Last night, the 'Memsahib' and I took a cruise down memory lane (That's enough nautical allusions - Ed!) by watching a recording of 'The Onedin Line', a 1970s TV series on which we, indeed, everyone, were totally hooked back 'the good ol' days'. The entire series is being repeated by one of the obscure TV stations and I am recording them all. Last night, with the main channels filled with the usual 's.f.a.', we settled down to watch one of the episodes. Oh dear, "what a falling off was there"!
How can I put it? Whilst all too aware of my own multitude of amateurish thespian efforts, the sad fact is that this production was as clunkily amateurish as anything I have ever done. The actors did their best with what they had but what they had was truly second-rate. Or to be more precise, judged by today's standards it was second-rate but, of course, now we take the mostly slick production standards of today for granted.
Mind you, this was an early episode set almost entirely in the coastal waters of Cornwall so those great seascapes and magnificent sailing ships of later episodes are yet to come. And, of course, it featured that stroke of genius by some musical director who decided to use the magnificent music of Khachaturian's Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia as the theme for the entire series.
We shall watch some more episodes which I am sure will improve because we were truly captivated by it 'back in the day'.
I remember they only had about thirty seconds of footage of ships under sail, which they used to re-use again and again whenever the plot demanded it. The sailing ship and the helicopter were presumably the most expensive items in the budget, so get that shot early on, and then everyone back into the studio to fanny around with mutton-chop whiskers and bodices.
Posted by: Whyaxye | Tuesday, 16 January 2018 at 10:22
From memory (and I had them on video tapes) the first series was pretty good but the second was dire, as they became politically correct and all about women being downtrodden. I seem to recall that the Charlotte Rhodes (actually the Kathleen and May) was kept at Exeter Maritime Museum for a bit.
Posted by: mike fowle | Tuesday, 16 January 2018 at 11:17
In the world of so called inanimate objects there is nothing more beautiful and inspiring than a full rigged ship under all sail.
Posted by: AussieD | Wednesday, 17 January 2018 at 09:59