SPEAK UP! Or why mumbling actors are ruining TV drama (Daily Mail)

(I thought I was the only one having this problem!  I can't understand half of what is said anymore.  And it can't be my hearing - I can understand old movies perfectly well)

By Leo Mckinstry

Last updated at 11:20 AM on 30th January 2012


At first, I thought something had gone wrong with my hearing. Having sat down to watch the BBC’s much-hyped period drama Birdsong, I found myself struggling to understand the dialogue.

As one incomprehensible line followed another, I quickly began to lose the plot — and my patience. Then my wife, whose aural sense is so acute that she could hear a bat squeak at 300 yards, turned to me and asked: ‘What on earth did he just say?’

A temporary sense of relief came over me. So it was not my advancing decrepitude that was responsible.

Nor was it our TV set. We fiddled with the volume and the settings on the remote control, to no avail — the actors remained inaudible.

Our frustration mounted. Like millions of others, we had eagerly looked forward to this drama, a love story set against the backdrop of World War I.

But our enjoyment was ruined by the dismal sound quality. Even the Glaswegian comic character Rab C. Nesbitt at his lager-fuelled worst is not as difficult to follow as some parts of Birdsong. After less than an hour of this auditory ordeal, we switched it off.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2093648/SPEAK-UP-Or-mumbling-actors-ruining-TV-drama.html#ixzz1kxaWUvkf