rahulgreenday8 Christopher Tietjens is a man of immense character. He does what is right and what tradition demands of him. He is the sort of person you can expect to back upon, whether one is cheating wife, an untrustworthy friend or a fellow soldier. The plot revolves around what are his limits, how much can he bear his cheating wife, how much can he trust his emotions about a simple minded sorta rebellious girl who makes an unexpected arrival in his life. After all he is the last man at the end of parade of honorable men. Damn if he does damn if he don't. Watching this series is like reading the book. You want to keep it down because it may not go where you expect or want to go but you want to know how much Tiejens can take it further. You feel sorry for the fellow. It does justice to the book. Acting is brilliant, characters do come to life especially of Silvia who is played by Rebecca Hall, Benedict is awesome as he usually is. Pace is very slow but it does capture the emotion behind the plot. I Would recommend you to watch it if you haven't read the book.

Vicki Hopkins Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch (yes, that's his full name) has been busy. Between filming episodes of Sherlock Holmes, he worked elsewhere starring in this interesting and entertaining series entitled Parade's End. The story is based on a series of novels by Ford Maddox Ford.Benedict plays the character of Christopher Tietjens in five episodes. After one indiscretion, his life takes an unexpected turn when he meets a woman on a train. She seduces him, and they end up copulating quite wildly in their private quarters. He deposits his seed into Sylvia on a one-train stand and ends up marrying her after she declares the child in her pregnant womb belongs to him. The entire affair is questionable because of her many lovers, but Christoper does what he does best--the right and proper thing.He is not a man that is necessarily well liked and is socially awkward. The relationship with his family members is poor, he's the object of gossip, and appears to have trouble communicating his feelings. However, he is intelligent, and works at the Imperial Department of Statistics crunching numbers. In his spare time, he reads the encyclopedia and jots down corrections to the content in the sidelines of the book.Sylvia, on the other hand, is quite the opposite. She's not exactly the stellar wife. To her shame she parties, flirts with men, and ends up having an extramarital affair. She blames her motives for living on the wild side on Christopher, who is the picture of perfection. She loathes him and his values, and is determined to destroy him one way or the other. In fact, she seems to treat all her men with disdain. When she leaves Christoper for another man because she's bored, abandoning even her son, Christopher keeps the proverbial stiff upper lip and parades before society, friends, and family that all is well. He refuses to divorce, because he's a good Catholic. You just don't do those things. You bear it. Live with it. And parade onward.However, during his wife's escapades with another man, Christopher meets Valentine Wannop, played by Adelaide Clemens. She is young, intelligent, and a suffragette. It's one of those love at first sight moments for the two of them. Unfortunately, he's too proper to do anything about it even though they keep running into each other exchanging heartfelt glances and having pleasant conversation. When they are not in each other presence, they daydream of being lovers, but Christopher cannot cross that line.Eventually, Sylvia returns to Christopher, after having a spot of remorse. She turns to religion, though you don't believe there's an ounce of purity in her conniving mind.World War I breaks out, and the series takes a diversion toward wartime and life in the trenches. However, during this period of time, Christopher begins to change for the better. He becomes a stronger man who leads, and finally realizes that times are changing. It's no longer necessary to parade around as if life is peachy and all can be handled. The parade has ended, and he needs to do what is right for him as an individual--even if that means making immoral choices in order to find love and happiness.It's a fairly good series, and you'll find that Benedict is not the Sherlock Holmes you know. The portrayal of this character is vastly different, but also extremely convincing and well done. He looks rather dashing in his military uniform with blond hair. You'll also enjoy the Edwardian fashions worn by Sylvia, the manipulating wife.Parade's End is streaming on Amazon Prime for free. You might want to check it out. Only negative point is that I don't seem to be the only one complaining that you cannot understand what is being said about 10% of the time. Sometimes Benedict talks very fast, and it's difficult to catch the words with that thick British accent. On the other hand, it just might be poor sound quality on behalf of the producers of this film.

zulejka-javersek Let my begin with a little disclaimer: I haven't read the book, so my review will be from this perspective. Maybe this show is just too intelligent for me, but I found it to be a mix of equal parts boring (the war!), uptight and frustrating. I guess the last bit is not necessarily a bad thing in terms of art but it sure made it all a tedious experience to watch.Benedict Cumberbatch is an amazing actor and so is Rebecca Hall. They have great chemistry, while Adeleide Clemens' character comes off incredibly flat, but I cannot say it that's because of writing or she doesn't do it justice. Sylvia Tietjens is probably supposed to be the bad guy in this series, but she is actually the only multidimensional, understandable and believable character in the show. She does marry Christopher to save herself from ruin, but that's not something he doesn't know. He on the other hand marries her because of his strong moral values, and allegedly forgives her, but "without mercy" as she explains beautifully in the best scene of the whole show. He doesn't try to understand her, he treats her coldly - but honorably. He probably never even loved her, while she's clearly in love with him. She does cheat on him - to provoke a reaction! She's desperate for his love but doesn't find a way back to him, not by cheating on him nor by being faithful despite his abhorrent coolness, not by being nice nor by being a bi**h, because she probably never was in his heart. Every bad thing she does, she does to get his attention (if not love). It's a f***ed up relationship, but at least it has some ground and chemistry between characters. So, for me, the story is about her and not about Christopher and Valentine.Now onto what we should probably believe to be the main love story, Christopher and Valentine. It is so damn unmotivated! Or is it? Am I supposed to root for a bored, uptight middle-aged man who falls for the first angel-faced teenage girl who shows some interest in him? Yes, they have a connection - she's more of a nerd than Sylvia which makes her more like Christopher, but surely that's no ground for a five (or more?) year long platonic love? Maybe their story would be more believable if the show focused less on stupid boring WWI and social events and more on developing a) Valentine's character that is absolutely cardboard, dull and "manic pixie girl from the beginning of the 20th century", b) on events that constitute their love story, if there even were any more than what we saw. So from my point of view the encounter on the stairs in the last episode is very disturbing, unmotivated and makes me even more unsympathetic towards the couple I should probably be rooting for.

zasscm Having recently read Ford's Parade's End, this adaptation is an irritating disappointment whose main sin is that it will drive people away from reading this great piece of literature. Mr. Stoppard's adaptation is guilty of lack of understanding of the medium called television and of arrogance in changing one of the foundations on which Ford based his book (4 books, actually): Sylvia, that perfect intellectual match to Christopher who being a woman in the Edwardian Era had few opportunities to express her intellect is portrayed here as a giggling floozy, thus cheapening the whole story. Fragments of Ford's lines are blurted out in staccato fury because there's not enough time to let these lines grow, because there are all those "invented" scenes that are not part of the main story (television loves long scenes, see "Brideshead Revisited"). Mr. Cumberbatch is a perfect Christopher Tietjens, as is Ms. Clemens a perfect Valentine. But Ms. Hall is evidently totally miscast here. Even Michelle Dockery from the series that must not be named in association with this production, Downton Abbey, would have been better. And for that matter, using the late Anthony Minghella as writer-directory would have been a perfect match (see his English Patient to understand what "intelligent love" is all about). Just to get an idea what this adaptation might have been here's Ford introducing Sylvia: "Her very oval, regular face had an expression of virginal lack of interest such as used to be worn by fashionable Paris courtesans a decade before that time. Sylvia Tietjens considered that, being privileged to go everywhere where one went and to have all men at her feet, she had no need to change her expression or to infuse into it the greater animation that marked the more common beauties of the early twentieth century. She moved slowly from the door and sat languidly on the sofa against the wall."