COLIN FIRTH: In The Matter of Mr. Darcy (HUFF POST BLOG)

Elinor Lipman
Author

Though hardly enough is known about Jane Austen's too-brief, non-celebrity life, there is one biographical certainty we can surmise from this distance: No one ever asked her whom she'd pick to play Mr. Darcy in the movies.

May I weigh in? ("Insolent girl!" Lizzie Bennet would scold.) I do so only after having rented, streamed, watched, read, and taken notes during a week of adaptation immersion. Thus "pleased with the preference of one," I announce that the head-and-shoulders winner of Best Mr. Darcy is Colin Firth (1995 Masterpiece Theatre, 300 minutes.)

A geological sample of Darcy's core, as portrayed so beautifully by Firth, would show the following layers: at the bottom, his breeding and wealth. Undeniable. On top of that, confusion, the push-pull of class--egad, 10,000 pounds a year and a house 10 times larger than Downton Abbey! Who wouldn't be conflicted, falling in love beneath his station with a penniless girl in possession of an insufferable mother? Next: love-struck silence. And finally, which we learn from the housekeeper who has known him since he was four, a heart of pure gold. Before Disc Two, it is only hinted at. He stares at Elizabeth Bennet with an intensity that promises passion and--spoiler alert--a happy ending.


READ MORE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elinor-lipman/in-the-matter-of-mr-darcy_b_2551744.html

Colin Firth - Mad About The Boy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6l6_aPgVN0&list=UULH9p_a-1VQ5w7wGxPPDChg&index=3

Nancy Marsella

Colin Firth - Come On Get Higher (Pride and Prejudice)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U0wstd6OTM&list=UUr-gXdILncJ5zq58wwtRMyw&index=8

mgcrules's channel

'Ripper Street' promotional photos and spoilers of 'The King Came Calling' (Photos) RIPPER STREETJANUARY 8, 2013BY: JAMI MCDONALD (EXAMINER)

Spoiler TV released promotional photos of the new BBC eight episode mini series Jan. 8, 2013 and they are extremely entertaining both in period clothing and the action in the photos. You can check out the photos in the slideshow above. You can also check out a 3 minute spoiler scene from this upcoming episode here. In this video preview you see the Reid discussing the Ripper tactics and how convenient the river is to the disposal of bodies. It also reveals the rumors of a possible cholera outbreak that could put a crimp in Reid's investigation to find "The Ripper"

READ MORE: http://www.examiner.com/article/ripper-street-promotional-photos-and-spoilers-of-the-king-came-calling

Matthew Macfadyen-Episode Two Ripper Street

BBC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO1gpRyn28A

TV review: Ripper Street; Neil Armstrong – First Man on the Moon; The Hotel It throws in everything from CSI to Sherlock, but Ripper Street is proper crime drama (GUARDIAN)

Sam Wollaston
The Guardian, Sunday 30 December 2012 17.00 EST

Methodical ... Matthew Macfadyen as DI Edmund Reid in Ripper Street. Photograph: Amanda Searle/BBC/Tiger Aspect

Cor blimey. East London, 1889, ain't no place for no shrinking violet. Well, not according to Ripper Street (BBC1, Sunday). The men are all at the fight (bare–knuckle, naturally) and the women are all on the game, even though it's only a few months since the horribly mutilated body of Jack the Ripper's last victim was found. Suspicion, rumour and terror run in the gutters, along with all the usual Victorian filth.

Then there's blood in the gutters, too. Another body, another young woman, with the Ripper's calling card slices. Is it him – is Jack back?

Sensible, handsome Detective Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen) isn't so sure. He's not jumping to any conclusions, nor ruling anything out, just going about the investigation in the methodical, pragmatic way he would any other, pinning photos and stuff up on the blackboard (that's what the police used is it, before they got those transparent screens modern TV detectives have?). Reid calls on a seedy American pal, a former Pinkerton detective who has the combined talents of Grissom and Holmes, for a bit of help with the forensics and the logical reasoning.

It would be easy to be negative about Ripper Street. Do we really need more on a story that's been not just done to death, but then carved up, and had its insides torn out? Why this obsession? You could also be cynical about it more specifically as television. It's manufactured, a hybrid, televisual eugenics: take beautiful period drama, then sex up, literally, with sex; and darken, with nasty dark sex; add CSI, Waking the Dead, Sherlock, a touch of Life on Mars, Garrow's Law … anything that's been done well recently. Perhaps in the next episode there will be a phone vote to decide who goes to the gallows.


But, on the first point, this isn't really about Jack the Ripper – not so far, anyway. It's about the aftermath, it's about a time and a place and a feeling, it's about the police, and the press, and the people, and it's actually about that obsession. And on the other: well, maybe it is a cocktail – but it's a bloody good cocktail. Warlow's/Leveson's script is real, alive and human. It's beautifully performed, and beautiful to look at – stylish, and stylised. The bare-knuckle fight scenes are brutal and memorable. It's proper, character-based crime drama, gripping, and yes – I'm afraid – ripping as well.

READ MORE:http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2012/dec/30/ripper-street-tv-review

Five Minutes With… ‘Ripper Street & ‘Game of Thrones’ Actor Jerome Flynn (IFTN)

You may remember him from his 90s heyday, when he was riding high on the charts with number one hits such as ‘Unchained Melody’, with his ‘Soldier Soldier’ co-star Robson Green.

Long before he was ‘Up on the Roof’ with Green however, Jerome Flynn was a serious actor who starred in the award-winning TV series ‘Soldier Soldier’ for four years. After nearly a 15-year break from prime time television, and a six-year break from acting entirely, 2011 saw Flynn make a sensational TV comeback in HBO epic ‘Game of Thrones’, in which he plays cunning sellsword Bronn. Back on screens again this month, this time as rough-around-the-edges East London detective, Bennet Drake, Flynn talks to IFTN about falling back in love with acting, why Irish crews feel like family to him, and how the last 10 years has affected his character choices.

Jerome, how familiar were you with the Jack the Ripper tale before you signed up for ‘Ripper Street’?
I didn’t know much except they never caught him.

What made you sign up for the part then? 
It’s the world in which [Richard Warlow] paints, it’s a very rich and textured world of London at that time, and as an actor, it’s characters that, it’s not just a kind of episodic to have a crime and solve it, yes that kind of tends to happen, but the characters of these, that’s the strong element that runs through.

The series is centered around the lives of three East London police, Matthew Macfadyen’s character Inspector Reid, who we are told wants nothing more than to catch the Ripper; Adam Rothenberg’s character Captain Jackson, who mysteriously comes over from America; and your character, Detective Drake…

That creates a nice dynamic with my character, Drake, because I think Jackson, what he represents, and that he is very much out of his suit and free and does what he wants, whereas Drake’s very buttoned up. He has a wounded past and he’s trying to make himself a better man and be a gentleman but he can’t button it up. So he’s jealous of Jackson, and also he’s jealous of the fact that he takes Reid’s attention, because Reid obviously has a thing going with him and enjoys his company and bounces off him, whereas it’s harder for Reid to bounce off him, apart from physically, in terms of intellectually, I don’t do it for him. I’m trying to convince him, but maybe a couple of series down the line, so that’s a nice dynamic.


READ MORE: http://www.iftn.ie/news/?act1=record&only=1&aid=73&rid=4285667&tpl=archnews&force=1

Ripper Street: Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn Interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=AivtsIXajGQ


https://www.youtube.com/user/danielsredluna?feature=watch