Inaudible..what could be heard was mumbled in accents i didn't recognise. (I'm Cornish!)
It was badly lit too...perhaps to divert our attention away from the sound quality!
Why roll out yet another version of this old chestnut anyway? Viewers (in the UK at least) know this drama by heart, why can't the BBC film an original period drama instead of recycling this old chestnut?
They used to be good at this genre...back when they were a quality broadcaster!
While short sections in the first episode were a little challenging, to call it all "inaudible" borders on the ridiculous. I had no trouble with the accents (I'm not Cornish, but hey).
It was lit to reflect the times, and the darkness of the story. It was perfectly possible to see what was going on all the way through.
As for yet another version - there is Hitchcock's film, and there is one BBC adaptation. Hardly an old chestnut.
They are still a quality broadcaster - some things may not be to some people's taste, but they're still very much a quality broadcaster.
I had no trouble understanding or seeing anything.
And you're right, this is hardly an "old chestnut" that is filmed over and over. The earlier BBC adaptation came out 30 years ago!
How many times have P&P or S&S been adapted since then? Five?
I had never seen it before, and I am a fan of period dramas.
I know some people preferred the other BBC version but personally I like the darker, more naturalistic feel of this one. It suits the story.
That still got the new smell about it? "I'm Cornish"
I love it, it's great the Cornish identity has had its future secured. Now you're back at the table, so to speak, you should know - and don't let the English know - we Irish, Scots, Welsh and Manx do stuff we don't tell them about.
Like, Christmas is REALLY in April. HAPPY CHRISTMAS!
No..i'm not a townie with a holiday home. I'm 49, lived here all my life...and feel qualified to comment on Cornish dialect! The nearest they got to it was Bristolian...and that was a loose adaptation of it! As for people saying the sound quality was satisfactory...all i can say is their standards and mine differ!
Yes we KNOW the era depicted was candlelit, but production companies exercise a certain latitude...artistic licence if you will..that allows the viewer to see what's going on; (we've all seen the candle or oil lamp that miraculously lights a room far more than would actually be possible) If realism means a scene is SO dark that a viewer cannot appreciate the set, then shooting the scene in deliberately degraded light is a pointless exercise! Jamaica Inn was badly lit with poor sound and mumbled dialogue in laughable accents! If you enjoyed it then good for you, but i thought it was a truly shoddy effort from a renown corporation that really ought to know better! It made Eldorado look like Upstairs Downstairs, which as i recall WAS correctly lit and enunciated!
Their accents were nothing like Bristolian! That's an insult to the highly distinctive dialect and accent of that city.
As has been said by others, the sound quality in certain parts of the first episode was not as good as it could have been; but to tar every part of every episode with the same critical brush shows that possibly, you did not actually see this programme at all.
And fortunately, since no scene was so dark you couldn't see the set (!), the audience would have been able to appreciate the set as much as it wanted.
And you, a Cornishman, were expecting correct enunciation? Correct in whose terms? Had everyone's accents been the same kind of Cornish (which seems doubtful, since they all came from such different social backgrounds, for one thing, not to mention different areas of Cornwall), no doubt there would have been complaints about not understanding anyone's dialogue!
Their accents were nothing like Bristolian!
Oh yeah, right. They were all adding "l" to words ending in a vowel sound. Absolutely. And other quirks of a Bristow accent and dialect.
Don't be silly.
I've lived in Bristol which had it's own very distinct accent not so noticeable today, as in any city people are more mobile, this old accent was predominant in Jamaica Inn.
shareEr - why would they use a Bristolian accent (with its very distinctive vowel sounds) when they have a perfectly good Cornish accent available? It really is a very different accent.
So no, I don't agree with you. Cornwall and Bristol were a long, long way apart at this time and I heard no Bristolian (and thankfully no Mummerset) accent in the performances.
Had you actually READ my post you'd have seen that i did NOT liken the dialect in 'Jamaica Inn' to a Bristol accent! Quite the opposite in fact...being from the west country i found it impossible to fathom what the cast were attempting to do! R.P. would have been preferable to the "oor aar" that t.v. seems to think represents Cornwall and Devon! Doc Martin is another offender. Disagree with me by all means, but it might be an idea to actually read and take aboard what i said BEFORE you post a reply!
share[deleted]