#Britbox

[oswincoleman]

New behind the scenes pictures of Jenna Coleman filming The Jetty!

[forsworned]

Promised pics of Barry from Comic Con last night

[stellaseveride]

MIDSOMER MURDERS 2.03 (aka a summary)

[safedistancefrombeingsmart]

Britbox upoladed a few nice Red Carpet videos to the IG account. I cut together Martin's parts. Enjoy.

[meandhisjohn]

It's here!

Welcome to our Responder week!

Six different articles.

Six different topics.

The cast, the writing, a patient's opinion on panic attacks, the trauma and most of all:

Mr. Martin Freeman as Chris Carson!

All articles are already online!

I'll post them separately through the week but if you want to see them all..please go ahead and honour a fantastic S1!!!

[edeschmedie]

May The Firth Be With You | BritBox

I cannot believe I had never seen this before. How did I never see this before?

[bonobochick]

It took several seasons over a few years... starting with S10 and ending in S13.... but Death In Paradise gave viewers a proper ending to the love story of Florence & Neville. 💗

He fell in love with her during S10 and when he confessed his feelings in S11, she told him that saw him as just a friend. Or so she thought. Still grieving her fiancé who was murdered in S8, Florence went in to witness protection partway through S11 after an undercover sting and emerged again towards the end of S13 in which she admitted that she missed Neville more than she thought she would and realized her feelings for him were deeper than she initially understood them to be. Florence & Neville sailed off together after a reunion hiccup to travel the world on an adventure and build a foundation as something more. 🥰 The Floreville shipper in me was happy that they got a HFN / HEA send off together from the show after years of build up.

[mountainsinaboat]

I temporarily subscribed to britbox so I can binge everything they have with MyAnna Buring in it. bc why not?

[annabolinas]

Anne of the Thousand Days Review: Part 2

Alright, here's part 2! Spoiler alert but this movie has some shockingly regressive views about women... no, not just by the male characters in it.

Absurdities only mount as Henry visits Anne in person in her Tower cell and offers to let her live and have custody of Elizabeth if she agrees to an annulment. Anne utterly refuses; while this is completely the opposite of what the real Anne did, this is an understandable deviation, as it is more straightforwardly heroic. Anne lying that she committed adultery with “half your court”, though, is not only baffling, but an insult to the real Anne’s memory. I know that sounds harsh, but bear with me. In the movie, Anne seems to fling this lie at Henry to wound his fragile masculinity, as seen in her remark that he should “look, for the rest of your life, at every man that ever knew me and wonder if I didn’t find them a better man than you!” But Anne shifts far too rapidly from crying out at her trial, “They were innocent as I am innocent! Any man, no matter who he is, who says the contrary, is a liar!”, to freely lying and stating that she’s an adulteress. There’s no buildup, no rhyme or reason that the audience can see as to why she would do such a thing. Moreover, the real Anne never confessed to adultery, twice swearing on the Eucharist that she was innocent of all charges. Anne of the Thousand Days’ portrayal of its Anne as flippantly and falsely confessing to adultery and incest undermines her real-life courage and bravery in maintaining the truth until the end, even on peril of her soul’s damnation. It’s incredibly disrespectful, to say the least.

Above all, the movie fails on an emotional level. Not only does it sag in the middle with its pacing and excitement, but it fails to create a compelling or believable relationship between Anne and Henry, the movie’s two leads. The marketing for this movie played up its romantic aspects, even if it is really more reminiscent of a boss sexually harassing young female interns; its poster reads, ‘He was King. She was barely 18. And in their thousand days they played out the most passionate and shocking love story in history!” However, the movie fails to convince audiences of a core part of its story - the romance, let alone the believability of Henry and Anne’s relationship. There are usually two ways adaptations go with Henry and Anne’s relationship. They either have Henry and Anne, after some point, have a genuinely loving relationship until it goes horribly wrong (e.g.  The Tudors, Blood, Sex, & Royalty) or portray Anne as stringing Henry along to win a crown (e.g. Henry VIII and His Six Wives (1972), The Other Boleyn Girl, Wolf Hall to an extent). Anne of the Thousand Days takes a third choice and goes the route of portraying Henry as sexually harassing an initially quite unwilling Anne. Henry’s attraction to Anne is never explained, as in the first scene (chronologically), he’s drawn to her before she says a word, even ordering Wolsey to break her romance with Percy. Why? Is it just because he wants her in his bed? After all, Henry declares at one point that he’s never been refused by a woman; maybe he finds the challenge exhilarating. But if so, why does he remain fixated with her after she insults his words and poetry, even though he says there’s no better way to end his interest than by doing that? Indeed, Anne later says that Henry wants to know whether she’s guilty because “that would touch your manhood and your pride”, indicating that he is touchy about such subjects. Apparently, though, he’s not sensitive enough to abandon Anne after she blasts every part of his personality at the start of their courtship. Why does he still try to woo her for six years, throughout which Henry admits that “Not once have you said, ‘I love you’”? To be clear, it’s not an impossible scenario, but it is perhaps the farthest thing from romance imaginable.

In other words, what are we supposed to think of Henry and Anne’s relationship? Far from being a passionate romance turned toxic, Anne of the Thousand Days portrays a toxic relationship driven by lust on Henry’s part and ambition on Anne’s part, a relationship where supposedly, they only love each other for one day. Such a characterization of any relationship, let alone the fascinating and complex one of the real Henry and Anne, would be too reductive. Henry starting to hate Anne immediately after she falls for him not only is too simplistic for viewers, but not even supported by the movie. Henry continues to love Anne and behave affectionately towards her after they sleep together until she gives birth to Elizabeth, meaning there are at least nine months of mutual love between them in the movie’s timeline! 

