Today I read an article which was a discussion of historical accuracy within Television drama. It made some interesting points, should period drama have to be historically accurate in every detail and what does that really mean anyway?
Firstly, as pure entertainment, period dramas needn’t cling to any historical narrative or detail at all. They should simply use everything as a colourful and informing palette to the scriptwriters imagination. Zombies, spacecraft and an immobilised Kenneth Branagh in a steam powered wheelchair at the heart of a giant mechanical spider can certainly liven things up. But in all those instances it would take a pretty dumb futher-mucker to confuse what they were watching for a true and honest historical account. Except for perhaps that small demographic that need to be told “Venice, ITALY” in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Though some films and dramas, particularly those who pay and pay well for historical advisors, do trade on the historical accuracy and detail as part of a programmes overall appeal.
The correct use of language is always problematic, anyone who’s read Chaucer and knew immediately what was going on would be an Oxbridge Professor or a liar. So a concession on that part has to be made.
Settings and costume are less problematic. Britain is littered with historic buildings of every period positively yearning for a few days worth of filming fees. With such choice, if you get the building wrong you really only have yourself to blame and nowhere, apart from the venue you just hired, to hide.
Equally reproductions of costume available in National Collections can be run up, albeit using a singer sewing machine and a few iron-on patches. The techniques and materials in the actual construction may differ wildly but the overall visual effect should pass muster too, without eliciting any “tuts” from scholars as long as nobody turns up wearing a pair of frayed jeans or a “Frankie Says Relax” t-shirt. Really so far, so good and so simple.
But then we get to the slightly combative recent commentary of two historical drama advisors on the issue:
“Those are the issues that really matter to me [plot/narrative] as a historian, and less so about wether we’ve sourced exactly the right wine glass”
The telling words in that sentence are “exactly the right”, perhaps we should picture someone shrugging their shoulders whilst looking at the director saying “don’t worry, it’s near enough”
I should confess now that I and some of my dearest friends within the Antiques Trade delight in a touch of pedantry tweeting when it comes to historical dramas.
Playful banter between ourselves, but clearly something which happens often enough in the wider world to warrant comment by paid advisors. Something that’s touched a nerve and needs to be publicly admonished and pushed aside, dismissed by “proper” historians. Well, I suppose if I did a job of work and got things wrong I’d be a bit sensitive about people always pointing it out too.
The “Antiques” in historical drama have almost always played second fiddle, yet the budgets for sourcing them are, believe me, not insubstantial, so why do they so often fail to get it right?
If you don’t care, if your Zombie Georgian apocalypse paints with a very broad brush, that’s fine, a cups a cup, a glass is a glass and no one cares if it’s all from TK Maxx. But let’s go back to that phrase “exactly the right”. Someone clearly has asked for the right furniture, the right china, the right glasses and the right silver for the right mahogany tea table. It’s not that you can’t get it right, it’s really not that hard, so it must be that you simply don’t know how.
History is a huge academic subject, a true pillar of learning and standing much smaller but still beside it, is the discipline of Antiques. They share a common border, they often overlap but are still clear and distinct. Yet there’s a trap which many Historical advisors fall in to, because they know the religion, the politics, the social condition etc of a period in minute and commanding detail, they sometimes forget that they just don’t know the teapots.
In Poldark (set at the end of the 18th century) a litany of bad out of period silver teapots appeared through every series. The slight tragedy being that any day of the week you could throw a pebble in some parts of London
(Excerpt from the Evening Standard)
and be assured of hitting one. Indeed had there been a need for two dozen Georgian silver teapots the back of a van could easily have been filled with examples to choose from and probably at the same cost as hiring the spun sheet Edwardian sets which turned up instead. So was it done deliberately? Did someone think “ah, fuck it” or was it simply beyond the scope of their knowledge but they were unwilling to say so?
All in all it’s just a drama, it’s just Telly or a film. But if you trade on it’s historical accuracy, if that’s part of an implied contract you’re making with your audience, making them believe “this is how it REALLY was” then it REALLY should be.
From the house, to the jacket, to the table and the silver teapot resting upon it. If you pay an historical advisor a fee to get it all right then they should get “exactly the right wine glass” and certainly not throw their exasperated and well paid hands up in the air when someone, more specialised in a particular field than they, points out the mistake.