(Mis) Casting

In November I had the chance to purchase some DVDs very cheaply, I did so, settled to watch them and noticed that casting people of a realistic age seems to be a problem in some TV series and movies. One of my purchases was the box set of Agatha Christie’s series of the Tommy and Tuppence stories on DVD. These were filmed over 1982-4. I’ve always liked the written tales and looked forward to watching them. I was therefore the more irked to find that where, in the original book it’s made abundantly clear that Tommy and Tuppence would have been in their early 20s, and during the early tales would have remained about that age, in the TV series the actors playing them are a good fifteen years older. It isn’t that the two actors aren’t normally very good, usually they both are, but with this series both fail to convince. Here you have two people in their late thirties and who look that age acting like giddy young people, freed from many restrictions immediately after a major war, and almost drunk on the freedom from danger and fear, and having found each other. The silly comments, the excitement, the giddy atmosphere would be convincing if the main actors were indeed in their early 20s. In this series they came across as staid mutton dressed as prancing lamb and merely looked rather silly when they said a fair proportion of the lines. I watched the first and longest of the episodes, and two of the shorter ones before deciding to pass on this box set without watching the other eight episodes. I was disappointed, not so much at the actors who can only work with the material for which they’ve been signed, but with the casting people, who should have seen that this wouldn’t and didn’t work.

A week later I watched the Australian movie, Tomorrow When the War began, based on the series by John Marsden. I have the entire book series and love them. Unfortunately this didn’t apply to the movie. Again one of the main things that bothered me was the casting. Almost all of the actors were in their twenties, but in the books they are around 17-18 at most and somehow, having actors who were years older speaking the lines just didn’t gel. It can be done, I’ve seen plenty of movies and TV series where you know that the convincing ‘teenager’ on screen is years older in reality, but here it just felt fake to me. The film did extremely well in Australia, well here, but not well elsewhere and it looks as if the projected sequels may not happen. With which, sadly, I’m in agreement. The books are far better and given the option I’d rather read them again than watch the movie/s even if they were free. I thought the acting patchy, unconvincing in too many places, and not a patch on the books, the more so as I was kept too conscious that the ‘teenagers’, weren’t.

I had the same problem years ago when I watched the BBC adaption of Rosemary Sutcliffe’s book, The Eagle of the Ninth. The two main characters were played by men around 30, whereas (again) they should have been teenagers. The newest version of this book appeared in 2011, and again (sigh) both actors were too old, one being 31 and the other 25. What is it with casting directors, can’t they see that having an actor who is very visibly much older than the book character is implausible for fans of that book or series. At least and thanks be for it, the Harry Potter series had actors which were pretty much the age the characters were in the books. But I’ve come to the conclusion that in future I’d do better to stick with the books and ignore many of their film adaptions. Unless, that is, some casting directors pull their socks up.

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