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Ignorant script writers - and producers?

(48 Posts)
Greatnan Sat 08-Jun-13 06:00:27

I was watching Emmerdale and found myself shouting at the TV set when Eric suggested that Portugal was on the Mediterranean!

Deedaa Sun 23-Jun-13 18:47:38

My son, aged eleven, was carted off to hospital after banging his head at school. I went rushing to bring him home thinking how scared he must have been. He assured me he was fine "and when I started being sick they put a tube down my throat - just like Casualty!" Apparently it was all really cool!

FlicketyB Sun 23-Jun-13 11:50:11

DD was rushed to hospital after a road accident, red telephone call ahead of her arrival etc and she said it is not remotely like ER or any other hospital programme, far from people rushing around , she said the first thing she noticed was how calm and quiet everything was. A team was ready when she arrived she was taken at a reasonable pace into an emergency bay and carefully and calmly assessed, received the necessary stabilising treatment and then transferred to a specialist unit at another hospital. She said it was all quite disappointing, she had rather fancied being a star in her own hospital drama!!

Maniac Fri 21-Jun-13 12:45:58

anno That's rare nowadays -a pharmacist in a white coat!.haven't seen one in this area for years .
Last time I visited a shop where I used to work in Bristol the pharmacist was a young woman wearing a burka -without the face covering !

numberplease Thu 20-Jun-13 21:10:23

I don`t watch Waterloo Road, but how did they explain the difference in scenery between Rochdale and Loch Lomond, where it`s now filmed? Having lived in Rochdale, I can assure you that there is quite a lot of difference!!

nanaej Thu 20-Jun-13 20:08:10

Terms...not erms!!

nanaej Thu 20-Jun-13 20:07:11

Don't get me started on Waterloo Road! Total garbage in accuracy erms but I guess a lot of people must enjoy it!!

annodomini Thu 20-Jun-13 19:44:33

Sorry, Maniac, our pharmacist is a white middle-aged man in a white coat!

Wheniwasyourage Thu 20-Jun-13 19:44:30

What about the equally lazy way that doctors are very often made to be Scottish? I know we have some good doctors, but really...! DH and I used to listen regularly to Saturday night plays on Radio 4, and doctors were almost always given a Scottish accent, even if it was quite obvious that the actor was not very good at it! confused

JessM Thu 20-Jun-13 19:26:57

Most pharmacists round here are youngish British Asians - and yes, lots of women. Ditto opticians. Immigrants-putting-their-kids-into-professions syndrome. Like all those jewish lawyers and doctors in the US.
White coats must have been needed way back in the day when they actually mixed things up in glassware.
The white middle aged man in a white coat is a very lazy way for advertisers to represent doctors, pharmacists and dentists, but still very common.

FlicketyB Thu 20-Jun-13 14:48:42

It is like all the period drama where the towns and villages are always immaculately clean and everybody has nice clean, fresh from the dressmaker clothes, no poverty, dirt or rags. When we see coaches travelling along it is always in beautiful parkland scenery. We are never shown rutted muddy tracks, which is why gentlemen so often rode horses rather than travelling by coach and remember in the book (P&P) when Elizabeth Bennett walked from Longbourn to Netherfield Hall to see her sick sister, Jane she arrived with the bottom foot of her skirt and petticoat covered in mud - and she was probably trying to keep it above the dirt. Don't get that detail in television either.

Maniac Thu 20-Jun-13 14:40:18

Whenever a pharmacist is portrayed it is usually a middle-aged man,wearing a white coat and often portrayed as a bit creepy and nondescript.
Having worked in community pharmacy over 50 yrs I know that more than 50% of pharmacists are women age range 25 -75 very varied in appearance and character. White coats are rarely worn now- last time I wore one was in 1991.

numberplease Wed 19-Jun-13 22:55:30

Poetic license

annodomini Wed 19-Jun-13 19:12:59

Remember: 'the willing suspension of disbelief' (Coleridge, I think).

