Pouting makes me curl my lip (From York Press)

Pouting makes me curl my lip

9:48am Friday 27th January 2012 in Columnists By Richard Catton, richard.catton@thepress.co.uk

Richard Catton

DID you settle down in front the BBC's adaptation of Sebastian Faulks’s First World War epic, Birdsong, on Sunday evening, only to find yourself struggling to hear the dialogue?

The BBC is understood to have received 15 complaints about the drama, not, as those who saw it might expect, over the portrayal of horrific injuries in the trenches, or the graphic sex scenes. The majority of complaints, it turns out, were from confused viewers unable to fathom the lead characters’ mumbled dialogue and dreadful diction.

The reason you may have found yourself reaching for the volume button is simple, yet it is a problem which has gradually crept into the kind of one-off, big production costume dramas, for which the BBC and, more recently, ITV have built a world-wide reputation.

The culprit is quite simply the pout. How could Eddie Redmayne, who played the aloof and introverted young officer, Stephen Wraysford, ever hope to deliver his lines when those lips were in state of smouldering perma-pout throughout the whole 90 minutes.

It seemed no scene was complete without the camera slowly closing in on our hero’s well-chiselled features as he pushed out his fulsome lips and gazed wistfully into the distance. Indeed in one scene intended to portray the growing sexual electricity between Wraysford and the bored, beautiful wife of his Gallic business acquaintance, we were treated to a frankly embarrassing, dialogue-free and unnecessary exchange of misty-eyed pouts during a punt down a French river.

The BBC’s recent adaptation of Great Expectation, aired shortly after Christmas, was similarly blighted. The Dickens classic saw Pip portrayed not as a simple young man thrust, bewildered, into a world of privilege and wealth, but as an impossibly buff young male model who had seemingly stepped straight out of a Burberry advert. And that’s because actor Douglas Booth was an impossibly buff young male model who had stepped straight out of a Burberry advert.

Where was the evidence, in that handsome face, of a childhood spent at the blacksmith’s anvil under the scheming gaze of the crotchety and self-serving Mrs Gargery?

I blame Colin Firth for all this nonsense. No, I'm not saying one of our finest living actors is too good looking to bring the depth that Alec Guinness or John Mills were effortlessly capable off, but the moment Firth’s brooding Mr Darcy stepped out of that lake, dripping wet, striding confidently yet unwittingly in to the path of the startled Miss Bennett, something went ‘ping’ in the heads of those behind bringing dramas such as Pride and Prejudice to our screens.

The leading men have been getting younger and more good-looking and it is taking a lot of the credibility out of what is surely one of our finest exports – the period drama.

In casting underwear models as pouting Pips or hunky Heathcliffes, producers are turning costume dramas into Hollyoaks with breeches and bonnets.

Try watching The Tudors if you want to see an example of this theory drawn out to full and horrific realisation.

But the pout is not just limited to the period piece. Anyone watching the latest series of police drama Above Suspicion may well marvel at how smoky-eyed, red-headed detective Anna Travis sustains that magnificent pout throughout her inquiries. And when did senior police uniform become a tight-fitting blouse, impractical high-heels and mini-skirt? It is, of course there for the dads, but it takes away credibility from an otherwise excellent series.

There is a time and a place for period dramas (usually about 9pm on Sunday evenings on one of the two main channels). And there is a time and a place for pouting models in short skirts (try looking a bit further down the channels on your Sky or Freeview options – you can usually get the first ten minutes for free).

Please, whoever it is who commissions and, more importantly, casts our period dramas, when it comes to the pout... leave it out.