Tom Hiddleston and Gillian Anderson Among Winners at Evening Standard Theatre Awards

ACESHOWBIZ
December 01, 2014 04:28:01 GMT



Tom Hiddleston and Gillian Anderson are big winners at the 2014 Evening Standard Theatre Awards. Hiddleston and Anderson were awarded with Best Actor and Best Actress award respectively at a ceremony which took place at the London Palladium on Sunday night, November 30.

The Loki depicter on "The Avengers" took home the award for his role in "Coriolanus" after beating other contenders such as Mark Strong and Ben Miles. Receiving the trophy from Helen Mirren, Hiddleston said that he was "so proud" to be honored with the award. As quoted by BBC, the 33-year-old actor described "Coriolanus" as a "bloody, brutal, angry play." He received four stitches during the gig and "had the scars to prove it."

Anderson, meanwhile, won the Best Actress award for her performance in "A Streetcar Named Desire". The actress, who currently stars on "The Fall" alongside Jamie Dornan, was quoted as saying, "I haven't done that many plays and any time I do one I feel like an imposter."

James McAvoy handed the NOOK Award for Best Play to Rona Munro's "The James Plays" while the Best Musical trophy was awarded to "The Scottsboro Boys". Benedict Cumberbatch, who attended the event with his theater director/actress fiancee Sophie Hunter, presented the lifetime achievement award to Tom Stoppard.

Read more: http://www.aceshowbiz.com/news/view/00077653.html#ixzz3Kl0VE2Vq

Emmy Awards British nominees: Benedict Cumberbatch

RADIO TIMES
James Gill
8:00 AM, 21 September 2013



BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Nominated for: Outstanding Lead Actor in a Mini Series or Movie

Role: Christopher Tietjens in Parade’s End

This is the second time the Sherlock actor has been nominated for an Emmy Award. The first was last year when he received a nomination for playing Sherlock Holmes, but lost out to Kevin Costner for his leading role as William ‘Devil Anse’ Hatfield in Hatfields & McCoys.

This year he’s up for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Mini Series for playing Christopher Tietjens in Parade’s End. When he heard of his nomination, Cumberbatch paid tribute to writer Tom Stoppard who adapted the novel by Ford Madox Ford.

“I was so honoured to work on Parade’s End, to get the chance to get under the skin of such a complex, beautifully written character as Tietjens with a script written by the unsurpassable Sir Tom Stoppard,” he said.

READ MORE HERE: http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2013-09-21/emmy-awards-british-nominees-benedict-cumberbatch

'Sherlock' Star Benedict Cumberbatch Collects Broadcasting Press Guild Award For 'Parade's End', Rebecca Hall Also Honoured (HUFF POST)

Cumberbatch with 'Parade's End' adaptor Sir Tom Stoppard

Benedict Cumberbatch has picked up another award for his starring role in 'Sherlock' and said he was looking forward to getting his teeth back into the part of the scruffy sleuth.

The actor, who was named best actor at the Broadcasting Press Guild for his performance in 'Sherlock' and the period drama Parade's End, said he was looking forward to starting filming next week.

He said: "Playing Sherlock means a great deal to me. It's lovely to be back and have the hair in place. We're getting our teeth into the first episode of the new series next week so it feels like a treat. It's just wonderful to be back."

Benedict's 'Parade's End' co-star, Rebecca Hall, also walked away with a trophy after she was named best actress for her performance as his on-screen wife in the drama.

'Parade's End', which was shown on BBC Two in five episodes last year, picked up four prizes and was named best drama series, while dramatist Sir Tom Stoppard won the BPG writer's award for his work adapting the original novels by Ford Madox Ford.

READ MORE: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/03/14/sherlock-benedict-cumberbatch-parades-end-rebecca-hall_n_2877196.html#slide=2222544

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/

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: Not the Same Old Cup of British Tea By ALESSANDRA STANLEY (NEW YORK TIMES)

Saying that a television series depicts the English aristocracy on the brink of World War I and beyond is almost a disservice — the description sounds like yet another big Masterpiece Theater bore, or worse, an amusing one like “Downton Abbey.” “Parade’s End,” a co-production of the BBC and HBO that begins on Tuesday on HBO, looks like a lush elegy to the Edwardian age, but it’s not nearly as swoony and nostalgic as most others of the genre. Tom Stoppard adapted Ford Madox Ford’s tetralogy into a five-part series, streamlining and speeding up the story without dumbing it down.


