Apparently it’s mentioned in-script also but I totally missed it. And yet it still came through to me via her acting, which I think is a testament to Ellie Heydon’s skill as an actor, that I was able to pick up on that background– a quick search showed me that while Harlots is her first IMDB credit, she has a long background in theatre, and an education at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama which makes sense considering!
‘it’s a sin to deprive a workman of his wages’ vs. ‘a harlot can always be bought.’
among all the prestige period dramas tho, my ranking is probably like:
tudors
borgias
versailles
(the last two are maybe tied, i never finished borgias but versailles had so much violence and was not very fast-paced besides)
granted all three had issues with gratuitous nudity of women especially, and also gratuitous assault scenes, but i do actually feel like it was least egregious in that regard was tudors (altho this is maybe just those scenes vs. total screentime otherwise that’s making me say that, because i think tudors had the most screentime overall).
like, the thomas culpeper scene did not need to be that long, at all, but it was actually based on a historic account (unlike george boleyn’s)
and also it was important that they cast torrance coombs (who is a conventionally attractive, gossip girl-casting-type) as culpeper; because so often period dramas (like poldark– which includes their main, played by a handsome actor, assaulting someone but denies it in the narrative so it doesn’t count– like borgias with lucrezia’s first husband) seem to be trying to make the point that only ugly (specifically, overweight) men can be rapists, and that is certainly not the case, and never has been.
i like, y’know, history, i like drama, i like high stakes and costumes and panache but like………i don’t like sexist writing, and i don’t like stereotypes, so i have a period drama void; and we try to fill it with fic but there’s just not enough of it!!
also i do find there’s a big difference (not always) between fic that is like, say, 16th cent rpf (real people fiction), and like tudors (showtime) fic (which, is even a show i like but definitely did draw on stereotypes with characters…most were not fully nuanced/fleshed out, partly i think because of limited time and their cast was so big, rather than just having a few main char’s and focusing on them)….altho, of course often they’re both tagged so they get more traffic (i’m guilty of this myself, lol) but you can usually tell when a fic is based more on historic readings vs. solely a period drama and usually those more based in history are better/more nuanced/less stereotyped.
