The Crimson Field - BBC drama series

[Guest]

no one has to listen or respond to these complaints on forums, if they irritate, just don't look.

Absolutely

Mike

[Hollytree]

Don't just take my word for it, and by all means watch it, you're quite within your right to like it? I don't.

Mike

If I can find the time!

[CarylW]

I did a lot of work pre production and was on set with Christine but they basically ignored all we said especially the QAS uniforms because scarlet did not look good on camera!

I then read some scripts and made corrections but I doubt they took them into consideration. I have not watched the series and I am cautious about doing so.

Pete starling

That's interesting Pete. I wonder why they decided that scarlet didn't look good on camera. I'd seriously like to know the answer to that one. The scarlet uniforms of the redcoats in the Sharpe series looked very effective. I can imagine the furore if they'd had them mincing about in maroon instead.

[Moonraker]

That's interesting Pete. I wonder why they decided that scarlet didn't look good on camera. I'd seriously like to know the answer to that one. The scarlet uniforms of the redcoats in the Sharpe series looked very effective. I can imagine the furore if they'd had them mincing about in maroon instead.

Time was when we press officers advised TV interviewees not to wear red because the camera didn't like the colour, but surely technology has improved since then. As Caryl points out, the redcoats in Sharpe look good - as they do in some episodes of Hornblower and in films made in various decades showing them in the Scottish Highlands and America.

Moonraker

[geraint]

I've stopped watching Great War commemorative programmes. I was an oik and an anorak for programmes pertaining to the Great War and I would even postpone going to the pub when ANYTHING relating to the Great War came up on telly. That was until about three months ago. Mrs G would diligently record or select GW programmes for me, and was gob-smacked when I told her henceforth not to bother.

The same is true about books. Last week I bought Max Arthur's The Road Home, 2010 first paperback edition, and was horrified to find out that it had been previously sold (AND BOUGHT AND READ BY ME) as We Will Remember Them. A thoroughly disgusting practice and I should be able to sue the publishers and author for acute malpractice. I shan't be buying any other books by him nor watching crap jumping on the bandwagon Great War tv programmes.

[kenneth505]

Is the next episode the finale? While I will certainly continue watching I'm disappointed that the plot doesn't seem to be developing. What storyline is rising? What narrative thread is really connecting each episode? Besides 'DON'T RUN on the Duckboards' I really can't say. Im sure nothing is going to come out of this program near as interesting as the admission by several pals that at the end of 37 days they were still rooting for a diplomatic solution!

[slick63]

Is the next episode the finale?

I get the feeling that "Crimson Fields" may last just as long as the war did unfortunately. If it does, you can expect the plot lines (if any exist) to get more and more bizarre, and connected less with WW1 and more with the likes of "Eastenders".

[petestarling]

I hate to say this but when I left the set I asked if this was a 'one off' and was told that because it had cost so much to build the set it would probably run to at least one more series.

Pete

[Old Tom]

This thread goes on and on and on. What with this TV programme and Jamaica Inn one wonders if all those highly paid BBC staff, which we employ - not me actually, poor old b----r- do with their time. As we are a 'forum' I suppose we can't let the BBC know our views.

Old Tom

[keithmroberts]

We don't have a view as a forum. We provide a platform on which some members express their views and exchange comments.

Keith

[spof]

Individuals can always contact the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/faqs/contacting_bbc

[slick63]

What with this TV programme and Jamaica Inn one wonders if all those highly paid BBC staff, which we employ - not me actually, poor old b----r- do with their time.

Old Tom

Well they`re always stating that they need the TV licence fees in order to make quality programmes. The mind boggles as to what nonsense they would turn out if they didn`t get the fees.

[ianw]

Well they`re always stating that they need the TV licence fees in order to make quality programmes. The mind boggles as to what nonsense they would turn out if they didn`t get the fees.

No, it's the excess money that breeds trash like this - what irritates me is that they create an expensive set and then people it with expensive actors and blow me down give them a lazy , cliche ridden and intelligence insulting script. Hollywood usually now does the same.

[Moonraker]

BTW, the series is filmed on Salisbury Plain and the huts have a look of semi-permanency. I would guess they were/are erected in the area of the former West Down campsites or on the Eastern ranges?

Moonraker

Edit:

IMDB says that (some) filming was at Charlton Park, near Malmesbury, which surprises me. I've yet to spot any scenes that look like this locality, though they may appear in later episodes. The Park was used pre-WW1 by the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry and as a Belgian refugee camp in 1914, and there was a 30-bed VAD hospital there.

I'm wrong! A GWF member who's visited the site assures me that the set is at Charlton Park. I could have sworn that some of the panoramic shots were of the Plain.

Moonraker

[slick63]

No, it's the excess money that breeds trash like this - what irritates me is that they create an expensive set and then people it with expensive actors and blow me down give them a lazy , cliche ridden and intelligence insulting script. Hollywood usually now does the same.

I couldn`t have put it better.

[Gunboat]

I was discussing this yesterday with my sister who is a retired nurse who has no interest in The Great War. She said she watches it because there is nothing much else to watch and that she found some of the plot line to be unbelievable.

I seem to recall there was a series on a few years ago set in a late Victorian hospital (I seen to recall Cherie Lunghi was in it playing a sister/matron)

I had no great interest in it one way or another and because I have no interest in late Victorian hospital I couldn't attest to its accuracy or not. If we simply accept that the crimson field isn't a docu drama or even a historical drama and rather a drama set in the past it may be more palatable for most. I shan't be returning to the series.

