[tv] Parade's End

[inulro]

Somewhat belatedly, I have finished watching the BBC adaptation of Parade's End. I pretty much only did because Benedict Cumberbatch was in it, but found that I did enjoy it after all.

I had to read 3/4 of it as part of the Literature of the Great War course I did in my honours year of undergrad. We were explicitly forbidden to read the last book; it was meant to be a trilogy and Ford only wrote the last installment because of public pressure to tie up everything neatly.

I can't, however, remember a thing about the books - they came up towards the end of the year, when I was concentrating on writing on the Anglo-Saxon book of Judith and linguistics essays that would get me into grad school at U of T. I thought I remembered that the poisonous society wife was in Aldington's Death of a Hero, and I remembered the thing about the sonnets being from Robert Graves. Actually, I'd put money on there being something similar with sonnets in Goodbye to All That, because I was still paying attention when we did the Graves and I did like it.

I'm almost tempted to re-read the books now, but I see that at some point I did sell the single-volume edition that I had. Doh!

Comments

[ivory-goddess.livejournal.com]

I only saw the final episode a few days ago. Haven't read the books.

I liked it a lot. It was funnier than I had expected, the war stuff seemed (unpleasantly) realistic, and I just wanted the pair of them to get together and be happy.

That bloody tree coming down was a total non-surprise.

[valkeerie.livejournal.com]

I watched two episodes and realised I hadn't the slightest interest in the fate of any of the characters ....

[girfan.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed it, never read the book(s) it's based on, and was quite sad at times (not the war parts).