Frankenstein Chronicles - Series 1 Episode 2 - Reaction Post
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1:30 Hold on, this scene is what Marlott saw in his dream. How did he manage that?
7:00 I don't think I noticed first time through, but when he's standing by the stream waiting for his wife, his hair is really neat and clean, shorter, smoothly brushed back, rather than the greasy mess it looks like a lot of the time.
7:25 "How can that be? She's cured!" "All sins are forgiven here - no corruption". So he's either seeing, or imagining, his wife and baby daughter in the afterlife.
8:15 Maybe it's just the light, but it looks like Sean's got grey roots. At least his hair is back to light-brown/sandy in this, unlike Sharpe's Peril where it was quite a dark brown for some reason.
9:55 Urgh, actual grave-robbing. They're looking to take the boy, Marlott's informant, who was buried earlier that day. Umm, they seem to have put a girl in there to replace him. Is it the girl they offered to Marlott towards the end of the previous episode?
11:15 What's this? Has Marlott got together a lynch mob? And where from? So far he's been presented as a man who has nothing and no-one except a vicar who hasn't seen him for years and the PC (or whatever his rank is) he's been assigned.
11:40 My God, Sean is so Sharpe in this. It sounds kind of silly saying "same voice", but he does change his voice for each character, and he's definitely using Sharpe's voice here, and expressing anger in the way Sharpe does. Even bloody looks like Sharpe sometimes, which I never saw in Martin Odum's face or Neil Byrne's (and not for want of looking!)
13:25 "Someone's been murdering to undercut our trade". That's the trade of delivering fresh bodies to anatomy schools, and the grave-robber - who says he's a businessman supplying a demand - says that on a number of occasions he and his fellow grave-robbers have turned up with a body only to find it's not wanted because they already have one even fresher. With the rigour still on it.
14:50 Holy fucking shit. This is why I don't watch this kind of thing, I nearly hit the fucking ceiling.
I'm definitely stopping there for tonight, I do not need this fresh in my head when I go to sleep. On the upside, I suppose the occasional adrenaline jolt is good for you.
I'm conflicted now - I don't want to turn away from one of Sean Bean's more recent works; I do want to stay alongside John Marlott, because Sean has a real knack for showing the loneliness and vulnerability in a character, even while showing that the character - Sharpe for example - barely recognises it in himself. But I don't enjoy Gothicky undead horror stuff and would never normally watch or read it.
19:10 Are we supposed to know who this woman is? Marlott still looking like Sharpe imo.
21:00 Interesting foreshadowing here: "This act seeks not only to supplant the bodysnatchers, they will also outlaw all forms of medicine not licenced directly by the surgeons - benign philanthropic practice such as Lord Harvey's."
Which is all very well as far as it goes, which is to improve knowledge and safety, but it also over time has a freezing effect imo in that anything not covered or understood by the licensing bodies is not allowed to develop and perhaps do great good.
20:55 I've just noticed that Sean has that strange mark on his throat that I've seen before - it looks almost like a surgical scar, right on his Adam's Apple. But I think I've seen him without it in later pictures?
25:50 Creepy music, wandering around dark corridors on his own; I do wonder if it's a good idea to be eating while I'm watching this, don't want to choke if something drastic happens. Or just vomit at some of the things he's looking at argh.
27:30 Marlott is presented as being very scruffy compared with Sir Robert Peel, and whoever this is he's talking to. I'm not sure yet whether that's the character's style, or whether Marlott is supposed to be very poor. Certainly the lodgings would suggest the latter.
30:35 This guy giving the lecture, who is he? He looks familiar.
33:00 "What further proof do you need that this Government seeks to make poverty a crime, and the afterlife a privilege of the wealthy?" Plus ça change.
34:10 He's just met Boz lol (Charles Dickens' early pen-name), and he's already met Mary Shelley, played by Anna Maxwell Martin, so they definitely weren't going too small on the casting.
34:30 Scenes like this - ie crushing Boz's hand - demonstrate why Sean plays so many villains. (Apart from the whole "evil Brit accent" bollocks.) He does a fine line in "menacing" without being obvious about it.
"If you do, I may be able to give you a better story."
"And if I don't?"
*Slight smile* "I may break your thumb"
44:55 Argh, his room is probably just perfectly normal for the time - very dark and dingy, lit only by a couple of candles - but to my eyes it looks extremely creepy. And oh look, as he reads Frankenstein and the text gets more gothic, the candle he's reading by starts to gutter.
