#watership down bbc

[the-end-poem]

Been thinking about Watership Down a lot recently, both from a literature perspective and from a xenofiction perspective! It has it's clear biases and flaws but I still love it all the same! Had to draw some of the main crew while they were in my head! In order: Bigwig, Hazel, Fiver, Strawberry, Blueberry, Holly, and Dandelion ! Almost the entire Sandleford crew but not quiet!

——

If you like this design it’s up on my Redbubble !

[nigrit]

[patmax17]

6 exactly for me

LOTR and the hobbit, the da vinci code, Harry Potter, hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, and watership down. I have the little Prince but still have to read it...

How many have you read?

How many have you read?

The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Reblog this and bold the titles you’ve read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein 3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6 The Bible 7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens 11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien 17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks 18 Catcher in the Rye 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger 20 Middlemarch – George Eliot 21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell 22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald 23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens 24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh 27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame 31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy 32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis 34 Emma – Jane Austen 35 Persuasion – Jane Austen 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden 40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne 41 Animal Farm – George Orwell 42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving 45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins 46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery 47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy 48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood 49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding 50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel 52 Dune – Frank Herbert 53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen 55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth 56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon 57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens 58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck 62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov 63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas 66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac 67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding 69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie 70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens 72 Dracula – Bram Stoker 73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett 74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson 75 Ulysses – James Joyce 76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome 78 Germinal – Emile Zola 79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray 80 Possession – AS Byatt 81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens 82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel 83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker 84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro 85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert 86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry 87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton 91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad 92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery 93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks 94 Watership Down – Richard Adams 95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole 96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute 97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl 100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

[krinsbez]

A Watership Down Meta/Headcanon/Rant

So, both @jaybutnotthebird and @stavarosthearcane have stated that, to their knowledge, I've not posted this on tumblr, and indicated that they would like to hear it, I'm posting it now!

So I don't recall if it was stated explicitly or was, like, a rumor, but everything about Gen. Woundwort makes so much more sense when you realize he's a hutch rabbit.

Why is he so enormous? Cuz he was bred to be big and fluffy, was fed flayrah everyday, and was taken to the vet if he got sick.

Why is he so afraid of humans? Because they were the first elil he ever encountered.

Why is everything he does in complete opposition to proper lapine culture and behavior? Because he grew up not knowing anything about it.

Efrafa is, in essence, an attempt to make a warren into a hutch.

OK got that? So, here's another thing to think about. Cowslip's Warren, or Strawberry's Warren, or the Warden of the Shining Wire, or whatever you want to call it...they also completely disregard traditional Lapine culture and behavior; they don't tell stories of El-ahrairah, they make weird poetry about the inevitability of death, they keep babbling about dignity, they make ART, etc. This, by the way, is why it and Efrafa come off as so viscerally wrong, because Mr. Adams went to the trouble of putting us in a rabbit headspace, so we can understand the full horror; it's not just Woundwort's tyranny or the farmer's snares, it's that they're unnatural and rabbits aren't meant to live that way.

Now, I know what you're thinking when I say that word, "unnatural", but put down the pitchfork.

Because Hazel and Co. do a LOT of things that is outside the realm of typical rabbit behavior:

Despite being Chief Rabbit, Hazel let's the others argue with and talk back to him.

They made friends with mice and a bird.

He adopted Cowslip's Warren's idea of using tree roots to create a big central chamber

Tales (the sequel short story collection) has them adopt a (obvs. less aggro) version of the Efrafan practice of having the Owsla run patrols

They busted out hutch rabbits.

They used a boat

Meanwhile, Sandleford, the Warren that our heroes fled, was apparently the epitome of a traditional Warren and of course they all died horribly.

So, what's the difference?

It goes back to the last lines of the first myth, part of which was used as the first animated film adaptation's tagline:

“All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.”

(I bolded the important part)

Sandleford's Chief Rabbit (EDIT: The Threarah) decided he liked things as they were and refused to change, and his people died. Cowslip and Co. allow themselves to be farmed and treat death as an inevitability, and they're slowly going mad and dying one by one. Gen. Woundwort teaches his Owsla to respond to every situation by fighting, and they break and flee when the unexpected happens. The ordinary rabbits of Efrafa are forced to live like hutch rabbits and they're miserable and not having babies.

