Originally published by L.S. Media. March 25th 2012.
L.S. Media Rating ****
Cast: Stephen Campbell-Moore, Jenna-Louise Coleman, Celia Imrie, Toby Jones, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Lyndsey Marshal, Stephen Waddington, Sophie Winkleman, James Wilby, Linus Roache, Geraldine Somerville.
The 100th anniversary of the sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic is one that will touch many areas of Britain and Ireland, so much so in places such as Southampton, Belfast and Liverpool. Southampton due to the amount of men from the area who were employed as workers on the ill-fated ship, Belfast will feel this anniversary with heavy heart as they remember the loss of life from a ship built at Harland and Wolff ship yard and Liverpool as the place where she was registered and where the news broke to the world that the unsinkable, the most prestigious ship of its time had been lost.
Julian Fellows in recent times has made a habit of producing television programmes that deal with time from the end of the Edwardian era, not least with his sensational smash hit Downton Abbey. There will be those who view Mr. Fellows latest work as nothing more than “Downton at sea”, the tale of rich and poor and with an ending that’s already known. There will be others that point out some sort of irrelevance to today’s society. However, as recent events off the coast of Italy have shown, passenger safety at sea is only one pivotal moment away from disaster.
Titanic tells the tale of those who were on board that fateful night in April 1912 and the insanity of class warfare and certain class prejudices when faced with the prospect of drowning. It shows the lunacy of trusting comfort and supposed sensibilities over safety and for a change it also shows the story from different angles, from the poor end or steerage passengers on board to those who showed scant regard to other people’s lives.
Titanic is in four parts and in episode one the story followed certain people as they went to meet their fate, will they live or die will not be addressed till episode four, however there are some characters who already you feel some sympathy for and over the next three more episodes you will learn their back story as Julian Fellows fine script cleverly flashes forward and back and you see how the passengers got to the moment where they boarded the ocean liner.
Yes there will be those that say its slow, but isn’t travelling by ship supposed to be, to condense four days in April to a two hour film and only concentrate on two of the passengers in the terms of a love story can be tedious, by racking up the tension and focusing on a disparate amount of characters, Julian Fellow’s Titanic will surely be a ratings winner.
Ian D. Hall