My PBS stations didn't carry it last December. I caught two episodes this week as they have started to air the show...at 2 a.m. and 3 a.m.
I was excited as reportedly the same production company that did
Downton Abbey is currently producing
Jamestown. Downton Abbey is a perfect example that one may have visual accuracy and blend the story with that accuracy and customs of the time period, to contrive interesting drama for the characters. Unfortunately,
Jamestown does not have the same director nor the same writer as
Downton Abbey.
Whomever made the final decisions on costuming, and whomever made the final decisions on scripting..., should be tried and jailed for fraud. (imho - hbc)
Here Begins a Rant, So Folks Might Want to Stop Here..., No?...Well then.......
Now is when folks will chime in with
"It's not a documentary", or worse,
"IF it was a documentary, nobody would watch it" and all that drivel.
FIRST if you deliberately place the show in a historic setting, AND then you tout it was done by the same company that did
Downton Abbey (an award winning, non documentary, highly authentic that people DID watch), then YES you are implying that the show will go to the trouble of being authentic. Period.
The most glaring error..., a demonstration of total laziness on the part of the director and the costuming staff....NOBODY is WEARING A HAT.
In two episodes, two hours of viewing, I counted 12 hats and two women's caps. Had they not had a shot of the slaves working in a field, it would've been down to 3 men's hats and one woman's bonnet. OH one of the female slaves had a kerchief on her head too.
All the women wear their hair down, and long, and some go around without a proper shift, or with bare arms from the shoulder to the elbow...which would've been considered naked for the time period. No stays are seen anywhere in the two episodes I saw. The blacksmith has a crewcut, and another couple of guys have shaved heads by choice, not for some malady. Characters SIR George Yeardly has short hair, and rich man Nicholas Farlow has even shorter hair, which is comical, as Sir George's hair style for the short hair of the period is wrong, but Farlow's is actually documented in portraits (neither of the actors is wearing his hair different than they do in public.) Rich woman Jocelyn, a very fair skinned blond woman, walks about without any protection from the sun..., at a time when a "tan" or freckles were highly looked down upon by the well-to-do.
The female slave Maria talks back to her mistress in public. The mistress pleads her legal cases in open court in front of a mixed audience that includes slaves. All of which is pure modern drek. The female slave would be whipped for insolence. The rich woman would have had to find a man to take her case into court as she is a widow, OTHERWISE her husband would be arguing the case, not her, and the slaves and the servant men would not have been at the court, and women would not have been there except when they were appearing as a witness.
Instead of using the customs of the time period to build drama...show the frustrations of the wealthy woman who, no matter how much money she has, is still a second class citizen to any man..., and how she has to come up with schemes to get her objectives done, by maneuvering around those customs, showing her to be crafty and smart... the show merely pretends it's a story in the 21st century but with odd, dirty clothing.
Here's a comparison of what we should see to what we get:
Versus:
I could go on but the British newspapers called it a soap opera that is mildly enjoyable. That's about as good a review as it could possibly get.
LD