One is obliged when discussing a post-Edwardian costume drama to compare it with Downton Abbey, so let’s get that over with. Yes, this five-part British miniseries is staged against the backdrop of the Great War, teems with pretty dresses and simmers with romantic tension, but there the comparison ends. Where Downton sallies into schmaltzy soap opera territory (in a highly addictive way, let’s admit), Parade’s End remains stark, cold and brutal.
Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock) stars as priggish aristocrat Christopher Tietjens, a brilliant government statistician desperately clinging to conservative Edwardian values as his beloved Britain is rocked by war and social upheaval.
Frustrated by his moral rectitude, his charmingly flippant wife Sylvia (Rebecca Hall, pictured with Cumberbatch), a stunning Catholic socialite, torments him by boasting about her many lurid love affairs. He endures her infidelity with a stiff upper lip but his own feelings are thrown into conflict when he meets Valentine Wannop (Australian actor Adelaide Clemens, Love My Way), a feisty young suffragette with cropped blonde hair and a passion for social change.
Based on the novels by Ford Madox Ford and adapted by Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love), Parade’s End depicts the end of an era, sweeping us from glorious British landscapes and aristocratic drawing rooms into the mud and blood-spattered trenches of France, as Christopher wrestles with his sense of duty both to his country and his marriage. The upper classes depicted here may not make any attempts to befriend their butlers, but impeccable period details and a stellar cast led by the inimitable Cumberbatch make this a highly watchable and thoughtful alternative to Downton‘s frothy fare.
M, 2013, 360 minutes, BBC/HBO
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