Parade’s End Episode Three: Benedict Cumberbatch and Adelaide Clemens share great chemistry & Rupert Everett shines as rumours start to circle about Christopher’s personal life.

As Parade’s End is based on a quartet of novels by Ford Maddox Ford, whose life is being celebrated on BBC2 throughout the run of this drama, it’s interesting to see how much plot there is to get through. I personally have not read the books but so far have felt that Tom Stoppard’s adaptation has been fine in pacing the action in each episode so that there’s enough story to interest us but we are also left with some time to get to know the characters. I found that this third episode really slowed down the pace that Stoppard had built up by focusing a lot more on the rumours surrounding Christopher Tietjens’ personal life which may have an impact on both his reputation and his inheritance.

Based on what happened last week I was sure we were going to be in the trenches for the majority of this instalment but instead the episode opens in 1916 as our hero is in the MilitaryCasualty Clearing Section in France, after suffering a concussion. It seems though that Parade’s End is much more interested in exploring the war at home rather than the one going on in France, as Christopher’s wife Sylvia is seen suffering due to her being viewed as a German sympathiser.

As always in this episode Sylvia has plenty of men sniffing around, with the latest being Brownlie a banker who makes life difficult for Christopher both financially and in regards his marriage. Though he wrongly believes that Christopher and MacMaster are sharing Edith Duchemin as a lover, he is right in the fact that Valentine Wannop is madly in love with him. The rumour circulating about Valentine and Christopher is that they have been together and produced a war baby which she then aborted. It is unfortunate that this hearsay gets spread around the club with Christopher’s brother Mark, played by Rupert Everett – who gets a lot more to do this week – believing them to be true without even confirming them with Christopher. When Mark relays this information back to his father Christopher is essentially cut out from his will while Brownlie cancels a cheque meant for him leaving him essentially ruined and meaning he has to go back to the war.

Though for me the rumour-circulating plot became a tad repetitive, this episode did at least give us scenes which saw Christopher and Valentine finally confessing their feelings for each other. As Sylvia realises that it is Valentine rather than Edith that Christopher has feelings for she pushes him towards her so that they may feel equal following all the awful things that she’s done. Though he does tell her that he wants her to be his mistress through a series of mishaps, involving slow trains and rowdy sailors, he doesn’t do the deed making Sylvia the first wife in history to be upset that her husband hasn’t had an affair. Elsewhere this week we see the once timid Edith and MacMaster have become the toast of the town with both of them mixing in new social circles following him becoming an invaluable piece of the puzzle at the statistics office. After he takes credit for an assignment on which Christopher did most of the work, he is also later knighted though he worries that this new honour will make him lose his friend he needn’t have worried as it seems that Mr Tietjens doesn’t really care about awards.

Despite the fact that I felt that this week had a fairly slow-moving plot what stuck with me the most were some of the lines delivered which does demonstrate that Stoppard is an expert at picking the best parts of the dialogue to use in the drama. I love Sylvia sticking up for her husband describing him as ‘the straightest man in London’ and later ‘the last decent man left in England’ though later she berates him for not doing the deed with Valentine telling him that she was ‘ready to drop into your mouth like a grape.’ This wonderful dialogue is beautifully delivered by a cast who convincingly portray the changes in their characters as the years have gone on with some doing better than others. Benedict Cumberbatch is totally convincing as this brilliant man whose war injury has caused him to lose some of his memories, however not his mathematical skills it seems, but at the same time isn’t as emotionally crippled as he had been. Rebecca Hall plays Sylvia as someone who has grown-up a little since the war started while Adelaide Clemens shows us that Valentine has grown up a great deal even getting a job to help her mother out. I also loved Anne-Marie Duff and Stephen Graham’s double act as Edith and MacMaster journey into the upper echelons of society they both excel at putting on airs and graces with he in particular looking great with his long beard and monocle combo.

The style of the piece continues to immaculate as the costumes and sets continue to be some of the best thing about Parade’s End. Edith and Sylvia’s various outfits demonstrate that they are now both women of high society while Valentine continues to wear mainly white as a way to mark her out as someone of a lesser class which is later confirmed when Sylvia describes her as a chamber maid. Though we didn’t get to see a lot of the war what we did was convincing with the few scenes in the military hospital proving effective as a confused Christopher has to deal with explosions happening all around him. I also loved the close-up shots of Christopher and Valentine as they attempted in vein to cement their relationship the faces of Cumberbatch and Clemens perfectly captured two people who were genuinely in love with each other.