Hazel does weird stuff…but he does so because he's in a weird situation and has to adapt. He listens to the other's concerns and ideas, he keeps an open mind, he figures out what resources are available to him, and then figures out how he can use them to protect his people.

In short? Unlike Woundwort, Cowslip & Co., or the unnamed Chief Rabbit of Sandleford EDIT: The Threarah, he is cunning and full of tricks.

(I think one of the reasons the BBC miniseries from a few years back didn't hit right is that they failed to get this)

Anyways, thanks for coming to my TED Talk

[dlrconlicense]

MY CULTURAL FIRSTS

Louise Brealey: My first kiss with Sherlock’s Benedict Cumberbatch

The actor and writer on taking acid at her first gig, meeting Michael Caine – and the moment she knew the BBC detective drama was going to be huge

Louise Brealey

LEO STAAR

Jake Helm

Sunday November 12 2023, 12.13am GMT, The Sunday Times

First concert I went to

I would like to say an unknown band called Blur in a tiny tent at Reading in 1994, but I accidentally took my first and very much last acid tab off an apprentice plumber called Tony from Swansea and watched the The on the big stage instead. It was all fine until the music started to creep up from the grass right up my legs and I was surrounded by terrifying gargoyles.

First pop-inspired fashion trends I adopted

I’m afraid I was a relentlessly unfashionable child. I was a square and listened to 10cc I’m Not in Love and The Eagles’ Desperado on repeat. I did love Robert Smith [from the Cure] but I didn’t wear enormous jumpers until my twenties.

First time I realised the BBC drama Sherlock was going to be a huge hit

The read-through was electric, which is not normal. Usually, it’s nerve-jangling because everyone is terrified they’re going to be sacked. A few weeks later I was watching the scene where Benedict first stuck his head round the lab door and said to Martin Freeman: “The name is Sherlock Holmes and the address is 221b Baker Street.” And I thought, yes it is. But really, I realised it was going to be huge when I was on early Twitter and the show went off. When Sherlock kissed [my character] Molly I got 60,000 followers in an hour.

Louise Brealey as Molly Hooper, right, and the cast of Sherlock

TODD ANTONY/BBC

First TV show I enjoyed

Like everyone at school I was obsessed by Jim’ll Fix It. I put two letters into one envelope to double my chances. One was to ask to meet John Travolta because I’d seen him star in The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, a film in which he plays this kid that can’t step outside a little plastic tent or he’ll die. The other was asking to meet the pop star Paul Young — I figured I had a better chance with him because he was from Luton. At least I didn’t do what my brother did and write to Jimmy Savile to ask to meet Rolf Harris.

First film I saw at the cinema

The first film I saw on my own at the pictures was Stand by Me at The Point in Milton Keynes. I had seen River Phoenix in the video for Ben E King’s single on Top of the Pops and was utterly love-struck. That was it. River was the only one for me. I still think River was the great acting talent of his generation.

First time I cried at the cinema

Watership Down. That was actually the first film I saw at the cinema. At the Palace in Wellingborough, when I was five or six. It was the first time I had any clue that creatures die. I was very affected by it — I called my next rabbit Bright Eyes.

First actor I admired

Joan Greenwood in Kind Hearts and Coronets. She was the single most beautiful woman I’d ever seen — and I was fascinated by her voice. I also loved Richard Burton’s voice, mainly because he narrated The War of the Worlds, my dad’s favourite album. I wanted to marry Richard Burton so I could listen to him all day long.

First thing I did to embody my new character Deb in Such Brave Girls

I started with her voice. I wanted to use the Northamptonshire accent. It’s the land of my birth and how my whole family talks except for me because I was a scholarship kid at a posh school, and I’ve never worked in it before. And then the clothes — Deb is obsessed with being feminine, so with her costumes it’s often about the cleavage. I think of her as a wily street rat in dangly earrings.

