Anyone else watching this?
I'm doing one episode per day. I watched #8 this morning, so I've got one to go.
shareAbout to start episode 6. I'm actually liking it, and I wasn't expecting to. It's got nice production values, an interesting cast, and a different take on the novel. It's keeping my attention.
shareI finished it. Liked it well enough, but I don't think I'll be re-watching it any time soon.
> an interesting cast
It was nice seeing Jessica Brown Findlay again -- Sybil from Downton Abbey, if you're familiar with that series. I understood her reasons for leaving that show but was sorry to see her go. The last I heard she was in some series on Hulu about hookers in the late 1700s, and in BNW she briefly went topless. Quite a change from her D.A. character. The Crawley family must be tearing their hair out. ;)
> a different take on the novel.
They clearly had to change the Savage Reservation, but I liked that they made in into an amusement park with "savages" performing for tourists. OTOH, I didn't like what they did with the Bernard character. He's a misfit, or at least supposed to be. The 1998 television movie did the same thing with him, making him more handsome, socially adept, et cetera than he's supposed to be.
Have you seen the 1980 version? Much more faithful to the book, although it contains some contemporary jokes that would be lost on an audience today, e.g., characters with names like "Nixona Byck."
Part 1 -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmlMgeQGOWs
Part 2 -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNaa48Z-3ww
Hey there,
Wanted to finally finish it before replying to you. Thanks for the links to the previous version. I'll check it out in a few months after I let this one sink in a bit.
I felt like this fell apart in the middle, then they rushed the ending. Did you get that sense too? It also got a bit confusing in the last episode that I had to rewind a couple times to make sure I got the dialogue right. There was a whole lot of exposition and things being thrown out that I didn't see or comprehend in earlier episodes. I grasped it all but I think they should have intertwined it earlier than ramming it down the viewer's throat in the last half-hour.
Jessica Brown Findlay is fantastic - definitely the standout of the cast. I was captivated by her. I had never seen anything else she was in. I hope to see more of her in the future.
> Jessica Brown Findlay is fantastic [...] I had never seen anything else she was in.
She's probably best known for Downton Abbey. She played Sybil Crawley, the youngest of the wealthy leading family's three daughters. Sybil was the sort of girl who wouldn't even kiss until the fifth date; thus my amusement at the roles Findlay has taken since. Smart move, though -- she won't be typecast.
Sybil ended up falling in love with and marrying the family's chauffeur, then left the series. I won't say more than that, to avoid spoilers.
> I felt like this fell apart in the middle, then they rushed the ending.
Yeah, I had to kind of push myself through the middle episodes. And they left quite a few loose ends and mysteries. I'm not the sort who needs every question answered and everything explained, but I have little patience for mysteries just to be mysterious. For example, what was in that box Bernard was carrying at the end -- the thing that turned out to be his passport back to the savage town? We'll never know, I guess.
On the whole, I liked it but only to a lukewarm level. If they were trying to comment on how our present-day society's "conditioning" (propaganda, certain political and moral beliefs) carries the seeds of its own destruction, then it's a daring work. But I can't help wishing they'd have given it a different title and changed the character names. The story we saw has less in common with Huxley's novel than West Side Story has with Romeo and Juliet! But then again, if they had called it something else and made it 100% original instead of 95%, I'd probably never have heard of it.