Like Ford’s modernist opus, and its brainy, punctilious hero, Christopher Tietjens (Benedict Cumberbatch), the series is not easy to follow or instantly love, but it is impossible to dismiss. That’s partly thanks to artful storytelling and gifted acting, especially by Rebecca Hall, who is a bewitching hoot in the role of Christopher’s bored, unfaithful wife, Sylvia.

It’s a series that inevitably draws comparisons with “Downton Abbey,” since they share the same upper-class trappings and totems. Tietjens, a brilliant statistician, is an old-fashioned English gentleman, good with horses, furniture and propriety. He is chivalrously loyal to Sylvia, a spoiled beauty who scorns her husband’s stuffy rectitude, even as she is piqued by it. She dismisses him as a “great lump,” yet can’t stop poking him.


“Parade’s End” tells the story of a bad marriage, set in a much broader context of a rotting civilization.

And that’s the real difference between it and “Downton Abbey.” That show is a gauzy anachronism in period costumes; the first novel of “Parade’s End” was published in 1924, and the series is enmeshed in the great cataclysm of the time, underscoring the cruelty of the age as much as its charm.


READ MORE: http://tv.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/arts/television/parades-end-with-benedict-cumberbatch-and-rebecca-hall.html?pagewanted=all

Benedict Cumberbatch : Parade's End, the New Downton Abbey? (WALL STREET JOURNAL VIDEO)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJT_WvTAM5s

Move over, Downton Abbey: Parade’s End is moving in Stellar writing and cast make British period piece a winner By Bill Brownstein, Montreal Gazette February 20, 2013 (CALGARY HERALD)

MONTREAL - Great news for those going through the initial stages of Downton Abbey withdrawal: another sterling British period piece is set to make its North American debut.

The five-part miniseries Parade’s End begins Tuesday on HBO Canada. But unlike Downton Abbey, viewers won’t have to wait endless weeks for it to wrap. This Parade comes to an end on Feb. 28; the entire series airs over three nights.

Saving the best for last: Not to detract from Downton Abbey, but Parade’s End packs even more of a punch. Yet it, too, has epic sweep, replete with lavish costumes, tony castles and manicured gardens.

Not that time-honoured servitude doesn’t come into the fray, but Parade’s End is much more upstairs than downstairs-oriented. There is also more passion and more mirth at play here than in Downton Abbey. The tension builds dramatically in this bittersweet tale of love and valour. And the “whiff of sex permeates like a vapour,” as one character so accurately assesses.

Not to detract from the work of Maggie Smith et al at the Abbey, but Parade’s End stars Benedict Cumberbatch (yes, the same guy somewhat slumming in the Sherlock TV series), Rebecca Hall, Adelaide Clemens, Rupert Everett, Stephen Graham, Janet McTeer, Miranda Richardson and many more give the equivalent of a master class in acting. Even the late Sir Larry Olivier would be dazzled.

And not to detract from Downton Abbey creator/writer Julian Fellowes, but it’s hard to top scripts penned by playwright Tom Stoppard, who has adapted this series from the acclaimed four novels of Ford Madox Ford. The dialogue, be it tongue-in-cheek droll or deliciously treacherous, is brilliant. To wit: “He’s not dead. He’s in Glasgow.” Or, “He’s a great lump of wood … (I want) to kill him to see if he has any blood in him.”



Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Move+over+Downton+Abbey+Parade+moving/7990821/story.html#ixzz2La6W2suT

Parade's End Promos Showcase Benedict Cumberbatch And Tom Stoppard Author: Jesse Carp (CINEMA BLEND)

In about a week and a half's time, HBO will start airing Parade's End, a five part mini-series starring Benedict Cumberbatch as a British aristocrat caught in a love triangle and World War I. Surely, nothing that Sherlock can't handle. Based on a four part book series of the same name by Ford Madox Ford, the mini-series was adapted for the premium cable network, and the BBC, by renowned British playwright Tom Stoppard.

