Bad accents in tv/ films

[Bearpawk]

Anybody else get really bothered by this?

Honestly it makes my skin crawl for some reason and that's ALL I can think about/ hear and it completely ruins whatever I'm watching.
Some examples - Suranne Jones in dr foster
Lemon in Bullet Train
The sister in Insomnia

Arghhhh am I the only one who picks up on it ?

It was too cut-glass, and her pronunciation of ‘Mark Darcy’ was much too plummy.

Minnie Driver and Chris O Donnell in Circle of Friends were up there with the worst attempts at an Irish accent I’ve ever heard.

Er -- Chris O'Donnell is definitely Irish!

He is American. And his Irish accent in circle of friends was awful.

Don Cheadle's cockney accent in Ocean's Eleven!

Sounded like he had done some sort of linguaphone course entitled " How to speak cockney like Dick Van Dyke. "
He is such a good actor usually but just diabolical in this film!

Charlie Hunnam's Northern Irish accent in Rebel Moon kills me. The same with whatever that is they tried to do in Sons of Anarchy. Was it Irish? Scottish? Welsh? I had to mute and watch with subtitles. 😭

I’ve never read that Nicola Walker is from Cambridge, just that she was a student there.

Wikipedia says she was born in Stepney and went to school in Essex and Walthamstow.

Either way, a Halifax accent which convinces someone from round there is impressive. I think she’s a wonderful and versatile actress/actor.

Came on here to say this!!

Love your username 😁 if ye know ye know

I hope I don’t sound rude asking this, but are you confusing him with Chris O’Dowd?

Almost anyone who’s not Australian trying to do an Australian accent. But most notably Meryl Streep in Evil Angels: ‘Uh dingohws goh mai bayyyybeeee’ (A dingo’s got my baby).

I hate the fake American accents on Radio 4 plays!

haddockfortea · Yesterday 23:46

No-one's mentioned EastEnders yet...

Decades ago, when I last watched it, there was a girl called Disa, or Deza, who was supposed to be from Newcastle. The whole of the Northeast went,

"Eh? She's from Sunderland!"

Now people say that about Buffy but for me Alexis Denisof does the best accent.

@DiscoBeat me too. There is a particular 'BBC American' that they all use, and they used to do the same one on TV. I remember struggling to watch Anne of Green Gables in the 1970s.

And why do they have every child played by the same woman with a squeaky voice? If it's not the same woman why do they all sound the same.

I disagree about everyone in Broadchurch being terrible as I assume David Tennant was speaking in his own Scottish accent. Agree there was much oo-arr otherwise.

There's a funny moment in The Wire where Dominic West's character has to impersonate an English man, some time is spent with him practising. I'm not American but thought that he, like Idris Elba, was good. Occasional posh slips on West's part.

Jane Leeves came from Essex, and her Manchester accent in Frasier was a shocker.

Mick Jagger in "Ned Kelly'' - bloody awful.

Jane Leeves came from Essex, and her Manchester accent in Frasier was a shocker.

Even more so, it was supposed to be scouse.

Me too! I don't think I made it to the end of the episode. I don't normally care that much but it really was jarring

echt· Today 03:08

There's a funny moment in The Wire where Dominic West's character has to impersonate an English man...

He wouldn't have needed an English voice coach, what with him being a Yorkshireman. He did do a good impression of an American doing an impression of an English man, however!

This!
I have always had a bee in my bonnet about 'Daphne's' horrendous supposedly Manc' accent.

Actually took offence 😂

Then her bloody Mother shows up and took it to a whole other level 😬

The guy who played the brother in Orphan Black managed a pretty good English accent, I thought. The main character herself didn’t do badly, but every so often I would hear an Australian sounding vowel.

Jonny Depp in From Hell is one of my least favourites.

Oh, I know. She's northern but her brother Nigel has a cockney accent for some reason and a terrible one at that!

I have to say that I think posters on here are a bit too picky sometimes, determined to think the actors are getting it wrong. Evidence, not realising that Derek Thompson (Charlie from Casualty), actually IS frim Northern Ireland (I knew this and had seen him in other stuff years ago doing what is presumably his natural accent).

I actually thought that Renee Zellweger was great in Bridget Jones. Yes she's quite plummy, but why is that unbelievable? Bridget obviously came from a very middle class family, probably went to a posh school etc. Real people do have that accent you know. Similar with Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors and the 1990s Emma, I thought she did really well!

And what is 'ridiculous' about Helen Baxendale's accent as Emily in Friends? It is just standard southern English without a regional flavour. She sounded the same in Cold Feet I think? In real life I understand that Helen is from Birmingham and you can hear this a bit in her character in Cuckoo.

I agree about Daphne and her amazing multi-accented family in Frasier though! But perhaps this is a bit of an in joke among the actors and directors who made the show?

As someone who lives near the Black Country and Birmingham, I found pesky blinders impossible to watch past the first few episodes because 99% of the brummie accents were god awful

Cillian Murphy put a good effort in, but still so jarring. Not to mention the Aunt (forget the name) or Arthur. I wondered if Arthur was supposed to be a cockney at first.

Yes on Peaky Blinders the accents are very deliberate and slow (and probably a bit inaccurate) , and for some reason they don't seem to use contractions! (ie they'd always say 'do not' and 'cannot' rather than 'don't' and 'can't' as people normally do in real life.) Not that realistic I suspect, but the whole world of Peaky Blinders is sort of heightened and unreal anyway, so I didn't mind it.

Interestingly you can hear them talking in exactly the same way in the recent BBC drama 'This Town', set in Birmingham and Coventry in the early 80s. Other things about that seemed inaccurate too, but I quite enjoyed it. I think it might have been made by some of the same people who did Peaky Blinders?

Though Ralph Fiennes in The Dig did a lovely Suffolk accent.