First famous person I met

I didn’t meet anyone famous until my first proper job, which was as a film journalist. The most exciting thing to happen was to go to a film set and sit in Michael Caine’s trailer. He asked: “Would you like to marry me?” I blushed and started stammering at him. And then he politely pushed a little dish of Murray Mints in my direction and I realised that he’d actually said: “Would you like a Murray Mint?”

[applesandpavenders]

Someone needs to write a feminist retelling of Watership Down, but it’s Hyzenthlay and her gang trying to get out of Efrefa.

In the book it mentions that she tried to get permission to leave the warren and start a new one somewhere else, but is denied. You could totally write that and all the backstory leading up to when the Watership Down crew turn up, and then everything that happens then but from the perspective of the does.

I think this is an untapped resource! You don’t need to turn Strawberry into a girl, or Clover into this wonderdoe *side eyes the bbc mini series* you just have to work with the original cannon. Because Hyzenthlay is AWESOME. And there’s so much room for a commentary on female rights and society when it comes to how Efrefa is run vs Watership Down.

[cardinalcompass]

The relationships in the BBC show is one of the reasons I downright hate it. I've never seen the 1999 show, but I hope it does certain characters and their relationships better. One of the things I love so much is the platonic love between so many of the characters, and all of the shoehorned romances made the BBC show SO hard to watch. My family and I will ALWAYS hate that Strawberry got gender swapped just to have a stupid love triangle between Hawkbit and DANDELION of all characters (who they completely changed his character for, he has none of his original personality, rip to my favorite non-protagonist character) only to then slot Strawberry with Bigwig (BIGWIG) right at the end.

I always loved the bond in the book between Bigwig and Hyzenthlay. It wasn't romantic, but it came out of mutual respect and a mutual goal. If I'm remembering correctly, when Bigwig was thought to die after the Woundwort fight, Hazel and Hyzenthlay would barely leave his side.

So many relationships are so artfully written in this book, and I understand that in adaptations it can be difficult to translate them well, but it felt like the miniseries shunted them ALL to the side in favor of romances that didn't even work.

This is with all barely mentioning how some characters don't have their original personality or role in the story, taking away their ability to create some of their closest bonds. Bluebell taking over Dandelion's original role means that (Dandelion was stuck in a love triangle that shouldn't have existed--) he was never with Holly when they were escaping from Sandleford, saving his life by giving home something to cling onto (his jokes) taking away one of Holly's most important relationships in the book.

Strawberry, too. By making him a female character, Nildro-hain never existed, one of HIS closest bonds before joining the main group and literally the reason he joins them in the first place (which is fridging unfortunately but it is known that the main book had an emphasis on the male characters. I believe that if they wanted an important female character earlier on they could have made her live rather than gender swapping a different character)

I have so many more thoughts but this rant is already long enough lol.

Tldr, I'm disappointed with the BBC adaptation both in terms of relationships and how different characters were changed in ways that were infuriating

What do you think of relasionships in watership down?romantic or friendly or brotherly etc?in different adaptations and fave to worse?

That’s a lot of things to comment on, but I feel that it’d be obvious to say that the book(s) handled these kinds of relationships the best. Holly and Clover, or Hazel and Hyzenthlay, or Fiver and Vilthuril, were all handled subtly but with obvious devotion and care. The same went for characters that had a close friend or companion or even sibling, like Hazel and Fiver, or Holly and Bluebell, or even Strawberry and Nildro-hain. The book takes time to express fondness, even if only briefly.

In the animated series, Hazel falls for Primrose out of nowhere. And them making Blackberry a doe is bad enough, but for them to throw in some random romance with Campion was ridiculous. All the romances in this one were handled badly. However, the relationships between close friends or siblings, for instance, Hawkbit and Dandelion, were done well.

The BBC adaptation did a pretty sour job of it. Dewdrop wasn’t necessary. Clover’s romance with Hazel came out of nowhere to the detriment of more important relationships, like Hazel’s relationship with Fiver or even Bigwig. Hyzenthlay’s romance with Holly was literally just there to be a gut-punch when Holly ends up getting killed, and Strawberry’s romance with Bigwig came out of Frithing nowhere.