[slick63]

I watched the first part of a 3 part German series set during WW2 last night on BBC2. There was a storyline covering a German nurse and the hospital scenes were superbly done, the place wasn`t pristine, there were moans, cries, and groans from the patients. The patients themselves were heavily bandaged and looked like they had gone through hell, there were traces of blood on the nurses uniforms and the actresses playing the nurses looked drawn and haggard.

The whole thing was exceptionally done and very, very believable. The Germans do tend to be rather gritty though when making WW2 dramas, take Das Boot, Stalingrad, Downfall etc. Totally the opposite to what the BBC seems to think makes a historical drama.

Would be good to see a WW1 period, German produced drama, I suspect it would make the Crimson Fields look rather twee.

[MartH]

I watched the first part of a 3 part German series set during WW2 last night on BBC2. There was a storyline covering a German nurse and the hospital scenes were superbly done, the place wasn`t pristine, there were moans, cries, and groans from the patients. The patients themselves were heavily bandaged and looked like they had gone through hell, there were traces of blood on the nurses uniforms and the actresses playing the nurses looked drawn and haggard.

The whole thing was exceptionally done and very, very believable. The Germans do tend to be rather gritty though when making WW2 dramas, take Das Boot, Stalingrad, Downfall etc. Totally the opposite to what the BBC seems to think makes a historical drama.

Would be good to see a WW1 period, German produced drama, I suspect it would make the Crimson Fields look rather twee.

I thought it good too.

I shall be interested in my mothers view of it, she was a nurse on the Russian Front, being a Finnish Lotta Svard Nurse. Even looked after some German wounded in 44. I have watch war films with her over the last 45 years or so, and she has quite an interest in history.

At the end she normally snorts, and says not even close, apparently the amount of blood that come out of wounded troops when operated on, or things go wrong is never reproduced, because if you did not know it would seem overkill and silly TV. One tale she tells is about being strafed by Russians aircraft outside a hospital when dealing with an arrival of new wounded. The sister was hit and bled out in her arms in seconds, as she frantically tried to stem the flow of blood, and she then just put the sister to one side and carried on with the living, not even pausing to change her now dripping red uniform because the troops where more badly wounded and they had even less staff.

[Gunboat]

I totally agree with the praise for Generation War. I daresay that there were some inaccuracies that people will pick up on (there was at least one occurrence of the MP38/MP40 not requiring a reload) but the plot line was compelling, the performances believable and that's a marked difference to The Crimson Fields.

Edit: Mart your mother must have a fascinating story to tell - I would love to know more.

[Moonraker]

Somewhere in this long, long thread, I comment on the curious stamp used on a letter from England to the hospital. (I really can't be bothered to trawl through these 20 pages of posts to locate it.) In today's Sunday Times' "Culture", a correspondent identifies it as a 1 1/2d British Empire Exhibition stamp issued in 1924 or 1925 and with these dates in the design. On another page, he changes his mind and reckons it was a 2s 6d "Seahorse" stamp. For the TV company to have used either of these would have betrayed a slipshod approach.

At the back of the supplement, TCF comes second in the popularity list of BBC1 programmes for the week ending April 13, with 6.89m viewers. It's fourth in the ratings for all channels, which the BBC would see as justification for its expenditure.

In tonight's episode, "Culture" says, "the war [takes] a back seat ... but the episode is still largely chintz-free".

Moonraker

[kenneth505]

In tonight's episode, "Culture" says, "the war [takes] a back seat ... but the episode is still largely chintz-free".

Chintz free? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

[Moonraker]

The Oxford Dictionary defines chintz as "a printed multicoloured cotton fabric with a glazed finish; made from, or upholstered with this fabric".

????

So I had wondered whether chintz-free means the nurse would not be getting off most of her kit again to splash in the sea. But I see that "chintz" derives from the Hindi word meaning "variegated", so I infer there will be fewer sub-plots tonight.

Moonraker

[Anneca]

Chintz is a material used in making arm chairs or sofas, and is associated with a rather dated kind of 1950s tatty comfort which fills some British people with horror, hence the promise. A foreigner might find a chintzy hotel lounge bar comfortable and reassuring in small doses, but it's the antithesis of modern ideas of style and comfort. Today chintz is regarded as being unstylish and a little naff. When looking at Tripadvisor website the other day it said "one hotel had beautiful modern rooms, chintz-free and very comfy" - perhaps whoever wrote in "Culture" has stayed at this hotel?

Moonraker, perhaps in tonight's episode the nurse will be wearing a variegated chintz-free bikini?

I must admit to owning a chintz handbag which I bought in Brussels. It was very expensive and I reckon it is classy rather than naff - as long as I don't use it for a chair or sofa!

Anne

[Moonraker]

... Moonraker, perhaps in tonight's episode the nurse will be wearing a variegated chintz-free bikini ...

Anne

Impossible! Bikinis weren't introduced until after WWII, and with the production company's pride in accuracy and period detail ...

(Actually, there's a fourth-century AD mosaic showing a woman wearing a two-piece costume that could pass for a bikini.)

Moonraker

[Anneca]

Impossible! Bikinis weren't introduced until after WWII, and with the production company's pride in accuracy and period detail ...

(Actually, there's a fourth-century AD mosaic showing a woman wearing a two-piece costume that could pass for a bikini.)

Moonraker

OK! OK! enough of inaccuracies - I said bikini, perhaps I should have said a fourth century AD two-piece costume. Anyhow, I am more looking forward to the posts after tonight's episode than the actual episode itself.

Anne