad-35798659
Ye Gods, They just censored my comment.
I saw this story about illegal parking and wondered if you were the new Leon: PB by day; Fleet Street by night:-
Highway Code rule break mistake 'most drivers' are making
Drivers throughout Britain are being alerted to an obscure Highway Code regulation that could see them slapped with a substantial penalty, purely based on how they position their vehicle overnight. The Highway Code states that it's against the law to park facing against the direction of traffic flow once darkness falls, except when positioned within a designated parking space.
The rationale centres on visibility concerns: car headlights are engineered to bounce light off a vehicle's rear, rather than its front end. When parked incorrectly, cars become significantly more difficult to detect, heightening the chances of a collision. https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/uk-news/highway-code-rule-break-mistake-35794413
I knew that BUT only because I am preparing to take my advanced driving test. One I didn't know and got my knuckles rapped on is going around mini roundabouts. Rule 188 states you must pass around them unless you are physically unable to do so. I do, but have been known to cut off a small section and got told off for doing so. It is an offence, although I was told you are unlikely to get pulled up for it by the Police unless you are involved in an accident.
I tend to use mini roundabouts more as a suggestion as to who has right of way.
I don't believe the "facing the direction of traffic" thing is enforced.
Not enforced normally, but if you have an accident on a mini roundabout while doing it then a fine and penalty points will be coming your way and that was from the traffic cop sitting next to me in the car at the time.
If there are other cars you give way as normal, rather than try to cut across before the car on your right
Well I can only tell you what a traffic policeman sitting next to me told me when I did it and we all make mistakes, no matter how good a driver we are so you can get caught out.
Yes I'm aware that you are supposed to go round a mini roundabout as if it was a normal one, but if there is no-one else around you are not going to cause an accident. A bit like cutting the corner when you turn right - what is wrong is when cars cut the corner despite the fact there is a car in the way at the end of the road they are turning into
For me, it's the danger of getting into a habit and doing it without thinking. Ditto signalling - the IAM say "don't signal when there is no one there to see" (or they did), but I might have missed seeing something, and I'd rather be in the habit of signalling, rather than not-signalling.
Very good point @MattW . Interesting you brought up the signalling thing because I thought the same and asked the question of my instructor. He did not advocate not signalling if there is no one there to see you which was interesting. What he said was you need to be aware of whether your action could cause more confusion than impart accurate information. So yes you should indicate if there is no one there to see it, but not if it will confuse. I was criticised for indicating too early for instance which could give misleading information. I was told to look at drivers faces if you can and their car positioning to also determine what they are doing.
The training is excellent. It is all common sense, but reinforces what you know. The police handbook, Roadcraft is excellent and recommended reading.
I don't know the current IAM position; I did a few sessions with the local branch some time ago (meaning decades), and read Roadcraft in my early 20s after I passed my test at 17. I had several collisions in my first year of driving, of which the first was my fault, and involved spinning the family car off a motorway junction roundabout whilst exploring where the limit of grip was.
Aha - THERE ... FUCKETY-FUCK ... CRUNCH. Austin Maxis are not very good for catching front wheel skids.
Darling sister demonstrated that for VW Polos soon after in my first car in the snow.
I'm not wholly at ease with what I understand to be the IAM "drive to the speed limit where you can" ethos; I think we under-emphasize possible consequences of "minor" hazards, such as not being able to see behind things or in low sunlight.
The only accident I have had in the last 23 years was caused by the windscreen fogging up unexpectedly. Fortunately I was going at very low speed.
I don't want to dox you, but just to say I thought you were fabulous in Eastenders back in the day, Gillian.
Has there been any detailed, electorate based, analysis of possible outcomes given the way current polling is going?
MRP-style?
I’m assuming that Reform will top the polls, but they will be far short of a majority, and a Labour/LD coalition looks most likely. But I haven’t seen any good analysis on this, only comments that say things like “Wow, Tories will lose ALL seats using this defunct swing-based web tool!”
Donald Trump claims UK in for 'bad awakening' thanks to Starmer's energy policy Trump's comments come despite the UK's reliance on fossil fuels being one of the factors driving up energy costs, with wind power being significantly cheaper than nuclear, gas or coal https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/donald-trump-claims-uk-bad-35798659
Ye Gods, They just censored my comment.
I saw this story about illegal parking and wondered if you were the new Leon: PB by day; Fleet Street by night:-
Highway Code rule break mistake 'most drivers' are making
Drivers throughout Britain are being alerted to an obscure Highway Code regulation that could see them slapped with a substantial penalty, purely based on how they position their vehicle overnight. The Highway Code states that it's against the law to park facing against the direction of traffic flow once darkness falls, except when positioned within a designated parking space.
The rationale centres on visibility concerns: car headlights are engineered to bounce light off a vehicle's rear, rather than its front end. When parked incorrectly, cars become significantly more difficult to detect, heightening the chances of a collision. https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/uk-news/highway-code-rule-break-mistake-35794413
I knew that BUT only because I am preparing to take my advanced driving test. One I didn't know and got my knuckles rapped on is going around mini roundabouts. Rule 188 states you must pass around them unless you are physically unable to do so. I do, but have been known to cut off a small section and got told off for doing so. It is an offence, although I was told you are unlikely to get pulled up for it by the Police unless you are involved in an accident.
I tend to use mini roundabouts more as a suggestion as to who has right of way.
I don't believe the "facing the direction of traffic" thing is enforced.
Not enforced normally, but if you have an accident on a mini roundabout while doing it then a fine and penalty points will be coming your way and that was from the traffic cop sitting next to me in the car at the time.
If there are other cars you give way as normal, rather than try to cut across before the car on your right
Well I can only tell you what a traffic policeman sitting next to me told me when I did it and we all make mistakes, no matter how good a driver we are so you can get caught out.
Yes I'm aware that you are supposed to go round a mini roundabout as if it was a normal one, but if there is no-one else around you are not going to cause an accident. A bit like cutting the corner when you turn right - what is wrong is when cars cut the corner despite the fact there is a car in the way at the end of the road they are turning into
For me, it's the danger of getting into a habit and doing it without thinking. Ditto signalling - the IAM say "don't signal when there is no one there to see" (or they did), but I might have missed seeing something, and I'd rather be in the habit of signalling, rather than not-signalling.
Very good point @MattW . Interesting you brought up the signalling thing because I thought the same and asked the question of my instructor. He did not advocate not signalling if there is no one there to see you which was interesting. What he said was you need to be aware of whether your action could cause more confusion than impart accurate information. So yes you should indicate if there is no one there to see it, but not if it will confuse. I was criticised for indicating too early for instance which could give misleading information. I was told to look at drivers faces if you can and their car positioning to also determine what they are doing.
The training is excellent. It is all common sense, but reinforces what you know. The police handbook, Roadcraft is excellent and recommended reading.
I don't know the current IAM position; I did a few sessions with the local branch some time ago (meaning decades), and read Roadcraft in my early 20s after I passed my test at 17. I had several collisions in my first year of driving, of which the first was my fault, and involved spinning the family car off a motorway junction roundabout whilst exploring where the limit of grip was.
Aha - THERE ... FUCKETY-FUCK ... CRUNCH. Austin Maxis are not very good for catching front wheel skids.
Darling sister demonstrated that for VW Polos soon after in my first car in the snow.
I'm not wholly at ease with what I understand to be the IAM "drive to the speed limit where you can" ethos; I think we under-emphasize possible consequences of "minor" hazards, such as not being able to see behind things or in low sunlight.
The only accident I have had in the last 23 years was caused by the windscreen fogging up unexpectedly. Fortunately I was going at very low speed.
Which leaves us all wondering what happened 23 and a bit years ago?
The Telegraph article makes the Taliban sound all warm and cuddly . The main difference between the controversial German scheme and the one proposed by Farage is the former are sending back failed asylum seekers and criminals versus the latter in which all Afghans arriving by boat would be sent back .
I know we’re currently living in a climate of zero empathy or humanity but do the British public want to send people back who could be executed as soon as they arrive , are they willing to send back women to be stoned to death ?
Not really. A sizeable minority want to do it here.
Race blind casting is not the only kind of woke disruption I can’t abide. Essentially any BBC (and more generally British) period drama is now thoroughly infested with a kind of weird didactic wokery that I seem to have a strong allergy to.
The recent Ruth Ellis drama was unwatchable just to name an example that springs to mind (and the lead actress was rubbish).
Compare with “The Wire”, “Shogun”, “Mad Men”, which address race and gender issues but don’t seek to blatantly re-write history or create “goodies and baddies” based on race, gender, or class.
I’m not sure if this is a particularly British phenomenon insomuch as part of a wider decline in the quality of decent scriptwriting and what gets brought forward to be broadcast now. There’s plenty of American drama which also suffers badly from all sorts of similar issues.
The main problem is that scripts often feel inorganic. It’s getting harder and harder to find things that set out to tell a good story with thoughtful messaging. There is often a “written by committee” feel to some of it - it must have a scene that does X, it must have a character who is Y characteristic, it must show person X dealing with a situation better than person Z” - it is often rather lazy, and any messaging it retains is less thoughtful and nuanced than blatant and “right-on”.
It perhaps feels more disappointing that the BBC has fallen foul of a lot of this - partly because their history has seen them make so much thoughtful, diverse, interesting and thought provoking drama over the years.
Political messaging is the bane of many historical dramas.
That message can be very woke, but it can also be quite reactionary at times.
An example is "Turn. Washington's Female Spies." There's a bit where slaves in New York are discussing the British authorities' offer to free slaves who fight for the Crown (actually, it applied in Virginia, not New York). Some of the younger, stupider slaves are attracted to this, but there's a wise old matriarch who loves her owner, and points out that freedom won't feed and clothe them, and they should be grateful for such a benevolent mistress.
There are *a lot" of Americans, who see slavery as essentially a benevolent institution.
Donald Trump claims UK in for 'bad awakening' thanks to Starmer's energy policy Trump's comments come despite the UK's reliance on fossil fuels being one of the factors driving up energy costs, with wind power being significantly cheaper than nuclear, gas or coal https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/donald-trump-claims-uk-bad-35798659
Ye Gods, They just censored my comment.
I saw this story about illegal parking and wondered if you were the new Leon: PB by day; Fleet Street by night:-
Highway Code rule break mistake 'most drivers' are making
Drivers throughout Britain are being alerted to an obscure Highway Code regulation that could see them slapped with a substantial penalty, purely based on how they position their vehicle overnight. The Highway Code states that it's against the law to park facing against the direction of traffic flow once darkness falls, except when positioned within a designated parking space.
The rationale centres on visibility concerns: car headlights are engineered to bounce light off a vehicle's rear, rather than its front end. When parked incorrectly, cars become significantly more difficult to detect, heightening the chances of a collision. https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/uk-news/highway-code-rule-break-mistake-35794413
I knew that BUT only because I am preparing to take my advanced driving test. One I didn't know and got my knuckles rapped on is going around mini roundabouts. Rule 188 states you must pass around them unless you are physically unable to do so. I do, but have been known to cut off a small section and got told off for doing so. It is an offence, although I was told you are unlikely to get pulled up for it by the Police unless you are involved in an accident.
