Involving with most disappointed ending of anything I've ever seen

trpdean

A stylish, involving series with suspense and mystery - beautiful sets and costumes, perfect lighting and sound and brilliantly acted - is betrayed by an atrocious ending that makes you wonder whether the screenwriters understand any thing about the times in which the characters live.

SPOILERS

Throughout the 6 hour series set in the first half of the 1960s, one wonders why the protagonist (played by Jack Davenport, best known for either Pirates of the Carribbean or the TV series Coupling) playing a wealthy and arrogant surgeon and a night-time abortionist for hire - treats his beautiful wife Elizabeth like an utter stranger at home and when they go out - but dotes on his son. The answer given suddenly - sprung from the blue - in the last hour - is utterly ludicrous. Years before, when in the Army in Cyprus - his heavy drinking crashed a car he was driving with Elizabeth and her then soldier fiance as passengers. The soldier fiance was killed - Elizabeth and he survived the crash. Elizabeth was pregnant and the baby survived also. Davenport's character says "As you know, she could hardly return to England pregnant and alone because her fiance was killed - without having been married! her family, her friends would all shun her throughout her lifetime - she'd never get a job. So I married her to avoid the complete shame and pledged to dedicate my life to raise the son and show myself as her husband to the outside world."

First, the screenwriters seem to think they're writing about a cloistered nun in the year 1250 not a sophisticated woman in the 1950s. NEVER in the history of Britain had there been so many pregnant widows of soldiers, pregnant fiances of soldiers killed, pregnant girlfriends of soldiers killed than in the 1940s - due to the War. Attitudes toward having sex with a soldier after they were engaged but before they were married - had changed utterly from the 1800s - and the likelihood of his death was higher than at any time in British history. There were MILLIONS of women in her situation - they were not shunned throughout life!

Second, men responsible for a death due to drunken driving - were never as lightly treated as in the 1950s - particularly compared to today. So to have one of the primary plots be a blackmail by someone that he'll reveal the decades old drunken driving episode - is again ABSURD! And this is finally resolved by the davenport character saying "Who cares? go ahead and tell others" but only after - again INCREDIBLY, the beautiful Elizabeth has felt she had to have sex with the blackmailer! It's just laughable.

Third, the wife of one of the surgeons refuses even to inform her father she's getting married because under no circumstances can her husband learn that her father is working class and a bit doddering - thus she creates a story that her entire family is dead - even as she secretly visits her father to see if he's ok.

The warmth, forgiveness, human understanding of the 1950s-1960s obviously far surpasses today where all are polarized and far more judgmental. A period where all knew what had happened at home during the Second World War - was one with a greater degree of indulgence for individual mistakes. Social hierarchies had been much altered during the War as well - and by the early 1960s one saw routinely - those from the working class making strides in every field - indeed after the 1964 election, Edward Heath (father a carpenter) had become the leader of the Conservative Party!

This series - so beautifully acted - becomes a disaster when one realizes that it reflects yet more patronizing attitudes about an earlier time - by writers so smug and yet ignorant - that they're certain that all before them was benighted.

score /10

trpdean 20 January 2020

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw5422740/