Peake, Mervyn: BBC Gormenghast Adaption...

[ewlyn]

Ok.... what did you think? Cast your votes now!

Personally... I thought that given how massive the book is and how much they had to cut it down, that they did a pretty good job reconstructing it for the TV.

I also thought the casting was faily well done.

 

[Quietness]

I just saw this on PBS this very evening... I wasn't familiar with the books & so haven't read them, though I intend to now...

Strictly on it's merits as a movie, I thought it was very well done. The sets & costumes were fantastic & it was very well acted.

Irma Prunesquallor's party was hysterical.

 

[rde]

I'll confess that, despite the BBC's consistent approach to adaptations, I wasn't expecting much. I'd always considered the trilogy to be more or less unfilmable. I was more than pleasantly surprised; I went out and bought the DVD. Great stuff.

 

[Aes]

- Deleted -

...How did this get in this thread? I was replying to a completely different topic and it ended up here instead.

 

[Riselka]

Well Aes, your mispost brought this up to the front page of this sub-forum, and since I wasn't around when the thread was originally started I just have to ask:

Who the feck are Ben and Claudia, and what do they have to do with the BBC production of Gormenghast?

We are talking about the production with Jonathan Rhys Meyers playing Steerpike, aren't we? I've got it on DVD and I don't remember any Ben or Claudia in it.

By the way, I thought it was brilliant!

Oh, and what is this SG that is referred to?

 

[j d worthington]

Nice to see something on this... As a long-time reader of the books, I was VERY dubious about the whole thing... and ended up quite pleasantly surprised. The alterations made were quite in keeping with a shift from printed page to visual presentation, and the casting and direction (not to mention sets, etc.) were quite superb. My only real complaint -- and even then, a minor one -- is the brevity of the final scene with Steerpike; but, given what had gone before, it's difficult to imagine how else it could have been done, and as it stands it seems to add to the irony.

These were characters I'd have thought darn near impossible to adapt to the screen, and it was truly massive undertaking. I'm glad that they didn't try for Titus Alone, as it is such a completely different sort of book ... though a production of same would be an interesting undertaking, I think. Very impressive, indeed.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it. Jonathan Rhys Meyers was the perfect Steerpike, and of course with all those great British character actors the cast was exceptional. The sets were gorgeous, but I always imagined Gormenghast as darker and more ... massive ... the size and weight and history and the traditions of the place exerting a crushing influence, so that all those characters with their outsize emotions, and monstrous idiosyncracies, are repressed to the point of madness. That's how I felt reading the book, but I didn't get that from the BBC dramatization.

Basically, I wanted more decay: physical, moral, emotional decay.

 

[Aes]

Well Aes, your mispost brought this up to the front page of this sub-forum, and since I wasn't around when the thread was originally started I just have to ask:

Who the feck are Ben and Claudia, and what do they have to do with the BBC production of Gormenghast?

We are talking about the production with Jonathan Rhys Meyers playing Steerpike, aren't we? I've got it on DVD and I don't remember any Ben or Claudia in it.

By the way, I thought it was brilliant!

Oh, and what is this SG that is referred to?

Ben Browder & Claudia Black, they're the newest cast additions to Stargate SG-1, and said series is what lured me into this topic by complete accident. You see, during a forum merger, a few polls got mismatched with topics that have nothing to do with them. Imagine my surprise when I see people talking about stuff that makes no sense to even a seasoned Stargate fan?

 

[Brian G Turner]

Okay, closed due to technical problems with the poll.