ianlouisiana Review of The Halcyon

The Halcyon (2017)

Strong - jawed Yanks,chinless aristos,scarlet women,intrigue....

[10/10 · 4 January 2017]

....welcome to the world of 1950's British movies. Those of us old enough to remember the when we made "programmers",60 minute pictures shot on a shoestring with token American second - raters and chesty English gals who sang in night clubs while foreign - looking types(Eric Pohlman or Marne Maitland usually)followed them with hooded eyes,will gaze fondly at "The Halcyon",a new series starting on ITV this week. Watch it and immediately you are wafted back to the red plush seats at "The Odeon" with your Kia - Ora and Senior Service comfortably to hand casually scouting out "The Talent"(omg can I still say that?) and waiting for "Rebel without a cause" to start. But back on planet Earth in 2017(I don't have to believe it if I don't want to)we are seeing 1940 as a time of certainties,uniting against Germany(sorry,Nazism), the ever - so - slight cracking of the social barriers of the thirties and a time when women were just beginning to find a voice. So "The Halcyon" potentially has a lot going for it,aided no end by energetic performances by all concerned who have the look of actors who believe they are on to a winner. The basic premise is familiar enough;- a family -run business adapting to changes of manners and mores during wartime. We have all been here many times before but seldom with so much musical and visual enjoyment . The music is a clever pastiche of 30's styles by Jamie Cullum and is played onstage by a sextet but often sounds like like the Duke Ellington band with Cat Anderson playing the trumpet an octave above everybody else. Butlers,boot boys,chambermaids,concierges and major - domos proliferate and the hotel manager is satisfyingly menacing,mysterious and melliflous at the same time. With nine more episodes to go I look forward to a winter of content.