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Why do you do this to me, BBC? First you tease me that David Morrissey might be the next Doctor and then don’t follow through. After that, you promise me Five Days of his lovely face, but you actually give me about three and a half. Then you cast him as the brooding hero of your latest period drama, and kill him off half an hour before the end. ITV better not hate me this much, or Lord Grantham will die twenty minutes into the second series of Downton Abbey.
South Riding was rather different to the typical BBC primetime period drama. Maybe it’s just that I’m too used to programmes like Cranford or the latest take on the works of Jane Austen, but just how dark South Riding became really surprised me. Perhaps that’s why I couldn’t completely fall in love with it, even if I certainly loved parts of it.
I think the biggest problem I had with South Riding was that it felt a little disjointed. By the end of the last episode, some storylines felt underdeveloped, while others felt like they hadn’t been properly finished. More time spent with the council story, or Lydia Holly’s struggles against the circumstances she grew up in, would have maybe given a more complete sense of this world. An extra episode might have allowed time for this to all coalesce better, and could have helped to avoid that cheesy ending montage.
Still, there was so much to enjoy here. Despite the fact that it may have benefited from some extra length, parts of the script absolutely sang. Sarah and Robert’s encounter in Manchester particularly stands out, as well as Mrs Beddow persuading Sarah to stay in South Riding. Even if this may not go down as an absolutely classic Andrew Davies adaptation, this is still quality drama of the best kind that only the BBC produces, full of the kind of social change and culture clashes that make this such an interesting period of history.
Apart from poor Midge Carne and a few dodgy accents, the acting was uniformly excellent. Charlie May-Clark and Shaun Dooley shone in perhaps my favourite of all the storylines as the working class daughter and father who both had potential to rise above their situation. I was pleasantly surprised by Douglas Henshall – Joe managed to be sympathetic and charming, clearly in love with Sarah but not pathetic with it. Penelope Wilton was her usual brilliant self, bringing both a hard-nosed realism and real warmth to a potentially problematic role. My love for David Morrissey has already been well-documented, and he didn’t disappoint. But the true credit has to go to Anna Maxwell-Martin, who is just astonishing in everything she does. The character of Sarah has to carry the whole thing, her deep sadness mixed with her idealism and love for her job; her scenes with May-Clark as Lydia were some of the best in the whole programme, as were her fraught encounters with Robert Carne.
Even if South Riding wasn’t the greatest BBC drama ever, it was still of exceptionally high quality, providing a dark but engrossing look at a woefully under-filmed period of history. And it had David Morrissey in it, so it had me from hello, quite frankly.
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