I tend to use mini roundabouts more as a suggestion as to who has right of way.
I don't believe the "facing the direction of traffic" thing is enforced.
Not enforced normally, but if you have an accident on a mini roundabout while doing it then a fine and penalty points will be coming your way and that was from the traffic cop sitting next to me in the car at the time.
If there are other cars you give way as normal, rather than try to cut across before the car on your right
Well I can only tell you what a traffic policeman sitting next to me told me when I did it and we all make mistakes, no matter how good a driver we are so you can get caught out.
Yes I'm aware that you are supposed to go round a mini roundabout as if it was a normal one, but if there is no-one else around you are not going to cause an accident. A bit like cutting the corner when you turn right - what is wrong is when cars cut the corner despite the fact there is a car in the way at the end of the road they are turning into
For me, it's the danger of getting into a habit and doing it without thinking. Ditto signalling - the IAM say "don't signal when there is no one there to see" (or they did), but I might have missed seeing something, and I'd rather be in the habit of signalling, rather than not-signalling.
Very good point @MattW . Interesting you brought up the signalling thing because I thought the same and asked the question of my instructor. He did not advocate not signalling if there is no one there to see you which was interesting. What he said was you need to be aware of whether your action could cause more confusion than impart accurate information. So yes you should indicate if there is no one there to see it, but not if it will confuse. I was criticised for indicating too early for instance which could give misleading information. I was told to look at drivers faces if you can and their car positioning to also determine what they are doing.
The training is excellent. It is all common sense, but reinforces what you know. The police handbook, Roadcraft is excellent and recommended reading.
I don't know the current IAM position; I did a few sessions with the local branch some time ago (meaning decades), and read Roadcraft in my early 20s after I passed my test at 17. I had several collisions in my first year of driving, of which the first was my fault, and involved spinning the family car off a motorway junction roundabout whilst exploring where the limit of grip was.
Aha - THERE ... FUCKETY-FUCK ... CRUNCH. Austin Maxis are not very good for catching front wheel skids.
Darling sister demonstrated that for VW Polos soon after in my first car in the snow.
I'm not wholly at ease with what I understand to be the IAM "drive to the speed limit where you can" ethos; I think we under-emphasize possible consequences of "minor" hazards, such as not being able to see behind things or in low sunlight.
The only accident I have had in the last 23 years was caused by the windscreen fogging up unexpectedly. Fortunately I was going at very low speed.
Which leaves us all wondering what happened 23 and a bit years ago?
I skidded on a patch of ice on a bend near Kington. Fortunately the oncoming lane was empty at the time so I bounced off the bank a couple of times and ended up in the hedge.
Donald Trump claims UK in for 'bad awakening' thanks to Starmer's energy policy Trump's comments come despite the UK's reliance on fossil fuels being one of the factors driving up energy costs, with wind power being significantly cheaper than nuclear, gas or coal https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/donald-trump-claims-uk-bad-35798659
Ye Gods, They just censored my comment.
I saw this story about illegal parking and wondered if you were the new Leon: PB by day; Fleet Street by night:-
Highway Code rule break mistake 'most drivers' are making
Drivers throughout Britain are being alerted to an obscure Highway Code regulation that could see them slapped with a substantial penalty, purely based on how they position their vehicle overnight. The Highway Code states that it's against the law to park facing against the direction of traffic flow once darkness falls, except when positioned within a designated parking space.
The rationale centres on visibility concerns: car headlights are engineered to bounce light off a vehicle's rear, rather than its front end. When parked incorrectly, cars become significantly more difficult to detect, heightening the chances of a collision. https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/uk-news/highway-code-rule-break-mistake-35794413
I knew that BUT only because I am preparing to take my advanced driving test. One I didn't know and got my knuckles rapped on is going around mini roundabouts. Rule 188 states you must pass around them unless you are physically unable to do so. I do, but have been known to cut off a small section and got told off for doing so. It is an offence, although I was told you are unlikely to get pulled up for it by the Police unless you are involved in an accident.
I tend to use mini roundabouts more as a suggestion as to who has right of way.
I don't believe the "facing the direction of traffic" thing is enforced.
Not enforced normally, but if you have an accident on a mini roundabout while doing it then a fine and penalty points will be coming your way and that was from the traffic cop sitting next to me in the car at the time.
If there are other cars you give way as normal, rather than try to cut across before the car on your right
Well I can only tell you what a traffic policeman sitting next to me told me when I did it and we all make mistakes, no matter how good a driver we are so you can get caught out.
Yes I'm aware that you are supposed to go round a mini roundabout as if it was a normal one, but if there is no-one else around you are not going to cause an accident. A bit like cutting the corner when you turn right - what is wrong is when cars cut the corner despite the fact there is a car in the way at the end of the road they are turning into
For me, it's the danger of getting into a habit and doing it without thinking. Ditto signalling - the IAM say "don't signal when there is no one there to see" (or they did), but I might have missed seeing something, and I'd rather be in the habit of signalling, rather than not-signalling.
Very good point @MattW . Interesting you brought up the signalling thing because I thought the same and asked the question of my instructor. He did not advocate not signalling if there is no one there to see you which was interesting. What he said was you need to be aware of whether your action could cause more confusion than impart accurate information. So yes you should indicate if there is no one there to see it, but not if it will confuse. I was criticised for indicating too early for instance which could give misleading information. I was told to look at drivers faces if you can and their car positioning to also determine what they are doing.
The training is excellent. It is all common sense, but reinforces what you know. The police handbook, Roadcraft is excellent and recommended reading.
I don't know the current IAM position; I did a few sessions with the local branch some time ago (meaning decades), and read Roadcraft in my early 20s after I passed my test at 17. I had several collisions in my first year of driving, of which the first was my fault, and involved spinning the family car off a motorway junction roundabout whilst exploring where the limit of grip was.
Aha - THERE ... FUCKETY-FUCK ... CRUNCH. Austin Maxis are not very good for catching front wheel skids.
Darling sister demonstrated that for VW Polos soon after in my first car in the snow.
I'm not wholly at ease with what I understand to be the IAM "drive to the speed limit where you can" ethos; I think we under-emphasize possible consequences of "minor" hazards, such as not being able to see behind things or in low sunlight.
The only accident I have had in the last 23 years was caused by the windscreen fogging up unexpectedly. Fortunately I was going at very low speed.
I don't want to dox you, but just to say I thought you were fabulous in Eastenders back in the day, Gillian.
8 years is not "and a bit".
But one can imagine a conversation around "lamp posts".
Donald Trump claims UK in for 'bad awakening' thanks to Starmer's energy policy Trump's comments come despite the UK's reliance on fossil fuels being one of the factors driving up energy costs, with wind power being significantly cheaper than nuclear, gas or coal https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/donald-trump-claims-uk-bad-35798659
Ye Gods, They just censored my comment.
I saw this story about illegal parking and wondered if you were the new Leon: PB by day; Fleet Street by night:-
Highway Code rule break mistake 'most drivers' are making
Drivers throughout Britain are being alerted to an obscure Highway Code regulation that could see them slapped with a substantial penalty, purely based on how they position their vehicle overnight. The Highway Code states that it's against the law to park facing against the direction of traffic flow once darkness falls, except when positioned within a designated parking space.
The rationale centres on visibility concerns: car headlights are engineered to bounce light off a vehicle's rear, rather than its front end. When parked incorrectly, cars become significantly more difficult to detect, heightening the chances of a collision. https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/uk-news/highway-code-rule-break-mistake-35794413
I knew that BUT only because I am preparing to take my advanced driving test. One I didn't know and got my knuckles rapped on is going around mini roundabouts. Rule 188 states you must pass around them unless you are physically unable to do so. I do, but have been known to cut off a small section and got told off for doing so. It is an offence, although I was told you are unlikely to get pulled up for it by the Police unless you are involved in an accident.
I tend to use mini roundabouts more as a suggestion as to who has right of way.
I don't believe the "facing the direction of traffic" thing is enforced.
Not enforced normally, but if you have an accident on a mini roundabout while doing it then a fine and penalty points will be coming your way and that was from the traffic cop sitting next to me in the car at the time.
If there are other cars you give way as normal, rather than try to cut across before the car on your right
Well I can only tell you what a traffic policeman sitting next to me told me when I did it and we all make mistakes, no matter how good a driver we are so you can get caught out.
Yes I'm aware that you are supposed to go round a mini roundabout as if it was a normal one, but if there is no-one else around you are not going to cause an accident. A bit like cutting the corner when you turn right - what is wrong is when cars cut the corner despite the fact there is a car in the way at the end of the road they are turning into
For me, it's the danger of getting into a habit and doing it without thinking. Ditto signalling - the IAM say "don't signal when there is no one there to see" (or they did), but I might have missed seeing something, and I'd rather be in the habit of signalling, rather than not-signalling.
Very good point @MattW . Interesting you brought up the signalling thing because I thought the same and asked the question of my instructor. He did not advocate not signalling if there is no one there to see you which was interesting. What he said was you need to be aware of whether your action could cause more confusion than impart accurate information. So yes you should indicate if there is no one there to see it, but not if it will confuse. I was criticised for indicating too early for instance which could give misleading information. I was told to look at drivers faces if you can and their car positioning to also determine what they are doing.
The training is excellent. It is all common sense, but reinforces what you know. The police handbook, Roadcraft is excellent and recommended reading.
I don't know the current IAM position; I did a few sessions with the local branch some time ago (meaning decades), and read Roadcraft in my early 20s after I passed my test at 17. I had several collisions in my first year of driving, of which the first was my fault, and involved spinning the family car off a motorway junction roundabout whilst exploring where the limit of grip was.
Aha - THERE ... FUCKETY-FUCK ... CRUNCH. Austin Maxis are not very good for catching front wheel skids.
Darling sister demonstrated that for VW Polos soon after in my first car in the snow.
I'm not wholly at ease with what I understand to be the IAM "drive to the speed limit where you can" ethos; I think we under-emphasize possible consequences of "minor" hazards, such as not being able to see behind things or in low sunlight.
The only accident I have had in the last 23 years was caused by the windscreen fogging up unexpectedly. Fortunately I was going at very low speed.
That happened to me in my old car once. I had to open the window and hang my head out to see where I was going. Lucky to get away with it.
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
I'd tend agree with you, though I'm not entirely persuaded about title characters necessarily being "provocative".
I saw an all black production of The Importance of Being Ernest a couple of years ago. I anticipated it being a bit of a gimmick, but the cast was excellent, which is what mattered. One of the best productions I've seen.
Certainly the casting was making something of a point, but in the event, the point was that it was just very good.
I think an all black cast of any play would be no problem at all, the provocation, if there is any, is when a black person plays Queen Victoria for instance. That seems like a bit of a statement. But does it really matter? I’m not as sure as I was
Wouldn’t get one cast as Adolf Hitler though!
I suspect that in the end, the only thing that matters is how good any given actor is.
Cross cultural casting works only when the actor can inhabit the role. Depending on the circumstances, that can be another hurdle for the actor to have to overcome.