I think the main issue is that the book(s) made clear that rabbits are rabbits, and while they are sometimes devoted to their mates, they’re still a colony-type species first and foremost. The romances in the book(s) are downplayed because the characters are RABBITS, but in the series, they’re written more as humans, which isn’t a change that works. Romance as a subplot doesn’t work when the characters are non-anthropomorphized rabbits.

I liked the mate pairings in the book just fine, Most of them work very well. In fact, I can’t really think of any that don’t. The close relationships between Hazel and Fiver or Holly and Bluebell or even more downplayed, trusting friendships, like between Hazel and Blackberry, are artfully done. Hyzenthlay’s respect for Blackavar shows through. Pipkin’s vast admiration for Hazel is incredibly sweet and heartwarming.

My only true complaint when it comes to non-romantic pairings is just that the adaptations, sadly, don’t often tell the full stories of El-ahrairah, with the sole exception of the animated series, which isn’t always faithful. And probably one of my favourite relationships in the series is that which is between El-ahrairah and Rabscuttle. And the latter, sadly, hasn’t been in any of the adaptations, as of yet. 

[zhaliacain]

Huntikmas Day 7- What kids films and team are scared of

Lok:

Watership Down. I have never met anyone in the UK and Northern Ireland that hasn't been traumatised by this film when the BBC randomly decided to air it on tv again. Its already quite an intense plot line but I think the animation made this film 10x more disturbing to watch.

Sophie:

If you ask her, Sophie hates this film because of historical inaccuracies and playing off conspiracy theories. It definitely has nothing to do with the themes of aristocracy being targeted by dark magic and a young girl being separated from her family with limited memories of those she's lost. Definitely not. She does not cry whilst watching this film.

Cherit:

Cherit spends a lot of his time pretending to be a toy, or a statue. He wonders what else around him is also pretending...

Dante:

Obviously the Skeksis are unnerving but I think that combined with the way essence is described puts me in mind of Metz's curse and his will being drained. I think he can also related to Jen being adopted into being a seeker and having the weight of the world on his shoulders so watching this when he was younger set a really bad taste in his mouth.

Den:

The land before time. Den: "Its just a stupid kids film and its not even good" He's never got passed the mother dying scene.

Harrison:

Okay so Chitty Chitty Bang Bang doesn't start scaring Harrison until after the Blood-Spiral. As a child he thought the concept of the child catcher was ridiculous and the children were just naive for being taken. That is until he joins a magic cult intent on destroying the world because they used his own anger against him and used it to lure him away from his own brother.

Zhalia:

Also the dark crystal. Dante made her watch it to justify his fears and the whole laboratories and skeksis voice thing really puts her in mind of Klaus. I don't think there's a whole lot of movies that would bother Zhalia and I think with how rough her childhood was, she either didn't watch a lot of films or didn't have the capacity to spend emotions on them.

[not technically related though, in current settings of Huntik I have (as in set in 2020's not 2009) when Zhalia and Ryder are teenagers they sneak into a cinema to watch human centipede and given some of the experiments Klaus runs it really freaks Zhalia out. Given that he's trying to raise a spy/assassin he can't really have her being terrified of one film so using scientific logic he decided to desensitise her through repetition. But Zhalia watching HC over and over in that lab may be scientifically sound but not parenting sound so it just becomes a massive trigger for her. fun times.]

[magicaltear]

How many have you read?

The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Bold the titles you’ve read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein 3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6 The Bible 7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens 11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien 17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks 18 Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger 20 Middlemarch – George Eliot 21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell 22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald 23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens 24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh 27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame 31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy 32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis 34 Emma – Jane Austen 35 Persuasion – Jane Austen 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden 40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne 41 Animal Farm – George Orwell 42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving 45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins 46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery 47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy 48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood 49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding 50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel 52 Dune – Frank Herbert 53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen 55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth 56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon 57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens 58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck 62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov 63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas 66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac 67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding 69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie 70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens 72 Dracula – Bram Stoker 73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett 74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson 75 Ulysses – James Joyce 76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome 78 Germinal – Emile Zola 79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray 80 Possession – AS Byatt 81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens 82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel 83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker 84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro 85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert 86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry 87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton 91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad 92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery 93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks 94 Watership Down – Richard Adams 95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole 96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute 97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl 100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

As found in the original post I saw by @macrolit

My total: 43/100

[invisibleicewands]

Spooky monks and Michael Sheen murals: behind the scenes of new BBC drama The Way

Michael Sheen says he wants viewers of his new drama The Way “to feel like what it has felt like for the last 10 years of living” in the UK.

