Thursday 21 January 2016

There's a bloody Spitfire in the Mall ....

No royals were harmed in the production of this series
Ah. It's only a prop from the exterior filming associated with the Sid Gentle Films production of SS-GB, which is evidently making good progress and generating a little bit of good PR for the series. This article in a recent Daily Mail shows extras dressed as German troops and a Spitfire which has landed on the Mall. It has a new quote from the actor playing Douglas Archer, Sam Riley:
"Archer is a compelling and complex character. He is a good guy struggling to reconcile his job as a policeman within the repressive Nazi machine"

2 comments:

  1. The comments under any Daily Mail article referring to the 2nd World War are always good for a laugh.
    I wanted to post that the Mail itself would probably have been the only British newspaper permitted, (the Mail having supported Hitler pre-war) Unfortunately the comments were closed by the time I got there. :)

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  2. Note: Please use the following version. There was a silly typo in my earlier version. Apologies and thanks. Simon
    ---------
    The two James Bond writers got away with Skyfall because it was James Bond film, a new villain and the topical cyberspace control. Yet some one like me who read the James Bond novels first in 1958 as a university student, and watched the film Dr No in 1962, the story line was convoluted with scenes unnecessarily added to generate more intrigue and to give better opportunities for the villain to shine. Their earlier attempts with their writing from Quantum of Solace backwards resulted in similar convoluted scenes , needing plot, and belonged to the cluster of less successful as Bond plots despite what the Bond enthusiasts claim ( I am one, but have often been very critical of the attempts to package story lines which were insult to the sanity of those of us whose interest in Bond novels by Fleming dates back to decades).
    At least these two now would be reined in by Deighton , I hope, in their attempt to this 5-part series SS-GB drama where a detective is involved working under the Nazi regime in Nazi-occupied GB. There could be some interest in this drama series provided the scenes show the early 1940s GB, the people’s lives etc.., but then unlike Foyle’s War, where the series begins with the 1940 setting through the very immediate post-war years, the very good and self-contained story plots in each drama, the best acting from Michael Kitchen , and lastly the superb imagery of the GB in those days, all adding to the success of this series –in my opinion and in some of my generation at least; but when I tried this on much younger generation including those university students I am I know who are interested in the history, and alas, I drew a blank, every time!
    Though the BBC1 will show it, probably to demonstrate to this government some what hostile to the BBC television licence money being “squandered” on the production of reality shows competing for audience figures with the ITV for example, and hence justify the necessity of this license fee whose concept is very dated and outmoded in its reasoning, I am sceptical about the showing such series in 2016. In my opinion, the SS-GB should be enjoyed in its novel form which shows the creativity of Deighton. Certain novels, again in my opinion, should stay as novels. Finally, this pair are wrong selection, and I would have chosen Anthony Horowitz who is by far a better writer in dealing with the topic of this kind.

    Simon

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