Tag Archives: Benedict Cumberbatch

Patrick Melrose – revisited

Last October, filming was just under way and none of us knew exactly what to expect from this 5 part mini series. Although, we knew Benedict Cumberbatch was involved. He had declared his love for Edward St. Aubyn’s “Patrick Melrose” novels before, so we had an inkling we would be in for something extra special and expectations rose with the news of filming coming in.

Now, a couple of months later and with all five instalments of Patrick Melrose having been aired, it is time to say, wow, did they ever meet, if not exceed those expectations!

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Back then, I wondered about the choices the creative team (scriptwriter David Nicholls, director Edward Berger, producer and lead actor Benedict Cumberbatch) would make in order to bring the spirit of the books alive.

It turned out, the first two books are swapped for the adaptation: ‘Bad News’ with Patrick’s drug-addled trip to NYC in order to pick up his father’s ashes thus becomes the first instalment of the series. Setting the outcome before the cause, this gives Cumberbatch the stage he needs to fully establish Patrick in the viewers’ hearts and minds. Needless to say that his acting is out of this world throughout all five instalments of Patrick Melrose. 

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(c) Vanity Fair

It’s obvious, this is a matter of the heart for Benedict, his dream role, and he gives it his all, no matter how big or small the scene seems to be. We see him exposed and vulnerable as never before and yet: just a couple of minutes into the first episode and you might want to punch him already, yell some sense into him. You sit there, shaking your head at the screen going “NO!”, but at the same time you can’t but deeply root for him, hoping he will find a way out of the maze that he’s gotten himself into. Continue reading →

Atonement

Atonement  is a British movie (2007) based on Ian McEwan’s novel of the same name, published in 2001, directed by Joe Wright, starring Keira Knightley (Cecilia Tallis), James McAvoy (Robbie Turner), Saoirse Ronan (Briony Tallis, 13), Romola Garai (Briony, age 18), Vanessa Redgrave (Briony, 70).

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We also see Benedict Cumberbatch  (as Paul Marshall) in a supporting , yet crucial for the plot, role.  It turned out to be the role that made Steven Moffat want Benedict to play Sherlock in the BBC series, as he considered him to be just the right amount of creepy and sleek in order to embody the world’s only consulting detective in a 21st century version of Arthur Conan Doyle’s works. What a good choice he made! Continue reading →

Along came Benedict…

Along came Benedict… and inspired my reading

A lot. I used to read a lot. As soon as I had learned to read fluently, my mum got me a library card and from that moment on, I became a regular visitor to the local library. I always lugged around piles of books and would spend my afternoons or any time available really reading, drifting off into different times and ages, exotic (at the time) countries, fictional realms. My reading was a wild mix back then, from childrens’ books to crime stories to love stories to classic antiquity tales.

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(c) Pixabay

I moved from primary school to grammar school and that’s when things started to get a bit weird. Oh yes, we did read at school, of course we did. Only, I mostly did not like what we were made to read!

I’m living in Germany, thus, I attended German schools, and I tend to think there’s quite a difference between, say, Germany and the UK as far as cultural education goes. I’m under the impression that all things cultural are playing a more important role in the British society than they are here. There’s no fixed canon of books that must be included in the syllabus here, but of course there are Continue reading →

Parade’s End

Parade’s End

In 2012 Benedict Cumberbatch portrayed the character of Christopher Tietjens in the five-part BBC period drama series Parade’s End, an adaptation for tv of the tetralogy of novels by Ford Madox Ford. The screenplay was written by Tom Stoppard, and the series was directed by Susanna White.

