Review of Parade's End

This is an impressive adaptation. It is obscure in many ways, but that is, I think, the point. An old-fashioned, decent Englishman, Christopher, has a fling with an aristocrat on a train, Sylvia, and this sets both of them on a downward spiral. Why did they do it? Why do people get mixed up with the absolute wrong person? I think their attraction is that they are both completely outdated types: She is the worst of a selfish, dissolute aristocracy, who gets its way through clubby connections and manipulation. He is the best of the old ways: honorable and self-denying. She sees his value as nobody else does and she uses her nasty, underhanded tactics to defend him as much as to corrupt him. He on the contrary uses his code to admire her as much as repress her. It is the last gasp of Old England. Complicating the story is Valentine, the suffragette. She is truthful, unselfish and decent to others, like Crissy (as they call him), but she hates the old ways and offer him a choice. Is there a place for such values in the dawning 20th century? The stories about corrupt government ministers, crazy churchmen, nasty adulterers, cruel gossips and the horror of WWI unfolds against this basic conflict between the dying gentlemanly code and the unfolding new century. Benedict Cumberbatch is outstanding as Christopher: he always balances the exterior coldness and interior passion, and we can like him without sharing his dated beliefs. Rebecca Hall also does a lot with Sylvia, who could have been a cheating nasty B but shows us how much she hopes for love and is unable to find it in the narrow upper-class world.

This series demands that the viewer do the work. It never plays down to the audience, and I'm glad of it. It's worth pondering why people make the choices they do, especially under the pressure of a World War. Really top-notch.