Woke BBC's new period drama will tick all PC boxes & have just the right bonnets but here's why everyone will switch off

The Sun

30-05-2025

A NEW book came out this week.
It's called The Spider Covenant and it's about a group of sinister businessmen using money the Nazis squirrelled away after World War Two to fund a next- generation AI project which will put ­Hitler sympathisers in power around the world.
5
5
I'm bound to say, for two reasons, that it's a good read. Number one: It is. And number two: It was written by Brian Klein, who directed every single one of the studio segments in both Top Gear and The Grand Tour.
Certainly, it would make an excellent mini series on TV.
However, the BBC has decided instead to make a drama about a dreary ­Victorian woman from some god-awful Jane Austen book that I was forced to study at school. And which put me off reading for ten years.
Yup. It's another bloody period drama. Of course it is.
Horse and carriage pulls up on some gravel outside a big house. And then nothing of any great importance happens for about 16 hours.
However, the producer of this new one, Jane Tranter, says there's a reason why period dramas are usually boring. She says that as soon as you put an actor in clothes from the olden days, they start to walk slowly and talk posh.
Really? Michael Elphick didn't talk posh in The Elephant Man.
And the only reason they move slowly is because you can't really rush when you're wearing a bustle or a stovepipe hat. There's another issue the BBC always has.
They go to immense lengths to make sure the stitching on everyone's bonnet is correct for the time and that the swords are made from period metal.
But then in their 17th-century story, they cast people in wheelchairs and ­people with Mexican accents.
BBC releases new trailer for period drama Miss Austen starring Keeley Hawes
And there's usually quite a lot of talk about global warming.
There is, however, one period drama that got round all of this. Heath Ledger's movie, A Knight's Tale.
Chaucer was a dude
In that, the actors danced to music from Queen and David Bowie. They wore prog-rock clothes.
Chaucer was a dude, and the heroine was played by an ­ethnically diverse American.
5
It was brilliant. Mainly because behind all the period cleverness, there was a good story. Which you're unlikely to get from a book that sends most readers into a deep sleep by page four.
I fear that the BBC can make the ­characters rush about like Usain Bolt and talk like Jamie Carragher. But it won't make a ha'porth of difference.
Unless there's an actual plot we care about, we'll all carry on watching ­MobLand.
GEARS BOXING CLEVER
THE headlines this week told us that cars with manual gearboxes will soon become a thing of the past.
The figures seem to back this up. Back in 2011, only a quarter of cars sold in the UK were automatics, whereas today it's 80 per cent.
As a result, one in every four driving tests taken today is automatic-only. Because why bother getting qualified to drive a car with a clutch pedal and a gear lever, that you have to move about like you're stirring soup, when you're never going to encounter such a thing?
Aha. But there's more to this story than meets the eye. Because while a car may have a PRND automatic gear lever, the gearbox itself, in many cases, is actually a ­manual.
Certain Minis fall into this category. So do ­various VW Golfs.
So you could take your test in what drives like an auto and then claim that actually you are qualified to drive a manual.
Worth a try because, technically, you'd be right.
Reputation of French goes up in smoke
I'M rarely shocked these days by a news story but when I heard this week that France has banned smoking in parks, on beaches and even in the street, I nearly fell off my chair.
France ditching its love affair with the Disque Bleu?
What's next?
The Germans ban ­people from drinking beer?
The Americans ban burgers?
We are to be banned from going on social media and making jokes?
No, wait, hang on . . .
KICK UP A STINK
SADIQ KHAN, the increasingly thin Mayor of London, has backed calls for a ­partial decriminal-isation of cannabis.
Dear God, no. I've been to various cities in America which have adopted a ­similarly slack attitude to weed and they smell disgusting.
Right now, London's got enough problems.
Crime is off the charts, there are boarded-up shops everywhere, the pavements are rammed with what look like refugee camps, and the police do nothing because they're too busy probing a potentially offensive tweet.
And I can't imagine any of these things will be helped if the place smells more revolting than a teenage boy's sock.
PM NOT A RISK TAKER
SIR Starmer is forever telling us that he knows what it's like to work for ten hours a day because that's what his dad did.
Yes. But that's like me saying I know what it's like to leave school at 14 and become a butcher's boy.
5
Sure, it's what my dad did but I wasn't there.
So what's it like to pedal around the streets of South Yorkshire delivering mince to miners? No idea, I'm afraid.
And it gets worse because when you're Prime Minister what you really need to know is not what it's like to work in a factory, but what it's like to run one.
Business is what's going to get this country back on its feet.
People taking the risk, starting out on their own, making it work, employing someone and then someone else.
And then one day passing the business they've built on to their children.
Starmer has absolutely no idea what it's like to do that.
And neither do any of his ­Baldricks. Lammy. Rayner. Reeves. None of them.
Which is probably why they did a speedy deal with Trump to make British-made cars ten per cent more ­expensive in America.
They claimed they had been extremely clever and got round his new tariffs.
Yes, but every other country waited. And then found out this week that Trump wasn't allowed to impose the tariffs in the first place.
Honestly, this country is being run by a shower of dingleberries.
SO. The struggling high-street giant WH Smith is to change its name to TG Jones.
Yup. That'll make all the difference.
After all, the only ­reason I stopped buying ­magazines and DVDs is because I wanted the shop to sound a bit more Welsh. I guess that's what John Lewis needs to do if it wants to return to ­profitability.
Change its name to Dai Llewellyn.