Sinking television
A review of Julian Fellowes’s “Titanic”
Against better advice, I watched all four episodes of Julian Fellowes’s Titanic television drama. Nothing much happened in the first three episodes but unlike many others, I preserved and watched the final episode on the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the White Star passenger liner.
Fellowes is a man who has had remarkable success with both Gosford Park and Downton Abbey. After playing bit part roles in such series as Fantasy Island, Our Friends in the North and Aristocrats, his career took off in 2002 when Gosford Park won an Oscar for the Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen. Since then he has been ennobled and become a darling of the middle classes.
Described by John Doyle of The Globe and Mail as “a high-grade nobs-and-slobs story,” viewing figures fell from 9 million to 3.5 million between episodes 1 and 3 with good reason. To me this was a drama that lacked pace and repeatedly rehashed the same tales. It was tediously futile and an utter waste of four hours of anyone’s time.
Fellowes’s Titanic was truly a damp squib of a drama. May it, like the 1,514 tragic souls lost on 15th April 1912, rest in peace.
View ITV1’s official website for Titanic at: http://mip.itvstudios.com/programmes/drama-comedy/618/titanic
For more information on The Titanic Memorial Cruise, go to: http://titanicmemorialcruise.co.uk