Overall I would say that this is the weakest of the three episodes of Parade’s End we’ve seen so far but that’s not to mean it’s bad by any means but rather it doesn’t live up to the standard set by the first two instalments. For me this episode only kicked in during the final third with Christopher and Valentine’s relationship being the main point of interest throughout the fact it is finally focus on in detail meant that Parade’s End set-up a love triangle which will have major consequences for the rest of the series. The great cast and stylish edge that Parade’s End has means that even a weaker episode has plenty to enjoy and from what I’ve already seen the final two instalments will be as strong if not stronger than what has come before.

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New BBC2 drama, Parade’s end, filmed at Duncombe Park near Helmsley

A STATELY home in North Yorkshire is to star in a new TV costume drama which starts tonight on BBC2.

Duncombe Park, just outside Helmsley, features in Parade’s End, a five-part period drama adapted for the screen by Sir Tom Stoppard and starring Benedict Cumberbatch.

The house doubles as the country residence of the aristocratic Tietjens family in a production based on the novels of Ford Madox Ford and set in the dying years of the Edwardian era leading up to the First World War.

Jake Duncombe, from Duncombe Park, said filming had been “great fun”.

He said: “It was a delight to have Mammoth Screen and HBO filming at Duncombe Park for Parade’s End. Filming not only creates great excitement, but also brings local benefits and contributes substantially to the local economy.”

The series is the latest high- profile drama to shoot in the region, with others including The Woman In Black, filmed in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part I, filmed at Malham Cove and The King’s Speech, filmed at Bradford Bulls Stadium and Elland Road, Leeds.

Creative England, which opened for business last October and aims to provide a “one stop shop” for productions, said it was encouraging owners and managers of a range of properties of all different shapes and sizes in the region to register on its new locations database.

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The war had made a man of him: Benedict Cumberbatch stars in Parade’s End

Dazzling neckties? A celebration of English romanticism? The occasional rabble-rousing suffragette? No, it’s not Danny Boyle’s Opening Ceremony but Parade’s End, the BBC’s most eagerly anticipated costume drama of the autumn. Sir Tom Stoppard has adapted the Ford Madox Ford book for a cast that stars sometime consulting detective Benedict Cumberbatch, intellectual pinup Rebecca Hall, ever reliable fop Rupert Everett and Shameless star Anne-Marie Duff. Cumberbatch plays Christopher Tietjens, the last bastion of Toryism in a changing world, a civil servant tied to a faithless wife, Sylvia (played absorbingly by Hall). The situation is complicated by Tietjens affair with a young suffragette Valentine Wannop (a vibrant Adelaide Clemens - Stoppard picking her out as the “blonde one in the cap” in the pilot). Much has already been made ofCumberbatch criticising aspects of rival period dramaDownton Abbey (context free highlight: “we won’t talk about that series because it was, in my opinion, f****** atrocious”) but it certainly appears this is a more considered TV than waiting for Maggie Smith to drop another bon mot.

Indeed, Parade’s End’s strength lies not just in the detailed dialogue of Stoppard’s taught script but also the stunning work by Cumberbatch and Hall - the latter’s captivating beauty makes us in many ways just as enamoured to her as her lover, Major Perowne.Cumberbatch - who apparently had to work on his already distinguished accent to make him seem a believable turn-of-the-century gentleman - also executes the role well. Director Susanna White said that Tietjens is a difficult individual to get right as “he’s such a buttoned-up Englishman who doesn’t show his emotions. Yet you have to fall in love with him and want to follow his journey.” Of course, remember that Cumberbatch might not have even been in the programme. The show has been in development for nearly three years; when parties from both the BBC and HBO met in the Ivy a few years back, the American broadcaster asked “Who is this Benedict Cumberbatch?”

Parade’s End is a must for those of us looking for slightly more in our TV viewing than watching Mel and Sue make jokes about baps. As White says, “people like demanding television: television that makes you think. There is another type of television now, which people revisit on box set, where they really like engaging with something that makes your mind work.” Stoppard says that Cumberbatch’s character “appeals deeply to me, because he says something that is very central. ‘When you live an outmoded code of honour, people take you to be a fool, and I’m coming round to their opinion.’ This is a man who falls in love with a young woman, whose wife has gone off with someone, and he says: ‘It makes no difference. Monogamy, chastity, I’m not talking about it.’ There’s something interesting in a man who describes him that way and tries to live those principles.” Put it this way: such extra-marital drama is the only reason to stay in on Friday night…

Parade’s End starts this Friday at 9pm on BBC2.

