"The BBC's Hollow Crown - major wardrobe malfunction" Topic

I re-played the BBC TV adaptation of Shakespeare's Richard III with Benedict Cumberbatch as King Dickie last night. Seen it before and I had noticed nothing amiss…!

I suddenly found myself growling at the telly when I noticed that Henry Tudor was giving his rousing pre-Bosworth speech to smartly liveried retinue soldiers wearing BLUE AND RED!
In other words, major wardrobe malfunction, Henry Tudor is actually addressing Richard's soldiers.

Over on the other side of the field King Benedict III was addressing a rag-tag collection of men in browns, etc, who were wearing old kettle hats. In other words just the sort of rag-tag army Henry might have led. Good old Beeb got the costumes wrong!

And, while on the subject, the earlier TV dramatisation of Phillippa Gregory's The White Queen novel is good for a background in the politics of the period – with an interesting feminist take on how women may have influenced behind the scenes – but oh dear! Bosworth is fought in a forest (?) and there's snow on the ground, in August!

And, major wardrobe malfunction, there's not a single hat being worn in the interior scenes. In those days you did not go to bed without a hat on. I think the wardrobe budget only extended as high as the actors' shoulders :) :) :)

Hats have been permanently banned from movies and TV because far too many people complained they couldn't tell who was who.

How generations of viewers got through all those westerns without burning down the studios remains a total mystery.

How generations of viewers got through all those westerns without burning down the studios remains a total mystery.

It was easy – white hats = good guys and black hats = bad guys.

Jim

the earlier TV dramatisation of Phillippa Gregory's The White Queen

Has gone down as a landmark in continuity errors and anachronistic material in shot.

BBC Controller of Drama Ben Stephenson called the drama, which was filmed in Belgium, ‘one of the most ambitious series the BBC has made'.

But it was criticised for its historical inaccuracies, with viewers pointing out that the characters ‘had access to Persil' and the presence of ‘zips and buttons on the dresses' and ‘handrails and concrete steps'.

(from : link )

My favourite was the appearance of rubber soled boots…nice.

I seem to recall a tarmac road turned up in The Tudors.

Ah the BBC…..reminds me of the Robin Hood 'costumes' which I kid you not, one week included modern camouflage trousers and boots. I think it was the one with the traumatised war veteran burning people alive in churches, apparently they were a little vague on which war he was a veteran of.

They also seemed to raid the wardrobe department every week, usually for different disguises to get through the guarded city gate in every episode.

Annoying but when you are doing it on beans you have to scrimp somewhere and costumes always seem the first place.

Then again "Vikings", which I bet has more money to spend, although it gets things more uniform, only succeeds in getting it uniformly wrong!

Yeah – there were a lot of picky comments on The White Queen, stuff that in the past we'd have just accepted because of small budgets. As long as the acting made up for it. The BBC War & Peace with Tony Hopkins was very cardboard sets – but the acting was great so in the end one ignored the wobbling walls.

The White Queen was not, sadly, a masterclass in acting.

You're setting yourself up for eternal disappointment if you expect any sort of historical accuracy from TV or movies.

Hollow Crown was severely disappointing. They combined battles, combined characters, Warwick looked completely inaccurate, Edward IV's character is drastically under played, Richard III is drastically over played, Towton was a travesty, and the biggest bastadization of all was they portrayed Warwick dying at Tewskebury… Come on BBC he died at Barnet, a much more significant battle.

All in all, every WotR documentary/movie/tv show has severely let me down. Is it too much to ask for a 10 part miniseries with quality acting and Game of Thrones budget?