“The war has turned decent people into beasts,” said Valentine Wannop at the beginning of this third episode. The phrase was later repeated by Sylvia, and by the end, Christopher confirmed: “We are all barbarians now”.
Nobody behaved terribly well as the lights went out all over Europe. Mrs Wannop twittered on about moving to London to be near the critics as her novel was published. Edith Duchemin shed crocodile tears following the suicide of her mad husband. And nobody, of course, behaved more badly than Sylvia who sent plovers’ eggs, strong cheddar and a tin of toffees to German acquaintances.
It was all too much for Christopher’s father. Knocked by the scandal that his grandson was, in fact, “a papist child from the wrong side of the blanket”, he did himself in on one of his beloved grouse shoots. “He wasn’t the sort of man to leave a wounded rabbit on the wrong side of the hedge,” said Christopher gravely. It really felt like the end of an era.
So what about Christopher? Surely this 18th-century man, the last decent man in England, so at odds with the eternal Edwardian summer, would come into his own in wartime? In fact, Christopher’s war was as bloody and confusing as the next man’s, and his experiences allowed us to be treated to some of the most beautiful dialogue yet. Describing the horrors of life on the Western Front to his wife Sylvia, the bombs were variously described as “a crescendo, like an express train”, “tearing calico, louder and louder”, “wet canvas being shaken out by a giant.” Amid such poetry came the more prosaic news that Christopher would now report to a tin hut on Ealing Common. Sylvia barely contained her amusement.
READ MORE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/tv-and-radio-reviews/9528206/Parades-End-episode-three-BBC-Two-review.html
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