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Benedict Cumberbatch on ‘Parade’s End’: ‘My look suits a period drama’

Parades End: Christopher (BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH), Sylvia (REBECCA HALL)

Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch returns to our television screens this week. Fresh from a stint in Hollywood filming Star Trek 2and a period spent channelling Smaug the dragon for Peter Jackson’sHobbit movies, the British actor is taking on the lead role of Christopher Tietjens in BBC Two’s Parade’s End.

Digital Spy and other journalists caught up with Benedict to discuss his role in the five-part period drama, based on Ford Madox Ford’s novels, and got the scoop on his new stardom and his Hollywood experience.

Was it the chance to work with Tom Stoppard that attracted you to Parade’s End?
“Yeah, because his output’s slowed a little bit in recent years, so yeah, it was a huge pull. I didn’t know the books, but I knew of Ford Madox Ford because of [1915 novel] The Good Soldier but then I started reading the books and that really drew me in.

“I completely fell in love with Christopher Tietjens, the most adorable and long-suffering but virtuous character I think I’ve ever played. I really think he has many admirable qualities I’d like to siphon off into my life.

“Tom was obviously a massive pull, but also Rebecca Hall, who I’ve worked with before, but not opposite on such a large scale. And then [director] Susanna White as well, and the fact that it’s HBO.

“Also, I do have a fascination with that era. It’s a very interesting part of English history and something we all seem to be slightly obsessed with now - there’s Birdsong and Downton and now this.

“We’re living 100 years from where it actually began. No survivors can give us any evidence, nor will history other than what’s been recorded. So storytellers like to re-examine an era where there’s nobody alive to tell those stories anymore. People can’t tell us a story in an interview, so it’s quite nice to revisit it through a fictitious or dramatised account of reality.

“It’s 100 years on, yet I think there are a lot of similarities with today. Europe is falling apart.Parade’s End is about the death throes of aristocracy as told through the prism of this love triangle over the duration of the First World War. The war itself is of constant fascination to us, but it’s part of the series rather than the whole reason to it. It’s not like Birdsong, which is very much a war romance. I just think it’s important to look at an era that’s beyond our living experience.”

Parades End S01E01: Valentine and Christopher

There were reports that you had criticized Downton Abbey…
“Yes, I was sort of quoted in the press out of context. All these people [from that show] laughed when they read it. I thought the second series sort of dropped off a bit at the end, but it’s still a great show that keeps you hooked. What we’re doing is not supposed to be compared to that.”

How would you describe the love triangle between the characters in Parade’s End?
“Sylvia (Rebecca Hall) is kind of the modern woman. It’s a terrible mismatch - Christopher sees her as damaged goods and is trying to do right by her and be kind and understanding of her appalling treatment of him, but really he’s kind of exacerbating it and killing her with his kindness. What she wants is to be treated sternly, and they’re always out of sync. That’s the tragedy of it.

“And then Valentine (Adelaide Clemens) comes along in his life, who’s younger than him but has this incredible old soul, and has this incredible command of language. She can challenge him. She’s beautiful and promises something in the future for him. She’s exciting but forbidden fruit.”

Christopher is described as bulky in the novel, which clearly you’re not…
“Yeah, that’s what I said to Tom and everyone, ‘Why do you want me to play this part so badly?’ Obviously it’s an economical thing about bringing an audience from Sherlock, that was obviously part of it. But Christopher is a fat blonde Yorkshireman - I didn’t get it. I keep on looking at myself getting angry at the fact that I’m not fat enough! I had to eat myself into the role.”

Parades End S01E01: Cristopher and Mrs Tietjens

Has shooting in Hollywood for Star Trek and other films changed things for you?
“Oh yeah. Everything kind of scales up. Your hours are more weird… you’re working harder to an extent. Star Trek was an action movie as well as a drama, so it involved a lot of training and I put weight on - I went up four suit sizes at one point.

“It was hard work, but you’re paid to scale. The money with films is what directors get to play with, that’s what you really notice. [As an actor] you can get paid more for doing TV work than you can for films.

“I could have made much more money if I’d stuck around doing plays than if I was in Star Trek. But you just get to play with bigger toys that no other schedule or budget would allow in a TV structure.”

You seem to be on a career high - are you ever worried that it might come to an end?
“No, I don’t think so. It hopefully won’t. Maybe this drama will be the death knell. People will go, ‘Is this really what Sherlock should be doing next?’

“But I’m very proud of it. I treat each job as a new experience. I’m not nervous of the work drying up. It’s been great to have back-to-back, well-received work.”

