It’s an ITV series from a few years ago, starring Sean Bean, Anna Maxwell Martin, Tom Ward and Vanessa Kirby (recently of The Crown as the young Princess Margaret), set in late 1820’s London. Watching the first episode and it doesn’t look like dreck–actually seems pretty strong. I’m surprised there doesn’t seem to be a thread for it here. Has anyone watched it?
So how many episodes does Bean last in this show?
Don’t know yet. Looks like he’s the main character, so I’d be surprised if he died real soon. ;-)
Then again, so did Eddard Stark, so…
Hmm. I don’t recall this making any impact in the UK, so my instinct is it can’t have been that good. Also ITV usually isn’t a great sign. They make about one great show a decade.
Price is Right rules, I bet 6.
Don’t you mean Vanessa Kirby (recently of Kill Command as the chick version of Adam Jensen in a Deus Ex game)? Soon to be Vanessa Kirby of the latest Mission Impossible movie, by the way.
-Tom, who hasn’t seen The Crown
I’ll have to check her out in those things. Is that first thing a movie? BTW she also played Estella in a 2011 BBC TV adaptation of Great Expectations, which is a must-see for Gillian Anderson’s turn as Miss Havesham.
Yes45
-Tom
Thanks, it’s in the queue.
I watched the first two episodes tonight. Its not bad. Typical cop clichés, but I am enjoying it enough to keep watching.
Yeah, I got a long phone call which interrupted the first episode, but it seemed good enough to keep watching, and Anna Maxwell Martin isn’t generally known to act in real stinkers (at least I’ve never seen her in one).
Was thinking about watching this series but I haven’t seen that much hype about it. I read the book before (wasn’t into it) and I am scared that this series will just be another one of those cliches.
This is damn decent Gothic drama. Well acted, with a gripping story. Just watching the last episode of Series 1.
But it’s kind of jumping the shark at the moment, unless it’s got a serious payoff in Series 2.
And as an aside, man is Vanessa Kirby a babe (not to mention a good actress). Criminy.
And even before the end of the episode I was watching, there is a payoff. With a bit of an hommage to the end of the first Godfather film, no less.
Alright, can someone tell me what happened at the end of S1? I was watching episode 6, and when I got to the part where Marlott wakes up covered in blood and finds the dead body that he’s going to be framed for killing I said “Eff you, I’m out.” One of the few clichés I absolutely cannot tolerate, and to hell with every last son of a bitch who resorts to it.
That said, I still kind of want to know how it wrapped up.
By “the book” you mean the one by Mary Shelley? It’s been a very long time (I read it in high school) but I found it a pretty great read myself, partially because I kind of love the language of the period, where science was called “natural philosophy,” that sort of thing.
Well, rather predictably, Marlott is arrested and tried for Flora’s murder, and is convicted. He’s executed by hanging as was the custom–hence my comment in spoiler tags about meeting the audience’s expectations of what happens to Sean Bean’s characters-- BUT after a brief dream sequence where he’s in the peaceful glade where he’s seen his late wife and their infant daughter in the afterlife before, yet sees no one this time, he wakes up in Lord Daniel Hervey’s lab, where he’s been resurrected, not by “galvanism” but by some mumbo jumbo about stem cells (essentially, just like the doctor has accidentally discovered penicillin before 1830 for Marlott’s syphillis) combined with surgery. That was the point where I nearly noped out. Lord Hervey shows his “New Adam” to his sister, who is of course horrified. In a later scene she tells Marlott that she’s somehow partially responsible for his plight, and that she’ll help him escape. The Godfather tribute scene I alluded to in my post above shows Lady Hervey marrying the gay Lord Whatsisnuts for his money at the same time as Marlott stabs the manservant/butler in the eye with a fork, making him tumble backwards down a long staircase, giving Marlott the opportunity to flee into the night.
The second series is not as strong as the first one–takes a while to get going–lots more vision/dream sequences that kind of feel like filler. But I finished watching through it last night and it does pick up about a third of the way through, and ends with the possibility of more, but if that happens, unless it gets critical raves (as the first one did), I’ll probably skip it.
Oh, for heaven’s sake. I was quite enjoying it until that point.
Thanks for the recap!
Just finished Season One of this last night. I was enjoying it quite a bit right up until the bizarre ending. I also just realized in the final episode that the actress who plays Flora was also the Russian girl in Season Two of Fortitude, another import show my wife and I enjoyed. So about that ending…
Is this Sean Bean poking fun at himself, playing a character who both dies and still gets to be the main character in a series? I assume the marks on Marlott’s neck were from the rope he was hung with, not stitches where his head was sewn onto another body or something crazy like that. If he’d been sewn together from parts you’d think he’s have had a lot more difficulty in moving post-resurrection.
If I understood the whole political plot, Lord Hervey was publically against the passing of the corpse act based on his hospital and charity work and the fact that he was trying to marry his sister off to the gay Christian lord (it’s always the family values politicians, isn’t it?!), but privately he conspired to get the law passed so he could procure fresher and more whole specimens for his work? The side effect being that Marlott then became the first specimen. And apparently Hervey’s science is using infant stem cells to somehow cure and resurrect his subjects? Which up until Marlott had been unsuccessful beyond a few minutes of reanimation because of the length of time they’d been dead and the fact that he was stitching them together from parts.
I’m curious where Season Two could lead. Marlott can’t possibly show up anywhere he’ll be recognized at this point, so he’ll have to run off somewhere else and assume a new identity, but he can’t just let Hervey get away with what he’s doing, so it’ll have to come back around somehow. I wonder if Nightengale will play a part in Season Two? Poor guy.
I enjoyed Season One enough that I’m probably going to start Season Two shortly.
Be advised that Season 2 was not as good as 1 was (IMHO, at least), and starts out slow.
Cool, thanks for the warning. At only 6 episodes per season, at least it’s easy to power through if there is a slow point.