This review contains spoilers.
Is Christopher Tietjens the most doomed man in England? Every encounter he has in Parade’s End further tightens the screws on him. His outmoded sense of propriety and honour leave him defenceless against the machinations of a cursed war and an even beastlier social set. Last week, society gossip removed his father; this week, Sylvia’s caprices have him condemned to what amounts to a death sentence on the front.
There’s a hopeless sense of inevitability about Christopher’s route back to the trenches. He’s as helpless as Oedipus trying to avoid his fate, a fallen twig spiralling around an eddy. If Sylvia’s deviousness doesn’t get him, then his own strict design for life does. Despite every attempt being made to keep him in the relative safety of base camp, a farcical series of misunderstandings and run-ins leave him with the choice between a dishonourable court-martial or a ‘promotion’ to the front line, which to Christopher, is no choice at all.
Farce it just the word for it, and the scene in the Rouen hotel room with its passionate clinch, drunk General, and doorknob rattler was precisely that. One of the remarkable things about this adaptation is its agility in sliding from moments of real poignancy to comedy and pantomime without any undermining the other. Stoppard showcases fantastic dramatic speeches such as Sylvia’s five years/musk monologue and Christopher’s shelling similes from last week by surrounding them with scenes of a contrasting colour. That’s this adaptation’s secret to avoiding stuffiness and melodrama, and it’s a delight.
Alongside Christopher’s personal life, for instance, much of this episode satirically targeted the inefficiencies of the British army - the fire extinguisher rigmarole just one example - and in doing so, humanised the experience of war magnificently.
The litany of banal events that had Christopher’s draft of 3,000 men swept from pillar to post (changes in destination, a lack of equipment, a French railway strike…) was a reminder of the infernal pettiness of war. Life and death rest on follies, ineptitudes and personal rivalries, reducing the propaganda-rich Great War to a series of paperwork cock-ups. It was death by administration - Catch 22, but forty years earlier - and intentional or not, it makes for a better anti-war statement than any suffragette placard.
Speaking of suffragettes, Miss Wannop continued to teach hockey and harbour her love for Christopher, whose run to meet what he thought was her visit at the camp gates had to have set many a Cumberbatch fan’s heart aflutter. Not that you can blame them, who doesn’t love a man who writes sonnets to distract himself from approaching disaster?
Tietjens was a pallid wreck for much of the episode, tortured by his own anachronistic moral code. His warning to the mad Latin scholar not to let himself go lest he go further than he wished to must be a daily mantra. Christopher's shivering deterioration throughout the episode must have seen Cumberbatch’s loyal fanbase wishing they could mop his brow and administer a good rub down with a pot of Vicks.
Benedict Cumberbatch conveys it all; Christopher’s cleverness, stifled disappointment, and the silent damage-control calculations utterly convincingly. The scene with the hotel lounge mirror was beautifully understated, narrated by Sylvia’s acerbic but unparalleled insights into her husband’s behavioural code.
Lord though, isn’t it cruel to watch two such handsome people as Christopher and Sylvia never getting it on? Since the railway carriage and hotel room carpet action of the first episode, Parade’s End has been a teasing chronicle of people not getting their end away, as summed up by Sylvia in the best speech on female sexual frustration in literature. Not that Christopher and Valentine are any better, their relationship having been stuck at ‘Colin Firth gazing longingly at Jennifer Ehle over the piano forte’ levels for over five years now. General Campion wasn’t wrong when he barked about Christopher having a complicated love life.
A quick salute to Roger Allam, who was wonderful as the dyspeptic General this week, declaiming over his troops’ personal lives while he trimmed that gorgeous moustache. General Campion came into his own in the episode, more than making up for the lack of Mr and Mrs Macmaster’s buffoonery.
Next week's episode will be the climax of this elegantly handled mini-series and with it, a wave goodbye to its richly drawn cast of characters. Until, that is, their almost-guaranteed return come awards season wouldn't you say?
Read Louisa's review of the previous episode, here.
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