READ MORE: http://www.cinemablend.com/television/Parade-End-Promos-Showcase-Benedict-Cumberbatch-Tom-Stoppard-52605.html

Benedict Cumberbatch: HBO Previews Upcoming ‘Parade’s End’ Miniseries Starring Benedict Cumberbatch

HBO has some good news for Anglophiles who are already fretting over the looming finale of Downton Abbey‘s third season in February. They’ll soon be serving up a British period drama of their own in the form of Parade’s End, a five-part miniseries set against the backdrop of World War I, starring Sherlock‘s Benedict Cumberbatch.

The first two parts of Parade’s End premiere Tuesday, February 26th at 9/8c on HBO.



READ MORE: http://www.tvequals.com/2013/01/09/hbo-previews-upcoming-parades-end-miniseries-starring-benedict-cumberbatch/

Benedict Cumberbatch in Tom Stoppard miniseries for HBO (WASHINGTON POST)

By Lisa de Moraes

Benedict Cumberbatch, the new dulcet-toned fair-haired boy of British thespianism, came to soak up the love of TV critics and talk about his HBO’s broadcast of “Parade’s End” at Winter TV Press Tour 2013.

“Benedict Cumberbatch…has now played the two cleverest men in England – and, of course, Tom Stoppard,” an HBO exec introduced the panel, having earlier called Stoppard “one of the greatest living writers of the English language.”


Cumberbund plays radical Tory Englishman Christopher Tietjens in Stoppard’s adaptation of Ford Maddox Ford’s quartet of Brit history novels that span the twilight years of Edwardian England through World War I. HBO will launch the five-parter on Feb. 26; it aired in the UK last year.

“Benedict, you have not only played the two cleverest men in England, but you’ve done the words of the two cleverest men in England,” one critic gushed, wondering “What is it like to do the words of these guys and to do these incredibly witty things that they have you say?”

(That second cleverest man reference would be Steven Moffat who penned the “Sherlock” scripts Cummerbund performs in the PBS highly-mini series.)

“Very humbling because they’re far brighter than you could ever possibly be,” said Cumberbatch, appearing via satellite, from London.

He compared it to “extraordinary pieces of classical music,” which, he noted, does have to be interpreted by an actor if anyone’s going to hear it.

“Benedict, this has been such an amazing year for you with all the things that are happening in your career. Could you just reflect a little bit on where you’ve come and what you’re achieving this year and so far?” another critic gushed.

Cumberbatch smiled and laughed. “That’s it, really -- it’s a big smile and a laugh…Embarrassment of riches is the headline, I think.”

Stoppard, who’d not gotten any questions at that point and who, like Cumberbatch, was appearing via satellite, jumped in and noted Cumberbatch had already done “Frankenstein” with Jonny Lee Miller at the National Theatre, alternating the roles of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster.

“Yeah,” responded Cumberbatch. Stoppard had struck a nerve, what with Miller now playing Holmes on CBS, of which neither he nor Moffat approves.

“And you had finished filming ‘War Horse.’,” Stoppard continued. “So we didn’t pluck you from the chorus.

Then he told a story about smoking cigarettes with Cumberbatch in the made-for-movie trenches of Flanders while Cumberbatch was shooting “War Horse,” giving critics a moment to think of a question for Stoppard.

One wondered about the challenge Stoppard faced in adapting the series of novels, guessing “it was considerable.”

“You possibly already know quite a lot about the book,” Stoppard told the room full of critics and blogalists – the best gag of the press tour’s first day.

Then he began to detail that challenge.

READ MORE: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/tv-column/post/2013/01/05/eac97982-577d-11e2-bf3e-76c0a789346f_blog.html

Dan Stevens: New Yorker Festival Dispatch: Period Acting By June Thomas | Posted Sunday, Oct. 7, 2012, at 5:32 PM ET (SLATE)

Putting together a panel for an event like this weekend’s New Yorker Festival is inevitably a random exercise, but I imagine the task of selecting four actors to discuss “Period Acting” was particularly challenging. After all, most working actors have donned knee breeches or bonnets at some point in their careers. And since the panel was scheduled for 10 on a Saturday morning—the Manhattan equivalent of 7 a.m. in Kansas City—the participants needed serious juice to fill the seats. Whatever complex calculation involving availability and box office appeal was employed to gather John Slattery, Jennifer Ehle, Dan Stevens, and Cherry Jones, it was a winning formula. Moderator Rebecca Mead was nimble and well prepared, and the panelists were gracious with each other—not a microphone-hogger in the bunch—and with the audience, doling out the perfect mix of gossip and insight.

