Bonneted Beeb Brilliance

Parade’s End inevitably draws comparisons with Downton Abbey due to its setting in the early 1900s with a focus upon class and love. However, this comparison quickly dies within the first half hour of its premiere. Instead, it becomes a Downton Abbey for people who think Downton is quaint, fussy and melodramatic. Indeed, Benedict Cumberbatch (of Sherlock fame) who plays the lead Christopher Tietjens, called the aforementioned bonnet-fest ‘fucking atrocious’ in an interview with Reader’s Digest, though later he withdrew the comment, explaining it away as a joke. It is a point though, and one I personally agree with.

While Downton Abbey is an inoffensive parade of frocks, tweed and upper class niceties, Parade’s End has been condemned as being too clever and aimed at a target audience of those too high-minded to indulge in watching the upper classes at play in the big house. This is television’s downfall – that anything less than mindless escapism is damned as inaccessible. Why do we continue to insist that ‘art’ be more simple? That is to say, I have nothing against escapism, but surely that’s not all there should be time for in programming schedules.

In short, Parade’s End is not Downton. While Downton lets watchers sit back and relax, Parade’s End is a far more demanding and therefore fulfilling experience. The ‘big house’ is a looming absence in the show, and when Groby House does appear, it functions to remind us about what is wrong with the characters’ relationships, acting as an ironic bartering commodity between socialite Silvia Tietjens (Rebecca Hall) and her husband.. Tietjens, like his father, is ever so fond of Groby’s cedar tree, upon which hangs all sorts of nostalgic nick-knacks, that Silvia threatens to have it chopped. Tietjens’ refusal to let go of this is also his refusal to let go of old Britain – his life is dictated by duty and honour; the last of the Edwardians in a world run amuck (to understate) by the First World War.

This is the end of the parade; of a Britain dictated by the rules and decorum of the pre-war glory days and the series, says Cumberbatch himself, is an “elegy to a dying era”. Tietjens’ nearly-almost fling with suffragist Miss Wannop (say it aloud – yes it sounds like Wallop) posed against Mrs Tietjens’ initial infidelities and growing sweetness for her husband is the central storyline. Ultimately, I would say, that’s not overly complicated. He’s in love with the girl and dutiful to the wife. The fact that both characters are inherently sympathetic makes it hard to predict.

For director Susanna White, who is campaigning against the gender stereotypes that still pervade the industry, the adaptation from Ford Madox Ford’s critically-acclaimed-though-barely-read novel was always going to be a difficult one. She has talked about her influences from Vorticism to cubist art of the same period, touches that fit well with what is an undeniably a difficult narrative – one that moves between points of view and points in time in a typically modernist, fractured manner.

What the novel and the TV show both draw to our attention is that the experience of modern man, of alienation and dread, of a fractured sense of existence, began well before the Great War. As the characters respond to the ending of boom time it is difficult not to identify with them as we today emerge from economic crisis and the indulgence of the early noughties. The misuse of statistics, political hypocrisy and pointless bureaucracy also touch-home, and I find Tietjens’ upstanding reproach of the system for honourable values incredibly touching.

Perhaps the drop in viewing figures is because the series is not quite escapist enough for Friday night viewers. Interestingly Downton too suffered a reduction in viewing figures as it began to deal with the First World War. If pretty dresses and petty gossip are your cup of tea, I recommend Strictly Come Dancing; if it must be period drama and you need a weekly fix of diamonds and relationship intrigue, then Series 3 of Downton Abbey – well, you’re already watching; if you’re not phased by a little complexity of plot, intelligent comedy and genuinely insightful period drama, then Parade’s End is a triumph.