That is, “in a society where you don't know if you're in a horror film or a sitcom,” he told viewers at a Q&A for the show on Monday night. “Something that feels life and death stakes suddenly goes incredibly surreal and absurd, and then goes back to being incredibly scary again.”

The Way, which is due to air in February, follows the Driscoll family in the old industrial town of Port Talbot on the Welsh coast. Estranged from each other, they nevertheless have to set out on a cross-country odyssey to safety when they become tied up with civil unrest in the area.

In addition to making a cameo appearance in the show, The Way also marks Sheen’s first directorial role.

“I was never going to direct it. And then they said it's going to be in Port Talbot and then I have to direct it,” he joked.

“And the original seed of the idea was, I had this idea about watching a British family being uprooted and you didn't know why. And having to kind of flee their homes and go on the journey across Britain and then get across the channel. So it was a sort of refugee journey in reverse to the way we normally see it.”

It is also a passion project for the Welsh actor, who grew up in and now lives in Port Talbot himself – while the cast, who are majority Welsh, mostly grew up in the same area.

“There was so much of him in it,” said Steffan Rhodri about Sheen, who plays dad Geoff Driscoll (and who went to drama school with him). “I mean, you see a bit of Port Talbot. The one bit you didn't see is a massive wall with a mural of him on it.”

Was it hard to film the show without including it? “It was very hard,” Sheen joked. “We came very, very close – I mean, we were literally around the corner from it, and Callum made me go and have a photograph with it between takes. So that was difficult.”

��Callum’ is Callum Scott Howells, best known for his performance in Russell T Davies drama It’s A Sin. He plays the disaffected Driscoll son, Owen – whom we first meet as a lonely figure looking for connection, and who gets caught up in the riots that sweep the town.

“It says in the script, James put something like, ‘we don't know why at this point, but he's feeling something. He’s there now, and he’s present’. And that for me kind of said everything. Like he doesn't he doesn't even know why he's rioting, but he's doing it,” Howells said.

“That was something that I really kind of threw myself into, and Michael was great in allowing me to do that. Yeah, those riot scenes were so fun, we just got to go nuts, you know. I headbutted a riot shield… because I’m nuts.”

The show itself also features the writing talents of James Graham, best known for political film Brexit: The Uncivil War and BBC crime drama Sherwood.

“We talked collectively about not wanting a traditional dystopian future, which was, which was really grim and bleak,” he said. "I think we all got excited by imagining the reverse of that... what if it was the myths and the legends and the folklores that embed themselves in our national psyche. Do they trap us? Do they inhibit us?"

The end result, he said, was a "contamination of genres." Not just social realism: the second episode becomes "a road movie, or an adventure movie on foot.

"So you start to see these elements of the myths and legends that the family carry with them become those stories we grew up with like Watership Down and Wizard of Oz, and it becomes very fantastical and weird."

[ash-of-ruins]

Watership Down Aquired

I have obtained the book! Library finally had it.

I've never read Watership before this, hence why I wanted to read it before writing my fic, and only ever watched the old animated movie and the BBC 3D animated show.

I'm 4 chapters in, barely 11 pages, and already there are so many details and character changing aspects not explored in the show and movie that I am impressed by.

I am going to love the book so much. Thoughts and mild spoilers under the cut.

A couple things I noticed about Bigwig's characterization I like:

Bigwig chose to heed Fiver's warning early on. In the versions I've seen he seems reluctant to trust Fiver's visions at all, but in the book he straight up admits to believing in prophetic visions.

He left the Owsla due to Threarah being an old grump and because he felt like he could be doing more.

Bigwig is actually the one who independently wants to try and get junior Owsla to evacuate with them, and Hazel warns him that's risky.

Also also, Threarah, the Sandleford Chief Rabbit, gets actual context about who he is and why he doesn't heed Fiver's warning.

