Bouquet of Barbed Wire ITV 1

I tried to watch a bit of this last night but I much prefer the original characters. Trevor Eve is coming across as much more creepy than Frank Finlay playing the character. I normally like Trevor Eve acting but do not like him in this.
 
That's what I did. I do like Trevor Eve, think he's a very good actor and always watchable, but the storyline was LUDICROUS. If Gavin wanted to get revenge, surely his anger would have been directed at the pervert who brought them up and abused them. Or did he do something to the foster parents that I missed?

Also, would Pru have been attracted to a man who treated her family with such contempt? The fact that Gavin was so vile in the first place, makes you wonder what she saw in him - also the relationship with Cassie was just un - believable in the true sense of the word. In the original the relationship that grew between Cassie and Gavin was based on them both feeling excluded by the relationship between Pru and her father. We didn't get that sense here in the remake. Pru turned against her father in favour of Gavin.
 
lol...thankyou..

still confusing though...when did the baby arrive? One minute she was bashed up in the car..the next there was a lovely term baby?? And where was the paramedic when she was dying in the road??
 
oh i agree that is his motive for screwing her on the desk but in think maybe she is there for the son's motive of having something on dear old dad because at the moment he knows the daughter idealises him.
 
Mind ! loved him in Shoestring !...but he was much younger (and thinner) in that!.in this drama ..i cringed at the way he seduced the Sarah character in the office ! ughhh not sexy at all !!! talk about bad directing ! ..hopefully the next 2 episodes will get better !
 
That is big problem with this production. Whilst the content would obviously not shock viewers today in the same way as it did 34 years ago, it could still have been a damn good drama. Instead they appear to have done a "Bouquet for the CSI generation"..and don't get me wrong, I like CSI.
But this needed the the characters to be revealed slowly, gradually stripping away the layers of apparent respectability.
From memory, Gavin was originally an American with a degree of charm, not some boorish oaf from "up north". For a drama like this to work, they needed time to set up each character, to put some flesh on the bones. It's all been told at breakneck speed and lost any of the original mystery, revelations coming every 5 minutes..even soaps do a better job !
I guess it will turn out ok for what it is..a rather dumbed down version. A pity though, it could have been so much better.
 
The thing about the violence in the original is that it was really Pru that started it off by goading Gavin into hitting her during sex. The violence then slowly took over their relationship as Gavin became more and more frustrated with the intense, manipulative relationship going on between Pru and her father.

I suspect this modern day ITV thought it would be too controversial to show a woman not only complicit in a violent relationship but in some ways actively encouraging that violence.

Its a pretty important differance though though because the violence in the original, both Pru's desire for violence and Gavins willingness to dish it out, was bascially a symptom of the wider issue, which was the quietly incestuous relationship going on between father and daughter.

Everything that happens in the original is really instigated because of Peter and Pru's relationship, where-as in this new version you don't get that sense at all.
 
Actually, Sarah's quite interesting. She starts off looking all victimy and girlish, but it appears that she's really angling for a partnership, she wants to take over Peter's vacated position.

This also shows one way in which society has changed since the original was made in the 1970s. A secretary in the 1970s had no real prospects of career progression. She would have been in the same position from her early twenties until she retired at the age of 60. The modern Sarah is different, she has far more chance of promotion, and she's ambitious.
 
Love the totally overblown melodrama :) I reckon Gavin is Peter's love child too and Gavin was out to screw up the family by er...screwing the family. So basically, it's an incest-fest.
 
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