True to extent but what’s the point in making a historical drama that isn’t bothered about being accurate? Why didn’t the makers of the new 1066 effort think to have the Normans with their bowl haircuts and the Anglo Saxons with their longer hair and moustaches? Easy for the viewer to work out what’s going on as an added benefit. Why not strive for accuracy?
If the makers had wanted to make a point about modern society then write something where two CEOs, one from France and one from England battle over some giant company and then you can weave in arguments about broken promises, expected inheritances and have the cast reflect the world it exists in. Christ even have the Harold character being rescued by William whilst they have some macho boat race and promising to support a takeover whilst they are drinking whisky later - it’s easy so no need to mess with the past.
Just don’t screw up a very compelling and important story through laziness or trying to be clever by adding a veneer of today’s sensibilities.
Can you imagine the reaction if the recent remake of Shogun had cast Japanese characters in it with white or black actors - people would have laughed at it and it would have pissed off a lot of people and probably mortally offended the Japanese because, even though it’s a fiction, it’s set in a very real period of their history and it’s fair to respect the reality of how it was. Yet it seems very much that we are supposed to laugh it off or wave it away when our history or past is breezily misrepresented.
I'd say Shogun is different. The main point of the story was that he was different. Even today, the white population in Japan is absolutely tiny.
The UK is a much more diverse country now, and a few black faces in a period drama that don't affect the actual story, isn't a big deal in my eyes. An entirely white cast, even if more historically accurate, would be as likely to stand out as a distraction to many people.
It's an age thing I think. I still find non white actors in costume dramas a bit jarring, even though I don't have any ideological objection to it, because I've grown up watching all white costume dramas. My kids don't find it jarring at all because they have grown up in a much more diverse environment than I have and this is reflected in the TV and film they have grown up with too. They are mixed race themselves so I would imagine they like seeing themselves represented on screen. I guess on some level it is anachronistic but all costume dramas are anachronistic on a whole load of levels, from costume to speech to the appearance of the actors, and the entire set up is artificial as all art is. If you listen to archive recordings people even just seventy or eighty years ago talked quite differently to how they talk now but we don't mind people speaking modern English in 21st century accents in dramas set hundreds of years ago. Let alone speaking English when they are Russian or whatever, eg Chernobyl.
I generally have no problem with casting different races in any role. Tho sometimes it can get ridiculous - if half the actors in a drama about Vikings are black or Middle Eastern it’s so odd it distracts from the drama (even more so if the writers bend history to explain it - “oh they’re freed slaves from Mali”)
However the woke flip the argument on its head sometimes, and say “only a trans person can play a trans role” or “only a black writer can write about black experiences”
Sod off with that. The whole point of acting and fiction writing is the ability to get inside someone else’s head. If you can do it you can do it
Imagine saying to Shakespeare “sorry you can’t write othello” or “you were never a young virgin girl in Verona”
Yep, would agree with both Leon and OLB there.
I'd add that it's not just period dramas. Pretty much every programme on the telly - period drama, sitcom, panel show, documentary, advert - has a quota of non-white faces in a way which in much of the country just doesn't happen in the real world and is the result of deliberate choice rather than random chance. It's at its most noticeable in period drama because, well, obviously in that respect it usually looks as obviously unreal as characters using mobile phones would - but good acting can overcome this reasonably quickly. Celebrity game shows trouble the statistician in me - statistically, you would expect all-white line ups to occur reasonably frequently: always having at least one non-white participant in Richard Osman's House of Games must be a challenge: scheduling famous people is tricky and an element of last-minute juggling is often involved, and if the non-white participant pulls out presumably needs to be replaced by another non-white participant. The production meetings where these conversations take place must be very peculiar.
It must be tricky for production teams. With the 1066 drama and the black extra issue I wonder if it was a case where the part of casting department tasked with finding extras to play Anglo Saxon soldiers didn’t even give it any thought that it wouldn’t make sense to have black Anglo Saxon soldiers so they just got their target of 500 extras, stuck them in costume and got them out onto the set.
Then the director or someone senior on set notices and points it out whereupon everyone has a meltdown worrying that if they tell the extra he can’t be used because he is black they will be in a load of trouble for discrimination. The production team don’t know the rules/laws and the costs and time involved in checking out whether they can replace the extra makes it prohibitive so they decide that the safest option is to just go with it.
Are there exemptions to discrimination laws for casting where the director/producer can specify race of actors/extras if not a specifically identifiable character?
The Telegraph article makes the Taliban sound all warm and cuddly . The main difference between the controversial German scheme and the one proposed by Farage is the former are sending back failed asylum seekers and criminals versus the latter in which all Afghans arriving by boat would be sent back .
I know we’re currently living in a climate of zero empathy or humanity but do the British public want to send people back who could be executed as soon as they arrive , are they willing to send back women to be stoned to death ?
The test of an asylum policy is what would have happened had it been applied in the 1930s. Farage would have sent Jews back to Nazi Germany.
Donald Trump claims UK in for 'bad awakening' thanks to Starmer's energy policy Trump's comments come despite the UK's reliance on fossil fuels being one of the factors driving up energy costs, with wind power being significantly cheaper than nuclear, gas or coal https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/donald-trump-claims-uk-bad-35798659
Ye Gods, They just censored my comment.
I saw this story about illegal parking and wondered if you were the new Leon: PB by day; Fleet Street by night:-
Highway Code rule break mistake 'most drivers' are making
Drivers throughout Britain are being alerted to an obscure Highway Code regulation that could see them slapped with a substantial penalty, purely based on how they position their vehicle overnight. The Highway Code states that it's against the law to park facing against the direction of traffic flow once darkness falls, except when positioned within a designated parking space.
The rationale centres on visibility concerns: car headlights are engineered to bounce light off a vehicle's rear, rather than its front end. When parked incorrectly, cars become significantly more difficult to detect, heightening the chances of a collision. https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/uk-news/highway-code-rule-break-mistake-35794413
I knew that BUT only because I am preparing to take my advanced driving test. One I didn't know and got my knuckles rapped on is going around mini roundabouts. Rule 188 states you must pass around them unless you are physically unable to do so. I do, but have been known to cut off a small section and got told off for doing so. It is an offence, although I was told you are unlikely to get pulled up for it by the Police unless you are involved in an accident.
I tend to use mini roundabouts more as a suggestion as to who has right of way.
I don't believe the "facing the direction of traffic" thing is enforced.
Not enforced normally, but if you have an accident on a mini roundabout while doing it then a fine and penalty points will be coming your way and that was from the traffic cop sitting next to me in the car at the time.
If there are other cars you give way as normal, rather than try to cut across before the car on your right
Well I can only tell you what a traffic policeman sitting next to me told me when I did it and we all make mistakes, no matter how good a driver we are so you can get caught out.
Yes I'm aware that you are supposed to go round a mini roundabout as if it was a normal one, but if there is no-one else around you are not going to cause an accident. A bit like cutting the corner when you turn right - what is wrong is when cars cut the corner despite the fact there is a car in the way at the end of the road they are turning into
For me, it's the danger of getting into a habit and doing it without thinking. Ditto signalling - the IAM say "don't signal when there is no one there to see" (or they did), but I might have missed seeing something, and I'd rather be in the habit of signalling, rather than not-signalling.
Very good point @MattW . Interesting you brought up the signalling thing because I thought the same and asked the question of my instructor. He did not advocate not signalling if there is no one there to see you which was interesting. What he said was you need to be aware of whether your action could cause more confusion than impart accurate information. So yes you should indicate if there is no one there to see it, but not if it will confuse. I was criticised for indicating too early for instance which could give misleading information. I was told to look at drivers faces if you can and their car positioning to also determine what they are doing.
The training is excellent. It is all common sense, but reinforces what you know. The police handbook, Roadcraft is excellent and recommended reading.
I don't know the current IAM position; I did a few sessions with the local branch some time ago (meaning decades), and read Roadcraft in my early 20s after I passed my test at 17. I had several collisions in my first year of driving, of which the first was my fault, and involved spinning the family car off a motorway junction roundabout whilst exploring where the limit of grip was.
Aha - THERE ... FUCKETY-FUCK ... CRUNCH. Austin Maxis are not very good for catching front wheel skids.
Darling sister demonstrated that for VW Polos soon after in my first car in the snow.
I'm not wholly at ease with what I understand to be the IAM "drive to the speed limit where you can" ethos; I think we under-emphasize possible consequences of "minor" hazards, such as not being able to see behind things or in low sunlight.
The only accident I have had in the last 23 years was caused by the windscreen fogging up unexpectedly. Fortunately I was going at very low speed.
Which leaves us all wondering what happened 23 and a bit years ago?
I skidded on a patch of ice on a corner near Kington. Fortunately the oncoming lane was empty at the time so I bounced off the bank a couple of times and ended up in the hedge.
At the funeral last week I was chatting to old friends, and we were talking about a friend now in his 70s, who was famously "hectic".
One day he said "Matt, Matt ... I was going up the motorway to see my mum in Sheffield. I was late and missed the junction. I tried to turn it quickly the car went around 4 times and ended up facing the wrong way." This was after midnight.
On another occasion he went a bit too quickly through a set of roadworks speed cameras in both directions, and got himself enough points to be banned as a totter.
The guy was Deputy Clerk to the Justices in a very large Magistrates' Court, in his 30s.
Has there been any detailed, electorate based, analysis of possible outcomes given the way current polling is going?
MRP-style?
I’m assuming that Reform will top the polls, but they will be far short of a majority, and a Labour/LD coalition looks most likely. But I haven’t seen any good analysis on this, only comments that say things like “Wow, Tories will lose ALL seats using this defunct swing-based web tool!”
Lab/LD probably wouldn't have enough for a coalition on their own. It would have to be a full rainbow coalition with Greens, PC, SNP, etc.
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
If you can have actors as black Anglo Saxons you can have an actor as a white Mandela
A nicely thoughtful post there by @isam. I need to watch this as it is the 2nd one of yours I have liked today.
I disagree with you @HYUFD on Nelson Mandela and agree with @isam. Mandela being black is rather fundamental to the whole point of the story. Normans and Anglo Saxons being white is not. OK they clearly weren't black. They also have the wrong haircuts*, and speak the wrong language for the time, but we overlook that. We can overlook (with difficulty I grant you as it is obvious) black Anglo Saxons. It is a bit more difficult to overlook a white Mandela.
* A review I read said it was confusing flipping between the Norman and the Anglo Saxon locations and would have been a lot easy if they had the correct haircuts for the time.
All historical movies and TV shows are inaccurate to a greater or lesser degree. Mary Queen of Scots spoke with a French accent but she’s invariably given a Scottish one. Jesus of Nazareth was considerably darker than Robert Powell or indeed most of his other European and American visual representations. Picking on the skin colour of actors in history pieces set in Europe is a bit of a double standard. Suspension of disbelief is necessary in any dramatic production.
I agree. It is only relevant if key to the plot. I don't care if someone is black or white, thin or fat, tall or short, when playing a roles,but there are obvious exceptions when it is key to plot:
A white Mandela, a thin Billy Bunter, a short Giant in the beanstalk.