Even the ending of Anne of the Thousand Days, despite its seemingly-empowering voiceover of Anne narrating how Elizabeth will be a great queen, is hampered by an unwillingness to face the full tragedy of her death. In real life, Anne was at most 35 when she was beheaded on false charges, and in the timeline of the movie, she’s around 29, following the 1507 birth date. Anne’s death is presented as poignant, as she remarks on the May flowers growing just as she did on her coronation day. But the absence of her execution speech, in what I can only assume is an attempt to highlight its somber brutality, is in fact borderline disrespectful to the real woman. While unlike Anne Boleyn (2021), this film does not purport to present Anne’s side of the story through a feminist lens, it is still galling that in place of the real Anne’s words, the writers inserted a fictitious monologue about Elizabeth’s greatness, which the real Anne could never have known! The real Anne Boleyn was a highly intelligent, ambitious, and reform-minded queen executed by her husband on false charges. Not only was her death, along with the deaths of the five men accused with her (never mentioned in the film!) a grave miscarriage of justice, but it was a tragedy. Much of its tragic nature derives from the fact that Anne left her toddler daughter, as far as she knew, dependent on the whims of her father and a bastard. There is no way she could have known, that anyone could have known, that Elizabeth would become queen. Anne of the Thousand Days giving Anne this knowledge makes sense out of a senseless, brutal demise, almost implying that there was a silver lining to Anne’s death because her daughter became queen.

It once again defines a woman by her reproductive history, and the film follows in a long tradition of claiming Anne’s real worth lay in her womb and the great queen it produced, her tragic downfall notwithstanding. Despite its ostensible focus on Anne Boleyn, the movie, like so many films then before and since, fails to understand - arguably, does not try to understand - historical women like Anne on their own terms. Women, in this mindset, must always be defined by their relation to a man or an exceptional woman. It’s not enough that Anne was an exceptional woman in her own right, that women are inherently important on their own, not by virtue of their family. Anne of the Thousand Days, at a time when cinema was pioneering in so many ways, is rigidly traditional in its views of women. Dramatic license with history needs to both fulfill a satisfying dramatic aim and at least be in contact with the facts; Anne of the Thousand Days’ portrayal of its titular queen’s death fails on both counts.

Needless to say, I didn’t like this movie. Its costumes, sumptuous pageantry, and strong performances from Genevieve Bujold as Anne, Anthony Quayle as Wolsey, and John Colicos as Cromwell, cannot make up for the fact that the rest of the film’s parts are either mediocre or simply bad. Why then do so many people think fondly not just of Genevieve Bujold’s Anne, but also this movie? Part of it must be nostalgia - it would have gained a special place in the hearts of Tudor fans who grew up in 1969 and the following decade. Its accessibility for purchase on platforms like Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and Youtube, also meant it gained more popularity than the far superior 1970 BBC miniseries The Six Wives of Henry VIII, which is only available on DVD and the platform Britbox. But I’ve argued in this review that Anne of the Thousand Days is just as inaccurate as more scorned depictions like The Tudors; in fact, I firmly believe that on the whole, Anne of the Thousand Days has more inaccuracies in its plot and characterization than The Tudors! Why, then, in spite of its major inaccuracies, does Anne of the Thousand Days retain a reputation for authenticity? 

The fact Jonathan Rhys Meyers looks nothing like Henry VIII in The Tudors and has little of the real king’s imposing majesty is surely part of it. More to the point, though, The Tudors’ propensity towards sex and nudity in its first two seasons meant it seemed louche and vulgar compared to the sober and slow-paced Anne of the Thousand Days. If Natalie Dormer’s Anne was criminally overlooked by critics because of her show’s disreputable appearance, then the opposite has occurred with this movie. Genevieve Bujold’s great performance has managed to elevate a quite mediocre and often horribly reductive movie into the hallowed halls of the Period Drama Pantheon. It’s time for a broader reappraisal of this movie: one which dethrones it for good.

[bewitchingomen]

I've just found out that (the news article is from July 2024 but I wasn't aware until last night) there will be an Inspector Lynley Mysteries reboot made by BritBox and I must admit that I have mixed feelings. It is just that I will forever be annoyed that the original series got cancelled too soon and without completing the sixth season. There were usually four episodes per season and only two were made/aired in the final season. The show just ended but didn't have an ending. Nathaniel Parker and Sharon Small will always be Tommy and Barbara to me.

Now, this doesn't mean I won't give the new Lynley a chance. There have been plenty of adaptations of Sherlock Holmes shown on TV from Jeremy Brett, to Benedict Cumberbatch, to Johnny Lee Miller and I've liked each one.

Oh, BritBox streaming service had better keep the OG Inspector Lynley Mysteries to watch once they release the new one.

[brian-in-finance]

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Remember… basically, everything that men do in your world, women do in ours. — Barbie, 🎥 2023

[oswincoleman]

Good news for those that haven't been able to watch Jenna Coleman's latest show, "The Jetty" yet: it will appear on Hulu and Britbox on December 13th!

[shipthecarsons]

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[marsharmonicorchestra]

why in the every living FUCK is north and south no longer on britbox

[i-really-should-change-my-url]

I'm already more invested in Jack Mooney 2 episodes in than I got in Richard Poole for his entire time

[meandhisjohn]

Three weeks until The Responder S2 arrives in the US via @BritBox_US

Revisit the first season with us, and meet the cast, the writer, and a man who deals with more than one demon.

Season 1 on the Freemaniac blog.

Gif by @safedistancefrombeingsmart