JessM Wed 19-Jun-13 18:24:13

Sounds like bliss deeda hmm
The hospital drama about the neurosurgeon takes the biscuit. Whatsisface from N Ireland, you know the one. That empty hospital in which there is a senior member of staff whose job seems to be "being nice to people".
Hats and makeup:
everyone wore hats outdoors, all the time, before 1950. Rarely appear on costume dramas.
Watched an episode of Father Brown yesterday, which was full of heavily made-up nuns. grin
And have you ever noticed that on the TV the remote control turn-your-car on thing makes a bloop-blooping noise. A decade or two since they did that in the real world.
Have to keep remembering : Drama takes place in a PARALLEL UNIVERSE grin

Deedaa Wed 19-Jun-13 17:53:08

My husband is a gun fanatic and my son in law is an aircraft engineer who used to be in the US Navy. Can you imagine what it's like trying to watch a programme that involves guns, planes or ships with them around? Nothing is ever correct and it all has to be explained to the rest of us in minute detail!

Daisyanswerdo Wed 19-Jun-13 14:36:28

The merry-go-round or roundabout in films that are supposed to be set in England should go round clockwise. American producers don't seem to be aware of this, or don't care. Theirs go round anti-clockwise, and I believe this is true in most if not all other countries.

FlicketyB Wed 19-Jun-13 11:44:13

If the programme is really good, does it matter? It is the need to modernise every period drama so that it is 'accessible' to modern viewers, that sets me on edge. the first of these was Pride and Predjudice with Colin Firth. OK some people found him sexy and attractive but the production was as silly and as dumbed down as the film starring Lawrence Olivier back in the 1930s and it has continued.

I saw trailers for the White Queen and it was so 21st century schamlzy attitudes to romance in a period wrapper. I am avoiding it.

Greatnan Wed 19-Jun-13 05:00:02

What was the one where a centurion was wearing a wrist watch?
I laughed when Tony Curtis was The Black Knight and he said 'You gorra listen to me, Sire' in his Brooklyn accent.

absent Tue 18-Jun-13 23:53:26

Not to mention the fact that the only species of frog in the world that go "ribit, ribit" is native to California and not found in Tarzan's jungle or Bogey's river as he hauled the African Queen or, indeed, anywhere not near Hollywood.

Deedaa Tue 18-Jun-13 21:41:23

Can't remember the titles but I've noticed quite a few children's films, set in England but filmed in the USA which have all sorts of strange birds and animals wandering the countryside. Raccoons always seem to be a favourite. It just seems such laziness on the part of the film companies when a couple of hours research would tell them what really lives here.

annodomini Tue 18-Jun-13 18:36:48

When we were in the 6th form, we were taken to see a strange Russian film of King Lear in which electricity pylons were clearly visible on the horizon.

Greatnan Tue 18-Jun-13 18:14:04

And of course there could not have been bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover because they are not native to Britain!

Wheniwasyourage Tue 18-Jun-13 17:50:30

The one which annoys me is "Mary Poppins", not for Dick van Dyke's accent, but for the peculiarly-shaped robin. I used to think it was just a bad model until I realised that it was a good model of an American robin. shock

BAnanas Tue 18-Jun-13 17:35:00

Way way back, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Roman centurion played by John Wayne at the foot of the cross drawling in his very American accent "he truly was the son of god" naaah didn't sound right!. Come to think of it, as good as he was in Gladiator, very slight Aussie accent could be detected at times from Maximus Decimus Crowe. Somehow an accent from the new world doesn't sound right on a character from the old world.

numberplease Tue 18-Jun-13 16:09:30

What about Prince of Thieves, with a very American Kevin Costner as Robin Hood?
I also remember, on the opening credits of the Richard Greene series of Robin Hood, back in the 50s, there was an arrow being shot through the trees, and as it whizzed by, there was something that looked suspiciously like a telegraph pole right there mid screen!