War of the worlds

[youngestisapsycho]

Anyone watching?

[Stupiddriver1]

Yes, I’m enjoying it.

[Powerplant]

So far so good

[youngestisapsycho]

Is it only 3 episodes?

[overnightangel]

Yeah 3 Sunday nights. Both leads really good so far, as is Robert Carlyle as ever

[longwayoff]

I'm impressed. Much better than I expected. I see Demelza has perfected the art of the long stare after all that yearning looking for out to sea for Ross in Poldark.

[overnightangel]

Don’t get where the post apocalyptic bits are meant to be.. flash to the future? Don’t really know the story, just that people thought it was real on the radio when Orson Welles read it

[chomalungma]

Love the album.

I've never read the book - so think I should. The series looks good and we'll try not to talk about the Tom Cruise version...

[Norugratsatall]

Yes I'm a bit confused by the post apocalyptic scenes. As far as I knew - from the story - the Martians were wiped out pretty quickly from Earth diseases but this looks as though the invasion is still happening years later as Amy has her son with her.

[Girliefriendlikespuppies]

I was a bit confused by the post apocalyptic scenes as well, also is demelza's son the same little boy that played Poldarks son?! 🤣

[HappydaysArehere]

Entertaining so far.

[MsAdorabelleDearheartVonLipwig]

Are we meant to think she’s still looking for George?

[chomalungma]

I just need to say

Oooooooooola

[ghostmouse]

I didn't like it

[thenightsky]

I loved it! I vaguely remember reading HG Wells when I was a geeky teenager. It came right back to me as soon as I heard the opening lines.

[dogsdinnerlady]

Kid playing her son is Valentine from PD. Agree, lots of long close ups of Demelza/Amy. Similar hair and colour palette for her clothes too.
Amy and George do not feature in the novel. The story is told by a nameless narrator. Martians only confined to Surrey/London in the book.
This version is set in Woking - now infamous destination for furtive princes looking for pizza/alibi.

[DriftingLeaves]

Loving it so far. Not too much messing with the basic plot.

[longwayoff]

Well spotted @Girliefriendlikespuppies, thought he looked familiar. Now that you've mentioned it, they're looking very Poldark-like in the post-apocalypse scenes, maybe Ross will gallop in, rescue them and scoop them off to Cornwall away from the nasty Martians.

[Gone2far]

I thought it was dire. Bloody BBC shoehorning in feminism, gay issues, horrible imperialists and toffs into a decent story. Why can't they just, you know, dramatise the book?
The resulting mess, with all the extraneous wokeness having to be inserted, is dull, dull, dull.

[RipleysCat]

I enjoyed it but agree with Gone2far, I think they could have used a lighter touch with the said issues and it would have had more of an impact.
Also, I felt as though half the script was a close up shot of a quivering Amy/Demelza exclaiming ‘George!’ every 5 mins. Yes love, we know his name by now...

[EoinMcLovesCakeJumper]

I quite enjoyed it, but as soon as Robert Carlyle mentioned the odds of something coming from Mars as being "a million to one", I heard Alan Partridge in my head bellowing "But still they came!"

I thought the post-apocalyptic bits looked like they were set on Mars itself but I could be reading too much into it. The ending of the book is a tiny bit lame and anticlimactic by today's standards, so perhaps it's going to be different?

[5foot5]

I am with Gone2far on this one. It is a few years since I read the book but they have changed the story so much it hardly seems right to call it "War of the Worlds"

I was very confused by the glimpses we kept seeing of an adult and child wondering around in a wasteland, until it became clear near the end that this is meant to be a few years after the events when the woman and her child are still searching for the main character. WTF!? In the book the Martians are wiped out relatively quickly.

Not even sure I will bother to watch again.

[senua]

Bloody BBC shoehorning in feminism, gay issues, horrible imperialists and toffs into a decent story. Why can't they just, you know, dramatise the book?
The resulting mess, with all the extraneous wokeness having to be inserted, is dull, dull, dull.
Absolutely agree.

I also got bored of everyone Staring. There wasn't much acting going on.

[MinesaPinot]

I wasn't keen. I thought it was a bit dull.

Am DH saying 'oooh, living in sin, in Woking' in a very 'Frankie Howard' sort of way didn't help (don't ask, I have absolutely no idea...)

[senua]

Actually, I'll amend my comment. The book arose because of concerns about invasion (esp Russians), colonialism and ecology but these subtleties got lost in the over-arching theme of "Gosh, weren't the Victorians vile. We're so much more woke than them, we're much better people."
It would have been more interesting to go with the theme of "we've been worrying about these things for over a century. We're not that different from the Victorians."

[BiasBinding]

DH was muttering throughout because he knows the book and it's not faithful to it.

Also, I kept being distracted by the fact that most of it was filmed in and around Liverpool/Cheshire, rather than Woking/London, but I accept that's a matter of local knowledge. Plus (major geek alert incoming) the Astronomer Royal, before being incinerated, was listening to Elgar's 'Cockaigne' overture on the gramophone. A piece that wasn't recorded till the 1920's....(and actually, wasn't even composed until after Wells had written the book).

Yes, we are pedants in this house