That's really annoying - once it gets into the credits it won't let you skip back into the story.
1:30 Hold on, this scene is what Marlott saw in his dream. How did he manage that?
7:00 I don't think I noticed first time through, but when he's standing by the stream waiting for his wife, his hair is really neat and clean, shorter, smoothly brushed back, rather than the greasy mess it looks like a lot of the time.
7:25 "How can that be? She's cured!" "All sins are forgiven here - no corruption". So he's either seeing, or imagining, his wife and baby daughter in the afterlife.
8:15 Maybe it's just the light, but it looks like Sean's got grey roots. At least his hair is back to light-brown/sandy in this, unlike Sharpe's Peril where it was quite a dark brown for some reason.
9:55 Urgh, actual grave-robbing. They're looking to take the boy, Marlott's informant, who was buried earlier that day. Umm, they seem to have put a girl in there to replace him. Is it the girl they offered to Marlott towards the end of the previous episode?
11:15 What's this? Has Marlott got together a lynch mob? And where from? So far he's been presented as a man who has nothing and no-one except a vicar who hasn't seen him for years and the PC (or whatever his rank is) he's been assigned.
11:40 My God, Sean is so Sharpe in this. It sounds kind of silly saying "same voice", but he does change his voice for each character, and he's definitely using Sharpe's voice here, and expressing anger in the way Sharpe does. Even bloody looks like Sharpe sometimes, which I never saw in Martin Odum's face or Neil Byrne's (and not for want of looking!)
13:25 "Someone's been murdering to undercut our trade". That's the trade of delivering fresh bodies to anatomy schools, and the grave-robber - who says he's a businessman supplying a demand - says that on a number of occasions he and his fellow grave-robbers have turned up with a body only to find it's not wanted because they already have one even fresher. With the rigour still on it.
14:50 Holy fucking shit. This is why I don't watch this kind of thing, I nearly hit the fucking ceiling.
I'm definitely stopping there for tonight, I do not need this fresh in my head when I go to sleep. On the upside, I suppose the occasional adrenaline jolt is good for you.
I'm conflicted now - I don't want to turn away from one of Sean Bean's more recent works; I do want to stay alongside John Marlott, because Sean has a real knack for showing the loneliness and vulnerability in a character, even while showing that the character - Sharpe for example - barely recognises it in himself. But I don't enjoy Gothicky undead horror stuff and would never normally watch or read it.
19:10 Are we supposed to know who this woman is? Marlott still looking like Sharpe imo.
21:00 Interesting foreshadowing here: "This act seeks not only to supplant the bodysnatchers, they will also outlaw all forms of medicine not licenced directly by the surgeons - benign philanthropic practice such as Lord Harvey's."
Which is all very well as far as it goes, which is to improve knowledge and safety, but it also over time has a freezing effect imo in that anything not covered or understood by the licensing bodies is not allowed to develop and perhaps do great good.
20:55 I've just noticed that Sean has that strange mark on his throat that I've seen before - it looks almost like a surgical scar, right on his Adam's Apple. But I think I've seen him without it in later pictures?
25:50 Creepy music, wandering around dark corridors on his own; I do wonder if it's a good idea to be eating while I'm watching this, don't want to choke if something drastic happens. Or just vomit at some of the things he's looking at argh.
27:30 Marlott is presented as being very scruffy compared with Sir Robert Peel, and whoever this is he's talking to. I'm not sure yet whether that's the character's style, or whether Marlott is supposed to be very poor. Certainly the lodgings would suggest the latter.
30:35 This guy giving the lecture, who is he? He looks familiar.
33:00 "What further proof do you need that this Government seeks to make poverty a crime, and the afterlife a privilege of the wealthy?" Plus ça change.
34:10 He's just met Boz lol (Charles Dickens' early pen-name), and he's already met Mary Shelley, played by Anna Maxwell Martin, so they definitely weren't going too small on the casting.
34:30 Scenes like this - ie crushing Boz's hand - demonstrate why Sean plays so many villains. (Apart from the whole "evil Brit accent" bollocks.) He does a fine line in "menacing" without being obvious about it.
"If you do, I may be able to give you a better story."
"And if I don't?"
*Slight smile* "I may break your thumb"
44:55 Argh, his room is probably just perfectly normal for the time - very dark and dingy, lit only by a couple of candles - but to my eyes it looks extremely creepy. And oh look, as he reads Frankenstein and the text gets more gothic, the candle he's reading by starts to gutter.
That's really annoying - once it gets into the credits it won't let you skip back into the story.