Someone here commented on what has happened to BBC drama. I think the main problem is the medium being used. Today everything is on film. That means some choppy editing sometimes and distracting jerky camera movement, and then too much background underscore music. But the main problem with film for the Brits is that the actors can't seem to do the scenes in full. In film, there are lot of takes, re-takes, cuts to move the cameras around, lots of time in between takes for the actors to lose their momentum. In the heydey of BBC period dramas, most of the scenes were in studios where the directors could use multi video cameras and the actors could do their whole scenes uninterrupted in one take, thus giving the scene more immediacy and almost like a stage play. Yes, there are downsides to that. But IMHO that is what has changed over the years in terms of the acting.
The jarring switch from interior studio scenes to outdoor scenes shot on film upsets a lot of viewers today. But at the time (1970s-1980s) it was easier to shoot as much on studio videotape, than on film. Look at I,Claudius for example, totally shot on interior sets on video...no film shots at all. Look at the acting in that series!
Review of The Woman in White