Dan Stevens, who was scheduled to make his Broadway debut in The Heiress that evening, pleased the Downton Abbey fans in the audience by describing his preparations for the show—including intense sessions with the show’s etiquette consultant, Alistair Bruce, on the lost art of hat doffing. He also admitted that in the show’s second season, he and Michelle Dockery, who plays Lady Mary, listened to “Matthew and Mary’s Theme” from the show’s soundtrack to get in the mood for love scenes. (“So do I,” said Mad Men’s John Slattery.)

Costumes are a big part of Cherry Jones’ preparation—indeed she tied her bonnet so tight when playing Sister Aloysius in the Broadway production of John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt that she had a mark on her neck long after the show closed. Asked by Mead, “How far down does the period costume go?” Jones answered, “All the way down to Florida.”

Jennifer Ehle said that when she played three characters in Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia, she wore a different perfume for each one. When she first took to the stage with co-star Brian F. O’Byrne, “the color drained out of him.” It turned out that one of the perfumes was the same scent as the candle he burned every night when playing suspected child molester Father Flynn alongside Cherry Jones in Doubt.

READ MORE: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/10/07/new_yorker_festival_dispatch_period_acting_with_john_slattery_dan_stevens_jennifer_ehle_and_cherry_jones_.html

Parade's End, final episode, BBC Two, review Serena Davies reviews the final episode of Tom Stoppard’s BBC Two adaptation of Ford Madox Ford's Edwardian novels Parade's End. (TELEGRAPH)

So what, finally, did Parade’s End amount to? The last episode of Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of Ford Madox Ford’s doorstopper has aired on BBC Two. Half its scenes were of war and gory wounds; the other half of society chat, which came with its own form of lacerations, in the cutting remarks of the witchy Sylvia Tietjens (Rebecca Hall).

The BBC has thrown a lot at this drama: huge amounts of cash (American moneybags HBO helped out), two leads (Hall and Benedict Cumberbatch) with burgeoning Hollywood careers, and a script by Britain’s Greatest Living Playwright (arguably).

Stoppard duly delivered a screenplay that was ever astute, often funny and nearly always lucid – a feat considering the source material is frequently impenetrable. The script was also that remarkable thing in this Downton-saturated age: never sentimental.

In the final episode, noble, unglamorous hero Christopher Tietjens (Cumberbatch) finally got to the Front. There he met a shell-shocked CO who liked to summon pot shots from the Germans by careering across No Man’s Land. In Steven Robertson’s mercurial performance he had a whiff of Brideshead’s Sebastian Flyte about him: destroyed by hateful circumstances, but a bit of an immature fool to begin with.

The CO was spared the snipers (that would have been too obviously sad) but Sylvia’s twerp of a lover, Potty Perowne, was buried up to his neck by a shell, a fixed grin turned heavenwards. This moment elicited the evening’s funniest line. Sylvia, after defending her affair with him to her mother by saying it was an act of charity – “as Jesus would have done” then added: “They say he died with a smile on his face. Potty, that is.”

READ MORE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9558694/Parades-End-final-episode-BBC-Two-review.html

Benedict Cumberbatch: Parade's End, episode four, BBC Two, review Episode four of Parade's End, Tom Stoppard's lush adaptaion of Ford Madox Ford's Edwardian tetralogy, was darkly humorous in tone, writes Patrick Smith. (TELEGRAPH)

By Patrick Smith
10:30PM BST 14 Sep 2012

There were shades of Evelyn Waugh in tonight's penultimate instalment of Parade's End (BBC Two), Tom Stoppard's lush, languorous adaptation of Ford Madox Ford's Edwardian tetralogy. Darkly humorous in tone, it found the putty-mouthed aristocrat Christopher Tietjens (Benedict Cumberbatch) stationed in a base depot near Rouen, fed up with the monotony and harebrained bureaucracy of life on the Western Front.