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(c) BBC

Set before and during World War I, the adaptation focuses on the love triangle of Anglican Christopher Tietjens, second son of the lord of the manor of Groby, Yorkshire, who is a disconsolate, Tory statistician in London, and his wife Sylvia Satterthwaite, a Catholic – which doesn’t stop her from being promiscuous, self-centered and downright evil at times. The socialite woman only married him – after a heated sex session during a train ride – to hide the fact that the child she was carrying at the time might be someone else’s – or Christopher’s. To complete it all, there’s Valentine Wannop, young and tolerant in thinking, she’s not only a suffragette, but also the daughter of a lady novelist. Valentine – in the course of the story – is very torn between her idealism and her attraction to “Chrissy”. Continue reading →

Melrose

Melrose

And so it’s happening. The filming for the 2018 Sky Atlantic mini series „Melrose“, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the title character, is well under way. Apparently Cumberbatch had been telling the truth, when he answered the question of which character he really would love to play with „Patrick Melrose?“. His obvious passion for Patrick and the novels right there and then made me curious and I’ve read the whole series of autobiographical novels written by Edward St. Aubyn – Nevermind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mother’s Milk, and At Last – a while back already.

Edward St. Aubyn on Wikipedia

The books’ timeline spans over decades – Patrick Melrose being only 5 years old at the outset and over 40 at the end, with each novel actually describing the events taking place in usually just one day or even only a couple of hours, focussing on the actual event taking place at the time. And yet we see the family’s Melrose_Edinb_2017history unfold in the various flashbacks telling about events of the past that have so obviously impacted the here and now, leading to what Patrick Melrose is going through – from being abused by his father as a child over becoming a drug addict to finally recovering and seeing his way through the net of lies and intrigues of the past, finally to emerge as a different person, not unscathed, but still alive.

In my opinion, the overarching theme of the books is that of dysfunctional relationships – marriages, families, childhoods – dysfunctional lives in general, shining a spotlight on the British upper class in decline, but being in denial about it, self-loathing – it wasn’t long into the first novel until I spontaneously thought „like father like son“.

Continue reading →

Christmas Cards for Anno’s Africa

Anno’s Africa

Anno’s Africa is a UK based children’s arts charity running educational arts projects for children living in slum conditions in Kenya.

The charity was set up in memory of Anno Birkin, a young, gifted writer and musician who died in a car crash in 2001, just one month short of his 21st birthday.

Anno’s Africa has been operating in Nairobi since 2006 and there are currently over 1200 children participating in their workshops and in the weekly clubs run by their sister organization One Fine Day.

Benedict Cumberbatch is a patron of this charity– among many others like e.g. (in no particular order) Tom Hanks, Lana del Rey, Greta Scacchi, Tom Tykwer, Daniel Craig, Dame Judi Dench to name just a few – and has been supporting it for years.

You can read about his reasons for supporting this charity here: Benedict about Anno’s Africa

For more information, please visit Anno’s Africa and Anno’s website

For the Christmas season of 2017, Benedict has agreed to create a Christmas card design exclusively for Anno’s Africa. You can order it here: Justacard Shop

Christmas Card Annos Africa

(c) Anno’s Africa

@cumberlibrary is going to have a giveaway of one set of these beautiful Christmas cards (5 cards w/ envelopes) soon.

New blog post

The Child in Time – Musings

BBC One’s The Child in Time got some harsh criticism, mostly for the production, while the acting, especially by Benedict Cumberbatch and Kelly MacDonald was generally praised.

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Copyright: BBC One

As in the book, the storyline focuses on Stephen and Julie, as they try to cope with the loss of their daughter Kate, a second thread focusing on Stephen’s friend Charles Darke (nomen est omen!), his sudden retreat to the countryside and subsequent regress into childhood. We also learn about Stephen’s parents and their past, the „pub scene“ having a central importance for the plot, as turns out in the progress of the story.

The book has more plot with elaborate descriptions of characters and situations, making the storyline somewhat less elusive, no way to put all of that into a 90 minutes timeframe for tv though. Some viewers thus got quite irritated watching the tv film. They sensed plotholes and got confused by the non-chronological storyline, the flashbacks and flash forwards. In my opinion though, the makers of The Child in Time were adamant to get the message across not only by what is said, but also by what you see: Continue reading →

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