Reply With QuoteYes, I enjoyed it as well.
A couple of points:
Most people since the event now call the place where it is set "Seaton Canoe".
And Monica Dolan is a native of Middlesborough, so should have nailed the accent.
I'm usually a bit sniffy about ITV dramas but since this one is set in my home town, I didn't resist. In 2002, a man named John Darwin perpetrated a life insurance fraud by faking his own death in an apparent canoeing accident off the coast of Seaton Carew, Hartlepool. This has been dramatised as The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe and the first episode was shown tonight.
It's actually very good. Eddie Marsan portrays Darwin as the wilful, irrational and obsessive man that he no doubt is. But the burden of the stress and shame and deceit that his poor wife has to bear after he disappears is the focus of the piece, nicely brought out in an understated performance by Monica Dolan. But it's not overwrought or melodramatic, just a sense of an invasive, melancholy pressure.
Nonetheless there's a strand of dark humour running through the telling of the story, as well. It's well directed and photographed and has a nice cinematic quality.
A couple of nitpicks - the characters all sound like they're from Newcastle rather than Hartlepool and that's most apparent in the pronunciation of words like "apart" for example. But most viewers won't be bothered.
Most of the "Seaton Carew" scenes, including Darwin leaving his house to enter the water with his canoe, are actually filmed at the Headland which is four miles round the other side of the bay, and looks very little like Seaton Carew. There's a nice scene of Darwin sitting at Seaton bus station though, while the police search his house.
Very good, I thought.
Yes, I enjoyed it as well.
A couple of points:
Most people since the event now call the place where it is set "Seaton Canoe".
And Monica Dolan is a native of Middlesborough, so should have nailed the accent.
I know the chap who put this sign up on the entrance to the village. I'll watch the programme with interest.
On a point of order Unclealec. Even though Middlesbrough and Hartlepool are but a few miles apart, linguistically there are quite different. Thank goodness.
Sent through the ether by diddling with radio waves
So far he comes across as a total bell end, she gets a much more sympathetic portrayal.
Dunno what the reality is, but can't imagine doing anything that cruel to my kids.
Will watch the rest of it. Remember it well and looking forward to the Panama adventure!
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Recorded it. Don’t tell me what happens! 😉
Exactly; one would think the excellent Monica would know the nuance. Presumably she is a legacy of the traditionally large Irish presence?Originally Posted by sish101
Perhaps. It's quite strange that Middlesbrough, which at one time had the second largest Irish population after Liverpool does not seem to have many vestiges of that accent. Instead it has a muddied 'Teesside' dialect (that isn't that pleasing to the ear IMHO). But we should be rightly proud of our industrial heritage in the North East which has provided coal, steel, ships, munitions, chemicals and the like for the UK and abroad for centuries, whilst allowing numerous small villages in the Home Counties to enjoy their rural idyll.
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My bucket list includes a trip across the Transporter Bridge.
I did that many times as a kid and once or twice in recent years. Fun! And very doable when it's working.
The Middlesbrough accent actually sounds even less Geordie than the Hartlepool one does, though the difference is subtle. I wonder if she was affecting a Geordie accent to match Eddie Marsan?
Last edited by monogroover; 18th April 2022 at 09:41.
When I saw it upcoming on the TV guide, I assumed it was a repeat.
Checking back, the BBC also dramatised it 10 years ago.
I watched it and will carry on, but did keep thinking, I’ve seen this bit before, I know what happens next. Felt a bit odd.
I can’t remember the BBC version in detail, but does this latest version have a bit more comedy (tragi) to it?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rs2kc
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Last edited by BillyCasper; 18th April 2022 at 07:37.
I know that this is a true story and we all know that TV companies can distort the truth but the overall impression is that the thief couldn't organise a booze up in a brewery. The sort of bloke who writes into the Current Topical Moan and Rant Thread all the time because everything he touches goes wrong and is incapable of fixing the problem.
I have the same issue with the TV series ‘McDonald & Dodds’ which is set in Bath. The characters accents sound more like the Wurzels’ & not at all like the Bath accent.
Lots of complaints from fellow Monkey Hangers being reported on the Mail online, this morning
They wrote on Twitter: 'The thief, his wife and a canoe, so, why is it that ITV think people from Teesside speak with a Geordie accent. This happened in Hartlepool and we DO NOT have that accent!!!! Insulting!!!!'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbi...ng-accent.html
Last edited by monogroover; 18th April 2022 at 10:11.
Thought is was ok, nothing to rave about
It's a Kayak, not a canoe !!!!
Hartlepool is obviously not very tolerant with accents (sounding foreign to them).
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
The problem is that everyone North of Watford Gap speaks funny, the ones South of the Thames aren't much better either.
;-)
Once I get past the home counties I need an interpreterso I guess most people would know no difference with NE accents.
The thing is if you know about a subject it's always depicted/portrayed wrongly on TV and film.
Cheers,
Neil.
I’m livid, that feller in Moon Night with the identity crisis walked out of the British Museum straight into Trafalgar Square.
Last edited by Mr Curta; 18th April 2022 at 18:31.
They're a bit sensitive if you mention that they hung the monkey! :-)Lots of complaints from fellow Monkey Hangers being reported on the Mail online, this morning
They wrote on Twitter: 'The thief, his wife and a canoe, so, why is it that ITV think people from Teesside speak with a Geordie accent. This happened in Hartlepool and we DO NOT have that accent!!!! Insulting!!!!'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbi...ng-accent.html
One of his sons worked at my firm. He left when it all came out.
Andy
Wanted - Damasko DC57
We're very inclusive and tolerant - but we don't like things to be misrepresented :)
Did he eventually enter politics? Sounds well suited to high office.
I too was alluding to the monkey…
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
That took 12 more posts than I thought it would
Considering that I lived in boro for a few years, I'm amazed that I've never been on the Transporter Bridge.
Nor did I have a parmo until a couple of years back either.
poor bloke fancy having parents like those conniving pair, despicable!
I grew up 10 miles from Middlesbrough, 1968-1981, & I'd never heard of a parmo until about 2 years ago. They do a good one at the Jet Miners in Great Broughton.
Not everyone suffers due to their parents acts.
Ronnie O`sullivans dad was convicted of a brutal murder and he is the most popular snooker player in the world.
Not sure it’s a good example. Having his dad in jail were a source of deep anxiety and is probably responsible for his mercurial temper.
Still an absolute genius of the game, but the wounds are not healed.
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
I have watched a couple of episodes and the guy playing him is great makes him look like a complete narcissist pathetic looser and the wife looking like the hard done to party, but I’m sure at the time it came out that she was just as much to blame as him.
His wife has reconciled with their sons. He hasnt, he’s moved to Thailand and is shacked up with a Thai girl decades younger than him. Make of that what you will but I think the portrayal’s are probably more accurate than inaccurate.
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