After the trailer emerged for Benedict Cumberbatch's new drama Parade’s End, it would be easy to see how influential Downton Abbey has been in getting Ford Madox Ford’s classic novel finally on screen
Cumberbatch though isn’t so keen on the comparison, after he told the September issue of Reader’s Digest about his dislike for the second series of the hugely popular ITV show.
He told the magazine “We’re living in a culture now that’s revering, or having a nostalgia trip with, the beginning of the 1900s. Although Downton traded a lot on the sentiment in the last series…but we won’t talk about that series because it was, in my opinion, f*****g atrocious.”
He went on to further separate “There was that fear, yes. I thought, Are we pandering to a taste? But this is so much more sophisticated, so much more unusual. You rarely see a piece about this class of people that’s this accurate, funny and pointed.
“We’re not making some clichéd comment: ‘Oh, isn’t it awful the way there’s this upstairsdownstairs divide.’ This is about class and love, an elegy to a dying era. It’s the final mad waltz of Edwardian society into this war-game idiocy.”
The September Issue of Reader’s Digest is out on Augst 21st and Parade’s End starts on BBC2 on August 24th.
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