Based on her true-life letters and memoirs (as the excessive opening declaratives inform us), 'Florence Nightingale' is a different kind of period-drama chronicling the feminist icon's early days and aspirations to become a nurse, and continuing to her subsequent breakdown following the aid she gave in the Crimean War.
A major fault of this drama is the patchy, inconsistent writing; colloquialisms and informal conversation leave it seeming out of touch with the era, and grating fantasy sequences seem to have been freshly picked out of a badly performed pantomime. The director's unwise decision to inter-cut between time eras so frequently also only results in unnecessary confusion, and breaking the fourth wall in Nightingale's letters delivery fractures the illusion that what we are watching took place long before the present.
Laura Fraser is bold and refreshing in the eponymous role, but she lacks the strength to fully-fledge her character she could quite simply be any well-spoken women from the period, and I imagined someone such as Helena Bonham Carter or Olivia Williams would have been more suited to the role, fitting comfortably into the character of Florence Nightingale with more power and resonance. On a positive note, considering this is pre-watershed television, the director does manage to convey the horrific nature of battle rather well, and it is an interesting, often atmospheric take on a well-known figurehead. The Victorian aesthetics are also very well established, and there are some fine supporting performances among the rest of the cast.
It's not a bad effort, but at a mere sixty minutes the drama felt far longer than necessary thanks to turgid pacing and a lack of fluency, cohesion and dramatic tension. There's nothing innovative or inspiring here, and with far better, more authentic period-drama available it seems an unexciting, bland waste of an hour.
A major fault of this drama is the patchy, inconsistent writing; colloquialisms and informal conversation leave it seeming out of touch with the era, and grating fantasy sequences seem to have been freshly picked out of a badly performed pantomime. The director's unwise decision to inter-cut between time eras so frequently also only results in unnecessary confusion, and breaking the fourth wall in Nightingale's letters delivery fractures the illusion that what we are watching took place long before the present.
Laura Fraser is bold and refreshing in the eponymous role, but she lacks the strength to fully-fledge her character she could quite simply be any well-spoken women from the period, and I imagined someone such as Helena Bonham Carter or Olivia Williams would have been more suited to the role, fitting comfortably into the character of Florence Nightingale with more power and resonance. On a positive note, considering this is pre-watershed television, the director does manage to convey the horrific nature of battle rather well, and it is an interesting, often atmospheric take on a well-known figurehead. The Victorian aesthetics are also very well established, and there are some fine supporting performances among the rest of the cast.
It's not a bad effort, but at a mere sixty minutes the drama felt far longer than necessary thanks to turgid pacing and a lack of fluency, cohesion and dramatic tension. There's nothing innovative or inspiring here, and with far better, more authentic period-drama available it seems an unexciting, bland waste of an hour.