Though within range of German artillery, this was supposedly a safe posting; his day-to-day duties involved ordering fire extinguishers and dreaming of his would-be lover Valentine Wannop (Adelaide Clemens).

There was a problem, however, in the form of his wife, Sylvia (the wonderful Rebecca Hall). Determined to get written approval from her husband to move into his family estate, Groby, Sylvia decided that she wanted to pay him a visit – despite General Campion (Roger Allam) being vehemently against the idea. “I’ve never known a woman like her," he fumed. "On no account is Mrs Tietjens to be allowed within 50 miles of Rouen, understood? I will not have skirts around my HQ."

Nevertheless, we watched as she charmed her way through France to show up at the General's camp. Indeed, Sylvia remained the most compelling thing about Parade's End: alluring, insouciant and deliciously duplicitous. We also saw her display a rare moment of vulnerability. “I haven’t had a man for five years," she said to her husband, sorrowfully. "I haven't let myself be kissed or touched. Not once. Not since Perowne (Tom Mison). Potty Perowne. Can you see how I must have been feeling to go with a fool like Perowne?" It made for affecting television.


READ MORE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9544475/Parades-End-episode-four-BBC-Two-review.html

Benedict Cumberbatch: Parade's End gives BBC2 biggest drama ratings hit in seven years (THE TELEGRAPH)

By Ben Bryant10:02PM BST 28 Aug 2012

Audience figures show the first episode attracted 3.5 million viewers, making it BBC2’s biggest drama in years.

BBC2 trounced BBC1 and ITV’s Friday night prime-time ratings with 15 percent of all viewers, doubling its usual share.

The five-part series marked a return to television for internationally renowned playwright Tom Stoppard after a 35-year hiatus.

Stoppard helped boost the channel to its most impressive ratings since HBO’s historical drama Rome aired in 2005.

Star turns from Benedict Cumberbatch, who enjoys a large global following, and Rebecca Hall, also helped give prominence to the period piece.


Critical praise was just as forthcoming as viewers.

The Telegraph’s reviewer James Walton described it as a programme that ‘demanded and rewarded our full attention’ and awarded it four and a half stars. It was met with an equally rapturous reception across the board in other national newspapers.

Concert pianist James Rhodes wrote on Twitter: “Parade's End the perfect counterpoint to a heavy day. Hall, Stoppard & Cumberbatch - what a combination! TV that makes one feel smart...“

READ MORE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9504571/Parades-End-gives-BBC2-biggest-drama-ratings-hit-in-seven-years.html

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

Two sex scenes in the first six minutes... the steamy saga that the BBC hopes will grab Downton's crown By CHRIS HASTINGS and EMILY HILL (DAILY MAIL)

On the night before her wedding, in a sumptuous Parisian hotel suite, a beautiful bride-to-be with tumbling red hair opens the door to her lover. Although he is not the man she is to marry in the morning, they kiss passionately, before he rips off her clothes and ravishes her on the carpet.

This is the arresting opening to the BBC’s latest period drama, Parade’s End.

It boasts two sex scenes in the first six minutes. The second features the show’s stars, Benedict Cumberbatch and Rebecca Hall, breathlessly panting and grappling at one another through illicit sexual congress in a railway carriage. A scene in a later episode shows a naked Hall smoking in the bath.


Downton Abbey’s Lord and Lady Grantham would be appalled – never dreaming of such lewdness. But the BBC hopes that Parade’s End will soon be beating Downton in the battle for ratings and critical plaudits.

Cumberbatch has already launched an attack on ITV’s hit costume drama, denouncing it as  ‘sentimental’, ‘cliched’ and ‘atrocious’.

Outraged Downton devotees are now labelling the actor ‘Cumberbitch’ but its creator, Julian Fellowes, appears to be talking down the furore, claiming: ‘I am quite sure what Ben said has been taken out of context.’

Like Downton, Parade’s End opens in 1912 and unravels the tangled love lives of the English upper-classes in the run-up to the First World War. It soon makes Fellowes’s version of Edwardian life – in which a Turkish gentleman has died in Lady Mary’s bed after making love with her and Lady Sybil has run off with a chauffeur – look positively prim and proper. TV insiders have already dubbed the BBC production ‘Downton for grown-ups’.

