The Great Fire

Another viewer compared this would-be miniseries exploring the 1666 Great Fire of London to EASTENDERS and I think they were spot on: this is extraordinarily disappointing given the effort and level of talent involved, and says a lot about the current state of the ITV drama department.

The miniseries is about the fire but the fire hardly comes into it. Instead we gets lots of uninteresting soap opera shenanigans involving sex, politics and conspiracy. The characterisation is on the level of a provincial pantomime and never once did I believe in or care about any of the sub-plots.

In a bid for quality, a lot of familiar actors from the best TV series around today are brought in. We get Rose Leslie and Charles Dance from A GAME OF THRONES and Jack Huston from BOARDWALK EMPIRE, but none of them are at their best. And they're sidelined in favour of Daniel Mays, who's out of his league playing Pepys (who seems to be a bit of a twit) and the singularly wooden Andrew Buchan. No, THE GREAT FIRE is a chore to sit through and there's nothing here I can recommend to any viewer.

This is drama by numbers.

A great idea for a script but unfortunately the writing, the directing and most of the acting fails to deliver. There is one character in particular (Hannah)that had I been there I would have thrown her ON To the fire. Constantly whining and nagging and the poor actress was so miscast as a 13 year-old - maybe her agent misheard and thought it was for a 30 year old!

The cast contains some quality actors particularly Daniel Mays and Charles Dance but they are directed so badly that at one point I really thought Dance was going to twirl his moustache and utter "Mou-ha-hah".

Mays also fails to deliver anything much more than a caricature of Pepys and in the first episode the whinging boatman (read cab driver for modern day equivalent) is so clichéd that I thought he was going to say "You know 'oo I 'ad in the back of my boat the other day?"

Indeed the only actor who showed any depth was Rose Leslie as the sister-in-law but think in future years she may be embarrassed to have this one on her CV.

ITV dramas have shown a massive improvement in quality in recent years but sadly this does not fall into that category and is more typical of their output that graced our screens in the late 1990s and early noughties. It is more suited to soap opera than serious drama and is an opportunity missed.

I thought this was very badly written, and not worth watching. Every one in it has been so badly flawed as to be unbelievable. Not a fan I am afraid. The cast were trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ears. It seemed more a script more suited to Eastendfers, another program which I cannot be bothered to watch. No celebration of how well organized the society must have been that only 6 people perished. We think of our society as being so enlightened and modern, but I doubt that the outcome of a fire in London today of such magnitude would be so well managed with so little loss of life. There was an opportunity here to show the courage and fantastic organisation skills of our ancestors, instead we get 2nd rate intrigues and the baseness of human frailties which are not entertainng to watch, much admit to. And, quite honestly, not something that is often common in these sorts of situations. Pitifully bad storyline, which had the potential to be good.

For anyone expecting a documentary, it's worth noting that this is a dramatisation, there is historical content of course, but there is also a theatrical content running alongside. It's a truly interesting drama, you get some fascinating content, how it started, and how it was stopped.

The accompanying story is interesting, and ends up overshadowing the interest of the fire itself.

It does feel like a drama of two halves, if I'm honest, I didn't care a huge deal for the first two episodes, maybe my expectations were for something quite different, however, the third and fourth parts are terrific, there's a massive switch up in quality.

The special effects are a mix of wonderful and awful, sometimes it looks a bit amateur, and other times it looks amazing. A mixed bag.

The acting is very, very good, the standout without any shadow of doubt is Charles Dance, he's brilliant in it, sinister and commanding. One of two perhaps felt miscast.

Watch it for a bit of escapism. 7/10

Everyone knows the Popish Plot was a fabricated story. Cannot believe they'd make a movie about a real event, the fire, and use an obvious fake story to try to "enhance" it. Ugh.