I recently had to write Victorians/Edwardians. I know a lot about the period but the dialogue is hard. You can’t sound like they wrote. So I slowly watched UD for probably the fourth time. Just for tone. The dialogue is historically true but crystal clear. - ThreadSky

wychstreet.bsky.social • 66 days ago

I recently had to write Victorians/Edwardians. I know a lot about the period but the dialogue is hard. You can’t sound like they wrote. So I slowly watched UD for probably the fourth time. Just for tone. The dialogue is historically true but crystal clear.

Reposted from CharleyM

I hate to admit it, but I've seen the entirety of Upstairs, Downstairs four times, beginning with the original run. Could it be my favorite show of all time? It could be. I'll never forget watching with my late father and enjoying the hell out of Sir Jeffrey Dillon.

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johnnymorton.bsky.social•66 days ago

The diaries of Linley Sambourne are sparse, but are great to give you a sense of the period among the upper middle class.

wychstreet.bsky.social•66 days ago

Angela Baddeley was born in 1904 & wouldn’t let the writers be too modern.

alecrubin.bsky.social•66 days ago

This is news to me. I spent a lot of time at the Shaw Festival in the Chris Newton era of the ‘90s-‘00s. Lots of GBS, Granville-Barker, Barrie, etc. Sure they were writing in a certain style, and often in literary mode, but how divorced was it from actual speech? And what else do you have to go on?

wychstreet.bsky.social•66 days ago

They would be the writers I'd go to first - mind you Shaw sounds like Shaw, more than anything - when I said you can't sound like they wrote I meant letters, etc - but I needed something I could hear every day...

alecrubin.bsky.social•66 days ago

So you’re writing a previous era’s dialogue by inference (and research)? I mean, of course you are. It just never occurred to me.

wychstreet.bsky.social•66 days ago

The UD people sounded both comtemporary and like themselves - that’s what I was going for

alecrubin.bsky.social•66 days ago

Ah, of course. I always learn things from you. Which is nice now that I don’t go to the theater anymore.

wychstreet.bsky.social•66 days ago

Granville Barker is very very good, he needs no help today

alecrubin.bsky.social•66 days ago

The late Canadian director Neil Munro was a first-rate interpreter of G-B. Made it sing for a 1990s tourist audience expecting summer stock.

kerrlockhart.bsky.social•66 days ago

Just put "daresay" in every other sentence. Also "vouchsafe."

trampolinechaplin.bsky.social•65 days ago

No real linguistic expertise here, but some historical training. I think another film that gets at Victorian speech, manners & milieu in a rigorous, ethnographic way is Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy.

wychstreet.bsky.social•65 days ago

1000%

cmonagan.bsky.social•66 days ago

That's Hawkesworth, right? I was always excited when I saw his name pop up in the opening credits. I knew it would be a special episode.

wychstreet.bsky.social•66 days ago

Hawkesworth was the producer; the second he bought it he brought it Freddy Shaughnessy as head writer, who was the perfect person - he was in that world, he knew it, but he was never quite of it

drobinsonfilm.bsky.social•66 days ago

That gulf between writing and speech is always interesting.

Aside from court transcripts etc diaries might be one of the closest things to a window to speech. I recently read the diaries of Henry “Chips” Channon and it’s pretty extraordinary stuff.

wychstreet.bsky.social•66 days ago

Haven’t they recently come out unexpurgated?

drobinsonfilm.bsky.social•66 days ago

I read a hell of a lot of Queen Victoria’s diaries for a project about ten years ago, which was mostly useful for language, but you can palpably sense that everything truly interesting had been (literally) burned by her daughter who edited them.

wychstreet.bsky.social•66 days ago

John Brown..

drobinsonfilm.bsky.social•66 days ago

Indeed they have, the last volume released last year I think, those are the ones I went through (never read the edited ones)

wychstreet.bsky.social•66 days ago

🤔

drobinsonfilm.bsky.social•66 days ago

Turns out my sense of when “last year” was is off by a few years…

lafleurmtl.bsky.social•66 days ago

Heavens,I have vapors

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