‘I like the idea of it being called an adult drama,’ says Susanna White, director of the new five-part series. ‘The two shows are very different animals and although they may appear to have the same spots, they don’t.
‘The only similarity is the period in which they are set and the fact that they are both about a load of toffs.

‘Downton is just a lovely thing to curl up in front of with a glass of wine but ours is the opposite. I like to think of Parade’s End as Downton Abbey meets The Wire,’ she adds, referring to the gritty American crime series.


The £12 million production – one of the most expensive dramas ever commissioned by the BBC – was adapted from acclaimed modernist writer Ford Madox Ford’s series of four novels also called Parade’s End.

In contrast to Downton Abbey, which many viewers feel at times descends into soap opera, the BBC drama could not be more highbrow. ‘Ford Madox Ford tracks the shifting moods of the nation, from chauvinistic pre-war Edwardian complacency to post-war exhaustion,’ says Professor of Literature John Sutherland at University College London. ‘It was a big subject. For those inspired to pick up Penguin’s tie-in edition of Parade’s End be warned: it’s 856 pages. At two minutes a page . . . well, you can do the maths.’

Adapted by playwright Sir Tom Stoppard, Parade’s End was filmed across 150 sets and boasts a cast that also includes Miranda Richardson, Rupert Everett and Anne-Marie Duff.


Read more:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2190323/Parades-End-Two-sex-scenes-minutes--steamy-saga-BBC-hopes-grab-Downtons-crown.html

Benedict Cumberbatch: Parade's End: A series to challenge Downton (THE INDEPENDENT)

With Benedict Cumberbatch in the lead role and Tom Stoppard in charge of the script, the BBC's adaptation of Parade's End will threaten ITV's all-conquering drama. They talk to Gerard Gilbert

Benedict Cumberbatch is furiously scrolling through his iPhone, the actor trying to locate a quote that he believes summarises his character, Christopher Tietjens, in BBC2's upcoming period drama Parade's End. Ford Madox Ford's quartet of novels, written between 1924 and 1928, has been adapted for television by Sir Tom Stoppard.

"I've got every single script I'm sent on my mobile," says Cumberbatch distractedly, pausing briefly in order to shake hands. "There is this amazing moment in episode two when Valentine (his lover in the story) asks, 'Why do you hate your country?' and he says, 'I don't. I love every field, every hedgerow. I just hate what's been done to this country; it's been taken over by moneylenders.' And basically he goes on to define his version of Toryism, which is feudalism really."

All this is delivered in a torrent familiar to anyone who knows Cumberbatch and his restless, super-charged mind – although comparisons to his most famous creation, BBC1's Sherlock Holmes, are unwelcome. "Because I talk a lot, probably because I'm nervous, I get pinned into the same mania bracket," he says.

Parade's End follows Tietjens, "the last Tory", a brilliant government statistician from a wealthy Edwardian landowning family married to a flippant, adulterous socialite, Sylvia (Rebecca Hall). Despite public humiliation, he refuses to divorce her because of what he terms his "parade" – an outmoded code of ethics that is tested by the mass slaughter of the First World War, and then by Tietjens' growing love for a young suffragette, Valentine (played by Australian newcomer Adelaide Clemens). It's a journey, says Cumberbatch, from romanticism to modernism.


Tom Stoppard, who last wrote for the BBC way back in 1979, began work on his adaptation four years ago, long before Downton Abbey seduced the world, and what Stoppard calls "the current festival of toffery". "I was well into the thing before I'd even heard of Downton Abbey and decided not to watch it," he says, before adding that "great minds sometimes think alike".

"I remembered a friend telling me about going to dinner in a stately home and saying to his host, 'Your butler is very impressive.' The host replied: 'Not really – he buys in his chutney.' I put that into Parade's End, and then somebody said to me that Maggie Smith says something like that in Downton Abbey (it was actually in Julian Fellowes's script for Robert Altman's Gosford Park – where Maggie Smith's character dismisses 'bought marmalade… how feeble'). Anyway, I called Julian Fellowes up and he said, 'Oh, just carry on, don't worry about it' – so I took it out and then put it back in. In the end, the things that are similar between these different dramas are much, much less significant than the things that are dissimilar."


