plays where the actors can't do the accent

I love vera but the accent is er not good

I suppose if you are used to hearing a certain accent then it's acceptable to expect that actors should sound authentic.

Big but coming now. It depends on how strong you expect the accent to be. I moved to Cornwall from Derbyshire. After 7 years I still really struggle to understand all that Cornish bred folks are saying to me. Our nearest neighbours are such and they've got used to me asking for a repeat?

I wish I could remember the film, but I remember critics saying that it was a brilliant story line and well acted but would need subtitles because of the strong authentic accents. I think it was the Liverpool accent.

I love Vera but can't comment about the accent.

I just think of the late Sean Connery who always had an Edinburgh accent. Many many years ago he told a friends Father who he had gone to school with(he never forgot his friends, no matter where he lived) that if they wanted 'that' accent they should have employed a local !!

Peaky blinders sets my teeth on edge. Surely it's not that difficult to learn dialect etc?

Also raised by wolves

I can see where this thread is going. We will all hate productions featuring what she be our own accents or that of our families

As a Scot, listening to non Scots trying the accent can be cringy so I get what you are saying. No matter the role, Sean Connery always spoke with a fairly broad accent though! I like that actors try to use an accent to get the character correct but I don't get annoyed too much

Oh, one of my pet hates

Nearly everyone in every drama set in Scotland has a Glasgow accent. The most obvious example is Shetland, where only one character (I think) has a Shetland accent, the rest are all Glaswegian. Even Jimmy Perez, born and bred in Fair Isle. Glasgow accent

The Shetland accent is very strong, but so is the Glasgow one. Drives me mad!

When we go to Chinese or Vietnamese restaurants I always have to order because the waiters cannot understand my husband at all. He was from Cheshire and has never lost that accent. Any takeaway has to be ordered by me for the same reason. A lot of Aussies can’t understand Scottish accents, mainly Glaswegian,on tv- I have had to translate for a couple of friends.

Thanks for the replies and I'm glad I'm not the only one, maybe I am getting nostalgic in my old age.
I know what the Scots people mean, it is all Glaswegian and I remember the film Kess had to be subtitled when it was shown in the south.
Maybe if it was in Cumbrian no one else would understand it except us.
Many years ago we had a laugh when a friend asked us where Ken John Peel was buried, we did have trouble explaining that his name was just John Peel and ken meant do you know.

Black Country - it's a dialect, not an accent. And it isn't Birmingham!

They still don't sound like they are from Birmingham but I have to be honest I couldn't watch it after one episode raised by wolves is supposed to be Wolverhampton ay it?

Many actors including some famous ones just can't get a Liverpool accent anywhere near right, I always have to turn the TV off as they sound so aweful

Roses I agree with you there are plenty of perfectly good actors with Scouse accents.

I've yet to hear an actor who can 'do' a scouse accent. I know that there must be many good actors in Liverpool but still they employ people who think they sound scouse but don't.

As a Brummie born and bred, I've yet to hear an actor who can do a Birmingham accent. Peaky Blinders had some cringeworthy accents in it. The best I've heard was Toby Jones in the recent programme Danny Boy. It was a Midlands accent and pretty good.

I cannot place UK accents very well, just very broadly north or south.

Can someone tell me if Louise in Doc Martin speaks with a Cornish accent? I did notice some of the harder consonants at some words and wondered if that was her own accent or Cornish.

When I lived in Cornwall during the 70s there was a lot of hilarity about the first version of Poldark. Ross and George were fine because they were gentry and wouldn't be expected to have a broad accent and of course Demelza was so lovely she could have got away with anything, but there was an awful lot of Mummerset being spoken.

I'll never forget a local amateur production of Guys and Dolls. It was a young cast and many of them struggled with the American accents, but the director had obviously just thrown in the towel with one young lad who sauntered to the front of the stage and announced in a broad scouse accent "Hiya, I'm Arry de Orse"!

Taggart may have been a very good drama but I couldn't understand a word of it.

No one ever gets Norfolk or Suffolk right.

I remember Daniel Radcliffe saying that he once acted in a play set in Galway. He started off with a generic Irish accent but the other players soon put him right and he worked hard at the Galway. I expect he is very conscious of this now, so I will watch out for him doing other accents.

Ralph Fienes perfected his Suffolk accent for The Dig. He was coached by an old Suffolk man who had studied the subtle differences each area has..

When we go to our home in Suffolk, from Essex, we struggle to understand the elderly locals. It’s only an hour and a half up the road but a completely different accent.

Watched Vera again last night. Love the scenery, the plots are good and Brenda Blethyn perfect for the role, but as Galaxy says her accent just isn’t right - it’s neither Geordie nor Northumbrian. Good try but no cigar, though probably not noticeable outside the region.

I once went to a Shakespeare at school and the actors had a range of accents from all around the world, I would have preferred a standard RP accent. It was very distracting hearing accents switch from American to Estuary...

It comes down to money, some of these productions are low budget and actors dont get time to absorb the local accent fully, particularly when the previous film has been based elsewhere. That should not be a problem if its a series, although being a authentic Brummie or Yam Yam is not easy.

When I joined the Navy, my class had a broad Scouser and a Geordie. Only I from deep in rural Kent was able to translate between then the first night such that they could fully communicate. They got each other eventually, but it was a long, tiring first week !! My class also had Welsh and Scots chaps with delightful, but complex, dialects.
We were all going to become Radio Operators so levelling down towards RP and especially the phonetic alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie) was strongly encouraged from the off.