One only has to apply common sense.
I will try asking you as JJ didn’t answer at the time of writing - if the epic series “Shaka Zulu” is remade do you think it’s fine to cast white actors as Zulu Impi, or do you think it would be utterly ridiculous?
If you think it’s ok then please explain why, and why the Zulu nation shouldn’t be livid about it, if you think it would clearly be ridiculous then please explain why we also should accept colour blind casting in other situations.
To me it's a strange thing to get excited about. There is value in (say) cast colour reversal as a way of stretching perceptions, and making the audience think. That is a valid artistic purpose.
At one end there are the "Patriots" who can be satirised by pointing out that St George was probably Turkish.
Then we have the plays of Shakespeare which are about the human condition through the lens of Shakespeare's scripts-set-in-history. Should we be objecting to British actors being in "Two Gentlemen of Verona", or Shylock not being portrayed by a Jewish Actor? It's a non-issue. In fact imo varying ethnicity of actors in casts elucidates the play further, and is usefully mind-stretching for us.
At the other end we have the reality of our history, where famously there is black sailor George Ryan portrayed on the relief of the death of Nelson at Trafalgar on Nelson's Column, or the reasonably recent revelation that there was a black Conservative MP in the Commons
It wasn't so long since we were being told that Bernie Sanders and Diane Abbott were the first Black British MPs (iirc from the 1990s). But now we know that there were black (mixed race afaik without really digging out the detail) from the 18C.
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
If you can have actors as black Anglo Saxons you can have an actor as a white Mandela
A nicely thoughtful post there by @isam. I need to watch this as it is the 2nd one of yours I have liked today.
I disagree with you @HYUFD on Nelson Mandela and agree with @isam. Mandela being black is rather fundamental to the whole point of the story. Normans and Anglo Saxons being white is not. OK they clearly weren't black. They also have the wrong haircuts*, and speak the wrong language for the time, but we overlook that. We can overlook (with difficulty I grant you as it is obvious) black Anglo Saxons. It is a bit more difficult to overlook a white Mandela.
* A review I read said it was confusing flipping between the Norman and the Anglo Saxon locations and would have been a lot easy if they had the correct and different haircuts for the time.
It is called acting, if you can act well you should be able to convince in the part regardless of skin colour.
Otherwise if you demand historical figures are represented by actors of the same skin colour that has to apply across the board
I agree on this but it should apply equally. You don’t need to be gay to play a gay person or have killed people and put them under the patio to play Fred West, yet the trans loon lobby, of course, dunked on casting of non ‘trans’ actors in trans roles even getting a Scarlett Johansson show pulled as she backed out due to the furore from the perma-offended brigade. There was also Eddie Redmaye in that film, the Danish Girl IIRC, who got a load of flak for being in it.
"Taliban: We’re ready to work with Farage on migrants Senior official says they will not take money but instead accept aid to support any Afghans deported under Reform plans"
If anyone is a fan of The Count of Monte Cristo, the 2024 French film adaptation is sublime. It takes a few liberties with the start, and the final scene is a little overblown, but the second half is beautiful, recreating important chapters from the book that other screen versions didn’t bother with at all.
I’m working my way through the book in French, for some reason it comes in two separate books, it’s my favourite story and read the best translation in English so thought I would read again in French to get the brain working.
There is a lot in the book left out of screen versions for reasons I don’t understand as, however long the book is, there is no fat in it to cut.
Have tried to watch the new series but something leaves me cold so far - must be because they haven’t cast a real Marseillais as Edmond Dantes.
I was left cold by the new series, and stopped at E3. The film changes the events leading to Edmond’s imprisonment and I was not happy about that at the time, but the second half is absolutely wonderful, and the changes to the plot are justified in my opinion. It keeps in many of the subplots that other adaptations leave behind, I thoroughly recommend watching
I have read the Robin Buss translation half a dozen times, which is the one you consider the best? I bought the book in French with the idea of reading it one day, but never have
The Robin Buss for me too - I have given a few copies to people as presents where appropriate too. It’s very hard to stop reading and put it down. I think my French edition must have been released to go with the French screen adaptation as they share a cover/marketing image photo.
My second most favourite after Kidnapped/Catriona , absolutely incredible and yet to see a film do it justice. Will look out for this one.
Farage rowing back on deporting women and children and they apparently won’t be part of the initial deportations.
Obviously after yesterdays hate wankfest there’s been further discussion and shipping off women and children isn’t now seen as such a vote winner .
Farage "rowing back" on small boats somewhat amuses me...
So under Reform, the boats from France will be full of women and children, who will then seek to bring their husbands/fathers to join them. Have I got that rigth?
It's sunny again now in south Devon, but we had a drenching for an hour. Rivers of water running across the roads, as it all just ran off fields hard as concrete.
There were 2 state senator by-elections in the US yesterday, one in Georgia and one in Iowa. The one in Georgia operates a run-off system, so yesterday's vote saw one Democratic candidate and multiple Republicans, so hard to interpret. We need to see the second round results.
However, the result in Iowa is more straightforward. It was a Republican seat, the Democrat won this time. Using the UK definition of swing, there was a swing of 10.5% from R to D.
If anyone is a fan of The Count of Monte Cristo, the 2024 French film adaptation is sublime. It takes a few liberties with the start, and the final scene is a little overblown, but the second half is beautiful, recreating important chapters from the book that other screen versions didn’t bother with at all.
I’m working my way through the book in French, for some reason it comes in two separate books, it’s my favourite story and read the best translation in English so thought I would read again in French to get the brain working.
There is a lot in the book left out of screen versions for reasons I don’t understand as, however long the book is, there is no fat in it to cut.
Have tried to watch the new series but something leaves me cold so far - must be because they haven’t cast a real Marseillais as Edmond Dantes.
I was left cold by the new series, and stopped at E3. The film changes the events leading to Edmond’s imprisonment and I was not happy about that at the time, but the second half is absolutely wonderful, and the changes to the plot are justified in my opinion. It keeps in many of the subplots that other adaptations leave behind, I thoroughly recommend watching
I have read the Robin Buss translation half a dozen times, which is the one you consider the best? I bought the book in French with the idea of reading it one day, but never have
The Robin Buss for me too - I have given a few copies to people as presents where appropriate too. It’s very hard to stop reading and put it down. I think my French edition must have been released to go with the French screen adaptation as they share a cover/marketing image photo.
In 1999,my Mum bought it for me after I watched the film Sleepers which it featured in as the boys favourite book. At 1100 odd pages I found it quite daunting, but was so hooked that I used to read it walking down the street on my way to getting the train in the morning!
So what is different in the Robin Buss version from the original
Farage rowing back on deporting women and children and they apparently won’t be part of the initial deportations.
Obviously after yesterdays hate wankfest there’s been further discussion and shipping off women and children isn’t now seen as such a vote winner .
Farage "rowing back" on small boats somewhat amuses me...
So under Reform, the boats from France will be full of women and children, who will then seek to bring their husbands/fathers to join them. Have I got that rigth?
The policy is already unraveling . Your guess is as good as mine !
The Telegraph article makes the Taliban sound all warm and cuddly . The main difference between the controversial German scheme and the one proposed by Farage is the former are sending back failed asylum seekers and criminals versus the latter in which all Afghans arriving by boat would be sent back .
I know we’re currently living in a climate of zero empathy or humanity but do the British public want to send people back who could be executed as soon as they arrive , are they willing to send back women to be stoned to death ?
It will certainly discourage them taking the dinghy.
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
If you can have actors as black Anglo Saxons you can have an actor as a white Mandela
A nicely thoughtful post there by @isam. I need to watch this as it is the 2nd one of yours I have liked today.
I disagree with you @HYUFD on Nelson Mandela and agree with @isam. Mandela being black is rather fundamental to the whole point of the story. Normans and Anglo Saxons being white is not. OK they clearly weren't black. They also have the wrong haircuts*, and speak the wrong language for the time, but we overlook that. We can overlook (with difficulty I grant you as it is obvious) black Anglo Saxons. It is a bit more difficult to overlook a white Mandela.
* A review I read said it was confusing flipping between the Norman and the Anglo Saxon locations and would have been a lot easy if they had the correct haircuts for the time.
All historical movies and TV shows are inaccurate to a greater or lesser degree. Mary Queen of Scots spoke with a French accent but she’s invariably given a Scottish one. Jesus of Nazareth was considerably darker than Robert Powell or indeed most of his other European and American visual representations. Picking on the skin colour of actors in history pieces set in Europe is a bit of a double standard. Suspension of disbelief is necessary in any dramatic production.
I agree. It is only relevant if key to the plot. I don't care if someone is black or white, thin or fat, tall or short, when playing a roles,but there are obvious exceptions when it is key to plot:
A white Mandela, a thin Billy Bunter, a short Giant in the beanstalk.
One only has to apply common sense.
I will try asking you as JJ didn’t answer at the time of writing - if the epic series “Shaka Zulu” is remade do you think it’s fine to cast white actors as Zulu Impi, or do you think it would be utterly ridiculous?
If you think it’s ok then please explain why, and why the Zulu nation shouldn’t be livid about it, if you think it would clearly be ridiculous then please explain why we also should accept colour blind casting in other situations.
To me it's a strange thing to get excited about. There is value in (say) cast colour reversal as a way of stretching perceptions, and making the audience think. That is a valid artistic purpose.
At one end there are the "Patriots" who can be satirised by pointing out that St George was probably Turkish.
Then we have the plays of Shakespeare which are about the human condition through the lens of Shakespeare's scripts-set-in-history. Should we be objecting to British actors being in "Two Gentlemen of Verona", or Shylock not being portrayed by a Jewish Actor? It's a non-issue. In fact imo varying ethnicity of actors in casts elucidates the play further, and is usefully mind-stretching for us.
At the other end we have the reality of our history, where famously there is black sailor George Ryan portrayed on the relief of the death of Nelson at Trafalgar on Nelson's Column, or the reasonably recent revelation that there was a black Conservative MP in the Commons
It wasn't so long since we were being told that Bernie Sanders and Diane Abbott were the first Black British MPs (iirc from the 1990s). But now we know that there were black (mixed race afaik without really digging out the detail) from the 18C.
Race blind casting is not the only kind of woke disruption I can’t abide. Essentially any BBC (and more generally British) period drama is now thoroughly infested with a kind of weird didactic wokery that I seem to have a strong allergy to.
The recent Ruth Ellis drama was unwatchable just to name an example that springs to mind (and the lead actress was rubbish).
Compare with “The Wire”, “Shogun”, “Mad Men”, which address race and gender issues but don’t seek to blatantly re-write history or create “goodies and baddies” based on race, gender, or class.
What was the specific issue with the Ruth Ellis drama. We didn’t watch it.
Superficial and simplistic, felt like 2025 just with 1950s costumes, and as I said, the lead actress wasn’t up to it.
This discussion reminds me of the one legged Dudley Moore auditioning for the role of Tarzan. I laugh every time, even before the punchlines in anticipation.