READ MORE: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/parades-end-a-series-to-challenge-downton-8026636.html

New Images Of Benedict Cumberbatch, Adelaide Clemens & Rebecca Hall In 'Parade's End' TELEVISION BY JOE CUNNINGHAM AUGUST 6, 2012 11:36 AM (INDIEWIRE)

Back in 2006 James McAvoy, Alice Eve, Dominic Cooper, James Corden, Rebecca Hall and Benedict Cumberbatch all starred together in the low key British rom-com “Starter For Ten.” It would take a hefty chunk of change to reassemble that cast in 2012, but the BBC and HBO have managed to secure the latter two, Hall and Cumberbatch, for their co-produced miniseries “Parade’s End.” Also working on the Tom Stoppard penned novel adaptation are Rupert Everett, Miranda Richardson, Anne-Marie Duff (aka Mrs James McAvoy), Roger Allam, Janet McTeer, Jack Huston and Aussie newcomer Adelaide Clemens.

The first images from the series have now surfaced ahead of its August 16th premiere on BBC2, and at first glance everything looks lusciously period and a little bit reminiscent of ITV’s “Downton Abbey.” Maybe it’s the Edwardian setting of the British countryside and the sight of a grand country manor, or maybe it’s just that Cumberbatch’s swept blonde hair-do looks a little bit like Dan Stevens’ in the Emmy-baiting series. Other than the many pictures of Mr. Cumberbatch, there are a couple of looks at Rebecca Hall (looking as stunning as usual), but we get to see even more of the 22 year-old Clemens who will play the young suffragette Valentine Wannop.

READ MORE: http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/new-images-of-benedict-cumberbatch-adelaide-clemens-rebecca-hall-in-parades-end-20120806

Benedict Cumberbatch In Costume Drama? OTB Meets the People Behind BBC Drama ‘Parade’s End’ August 1, 2012 by Jack Sharp (ON THE BOX)

After a 30-year absence, the prolific playwright Sir Tom Stoppard is set to return to the BBC with Parade’s End, a five-part drama adapted from a quartet of novels by Ford Madox Ford. Part funded by HBO and with a reported budget of £12 million, the miniseries is rumoured to be the most expensive production ever broadcast on BBC Two, but like many other recent British dramas, the story takes place around the First World War.

Sherlock’s Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Christopher Tietjens, a conservative English gentleman trying to contend with his unruly, adulterous wife at the centre of the piece and despite his fame on these shores, when the Beeb suggested him to American producers, they took some convincing.

“There was really on a tiny handful of people that we felt could play him,” Susanna White, the director of the upcoming series explains. “And Benedict just seemed so right to us.”

“This was a couple of years ago though and HBO weren’t sure who he was. They took some persuading’. We said, ‘Trust us, he’s a truly great actor, and by the time Parade’s End has come out everyone will have heard of him”.

Sherlock has since gained much attention in the States and his roles in the new Star Trek film and The Hobbit haven’t done his profile in America much harm either. “Of course, now everyone over there has heard of him,” she adds with a wry smile.




READ MORE:http://channelhopping.onthebox.com/2012/08/01/cumberbatch-in-costume-drama-otb-meets-the-people-behind-bbc-drama-parades-end/ 

Anna Karenina: Toronto Film Festival: 10 films with Oscar dreams by Dave Karger (EW.COM)

As it has been for most of the last dozen or years, the Toronto International Film Festival was a major Academy Awards feeder last year: Three of the nine eventual Best Picture nominees (The Artist, The Descendants, and Moneyball) played there, while Beginners, which won Best Supporting Actor for Christopher Plummer, premiered at the festival in 2010. Now that much of this year’s lineup has been announced, here are the 10 movies I’ll have my eye on when I head up north in September.

Anna Karenina

The first two times Joe Wright and Keira Knightley collaborated, it resulted in a nomination for either Best Picture (Atonement) or Best Actress (Pride and Prejudice). Adapting Tolstoy’s classic novel with the help of Oscar-winning screenwriter Tom Stoppard seems Academy-friendly to the max.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPGLRO3fZnQ&feature=player_embedded#!


READ THE REST OF THE LIST OF TOP CONTENDERS GOING TO TORONTO:
http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/07/24/toronto-film-festival-oscar-race/