To get annoyed by a badly written novel with serious factual mistakes

[PhaedraIsMyName]

Author thinks the witness to a crime can decide who the Crown calls as expert witness.

Expert witness is a therapist who was treating the witness to the crime. Expert witness is married to a lawyer. Expert witness has been discussing the background with lawyer husband. The person accused of the crime is the crime scene witness'father. Author thinks the lawyer husband can represent the accused and this is not a conflict.

Lawyer husband is actually employed in a government legal department and author thinks lawyer husband can, whilst still employed, act as a defence lawyer.

It's tosh. Did nobody bother to edit or proof read it?

Is it just me who bothers about stuff like this?

I am pretty sure publishers have computer programs now for "translating" British and American works back and forth. So they make changes like sidewalk and pavement. In some of the Rebus books published in the US, "whisky" is spelled "whiskey" as a result. Even in the US Scotch is spelled "whisky."

"And didn't get them printed for some reason."

Obsessive secrecy. Or it being character-building to make the junior Watchers-in-training copy them out by hand (my money's on the character-building one).

FatalCabbage I so agree on Death.. Pemberley but have you tried Longbourne. It covers the time span and a bit more of Pride and Prejudice and tells a separate story about the servants which intersects with P and P. It is its own thing IYSWIM.

The first line, or at least an early line, is something like 'Miss Elizabeth would not be so keen on going on muddy walks if she had to wash her own petticoats.'

Oxford bags - daphne from neighbours giving birth enraged my mum. She still mentions it occasionally now!
All the ones I can think of are very minor chick-lit things.
Although I did see an episode of Fraiser this morning with a supposed cockney friend of Daphne's. Most bizarre accent ever. Definitely NOT a cockney though.

Speaking again of accents, several of my friends and I love trying to catch out British actors doing American accents. Most of them are very good, but every now and then, there is a miss. Hugh Laurie, who is pretty much pitch perfect, missed it only on one word: "placard." Alan Cumming is close to perfect now in The Good Wife, but when he started out, his "r" sounds could get a bit Scottish now and then. I don't know if Cumming is doing it intentionally, but he has a trace of a Chicago accent mixed with East Coast which is exactly how I think Eli Gold should speak.

If I remember correctly Anthony Stewart Head also had some input in to the script which is why the words that Spike uses read well. I'm sure he calls someone a wanker in one episode. I thought Spike's accent was pretty good by the end.

Similarly, there's an episode of Doctor Who in which David Tennant, as the Doctor, puts on an (atrocious) fake Scottish accent.

I don't know whether any of you remember the short-lived 80s sitcom Dear John ? The format was sold to the US and their version made one of the characters British for some reason. In one episode her family father, mother and a couple of siblings, IIRC come to visit her and every single member of the family has a different regional British accent (for Bleak Expectations fans, it was like the time Pip is visited by the Ghost of Harvest Festival Present and sees the family of workers in his Bon factory, except that the accent issue wasn't supposed to be funny).

I read that the man who played Frasier's Dad, although he had lived in the US for many years, had been born in Manchester, and the one word they couldn't write for him to say was "umbrella" because he couldn't say it in anything other than a Mancunian accent - "oombrella"

Recently read Before I Go To Sleep and the author often described each visit to a cafe in minute detail ... but what started out as polystyrene cups at the beginning of the chapter turned into mugs at the end. If you are going to make the effort at least remember how it started!

Thanks, ObfusKate!

Similar to Audrey Niffeneggar second book, can't remember the name, where raccoons knock over a bin. In London. Hampstead IIRC.

I recall that many years ago there was a live action version of 101 Dalmations staring a 'pre house' Hugh Laurie amongst others. There is a scene where raccoons get in the van a make the lights flash, beep the horn etc. Laurie pointed out that we don't get raccoons in the uk, only to be told 'well it says in the script you do'.

On the subject of accents, I went to stage school, myself and one other girl there were from the West Country. We had an accent coach telling us how to do West Country accents. When we pointed out that we had, or could do, authentic accents we were told we were wrong.

What I find particularly endearing is that so many of us, clearly intelligent and well educated are seeking logical explanations for Buffy.

I adore the entire show, ( I worship at the altar at the exalted Joss, and will, if I ever gain magical powers, preserve a particularly nasty vengeance curse for the idiot who cancelled Firefly just as it was getting into its stride) however as my DD1 pointed out the other day, the only episode that actually makes any kind of sense of all is the one where Buffy hallucinates that Sunnydale is a hallucination.

And I will defend James Marster's accent from about series 5. What improves is that the cadences are far more English, especially in series 6 when they let Spike swear a lot more.

(DD1's question: if there's only 1 slayer at a time, at least at the beginning, why do they need such a huge Watchers' Council, given that the last British watcher was, as far as we know, killed by Spike in the 70s? I am sure we're missing something and would welcome an explanation.)

I can't remember who mentioned Elizabeth George but I totally agree. I can remember getting quite irate once that her research, such as it was, was very out of date, and she had the police still following the old Judges' Rules when PACE had been in force for many years. I also used to get really cross when people confessed to Morse sitting in a church, and the entire plot was wrapped up on the basis of that conversation. Had the man never heard of cautioning suspects?

cash, I promise you, I am completely beyond shame in seeking logical explanations for buffy. I totally, totally love it. And I think you are right about the swearing. Part of the problem earlier must be that you feel the character wouldn't be saying such half-arsed insults.

I love the bit where Spike comes out with a catalogue of 'English' words in the episode where they've all lost their memories, and realizes in horror he must be English. And Giles replies dryly 'welcome to the nancy tribe'.

I admit, I am sitting here writing lectures for English Lit undergrads and trying desperately to work out whether I can discuss Buffy in sufficiently elevated tones as to manage to work it in.

The sad part is, I suspect as a cultural reference it'll be completely over the heads of this generation.

I have read all of Elizabeth George and I think she is now over compensating for being an American writing English police procedurals. I may be completely off the mark here, and as an American, I am not as familiar with changes in British speech through the years, but I think her characters sound like British people from the 1950s and also a bit twee. She seems to be trying to avoid all Americanisms and thus seems to be going back in time.

To copy out the ancient texts by hand, obviously.

Tortoise, kindly pm me, because this is startling:

FatalCabbage, I love that I know who you are just from your rant about the blueberry pancakes!

::contemplates impending name change::

Ah, I don't mean in RL. I am not a stalker. I mean a previous MN identity. I've just realised how that post came across...

Elizabeth George wrote a book set somewhere I used to live. It describes places in such fine detail, as though she visited and made notes and maps and took photos, then when she got home was determined to get every single note into the book.

Later I lived in Oxford, which makes watching Morse, Lewis or Endeavour something of a drinking game.

DUDE, that explanation ain't much better.

::advance searches self::

You might all enjoy this blog: popclassicsjg.blogspot.co.uk/

She's a proper classicist who reviews books, popular tv and films for their historical (or not) accuracy. It's brilliant.