Do people treat you differently after the success of Sherlock?
“Yeah definitely. What’s quite nice is that they’re by and large an intelligent breed, so they’ve gone over my back catalog and got why I’ve done what I’ve done and how I’ve done it. Many more of them have seen [2005 BBC mini-series] To the Ends of the Earth then would have watched it originally, so that’s nice.”

Is it strange becoming a recognizable face?
“Oh yeah, yeah. There’s some worrying behavior. I worry for them, not for me. Any privacy in public is a hard thing to negotiate. The only thing that really pisses me off is people trying to surreptitiously take a photo of me with their phones. That really f**ks me off.

“It’s not just that I feel it’s invasive - it’s cowardly and pathetic. Just ask me if you really want a photograph. People’s response is ‘I’m a bit shy’ - well then don’t f**king take a photograph!”

Can you tell us about your experience on The Hobbit movies?
“I’m not really allowed to talk about it. But it was great, I had a very isolated time with Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh.”

Is it technically the most challenging thing you’ve ever done?
“No, I don’t think so. It’s very freeing once you put the suit on, and you have to be free. Andy [Serkis] for all his brilliant work is playing a primate, something relatable to us. Whereas a serpent with cold blood who’s twice the size of the Empire State Building who lives in a mountain is harder to do that with! You have to lose your s**t on a carpeted floor and imagine yourself into it.”

Why do you think you’ve previously been cast in a lot of period dramas?
“I haven’t done period dramas back-to-back, or really anything back-to-back. You get asked to do what you’re most recently famed for, so I’m careful of not repeating myself. But I’ve got a long face… I look a bit weird… I suit period costumes, I guess!”

Parade’s End begins on Friday (August 24) at 9pm on BBC Two.

New Images Of Benedict Cumberbatch, Adelaide Clemens & Rebecca Hall In ‘Parade’s End’

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Cumberbatch In Costume Drama? OTB Meets the People Behind BBC Drama ‘Parade’s End’

August 1, 2012 by Jack Sharp

After a 30-year absence, the prolific playwright Sir Tom Stoppard is set to return to the BBC with Parade’s End, a five-part drama adapted from a quartet of novels by Ford Madox Ford. Part funded by HBO and with a reported budget of £12 million, the miniseries is rumoured to be the most expensive production ever broadcast on BBC Two, but like many other recent British dramas, the story takes place around the First World War.

Sherlock’s Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Christopher Tietjens, a conservative English gentleman trying to contend with his unruly, adulterous wife at the centre of the piece and despite his fame on these shores, when the Beeb suggested him to American producers, they took some convincing.

“There was really on a tiny handful of people that we felt could play him,” Susanna White, the director of the upcoming series explains. “And Benedict just seemed so right to us.”

“This was a couple of years ago though and HBO weren’t sure who he was. They took some persuading’. We said, ‘Trust us, he’s a truly great actor, and by the time Parade’s End has come out everyone will have heard of him”.

Sherlock has since gained much attention in the States and his roles in the new Star Trek film and The Hobbit haven’t done his profile in America much harm either. “Of course, now everyone over there has heard of him,” she adds with a wry smile.

According to Stoppard, the series has been in the works since 2008, long before Downtown Abbey helped revamp the costume drama. Viewers are likely to draw comparisons between to the two programmes, although Stoppard admits that he’s largely unaware of Downton Abbey and indeed modern TV in general.

“I watch it sporadically,” he says. “I can’t say there’s anything where I arrange to be at home at the same hour on the same day every week. I wrote Parade’s End in the same spirit as I write stage plays.”

The biggest influence on the upcoming series, Stoppard says, has been Ford Madox Ford’s source material, which was recommended to him by a friend with the possibility of adapting it for television.

“I started reading it and pretty damn quickly I really wanted the job,” he explains. “It’s a tremendously unputdownable book, but you have to come to its aid when you’re adapting it into a television play.”

Ford’s books were published between 1924 and 1928, but fell out of fashion. The five-part television adaptation will likely fuel a renewed interest in the author’s work.

“The structure of the book is not linear, nor does it fall into five equal parts. There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on without it necessarily having a dramatic momentum. So there are a lot of things I got from source books and we were using stuff which wasn’t in the novel at all.”

In addition to Cumberbatch’s appearance, the TV adaptation will also feature performances from Rebecca Hall as Tietjens’ (pronounced TEE’jens) adulterous wife, and Adelaide Clemens as Valentine, a spirited suffragette who falls in love with Tietjens.

Explaining how Adelaide was cast, Susanna White says: “We ran through a few scenes over Skype and then she wanted the part so badly she flew to London to audition in person.”

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Parade’s End photos.

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Parade’s End movie poster.

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Parade’s End photos from (PrueHoward)