"There's nothing wrong with your left leg. It's a fine leg. I have nothing against it. (Pause). The problem is, neither have you..."
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
If you can have actors as black Anglo Saxons you can have an actor as a white Mandela
A nicely thoughtful post there by @isam. I need to watch this as it is the 2nd one of yours I have liked today.
I disagree with you @HYUFD on Nelson Mandela and agree with @isam. Mandela being black is rather fundamental to the whole point of the story. Normans and Anglo Saxons being white is not. OK they clearly weren't black. They also have the wrong haircuts*, and speak the wrong language for the time, but we overlook that. We can overlook (with difficulty I grant you as it is obvious) black Anglo Saxons. It is a bit more difficult to overlook a white Mandela.
* A review I read said it was confusing flipping between the Norman and the Anglo Saxon locations and would have been a lot easy if they had the correct and different haircuts for the time.
It is called acting, if you can act well you should be able to convince in the part regardless of skin colour.
Otherwise if you demand historical figures are represented by actors of the same skin colour that has to apply across the board
I agree on this but it should apply equally. You don’t need to be gay to play a gay person or have killed people and put them under the patio to play Fred West, yet the trans loon lobby, of course, dunked on casting of non ‘trans’ actors in trans roles even getting a Scarlett Johansson show pulled as she backed out due to the furore from the perma-offended brigade. There was also Eddie Redmaye in that film, the Danish Girl IIRC, who got a load of flak for being in it.
I'm half and half here. I think that having had the actual experience makes a big difference, as does challenging the perceptions and assumptions of an audience around skin colour. Though an actor's skill is to understand and portray.
I would struggle to work my way into the head of someone around something as simple as tobacco addiction, for example. Or being an out gay professional footballer - aiui in the UK game we still only have one, following on from Justin Fashanu in 1990. Fashanu hanged himself in a garage in Shoreditch after he was accused of sexual assault.
We see that in assumptions we impose on other people in the way we organise and regulate our society.
As an off-the-wall example, I knew of (via Buildhub) somebody who was so offended at having to install a disabled ramp to the door on his self-build that he devised a strategy to install a weak mix concrete ramp that he could remove with a pressure washer later.
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
If you can have actors as black Anglo Saxons you can have an actor as a white Mandela
A nicely thoughtful post there by @isam. I need to watch this as it is the 2nd one of yours I have liked today.
I disagree with you @HYUFD on Nelson Mandela and agree with @isam. Mandela being black is rather fundamental to the whole point of the story. Normans and Anglo Saxons being white is not. OK they clearly weren't black. They also have the wrong haircuts*, and speak the wrong language for the time, but we overlook that. We can overlook (with difficulty I grant you as it is obvious) black Anglo Saxons. It is a bit more difficult to overlook a white Mandela.
* A review I read said it was confusing flipping between the Norman and the Anglo Saxon locations and would have been a lot easy if they had the correct haircuts for the time.
All historical movies and TV shows are inaccurate to a greater or lesser degree. Mary Queen of Scots spoke with a French accent but she’s invariably given a Scottish one. Jesus of Nazareth was considerably darker than Robert Powell or indeed most of his other European and American visual representations. Picking on the skin colour of actors in history pieces set in Europe is a bit of a double standard. Suspension of disbelief is necessary in any dramatic production.
I agree. It is only relevant if key to the plot. I don't care if someone is black or white, thin or fat, tall or short, when playing a roles,but there are obvious exceptions when it is key to plot:
A white Mandela, a thin Billy Bunter, a short Giant in the beanstalk.
One only has to apply common sense.
I will try asking you as JJ didn’t answer at the time of writing - if the epic series “Shaka Zulu” is remade do you think it’s fine to cast white actors as Zulu Impi, or do you think it would be utterly ridiculous?
If you think it’s ok then please explain why, and why the Zulu nation shouldn’t be livid about it, if you think it would clearly be ridiculous then please explain why we also should accept colour blind casting in other situations.
The racial dimension in South African history in "Shaka Zulu" still very much feeds through to the country's situation today. In comparison, any racial dimension in "King & Conqueror" has long ceased to be relevant. Thus, the two are not directly comparable.
You do realise Shaka Zulu is about the rise of the Zulu against other black South African tribes of the time, pre Anglo-Zulu war and large scale white settlement and so the racial black/white dimension to the story isn’t relevant to the country’s situation today?
Also, we continue to hear a great deal about the superiority of the Normans, thinly disguised as the aristocracy and royalty.
I’ve not watched it, but surely a missed trick not having the Normans played by surly Gallic actors with in-built shrugs constantly saying “bof” and “du coup”.
And "ces salauds anglo-saxons sur cette colline de merde". Presumably they'd moved on from saying "de angelsaksiske røvhuller på denne lortebakke" but I'm not too sure when.,
Sounds as if speaking French all the time would have been better. The subtitles would be needed - but would have made the point of the alien language being imposed on the A/S. Unless the aim or the film was to glorify William and the Norman Conks?
Subtitles worked well for ‘Apocalypto’.
I was actually thinking of the Japanese in Tora! Tora! Tora! but had never heard of Apocalypto - and a Mel Gibson movie no less. From this sample it seems very, erm, striking - complete with, I notice, an atlatl in use.
All the actors were Mayan, although to my mind, the society that is depicted is Aztec, rather than Mayan. It's a very good film, IMHO.
It is good. Don’t want to start down the ‘can bad uns make good art’ line, but despite being a boozy, antisemitic virtually fascistic Catholic, Gibson can make a good movie, and act well.
He was brilliant in We were Soldiers, great book as well
Farage rowing back on deporting women and children and they apparently won’t be part of the initial deportations.
Obviously after yesterdays hate wankfest there’s been further discussion and shipping off women and children isn’t now seen as such a vote winner .
Farage "rowing back" on small boats somewhat amuses me...
So under Reform, the boats from France will be full of women and children, who will then seek to bring their husbands/fathers to join them. Have I got that rigth?
The policy is already unraveling . Your guess is as good as mine !
I see you’re still channelling your inner Mary Poppins ! I just want to see how a politician answers the question “ will you send back women to the Taliban who could be stoned to death “ .
The Reform policy was all Afghans would be sent back even if they had genuine asylum claims .
Race blind casting is not the only kind of woke disruption I can’t abide. Essentially any BBC (and more generally British) period drama is now thoroughly infested with a kind of weird didactic wokery that I seem to have a strong allergy to.
The recent Ruth Ellis drama was unwatchable just to name an example that springs to mind (and the lead actress was rubbish).
Compare with “The Wire”, “Shogun”, “Mad Men”, which address race and gender issues but don’t seek to blatantly re-write history or create “goodies and baddies” based on race, gender, or class.
What was the specific issue with the Ruth Ellis drama. We didn’t watch it.
Superficial and simplistic, felt like 2025 just with 1950s costumes, and as I said, the lead actress wasn’t up to it.
This is true of most period drama in my experience. "Ha ha, look at those unenlightened idiots who live in the past, not like us clever sophisticated inhabitants of the 21st century, or at least those bits of it we approve of..." Oddly, this only seems to apply over the last thousand years - once you get beyond that the inhabitants of the past seem to get treated with a little more respect.
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
If you can have actors as black Anglo Saxons you can have an actor as a white Mandela
A nicely thoughtful post there by @isam. I need to watch this as it is the 2nd one of yours I have liked today.
I disagree with you @HYUFD on Nelson Mandela and agree with @isam. Mandela being black is rather fundamental to the whole point of the story. Normans and Anglo Saxons being white is not. OK they clearly weren't black. They also have the wrong haircuts*, and speak the wrong language for the time, but we overlook that. We can overlook (with difficulty I grant you as it is obvious) black Anglo Saxons. It is a bit more difficult to overlook a white Mandela.
* A review I read said it was confusing flipping between the Norman and the Anglo Saxon locations and would have been a lot easy if they had the correct and different haircuts for the time.
It is called acting, if you can act well you should be able to convince in the part regardless of skin colour.
Otherwise if you demand historical figures are represented by actors of the same skin colour that has to apply across the board
I agree on this but it should apply equally. You don’t need to be gay to play a gay person or have killed people and put them under the patio to play Fred West, yet the trans loon lobby, of course, dunked on casting of non ‘trans’ actors in trans roles even getting a Scarlett Johansson show pulled as she backed out due to the furore from the perma-offended brigade. There was also Eddie Redmaye in that film, the Danish Girl IIRC, who got a load of flak for being in it.
I'm half and half here. I think that having had the actual experience makes a big difference, as does challenging the perceptions and assumptions of an audience around skin colour. Though an actor's skill is to understand and portray.
I would struggle to work my way into the head of someone around something as simple as tobacco addiction, for example. Or being an out gay professional footballer - aiui in the UK game we still only have one, following on from Justin Fashanu in 1990. Fashanu hanged himself in a garage in Shoreditch after he was accused of sexual assault.
With all due respect you’re not a professional actor. They immerse themselves in their roles. They inhabit the character and the role.
What you seem to imply would simply narrow the available cast. RTD selected actors on their merit for Queer as Folk, and it works fine.
I think it’s nonsensical to say only a trans actor can play a trans role or only,a straight actor can play a straight role.
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
If you can have actors as black Anglo Saxons you can have an actor as a white Mandela
A nicely thoughtful post there by @isam. I need to watch this as it is the 2nd one of yours I have liked today.
I disagree with you @HYUFD on Nelson Mandela and agree with @isam. Mandela being black is rather fundamental to the whole point of the story. Normans and Anglo Saxons being white is not. OK they clearly weren't black. They also have the wrong haircuts*, and speak the wrong language for the time, but we overlook that. We can overlook (with difficulty I grant you as it is obvious) black Anglo Saxons. It is a bit more difficult to overlook a white Mandela.
* A review I read said it was confusing flipping between the Norman and the Anglo Saxon locations and would have been a lot easy if they had the correct and different haircuts for the time.
It is called acting, if you can act well you should be able to convince in the part regardless of skin colour.
Otherwise if you demand historical figures are represented by actors of the same skin colour that has to apply across the board
I agree on this but it should apply equally. You don’t need to be gay to play a gay person or have killed people and put them under the patio to play Fred West, yet the trans loon lobby, of course, dunked on casting of non ‘trans’ actors in trans roles even getting a Scarlett Johansson show pulled as she backed out due to the furore from the perma-offended brigade. There was also Eddie Redmaye in that film, the Danish Girl IIRC, who got a load of flak for being in it.
I'm half and half here. I think that having had the actual experience makes a big difference, as does challenging the perceptions and assumptions of an audience around skin colour. Though an actor's skill is to understand and portray.
I would struggle to work my way into the head of someone around something as simple as tobacco addiction, for example. Or being an out gay professional footballer - aiui in the UK game we still only have one, following on from Justin Fashanu in 1990. Fashanu hanged himself in a garage in Shoreditch after he was accused of sexual assault.
With all due respect you’re not a professional actor. They immerse themselves in their roles. They inhabit the character and the role.
What you seem to imply would simply narrow the available cast. RTD selected actors on their merit for Queer as Folk, and it works fine.
