And you'll have seen enough to understand now why I, having seen Robin Ellis first as Essex in Elizabeth R and then as Ross & also as Franklin Blake in The Moonstone, on spotting he was in the 1971 Sense & Sensibility just went, oh, well, yes, who else would be Willoughby? And then he walked in as Edward Ferrars & while I was still recovering from that, Clive Francis turned up as Willoughby, because sometimes watching non-linearly is the funniest way to do things.
(a) Allowing for my incomplete knowledge of beige TV Clive Francis, he had a visible through-line of attractive trash fires in this period that would make sense of that casting. I don't know that I would have caught it without Middlemarch, but Fred Vincy is the mayor's charming failson who racks up such debts living on his expectations that his shock disinheritance leaves him more than financially embarrassed, unable to repay the father of the girl he loves for backing one of his irresponsibly accrued bills and far from a sure bet to get his act together and make good no matter how sincerely he means to. (Of the one episode of the 1968 BBC version available on YouTube—telerecorded, glitchy, what else is new—his major scenes involve accepting a bailout he feels weird about, failing to advance his suit with his love interest, and quarreling with his sister about her choice of beau, all of which is accurate to the book but still very funny to me.) Willoughby leaves much more damage in the wake of his charm, but the 1971 Sense and Sensibility seems unusually sympathetic toward him in his last interview with Elinor where his strength of feeling for Marianne comes through as clearly as his painful awareness that he might have hurt her less with a calculated seduction than he did with real affection that flanicked itself into a fortune-hunting marriage, to the point that Elinor agrees to transmit his sentiments to her sister outright as opposed to the much more guarded response she gives him in the book. I have seen the actor as an out-and-out villain, so I know he had that skill set, but his real gift looks like fuck-ups who are yet not total write-offs.
(b) I am profoundly entertained that this same version of Sense and Sensibility provides an Edward Ferrars surprised at home en déshabillé, thus proving that a serial in possession of a hot leading man must be in want of a scene that shows it off even if most of his appeal to that point has been his adorkability. The 1999 The Winslow Boy owes obvious royalties.
(c) And their John Dashwood was played by Milton Johns, last seen cheating Francis at cards, the Poldark cinematic universe really is microscopic.
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(a) Allowing for my incomplete knowledge of beige TV Clive Francis, he had a visible through-line of attractive trash fires in this period that would make sense of that casting. I don't know that I would have caught it without Middlemarch, but Fred Vincy is the mayor's charming failson who racks up such debts living on his expectations that his shock disinheritance leaves him more than financially embarrassed, unable to repay the father of the girl he loves for backing one of his irresponsibly accrued bills and far from a sure bet to get his act together and make good no matter how sincerely he means to. (Of the one episode of the 1968 BBC version available on YouTube—telerecorded, glitchy, what else is new—his major scenes involve accepting a bailout he feels weird about, failing to advance his suit with his love interest, and quarreling with his sister about her choice of beau, all of which is accurate to the book but still very funny to me.) Willoughby leaves much more damage in the wake of his charm, but the 1971 Sense and Sensibility seems unusually sympathetic toward him in his last interview with Elinor where his strength of feeling for Marianne comes through as clearly as his painful awareness that he might have hurt her less with a calculated seduction than he did with real affection that flanicked itself into a fortune-hunting marriage, to the point that Elinor agrees to transmit his sentiments to her sister outright as opposed to the much more guarded response she gives him in the book. I have seen the actor as an out-and-out villain, so I know he had that skill set, but his real gift looks like fuck-ups who are yet not total write-offs.
(b) I am profoundly entertained that this same version of Sense and Sensibility provides an Edward Ferrars surprised at home en déshabillé, thus proving that a serial in possession of a hot leading man must be in want of a scene that shows it off even if most of his appeal to that point has been his adorkability. The 1999 The Winslow Boy owes obvious royalties.
(c) And their John Dashwood was played by Milton Johns, last seen cheating Francis at cards, the Poldark cinematic universe really is microscopic.