wed 11/12/2024

DVD: The Sinking of the Laconia | reviews, news & interviews

DVD: The Sinking of the Laconia

DVD: The Sinking of the Laconia

Alan Bleasdale takes to the high seas in a real wartime saga

Ken Duken ponders his humanitarian options as a U-boat commander

Alan Bleasdale, along with Dennis Potter one of the truly original voices of British television drama, has spent the past decade in silence. His brand of epic narrative, his penchant for letting his characters talk and talk, went out of fashion when along came a generation of younger writers who nicked Yosser Hughes’s catchphrase - “I could do that” – and slipped into his slots. He has returned with this, a sweeping drama replete with all the Bleasdalian virtues: a huge cast of characters, an astute eye for the historical hinterland, and a belief that human decency abides in unexpected places. In this case, a German U-boat.

Alan Bleasdale, along with Dennis Potter one of the truly original voices of British television drama, has spent the past decade in silence. His brand of epic narrative, his penchant for letting his characters talk and talk, went out of fashion when along came a generation of younger writers who nicked Yosser Hughes’s catchphrase - “I could do that” – and slipped into his slots. He has returned with this, a sweeping drama replete with all the Bleasdalian virtues: a huge cast of characters, an astute eye for the historical hinterland, and a belief that human decency abides in unexpected places. In this case, a German U-boat.

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Franka Potente does a realistic role and she is maybe the most beautirul she has looked since the Bourne Identity,

I'd thoroughly recommend the accompanying half hour documentary as, primarily through talking heads telling the raw, sometimes grisly, truths of their experiences 70 years ago, it achieves an emotional punch which Bleasdale's worthy but ponderous epic didn't - and in a fraction of the time.

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