I think it’s nonsensical to say only a trans actor can play a trans role or only,a straight actor can play a straight role.
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
If you can have actors as black Anglo Saxons you can have an actor as a white Mandela
A nicely thoughtful post there by @isam. I need to watch this as it is the 2nd one of yours I have liked today.
I disagree with you @HYUFD on Nelson Mandela and agree with @isam. Mandela being black is rather fundamental to the whole point of the story. Normans and Anglo Saxons being white is not. OK they clearly weren't black. They also have the wrong haircuts*, and speak the wrong language for the time, but we overlook that. We can overlook (with difficulty I grant you as it is obvious) black Anglo Saxons. It is a bit more difficult to overlook a white Mandela.
* A review I read said it was confusing flipping between the Norman and the Anglo Saxon locations and would have been a lot easy if they had the correct haircuts for the time.
All historical movies and TV shows are inaccurate to a greater or lesser degree. Mary Queen of Scots spoke with a French accent but she’s invariably given a Scottish one. Jesus of Nazareth was considerably darker than Robert Powell or indeed most of his other European and American visual representations. Picking on the skin colour of actors in history pieces set in Europe is a bit of a double standard. Suspension of disbelief is necessary in any dramatic production.
I agree. It is only relevant if key to the plot. I don't care if someone is black or white, thin or fat, tall or short, when playing a roles,but there are obvious exceptions when it is key to plot:
A white Mandela, a thin Billy Bunter, a short Giant in the beanstalk.
One only has to apply common sense.
I will try asking you as JJ didn’t answer at the time of writing - if the epic series “Shaka Zulu” is remade do you think it’s fine to cast white actors as Zulu Impi, or do you think it would be utterly ridiculous?
If you think it’s ok then please explain why, and why the Zulu nation shouldn’t be livid about it, if you think it would clearly be ridiculous then please explain why we also should accept colour blind casting in other situations.
To me it's a strange thing to get excited about. There is value in (say) cast colour reversal as a way of stretching perceptions, and making the audience think. That is a valid artistic purpose.
At one end there are the "Patriots" who can be satirised by pointing out that St George was probably Turkish.
Then we have the plays of Shakespeare which are about the human condition through the lens of Shakespeare's scripts-set-in-history. Should we be objecting to British actors being in "Two Gentlemen of Verona", or Shylock not being portrayed by a Jewish Actor? It's a non-issue. In fact imo varying ethnicity of actors in casts elucidates the play further, and is usefully mind-stretching for us.
At the other end we have the reality of our history, where famously there is black sailor George Ryan portrayed on the relief of the death of Nelson at Trafalgar on Nelson's Column, or the reasonably recent revelation that there was a black Conservative MP in the Commons
It wasn't so long since we were being told that Bernie Sanders and Diane Abbott were the first Black British MPs (iirc from the 1990s). But now we know that there were black (mixed race afaik without really digging out the detail) from the 18C.
Well, well - the things you learn here. Enough to have Sir Desmond Swayne choking on his cornflakes, although i suspect not a PB follower
It's an interesting story how it came up. I think someone did independent research that woke up officials to the possibility. And it's quite recent.
I think there is a similar process coming for disabled MPs. We have been having cloud-of-dust generating stories about "WHY ARE THERE ONLY FIVE DISABLED MPS IN THE COMMONS" for 10 or 20 years, by people who want to say they represent them and so get attention, or want a big story / scandal.
According to me, it has been several dozen throughout, and is a lot more now. But it's quite intensive work to find them all. And there is an ambiguity of definition.
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
If you can have actors as black Anglo Saxons you can have an actor as a white Mandela
A nicely thoughtful post there by @isam. I need to watch this as it is the 2nd one of yours I have liked today.
I disagree with you @HYUFD on Nelson Mandela and agree with @isam. Mandela being black is rather fundamental to the whole point of the story. Normans and Anglo Saxons being white is not. OK they clearly weren't black. They also have the wrong haircuts*, and speak the wrong language for the time, but we overlook that. We can overlook (with difficulty I grant you as it is obvious) black Anglo Saxons. It is a bit more difficult to overlook a white Mandela.
* A review I read said it was confusing flipping between the Norman and the Anglo Saxon locations and would have been a lot easy if they had the correct and different haircuts for the time.
It is called acting, if you can act well you should be able to convince in the part regardless of skin colour.
Otherwise if you demand historical figures are represented by actors of the same skin colour that has to apply across the board
I agree on this but it should apply equally. You don’t need to be gay to play a gay person or have killed people and put them under the patio to play Fred West, yet the trans loon lobby, of course, dunked on casting of non ‘trans’ actors in trans roles even getting a Scarlett Johansson show pulled as she backed out due to the furore from the perma-offended brigade. There was also Eddie Redmaye in that film, the Danish Girl IIRC, who got a load of flak for being in it.
I'm half and half here. I think that having had the actual experience makes a big difference, as does challenging the perceptions and assumptions of an audience around skin colour. Though an actor's skill is to understand and portray.
I would struggle to work my way into the head of someone around something as simple as tobacco addiction, for example. Or being an out gay professional footballer - aiui in the UK game we still only have one, following on from Justin Fashanu in 1990. Fashanu hanged himself in a garage in Shoreditch after he was accused of sexual assault.
With all due respect you’re not a professional actor. They immerse themselves in their roles. They inhabit the character and the role.
What you seem to imply would simply narrow the available cast. RTD selected actors on their merit for Queer as Folk, and it works fine.
I think it’s nonsensical to say only a trans actor can play a trans role or only,a straight actor can play a straight role.
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
If you can have actors as black Anglo Saxons you can have an actor as a white Mandela
A nicely thoughtful post there by @isam. I need to watch this as it is the 2nd one of yours I have liked today.
I disagree with you @HYUFD on Nelson Mandela and agree with @isam. Mandela being black is rather fundamental to the whole point of the story. Normans and Anglo Saxons being white is not. OK they clearly weren't black. They also have the wrong haircuts*, and speak the wrong language for the time, but we overlook that. We can overlook (with difficulty I grant you as it is obvious) black Anglo Saxons. It is a bit more difficult to overlook a white Mandela.
* A review I read said it was confusing flipping between the Norman and the Anglo Saxon locations and would have been a lot easy if they had the correct and different haircuts for the time.
It is called acting, if you can act well you should be able to convince in the part regardless of skin colour.
Otherwise if you demand historical figures are represented by actors of the same skin colour that has to apply across the board
I agree on this but it should apply equally. You don’t need to be gay to play a gay person or have killed people and put them under the patio to play Fred West, yet the trans loon lobby, of course, dunked on casting of non ‘trans’ actors in trans roles even getting a Scarlett Johansson show pulled as she backed out due to the furore from the perma-offended brigade. There was also Eddie Redmaye in that film, the Danish Girl IIRC, who got a load of flak for being in it.
I'm half and half here. I think that having had the actual experience makes a big difference, as does challenging the perceptions and assumptions of an audience around skin colour. Though an actor's skill is to understand and portray.
I would struggle to work my way into the head of someone around something as simple as tobacco addiction, for example. Or being an out gay professional footballer - aiui in the UK game we still only have one, following on from Justin Fashanu in 1990. Fashanu hanged himself in a garage in Shoreditch after he was accused of sexual assault.
With all due respect you’re not a professional actor. They immerse themselves in their roles. They inhabit the character and the role.
What you seem to imply would simply narrow the available cast. RTD selected actors on their merit for Queer as Folk, and it works fine.
I think it’s nonsensical to say only a trans actor can play a trans role or only,a straight actor can play a straight role.
..That’s one of the reasons why Kim cast Reina Hardesty, who is Japanese American, as his Korean American character’s daughter in his new Prime Video series Butterfly...
TBH, it's not great. The problem lies more with the lame script, though.
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
If you can have actors as black Anglo Saxons you can have an actor as a white Mandela
A nicely thoughtful post there by @isam. I need to watch this as it is the 2nd one of yours I have liked today.
I disagree with you @HYUFD on Nelson Mandela and agree with @isam. Mandela being black is rather fundamental to the whole point of the story. Normans and Anglo Saxons being white is not. OK they clearly weren't black. They also have the wrong haircuts*, and speak the wrong language for the time, but we overlook that. We can overlook (with difficulty I grant you as it is obvious) black Anglo Saxons. It is a bit more difficult to overlook a white Mandela.
* A review I read said it was confusing flipping between the Norman and the Anglo Saxon locations and would have been a lot easy if they had the correct haircuts for the time.
All historical movies and TV shows are inaccurate to a greater or lesser degree. Mary Queen of Scots spoke with a French accent but she’s invariably given a Scottish one. Jesus of Nazareth was considerably darker than Robert Powell or indeed most of his other European and American visual representations. Picking on the skin colour of actors in history pieces set in Europe is a bit of a double standard. Suspension of disbelief is necessary in any dramatic production.
I agree. It is only relevant if key to the plot. I don't care if someone is black or white, thin or fat, tall or short, when playing a roles,but there are obvious exceptions when it is key to plot:
A white Mandela, a thin Billy Bunter, a short Giant in the beanstalk.
One only has to apply common sense.
I will try asking you as JJ didn’t answer at the time of writing - if the epic series “Shaka Zulu” is remade do you think it’s fine to cast white actors as Zulu Impi, or do you think it would be utterly ridiculous?
If you think it’s ok then please explain why, and why the Zulu nation shouldn’t be livid about it, if you think it would clearly be ridiculous then please explain why we also should accept colour blind casting in other situations.
To me it's a strange thing to get excited about. There is value in (say) cast colour reversal as a way of stretching perceptions, and making the audience think. That is a valid artistic purpose.
At one end there are the "Patriots" who can be satirised by pointing out that St George was probably Turkish.
Then we have the plays of Shakespeare which are about the human condition through the lens of Shakespeare's scripts-set-in-history. Should we be objecting to British actors being in "Two Gentlemen of Verona", or Shylock not being portrayed by a Jewish Actor? It's a non-issue. In fact imo varying ethnicity of actors in casts elucidates the play further, and is usefully mind-stretching for us.
At the other end we have the reality of our history, where famously there is black sailor George Ryan portrayed on the relief of the death of Nelson at Trafalgar on Nelson's Column, or the reasonably recent revelation that there was a black Conservative MP in the Commons
It wasn't so long since we were being told that Bernie Sanders and Diane Abbott were the first Black British MPs (iirc from the 1990s). But now we know that there were black (mixed race afaik without really digging out the detail) from the 18C.
Denmark summons US envoy over suspected influence operations in Greenland
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/denmark-summons-us-envoy-over-suspected-influence-operations-greenland-2025-08-27/ Denmark's foreign minister has summoned the top U.S. diplomat in Copenhagen over intelligence reports alleging covert influence operations by U.S. citizens in Greenland that aimed to whip up opposition to Danish rule, the ministry said on Wednesday. Public broadcaster DR, citing unnamed sources, reported that at least three Americans with ties to the Trump administration were suspected of involvement in the efforts, which also sought to promote Greenland's secession from Denmark to the United States...