He's coolheaded and doesn't like to move the whole warren drastically if he can avoid it, preferring to think critically with as much information as he can get and acting accordingly. Of course a nebulous bad feeling wouldn't persuade him, it's not his nature. He didn't even budge when there was a myxomatosis outbreak, he just isolated the sick rabbits, and it worked, so why should he worry about a gut feeling. It's tragic, but it makes sense.

[liminalweirdo]

How many have you read?

The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Reblog this and bold the titles you’ve read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein 3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6 The Bible 7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens 11 Little Women – Louisa May Alcott 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien 17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks 18 Catcher in the Rye 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger 20 Middlemarch – George Eliot 21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell 22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald 23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens 24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh 27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame 31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy 32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis 34 Emma – Jane Austen 35 Persuasion – Jane Austen 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden 40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne 41 Animal Farm – George Orwell 42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving 45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins 46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery 47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy 48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood 49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding 50 Atonement – Ian McEwan 51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel 52 Dune – Frank Herbert 53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen 55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth 56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon 57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens 58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck 62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov 63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas 66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac 67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding 69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie 70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens 72 Dracula – Bram Stoker 73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett 74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson 75 Ulysses – James Joyce 76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome 78 Germinal – Emile Zola 79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray 80 Possession – AS Byatt 81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens 82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel 83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker 84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro 85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert 86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry 87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton 91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad 92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery 93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks 94 Watership Down – Richard Adams 95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole 96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute 97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl 100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

34 in completion, 47 if you count the ones I started and didn't finish

original post

[child-of-the-danube]

The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Reblog this and bold the titles you’ve read.

1. Pride and prejudice - Jane Austen

2. Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien

3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë

4. Harry Potter series

5. To kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6. The Bible

7. Wuthering heights - Emily Brontë (TBR)

8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9. His dark material - Philip Pullman

10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11. Little Women - Louisa M. Alcott

12. Tess of the d'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (DNF)

14. Complete works of Shakespeare (TBR)

15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien

17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18. Catcher in the Rye

19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffeneger

20. Middlemarch - George Eliot

21. Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26. Brideshead revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky

28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33. Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis

34. Emma - Jane Austen

35. Persuasion - Jane Austen

36. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis

37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres

39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41. Animal Farm - George Orwell

42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (DNF)

43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47. Far from the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy (TBR)

48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding (TBR)

50. Atonement - Ian McEwan

51. Life of Pi - Yan Martel

52. Dune - Frank Herbert

53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (DNF)

58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (TBR)

59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night -time - Mark Haddon

60. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt (TBR)

64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (DNF)

66. On the Road - Jack Kerouac

67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding

69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville (DNF)

71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72. Dracula - Bram Stoker

73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74. Notes from a Small Island - Bill Bryson

75. Ulysses - James Joyce

76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78. Germinal - Emile Zola

79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80. Possession - AS Byatt

81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83. The Colour Purple - Alice Walker (TBR)

84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (TBR)

85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87. Charlotte's Web - EB White

88. The Five People You meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom

89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94. Watership Down - Richard Adams

95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (DNF)

[muaka-safari]

Been watching Watership Down again (the recent BBC version) and I think Fiver and Vakama should start a self help group for ppl who get horrible visions of the future (esp of their home being destroyed) and have a Not Fun Time trying to get others to believe them

[elijah-loyal]

(reposting from original bc it sounds fun)

How many have you read?

The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Reblog this and bold the titles you’ve read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein

3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger

20 Middlemarch – George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis

34 Emma – Jane Austen

35 Persuasion – Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne

41 Animal Farm – George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving

45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel 52 Dune – Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

72 Dracula – Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses – James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal – Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession – AS Byatt 81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel

83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

94 Watership Down – Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

[esperata]

How many have you read?

The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Reblog this and bold the titles you’ve read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein

3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger

20 Middlemarch – George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis

34 Emma – Jane Austen

35 Persuasion – Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne

41 Animal Farm – George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving

45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel

52 Dune – Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

72 Dracula – Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses – James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal – Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession – AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel

83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

94 Watership Down – Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo