''Parade's End'' is a five-part

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

television serial adapted from the eponymous novel cycle (1924–1928) by

Ford Madox Ford Ford Madox Ford (né Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer ( ); 17 December 1873 – 26 June 1939) was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals ''The English Review'' and ''The Transatlantic Review (1924), The Transatlant ...

. It premiered on

BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's second flagship channel, and it covers a wide range of subject matte ...

on 24 August 2012 and on HBO on 26 February 2013. The series was also screened at the 39th Ghent Film Festival on 11 October 2012. The miniseries was directed by

Susanna White Susanna White (born ) is a British television and film director. She spent twelve years making documentaries for BBC2, but is best known for directing the BBC miniseries ''Jane Eyre, HBO'' miniseries '' Generation Kill,'' and ''Disney+'' serie ...

and written by

Tom Stoppard Sir Tom Stoppard (; born , 3 July 1937) is a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and politi ...

. The cast was led by

Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch (born 19 July 1976) is an English actor. He has received List of awards and nominations received by Benedict Cumberbatch, various accolades, including a BAFTA TV Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and a Laurenc ...

and

Rebecca Hall Rebecca Maria Hall (born 3 May 1982) is an English actress and director. She made her first onscreen appearance at the age of 10 in the 1992 The Camomile Lawn (TV serial), television adaptation of ''The Camomile Lawn'', directed by her father, ...

as Christopher and Sylvia Tietjens, along with

Adelaide Clemens Adelaide Clemens is an Australian actress. On television, she has played Harper on the W series ''Love My Way'' (2007), Valentine on the BBC/HBO series ''Parade's End'' (2012), Tawney on the Sundance TV series '' Rectify'' (2013–2016), a ...

Rupert Everett Rupert James Hector Everett (; born 29 May 1959) is an English actor. He first came to public attention in 1981 when he was cast in Julian Mitchell's play and subsequent film '' Another Country'' (1984) as a gay pupil at an English public scho ...

Miranda Richardson Miranda Jane Richardson (born 3 March 1958) is an English actress who has worked in film, television and theatre. After graduating from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Richardson began her career in 1979 and made her West End theatre, West ...

Anne-Marie Duff Anne-Marie Duff (born 8 October 1970) is an English actress and narrator. She is best known for her BAFTA nominated television roles in '' Shameless'' and '' The Virgin Queen'', and her performance as Grace Williams in '' Bad Sisters'', for wh ...

Roger Allam Roger William Allam (born 26 October 1953) is a British actor who has performed on stage, in film, on television and radio. He played Inspector Javert in the original London production of the stage musical ''Les Misérables'', First Officer D ...

Janet McTeer Janet McTeer (born 5 August 1961) is an English actress. She began her career training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art before earning acclaim for playing diverse roles on stage and screen in both period pieces and modern dramas. She has r ...

, Freddie Fox,

Jack Huston Jack Alexander Huston (born 7 December 1982) is an English actor and director. He is best known for his role as Richard Harrow in the HBO television drama series ''Boardwalk Empire''. He also had a supporting role in the 2013 film ''American ...

, and

Steven Robertson Steven Robertson (born 1 January 1977) is a Scottish actor who stars as Detective Sandy Wilson in the BBC One adaptation of Ann Cleeves's ''Shetland'', filmed near where Robertson was born and brought up. He portrayed Michael Connelly, a young ...

. The series received widespread critical acclaim and has sometimes been cited as "the

highbrow Used colloquially as a noun or adjective, "highbrow" is synonymous with intellectual; as an adjective, it also means elite, and generally carries a connotation of high culture. The term, first recorded in 1875, draws its metonymy from the pseud ...

Downton Abbey ''Downton Abbey'' is a British historical drama television series set in the early 20th century, created and co-written by Julian Fellowes. It first aired in the United Kingdom on ITV (TV network), ITV on 26 September 2010 and in the United St ...

''". In its BBC Two premiere, the series attracted 3.5 million viewers, making it

's most watched drama since ''

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

'' aired in 2005. The miniseries received six

BAFTA The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA, ) is an independent trade association and charity that supports, develops, and promotes the arts of film, television and video games in the United Kingdom. In addition to its annual awa ...

TV nominations, including Best Actress for

, and five

Primetime Emmy Award The Primetime Emmy Awards, or Primetime Emmys, are part of the extensive range of Emmy Awards for artistic and technical merit for the American television industry. Owned and operated by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS), the P ...

nominations, including Best Adapted Screenplay for

and Best Actor for

. It won Best Costume Design at the 2013 BAFTAs.

Plot summary

In the years before the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, three Britons are drawn into fraught and ultimately tragic relations:

Anglican Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...

Christopher Tietjens, second son of the

lord of the manor Lord of the manor is a title that, in Anglo-Saxon England and Norman England, referred to the landholder of a historical rural estate. The titles date to the English Feudalism, feudal (specifically English feudal barony, baronial) system. The ...

of Groby, Yorkshire, who is a disconsolate statistician in London, with traditional

Tory A Tory () is an individual who supports a political philosophy known as Toryism, based on a British version of traditionalist conservatism which upholds the established social order as it has evolved through the history of Great Britain. The To ...

beliefs;

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

Sylvia Satterthwaite, his promiscuous and self-centred socialite wife who has married him knowing that she was already pregnant (possibly by another man); and

freethinking Freethought (sometimes spelled free thought) is an unorthodox attitude or belief. A freethinker holds that beliefs should not be formed on the basis of authority, tradition, revelation, or dogma, and should instead be reached by other meth ...

Valentine Wannop, a young

suffragette A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in particular to members ...

, pacifist daughter of a lady novelist, who is torn between her idealism and her attraction to "Chrissy". As the war works a profound change on Europe, and Christopher is badly wounded in France, the conflict shatters and rearranges the lives of all three principals, as well as virtually everyone else in their elite circle.

Production

The series was conceived when

Damien Timmer Damien Gerard Timmer (born 20 October 1968 in Chelsea, London) is an English Joint-Managing Director of British independent production company Mammoth Screen, which was established in 2007. He has executive produced ''Lost in Austen'', ''Wuthe ...

approached playwright Tom Stoppard to write the adaptation. After reading the novels, Stoppard agreed to pen the screenplay, thus marking his return to television after a 30-year absence. Stoppard has stated that he had considered

for the role of Christopher Tietjens even before '' Sherlock'' made him a global star.

was cast as Valentine after arriving for her audition in period clothing. Initially, producers were reluctant to cast an Australian actress but were won over on finding that Clemens' father is a British national. A significant part of the film was shot on location in

Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

, at Dorton House and St. Thomas a Becket Church. Additional scenes were filmed at Freemasons' Hall in London and Duncombe Park. The rest of the series was filmed in Belgium, including Poeke Castle in the town of Aalter, utilising television drama tax breaks, with scenes at the Western Front recreated in

Flanders Flanders ( or ; ) is the Dutch language, Dutch-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to culture, la ...

. Stoppard made changes from the source material, such as excluding most of the fourth novel, streamlining the plot to focus on the love triangle, and adding overt sex scenes. The exclusion of the fourth novel is not without precedent; it was also done in

Graham Greene Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a re ...

's 1963 edition of ''Parade's End'', and Ford himself sometimes referred to it as a trilogy; "He may have written the fourth to fulfill a contract or because he needed more money", said Michael Schmidt, the executor of Ford's literary estate.

Cast

as Christopher Tietjens *

as Sylvia Tietjens *

as Valentine Wannop *

as Mrs Wannop, Valentine's widowed mother * Freddie Fox as Edward Wannop, Valentine's younger brother *

as Mrs Satterthwaite, Sylvia's mother *

Ned Dennehy Ned Dennehy (born 8 December 1965) is an Irish actor in films and television. His credits include ''The Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog'' (1998), '' Blitz'' (2011), ''Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1'', '' Downhill'' (2014), '' Luther ...

as Father Consett *

Alan Howard Alan Howard may refer to: * Alan Howard (actor) (1937–2015), English actor * Alan Howard (cricketer) (1909–1993), English cricketer * Alan Howard (engineer) (1905–1966), American engineer * Alan Howard (hedge fund manager) (born 1963), hed ...

as Tietjens Senior *

as Mark Tietjens, Christopher's elder half-brother * Misha Handley as Michael Tietjens (4 years old) * Rudi Goodman as Michael Tietjens (8 years old) *

Stephen Graham Stephen Graham (born 3 August 1973) is an English actor and film producer. He began his career in 1990, with early notable roles in '' Snatch'' (2000) and ''Gangs of New York'' (2002), before his breakthrough role as Andrew "Combo" Gascoigne ...

as Vincent MacMaster *

as Edith Duchemin *

Rufus Sewell Rufus Frederik Sewell (; born 29 October 1967) is a British actor. In film, he has appeared in ''Carrington (film), Carrington'' (1995), ''Hamlet (1996 film), Hamlet'' (1996), ''Dangerous Beauty'' (1998), ''Dark City (1998 film), Dark City'' (1 ...

as Reverend Duchemin, Edith's husband *

as General Edward Campion * Patrick Kennedy as Captain McKechnie *

as Colonel Bill Williams *

Lucinda Raikes Lucinda Mary J Raikes (born 14 April 1971) is an England, English actress, most noted for playing Karen Ball in the sitcom ''Green Wing'' and Angela Heaney in ''The Thick of It'' and its spin off film ''In the Loop''. She has also appeared in ''S ...

as Evie, Sylvia's maid *

as Gerald Drake, Sylvia's former lover *

Tom Mison Thomas James Mison (born 23 July 1982)''Births, Marriages & Deaths Index of England & Wales, 1916–2005''. Ancestry.com; accessed 6 February 2014. is an English actor, voice artist, and writer. Following his film debut in ''Venus'' (2006), Mi ...

as Peter "Potty" Perowne, involved in affair with Sylvia *

Jamie Parker Jamie Parker (born 14 August 1979) is an English actor and singer. He is best known for his role as Harry Potter in the original cast for the West End play '' Harry Potter and the Cursed Child'', for which he received a Laurence Olivier Award ...

as Lord Brownlie, frustrated admirer of Sylvia's * Anna Skellern as Bobbie Pelham, Sylvia's best friend * Sasha Waddell as Lady Glorvina, Bobbie Pelham's mother *

Henry Lloyd-Hughes Henry Alexander Lloyd-Hughes is an English actor. He is known for his roles in ''Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire'' (2005), '' Unrelated'' (2007), ''The Inbetweeners'' (2008–2010), '' Miliband of Brothers'' (2010), '' Weekender'' (2011), ' ...

as Captain Notting * William Ellis as Aubrey

Episodes

Reception

The series has received widespread acclaim from British critics, ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

''s

Grace Dent Grace Georgina Dent (born 3 October 1973) is a British columnist, broadcaster and author. She is a restaurant critic for ''The Guardian'' and from 2011 to 2017 wrote a restaurant column for the ''Evening Standard''. She is a regular critic on t ...

going so far as to proclaim it "one of the finest things the BBC has ever made". Others praised Cumberbatch and Hall in the lead roles, Cumberbatch for his ability to express suppressed pain, ''The Independent''s Gerard Gilbert observed, "Perhaps no other actor of his generation is quite so capable of suggesting the tumult beneath a crusty, seemingly inert surface". ''The Arts Desk''s Emma Dibdin found "Cumberbatch's performance... faultless and often achingly moving, a painful juxtaposition of emotional stiffness and deep, crippling vulnerability". Hall's Sylvia was lauded as "one of the great female characters of the past decade" by

Caitlin Moran Catherine Elizabeth Moran ( ; born 5 April 1975) is an English journalist, broadcaster, and author at ''The Times'', where she writes two columns a week: one for the Saturday Magazine, and the satirical Friday column "Celebrity Watch". Moran w ...

, who also wrote that "the script and direction have genius-level IQ" in her ''

Times Time is the continued sequence of existence and events, and a fundamental quantity of measuring systems. Time or times may also refer to: Temporal measurement * Time in physics, defined by its measurement * Time standard, civil time specificat ...

'' TV column. ''Parade's End'' attracted 3.5 million viewers for its first episode, making it the most watched

BBC2 BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's second flagship channel, and it covers a wide range of subject matter, incorporating genres such as comedy, drama and ...

drama since ''

'' (2005). The second episode had a drop in ratings with 2.2 million viewers. A few viewers found the sound mixing awkward, the dialogue difficult to hear and understand. The miniseries received generally favourable reviews from American and Canadian television critics for its

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American pay television service, which is the flagship property of namesake parent-subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is based a ...

broadcast, according to

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

. Writing for

Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert ( ; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American Film criticism, film critic, film historian, journalist, essayist, screenwriter and author. He wrote for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. Eber ...

's ''

Chicago Sun-Times The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily nonprofit newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has long held the second largest circulation among Chicago newspaper ...

'' column, Jeff Shannon wrote that the miniseries has "up-scale directing" and "award-worthy performances" while Brad Oswald of the ''

Winnipeg Free Press The ''Free Press'' (or FP; founded as the ''Manitoba Free Press''; previously known as the ''Winnipeg Free Press'') is a daily (excluding Sunday) broadsheet newspaper in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. It provides coverage of local, provincial, natio ...

'' called it "a television masterpiece". Ford's tetralogy became a best-seller after the dramatisation was broadcast on the

Awards and nominations

''Parade's End'' was nominated for numerous awards. Both

and

won the

Broadcasting Press Guild The Broadcasting Press Guild (BPG) is a British association of journalists dedicated to the topic of general media issues. History The Guild was established in 1974 as a breakaway of The Critics' Circle and celebrated its 50th anniversary in 20 ...

awards for Best Actor and Actress respectively, while

picked up the Writer's Award and the series itself won Best Drama Series. The miniseries received six BAFTA TV nominations, including Best Actress for Rebecca Hall and five Primetime Emmy Award nominations including Best Adapted Screenplay for Tom Stoppard and Best Actor for Benedict Cumberbatch. It won Best Costume Design at the BAFTAs.

Merchandise

BBC Books produced a tie-in edition of ''Parade's End'' with Cumberbatch, Hall, and Clemens on the cover. It was made available in the UK on 16 August 2012.

Faber & Faber Faber and Faber Limited, commonly known as Faber & Faber or simply Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, C. S. Lewis, Margaret S ...

published a ''Parade End'' companion book by

, which includes the script, production stills, and deleted scenes omitted from the broadcast. The soundtrack by

Dirk Brossé Dirk, Knight BrosséEtat présent de la noblesse belge 2015, p. 20 (born 18 February 1960, Ghent) is a Belgian conductor and composer. He has composed over 200 works, including concerti, oratorios, lieder, chamber music and symphonic works. Br ...

was released in digital and physical copies on 2 October 2012. The BBC released DVD and Blu-ray copies of the series on 8 October 2012. They include behind the scenes footage and selected interviews with crew and cast members.

References

External links

* * * {{Susanna White 2012 British television series debuts 2012 British television series endings 2010s British drama television series 2010s British television miniseries HBO television dramas BBC television dramas Adaptations of works by Ford Madox Ford Television shows based on British novels Television series set in the 1910s Television shows filmed in Belgium Television shows set in France Television shows set in London Television shows set in Yorkshire Television shows shot in Kent Television series by Mammoth Screen Films with screenplays by Tom Stoppard World War I television drama series Films directed by Susanna White Television series set in the 1900s