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
If you can have actors as black Anglo Saxons you can have an actor as a white Mandela
A nicely thoughtful post there by @isam. I need to watch this as it is the 2nd one of yours I have liked today.
I disagree with you @HYUFD on Nelson Mandela and agree with @isam. Mandela being black is rather fundamental to the whole point of the story. Normans and Anglo Saxons being white is not. OK they clearly weren't black. They also have the wrong haircuts*, and speak the wrong language for the time, but we overlook that. We can overlook (with difficulty I grant you as it is obvious) black Anglo Saxons. It is a bit more difficult to overlook a white Mandela.
* A review I read said it was confusing flipping between the Norman and the Anglo Saxon locations and would have been a lot easy if they had the correct and different haircuts for the time.
It is called acting, if you can act well you should be able to convince in the part regardless of skin colour.
Otherwise if you demand historical figures are represented by actors of the same skin colour that has to apply across the board
I agree on this but it should apply equally. You don’t need to be gay to play a gay person or have killed people and put them under the patio to play Fred West, yet the trans loon lobby, of course, dunked on casting of non ‘trans’ actors in trans roles even getting a Scarlett Johansson show pulled as she backed out due to the furore from the perma-offended brigade. There was also Eddie Redmaye in that film, the Danish Girl IIRC, who got a load of flak for being in it.
I'm half and half here. I think that having had the actual experience makes a big difference, as does challenging the perceptions and assumptions of an audience around skin colour. Though an actor's skill is to understand and portray.
I would struggle to work my way into the head of someone around something as simple as tobacco addiction, for example. Or being an out gay professional footballer - aiui in the UK game we still only have one, following on from Justin Fashanu in 1990. Fashanu hanged himself in a garage in Shoreditch after he was accused of sexual assault.
With all due respect you’re not a professional actor. They immerse themselves in their roles. They inhabit the character and the role.
What you seem to imply would simply narrow the available cast. RTD selected actors on their merit for Queer as Folk, and it works fine.
I think it’s nonsensical to say only a trans actor can play a trans role or only,a straight actor can play a straight role.
That's fair enough. But I did not take the purist "only trans can play trans" position. I said personal experience could add extra.
Because actors are also bound in some ways by their personal experience, and they are not given infinite time.
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
If you can have actors as black Anglo Saxons you can have an actor as a white Mandela
A nicely thoughtful post there by @isam. I need to watch this as it is the 2nd one of yours I have liked today.
I disagree with you @HYUFD on Nelson Mandela and agree with @isam. Mandela being black is rather fundamental to the whole point of the story. Normans and Anglo Saxons being white is not. OK they clearly weren't black. They also have the wrong haircuts*, and speak the wrong language for the time, but we overlook that. We can overlook (with difficulty I grant you as it is obvious) black Anglo Saxons. It is a bit more difficult to overlook a white Mandela.
* A review I read said it was confusing flipping between the Norman and the Anglo Saxon locations and would have been a lot easy if they had the correct and different haircuts for the time.
It is called acting, if you can act well you should be able to convince in the part regardless of skin colour.
Otherwise if you demand historical figures are represented by actors of the same skin colour that has to apply across the board
I agree on this but it should apply equally. You don’t need to be gay to play a gay person or have killed people and put them under the patio to play Fred West, yet the trans loon lobby, of course, dunked on casting of non ‘trans’ actors in trans roles even getting a Scarlett Johansson show pulled as she backed out due to the furore from the perma-offended brigade. There was also Eddie Redmaye in that film, the Danish Girl IIRC, who got a load of flak for being in it.
I'm half and half here. I think that having had the actual experience makes a big difference, as does challenging the perceptions and assumptions of an audience around skin colour. Though an actor's skill is to understand and portray.
I would struggle to work my way into the head of someone around something as simple as tobacco addiction, for example. Or being an out gay professional footballer - aiui in the UK game we still only have one, following on from Justin Fashanu in 1990. Fashanu hanged himself in a garage in Shoreditch after he was accused of sexual assault.
With all due respect you’re not a professional actor. They immerse themselves in their roles. They inhabit the character and the role.
What you seem to imply would simply narrow the available cast. RTD selected actors on their merit for Queer as Folk, and it works fine.
I think it’s nonsensical to say only a trans actor can play a trans role or only,a straight actor can play a straight role.
It is literally the entire point of acting, to play a role that is not your own.
Sheldon: You can't be Professor Proton. You're not a scientist. Wil Wheaton: Well, I was never on a starship, but pretending I was bought me this house. And if I'd pretended a little longer, it would have a swimming pool
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
If you can have actors as black Anglo Saxons you can have an actor as a white Mandela
A nicely thoughtful post there by @isam. I need to watch this as it is the 2nd one of yours I have liked today.
I disagree with you @HYUFD on Nelson Mandela and agree with @isam. Mandela being black is rather fundamental to the whole point of the story. Normans and Anglo Saxons being white is not. OK they clearly weren't black. They also have the wrong haircuts*, and speak the wrong language for the time, but we overlook that. We can overlook (with difficulty I grant you as it is obvious) black Anglo Saxons. It is a bit more difficult to overlook a white Mandela.
* A review I read said it was confusing flipping between the Norman and the Anglo Saxon locations and would have been a lot easy if they had the correct and different haircuts for the time.
It is called acting, if you can act well you should be able to convince in the part regardless of skin colour.
Otherwise if you demand historical figures are represented by actors of the same skin colour that has to apply across the board
I agree on this but it should apply equally. You don’t need to be gay to play a gay person or have killed people and put them under the patio to play Fred West, yet the trans loon lobby, of course, dunked on casting of non ‘trans’ actors in trans roles even getting a Scarlett Johansson show pulled as she backed out due to the furore from the perma-offended brigade. There was also Eddie Redmaye in that film, the Danish Girl IIRC, who got a load of flak for being in it.
I'm half and half here. I think that having had the actual experience makes a big difference, as does challenging the perceptions and assumptions of an audience around skin colour. Though an actor's skill is to understand and portray.
I would struggle to work my way into the head of someone around something as simple as tobacco addiction, for example. Or being an out gay professional footballer - aiui in the UK game we still only have one, following on from Justin Fashanu in 1990. Fashanu hanged himself in a garage in Shoreditch after he was accused of sexual assault.
With all due respect you’re not a professional actor. They immerse themselves in their roles. They inhabit the character and the role.
What you seem to imply would simply narrow the available cast. RTD selected actors on their merit for Queer as Folk, and it works fine.
I think it’s nonsensical to say only a trans actor can play a trans role or only,a straight actor can play a straight role.
..That’s one of the reasons why Kim cast Reina Hardesty, who is Japanese American, as his Korean American character’s daughter in his new Prime Video series Butterfly...
TBH, it's not great. The problem lies more with the lame script, though.
Is "Butterfly" a prequel to the Carla Lane sitcom "Butterflies"?
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
If you can have actors as black Anglo Saxons you can have an actor as a white Mandela
A nicely thoughtful post there by @isam. I need to watch this as it is the 2nd one of yours I have liked today.
I disagree with you @HYUFD on Nelson Mandela and agree with @isam. Mandela being black is rather fundamental to the whole point of the story. Normans and Anglo Saxons being white is not. OK they clearly weren't black. They also have the wrong haircuts*, and speak the wrong language for the time, but we overlook that. We can overlook (with difficulty I grant you as it is obvious) black Anglo Saxons. It is a bit more difficult to overlook a white Mandela.
* A review I read said it was confusing flipping between the Norman and the Anglo Saxon locations and would have been a lot easy if they had the correct haircuts for the time.
All historical movies and TV shows are inaccurate to a greater or lesser degree. Mary Queen of Scots spoke with a French accent but she’s invariably given a Scottish one. Jesus of Nazareth was considerably darker than Robert Powell or indeed most of his other European and American visual representations. Picking on the skin colour of actors in history pieces set in Europe is a bit of a double standard. Suspension of disbelief is necessary in any dramatic production.
Funny thing about that example is that giving Marie Stuart a French accent would help drive home the degree of the split between her and very many Scots. A chance being missed there. But perhaps the emphasis in many productions is on Elizabeth Tudor, so it is thought that having MS a la francaise would confuse the viewer.
There was literally a BBC version of Mary Queen of Scots/James VI/I bio made two decades ago with a French actress playing Mary.
This is something I have changed my mind on to a certain extent; in the past I’d agree that using non white actors in British period pieces was ‘PC gone max’, but now I think it would be completely wrong to deny a black actor the chance to be cast in one. A multi racial school doing a play about the 1966 World Cup Final would cast all kids as players, even though all 22 on the pitch were white, and a production of Shakespeare with an entirely non white cast would be just as legitimate as any other.
Where it does seem provocative is casting title characters; you can’t have a white Mandela or black Henry VIII, although I’d probably be more ok with the latter
BBC series ‘King and Conqueror’ branded ‘woke’ and ‘historically inaccurate’ for featuring black actors playing Anglo-Saxons.
The series portrays the historical Battle of Hastings in 1066 between William, Duke of Normandy and King Harold Godwinson of England.
If you can have actors as black Anglo Saxons you can have an actor as a white Mandela
A nicely thoughtful post there by @isam. I need to watch this as it is the 2nd one of yours I have liked today.
I disagree with you @HYUFD on Nelson Mandela and agree with @isam. Mandela being black is rather fundamental to the whole point of the story. Normans and Anglo Saxons being white is not. OK they clearly weren't black. They also have the wrong haircuts*, and speak the wrong language for the time, but we overlook that. We can overlook (with difficulty I grant you as it is obvious) black Anglo Saxons. It is a bit more difficult to overlook a white Mandela.
* A review I read said it was confusing flipping between the Norman and the Anglo Saxon locations and would have been a lot easy if they had the correct and different haircuts for the time.
It is called acting, if you can act well you should be able to convince in the part regardless of skin colour.
Otherwise if you demand historical figures are represented by actors of the same skin colour that has to apply across the board
I agree on this but it should apply equally. You don’t need to be gay to play a gay person or have killed people and put them under the patio to play Fred West, yet the trans loon lobby, of course, dunked on casting of non ‘trans’ actors in trans roles even getting a Scarlett Johansson show pulled as she backed out due to the furore from the perma-offended brigade. There was also Eddie Redmaye in that film, the Danish Girl IIRC, who got a load of flak for being in it.
I'm half and half here. I think that having had the actual experience makes a big difference, as does challenging the perceptions and assumptions of an audience around skin colour. Though an actor's skill is to understand and portray.
I would struggle to work my way into the head of someone around something as simple as tobacco addiction, for example. Or being an out gay professional footballer - aiui in the UK game we still only have one, following on from Justin Fashanu in 1990. Fashanu hanged himself in a garage in Shoreditch after he was accused of sexual assault.
With all due respect you’re not a professional actor. They immerse themselves in their roles. They inhabit the character and the role.
What you seem to imply would simply narrow the available cast. RTD selected actors on their merit for Queer as Folk, and it works fine.
I think it’s nonsensical to say only a trans actor can play a trans role or only,a straight actor can play a straight role.
It is literally the entire point of acting, to play a role that is not your own.
