The Halcyon: Hotel Downton

The sets were nice, I'll give it that.

 Like Downton Abbey? Then you'll probably like the new WWII-set ITV drama, The Halcyon. I didn't like Downton, and I was sorely disappointed with The Halcyon. I'd really hoped for something good as there seems to be very little in the way of decent period drama on telly at the moment, but this really didn't do it for me.


Where to begin? On an obvious level, there was the same class-cosiness as Downton had, that impression that nobody minds if rich people are rich and other people have to wait on them hand and foot because they're usually so very nice only the truly churlish could mind, and it's not as though they really expect any special treatment. (Believe that? I don't. Being working-class has never been a barrel of cheery forelock-tugging fun.) The manager of the Halcyon, a luxury hotel, was incredibly informal with its titled owner - and, even less likely, so was his daughter, who, we're also supposed to believed, played with his lordship's sons when they were all children.

Of course.

Then there was the speech. I realise a proper upper-class 1930s accent would sound quite strange to modern ears, and possibly be quite hard for a modern actor to pull off, but what the actors said was more anachronistic than how they said it. I find it hard to believe that anyone posh would've said 'invite' (verb) where 'invitation' (noun) was correct, and 'halcyon' would have been pronounced 'halkyon' because it's from the Greek. It all grated. Possibly it wouldn't bother a lot of people, but it bothered me.

Two things are wrong in this scene: the popsy, and the mismatched chair.

The behaviour of the various characters was simply wrong. There was the aforementioned informality of the staff, of course. But His Lordship took his cheap-looking popsy to a meeting of influential men where she proceeded to laud Hitler and get drunk. The manager's daughter did everything from working on the reception desk to delivering drinks to Her Ladyship because the hotel appeared to have twice as many staff in the kitchen (virtually none of whom spoke) as it did working in the residential areas. It looked as though there were as many members of the band (complete with requisite cockney floozy singer) as there were public-facing hotel staff. Bizarrely, Her Ladyship threw an absolute wobbly about the popsy – among the 1930s upper crust, such a display of emotion would have been considered incredibly vulgar and in poor taste.

Receptionist, deliverer of cocktails... robo-staff never sleep!

All in all, very poor. If you've seen it and have a better eye for 30s fashions, I'd love to know what you thought of the costumes, as they looked to me like a real mishmash, and many of the primary characters seemed about five years out of date. Five years is a long time in 1930s fashion.

I shall refrain from going on at length about the BBC's Christmas adaptation of Agatha Christie's Witness For The Prosecution, but that disappointed me too. The costumes were better, but it still all felt over-wrought and as though a desperate attempt had been made to sex it up.

Law of averages means we must be due something good after all that lot. I wonder what it'll be?