Benedict Cumberbatch: Parade's End director calls Benedict Cumberbatch "one of the finest actors of his generation" Susanna White admits that "without Cumberbatch, Parade’s End would be nothing like it is" (RADIO TIMES)

Tom Cole
11:24 AM, 27 February 2013

Bafta award-winning Parade’s End director Susanna White has called Benedict Cumberbatch “one of the finest actors of his generation” and admitted that “without him, Parade’s End would be nothing like it is.”

White is currently promoting the BBC period drama in the States ahead of its transmission on HBO, and opened up earlier this week about how lucky she was to secure the 36-year-old Sherlock star for the lead role of aristocrat Christopher Tietjens.

“There were less than a handful of actors who could have played that role," White told Collider. "Christopher is so buttoned up and so self-enclosed, and yet you have to really care about his situation. I knew Benedict could do that.”

The 52-year-old director also admitted that she was grateful to find an actor capable of tackling the role, who looked nothing like the “fat ox” described in Ford Maddox Ford’s 1920s novels, which formed the basis of the drama.

“I wanted women to really fall in love with him, so it was important to find somebody who would be both attractive and who also could play the emotional layers and have the intelligence,” she said.

READ MORE: http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2013-02-27/parades-end-director-calls-benedict-cumberbatch-one-of-the-finest-actors-of-his-generation

Benedict Cumberbatch: 'Parade's End': A Plum Role for Benedict Cumberbatch

By Ross Langager 26 February 2013
Quavers and Hesitations

A moment in the premiere hour of Parade’s End explains the title in one deft stroke. In the midst of a luncheon with a friend and colleague, the brilliant but conventional government statistician Christopher Tietjens (Benedict Cumberbatch) receives a letter from his free-spirited wife Sylvia (Rebecca Hall). In blunt terms, she asks his leave to come home to Britain after deserting him for a fling with another man on the Continent. As Tietjens details a grimly rational plan for reestablishing a semblance of domestic stability upon her return, his more impulsive Scottish colleague McMaster (Stephen Graham) bluntly wonders why Tietjens does not simply divorce his wife for her serial infidelity. “For a gentleman,” replies Tietjens haltingly, “there is such a thing as… call it, ‘parade’.”

The BBC/HBO miniseries, adapted from Ford Madox Ford’s epochal tetralogy of 1920s novels, goes on to depict a long “parade” of failing conventional propriety. Tom Stoppard’s teleplay amplifies the frosted, caustic wit of the British upper class while maintaining the original’s core themes. The trajectory veers towards the titular expression of finality, as the inherited privilege of the Gilded Age and vestigial Victorian behavioral codes are eclipsed by the slaughter of the First World War and the profound social changes it engendered. Tietjens embodies initially the imperial establishment’s standard of gentlemanly self-possession, gradually becoming a harbinger of its agonizing downfall.

What a plum role for Cumberbatch this Tietjens is. Launched to prominence as a beloved 21st-century Sherlock Holmes, the fantastically named English actor here slips into the skin of another furiously logical genius who struggles to connect emotionally with those closest to him. Though the role is not wholly outside of his comfort zone, Cumberbatch rarely makes the obvious choice with the character, especially when Tietjens sees action at the Front and returns with acute shell shock (very literally expressed, in one haunted monologue about the varieties of explosives used in artillery bombardment). Quavers and hesitations in his Received Pronunciation utterances bespeak a considered intellect before the trenches, afterwards suggest mental trauma, and Cumberbatch gestures to the shift without ever telegraphing it.


READ MORE: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/168728-parades-end-a-plum-role-for-benedict-cumberbatch/

As Benedict Cumberbatch returns in period drama Parade's End, BBC is hit by complaints the dialogue is inaudible By SARA NATHAN (MAIL ON LINE)

Seen but not heard: Viewers complained that they struggled to hear the dialogue in BBC2's adaptation of Parade's End, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Christopher Tietjens and Rebecca Hall as Sylvia

For millions of fans, it was a chance to see Benedict Cumberbatch back on screen – but  if they had hoped to be able to hear him too, they may have been disappointed.

Viewers of the BBC2 adaptation of Parade’s End have complained that they could not make out a word the actors said in pivotal scenes.

Sherlock star Cumberbatch, 36, stars in the period drama as brilliant statistician Christopher Tietjens, with his wife Sylvia played by Rebecca Hall, daughter of acclaimed director Sir Peter.


The first episode of the series, adapted by playwright Sir Tom Stoppard from novels by Ford Madox Ford, aired on Friday night and pulled in a peak audience of 3.5million – but afterwards many took to Twitter and internet discussion boards to complain about poor sound.

Fan Tom Newsom wrote on Twitter: ‘I liked Parade’s End. Couldn’t hear all of it, and didn’t realise how “big” it was, but it’s certainly well made.’

Scriptwriter Terry Hodgkinson commented: ‘Bad sound quality. Dialogue and story hard to follow. Too much thespian exuberance and over-acting.’


Read more:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2194069/Parades-End-BBC-hit-complaints-dialogue-inaudible.html