Sheldon: You can't be Professor Proton. You're not a scientist. Wil Wheaton: Well, I was never on a starship, but pretending I was bought me this house. And if I'd pretended a little longer, it would have a swimming pool
Yeah, that show I see it and I remember watching an extra in a Queer as Folk DVD where a straight actor addressed that very point.
If you start limiting actors to roles based on life experience that’s going to be a very narrow path.
It’s why I don’t have a strong feeling about a black actor playing Anne Boleyn. As an example.
Has there been any detailed, electorate based, analysis of possible outcomes given the way current polling is going?
MRP-style?
I’m assuming that Reform will top the polls, but they will be far short of a majority, and a Labour/LD coalition looks most likely. But I haven’t seen any good analysis on this, only comments that say things like “Wow, Tories will lose ALL seats using this defunct swing-based web tool!”
Reform would be the biggest party, on 290 seats. An anti-Reform coalition could be put together, but it's doubtful how long-lasting it would be.
Thanks. This suggests a Reform/Con coalition or perhaps a less formal arrangement.
I still think Lab/LD is the most likely (60%) outcome right now, with all the caveats about the wild volatility we now live with, and the many years still to go.
And as a side note, SNP’s relative return to strength, and the possibility that Labour will be dependent on SNP votes, also points to Sindy being back on the agenda in in the next parliament.
But that aside, I don’t think the Establishment has yet viscerally understood that a Reform-led government looks highly possible, if not yet probable.
OT - The People's Party is the obvious choice. Aligning with Corbyn's claim to be for the many not the few. Frankly I don't think they'd expect or seek too energetically the votes of too many on here. We forum folks may share Corbyn's age but his followers do not!
Comments
I know you didn’t start the discussion but you’re like Joe Hendry. Say his name and you will appear 😉
The 1% media coverage of the LDs and Green is much too low for their current market shares. The media are underestimating LD/Green support.
Just wait until the media coverage of LDs/Green increases around the 2026 locals and the next GE.
At least the ones I can think of are.
I think we can distinguish between two or three types of drama.
For the historical epic, I think visual and other types of immersion are important. We look to such pieces to lose ourselves in a different time. Race blind casting makes no sense here. It’s a woke disruption. In fact it usually tells me that the director has no real understanding of what they’re doing, and I avoid such films or shows entirely.
For fantasies, such Bridgerton, it doesn’t matter, even if the nod is to Regency Britain, the whole point is that it’s an obviously-made up reinterpretation.
A third category perhaps encompasses the works of Shakespeare. We don’t really watch Othello to “feel” 16th century Venice, not in most versions - we watch to savour the language and individual performances. It doesn’t really matter if Hamlet is black.
Just proves to me the left, and hard left, are better organised than the right in getting shills to plug their message
The society which is depicted, falls into the category of a "sick society."
The lawsuit was filed by Matt and Maria Raine, parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine, in the Superior Court of California on Tuesday. It is the first legal action accusing OpenAI of wrongful death.
The family included chat logs between Mr Raine, who died in April, and ChatGPT that show him explaining he has suicidal thoughts. They argue the programme validated his "most harmful and self-destructive thoughts".
In a statement, OpenAI told the BBC it was reviewing the filing."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgerwp7rdlvo
But the basic point you make remains.
Gibson’s a loony - but, on occasion, he’s an interesting loony.
Shakespeare works because it is now widely accepted as a study of characters, primarily. The setting is secondary, as shown by the wide variety of very successful adaptations that place the drama in different periods.
Edit: I should also add that at the time the plays were written a lot of the historical elements were anachronistic and very much not written with accuracy in mind.
Don’t want to start down the ‘can bad uns make good art’ line, but despite being a boozy, antisemitic virtually fascistic Catholic, Gibson can make a good movie, and act well.
The recent Ruth Ellis drama was unwatchable just to name an example that springs to mind (and the lead actress was rubbish).
Compare with “The Wire”, “Shogun”, “Mad Men”, which address race and gender issues but don’t seek to blatantly re-write history or create “goodies and baddies” based on race, gender, or class.
I know we’re currently living in a climate of zero empathy or humanity but do the British public want to send people back who could be executed as soon as they arrive , are they willing to send back women to be stoned to death ?
MRP-style?
I’m assuming that Reform will top the polls, but they will be far short of a majority, and a Labour/LD coalition looks most likely. But I haven’t seen any good analysis on this, only comments that say things like “Wow, Tories will lose ALL seats using this defunct swing-based web tool!”
At one end there are the "Patriots" who can be satirised by pointing out that St George was probably Turkish.
Then we have the plays of Shakespeare which are about the human condition through the lens of Shakespeare's scripts-set-in-history. Should we be objecting to British actors being in "Two Gentlemen of Verona", or Shylock not being portrayed by a Jewish Actor? It's a non-issue. In fact imo varying ethnicity of actors in casts elucidates the play further, and is usefully mind-stretching for us.
At the other end we have the reality of our history, where famously there is black sailor George Ryan portrayed on the relief of the death of Nelson at Trafalgar on Nelson's Column, or the reasonably recent revelation that there was a black Conservative MP in the Commons
It wasn't so long since we were being told that Bernie Sanders and Diane Abbott were the first Black British MPs (iirc from the 1990s). But now we know that there were black (mixed race afaik without really digging out the detail) from the 18C.
The main problem is that scripts often feel inorganic. It’s getting harder and harder to find things that set out to tell a good story with thoughtful messaging. There is often a “written by committee” feel to some of it - it must have a scene that does X, it must have a character who is Y characteristic, it must show person X dealing with a situation better than person Z” - it is often rather lazy, and any messaging it retains is less thoughtful and nuanced than blatant and “right-on”.
It perhaps feels more disappointing that the BBC has fallen foul of a lot of this - partly because their history has seen them make so much thoughtful, diverse, interesting and thought provoking drama over the years.
More in Common is the most recent.
Reform would be the biggest party, on 290 seats. An anti-Reform coalition could be put together, but it's doubtful how long-lasting it would be.
Looking at it, I think he's echoing a couple of feeds, perhaps from live politics blogs with a bit of post-processing, given that it is scores of tweets per day.
There is also some arguably anti-Govt content, such as drawing attention to energy prices.
I ran a headline feed or two for years on my Twitter account once I found a cross-partisan feed, to give me 5 or 6 headlines a day to bulk out personal content. I'd say it's a version of that.
Mind you not sure how representative of sort of chav or roadman who plays their music loudly on public transport the picture is.
https://x.com/bbclondonnews/status/1960318852979474857?s=61
A sizeable minority want to do it here.
That message can be very woke, but it can also be quite reactionary at times.
An example is "Turn. Washington's Female Spies." There's a bit where slaves in New York are discussing the British authorities' offer to free slaves who fight for the Crown (actually, it applied in Virginia, not New York). Some of the younger, stupider slaves are attracted to this, but there's a wise old matriarch who loves her owner, and points out that freedom won't feed and clothe them, and they should be grateful for such a benevolent mistress.
There are *a lot" of Americans, who see slavery as essentially a benevolent institution.
But one can imagine a conversation around "lamp posts".
Nonetheless, we need to be told.
One day he said "Matt, Matt ... I was going up the motorway to see my mum in Sheffield. I was late and missed the junction. I tried to turn it quickly the car went around 4 times and ended up facing the wrong way." This was after midnight.
On another occasion he went a bit too quickly through a set of roadworks speed cameras in both directions, and got himself enough points to be banned as a totter.
The guy was Deputy Clerk to the Justices in a very large Magistrates' Court, in his 30s.
Obviously after yesterdays hate wankfest there’s been further discussion and shipping off women and children isn’t now seen as such a vote winner .
Asking for a friend.
*innocent face*
So under Reform, the boats from France will be full of women and children, who will then seek to bring their husbands/fathers to join them. Have I got that rigth?
However, the result in Iowa is more straightforward. It was a Republican seat, the Democrat won this time. Using the UK definition of swing, there was a swing of 10.5% from R to D.
I would struggle to work my way into the head of someone around something as simple as tobacco addiction, for example. Or being an out gay professional footballer - aiui in the UK game we still only have one, following on from Justin Fashanu in 1990. Fashanu hanged himself in a garage in Shoreditch after he was accused of sexual assault.
We see that in assumptions we impose on other people in the way we organise and regulate our society.
As an off-the-wall example, I knew of (via Buildhub) somebody who was so offended at having to install a disabled ramp to the door on his self-build that he devised a strategy to install a weak mix concrete ramp that he could remove with a pressure washer later.
There's nowt to queer as folk.
The Reform policy was all Afghans would be sent back even if they had genuine asylum claims .
PS I was supposed to be replying to MalcolmG !
Oddly, this only seems to apply over the last thousand years - once you get beyond that the inhabitants of the past seem to get treated with a little more respect.
What you seem to imply would simply narrow the available cast. RTD selected actors on their merit for Queer as Folk, and it works fine.
I think it’s nonsensical to say only a trans actor can play a trans role or only,a straight actor can play a straight role.
I think there is a similar process coming for disabled MPs. We have been having cloud-of-dust generating stories about "WHY ARE THERE ONLY FIVE DISABLED MPS IN THE COMMONS" for 10 or 20 years, by people who want to say they represent them and so get attention, or want a big story / scandal.
According to me, it has been several dozen throughout, and is a lot more now. But it's quite intensive work to find them all. And there is an ambiguity of definition.
TBH, it's not great.
The problem lies more with the lame script, though.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/who-were-the-first-mps-from-ethnic-minority-backgrounds/
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/denmark-summons-us-envoy-over-suspected-influence-operations-greenland-2025-08-27/
Denmark's foreign minister has summoned the top U.S. diplomat in Copenhagen over intelligence reports alleging covert influence operations by U.S. citizens in Greenland that aimed to whip up opposition to Danish rule, the ministry said on Wednesday.
Public broadcaster DR, citing unnamed sources, reported that at least three Americans with ties to the Trump administration were suspected of involvement in the efforts, which also sought to promote Greenland's secession from Denmark to the United States...
Because actors are also bound in some ways by their personal experience, and they are not given infinite time.
Does @MarqueeMark have a view, in between moths?
Times Radio"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePcYqBdnIZ8
Sheldon: You can't be Professor Proton. You're not a scientist.
Wil Wheaton: Well, I was never on a starship, but pretending I was bought me this house. And if I'd pretended a little longer, it would have a swimming pool
If you start limiting actors to roles based on life experience that’s going to be a very narrow path.
It’s why I don’t have a strong feeling about a black actor playing Anne Boleyn. As an example.
This suggests a Reform/Con coalition or perhaps a less formal arrangement.
I still think Lab/LD is the most likely (60%) outcome right now, with all the caveats about the wild volatility we now live with, and the many years still to go.
And as a side note, SNP’s relative return to strength, and the possibility that Labour will be dependent on SNP votes, also points to Sindy being back on the agenda in in the next parliament.
But that aside, I don’t think the Establishment has yet viscerally understood that a Reform-led government looks highly possible, if not yet probable.
I didn’t vote at all In this case.
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