The Gallows Pole

I've rarely seen an opening episode with so little action and so much rambling pointless dialogue. I'm a huge fan of Shane Meadows and have been since the 90's but the Gallows Pole is I'm afraid a big old-fashioned fail.

Tonally there were some very odd choices, the dialogue was completely modern and it was the sweariest script I've seen on the BBC in many a year with constant effing and blinding that added nothing and will turn lots of people off.

The cast was very hit and miss with no stand outs for me, protagonist David was a shouty, sweary enigma. The weakest element was definitely the script, in this case adapted by the writer of the original novel himself. The dialogue was really verbose with tons of over-written exposition.

Bizarre credits sequence and strangely shot in widescreen which added nothing. At times it resembled a weak 1760's version of Brassic. I gave it to the end of the episode, but I'm out now.

Shane Meadows brings us the tale of the Cragg Vale coiners in a strange tonal mash of modern improv and psychedelic folk horror. It's an intoxicating brew but the three-part first series is bizarrely paced and seems to shudder and stall like it thinks it has Vince Gilligan levels of set up time to waste. The cast are mostly great and I adore Thomas Turgoose. The 18th C mixed with retro garage psych music is also exactly my jam but the use of artificially generated artwork in the title sequence sticks deeply in my craw (and seems rather against the themes of the show) so it very much is a project of two halves for me.

Prior to this everything Shane Meadows has touched has been gold. Unfortunately bringing his oft-repeated style of improvisational dialogue into a period drama is a misfire.

I do have an issue with a period drama that doesn't quite stick to the period it's supposedly portraying. The trouble with actors improvising as a character from another time is that they won't always be able to stay 100% in that character without occasionally slipping and using modern parlance, which happens quite often here.

I managed two out of the three episodes and really could not continue to the last one. The pacing is at a snail's pace which is borne out of unnecessarily-long scenes of constant 'natural' talking which if given a proper script would've tightened it up and made for sharper dialogue thus giving it an energy instead of the sleep-inducing borefest it quickly became.

Well - this seems to have split people! Lots of 1/10's, lots of 10/10's!

1/10 or 10/10? I'd suggest neither mark-giver is really worthy of any attention?

It's an informative, well-delivered and infectious depiction of the real story of the Cragg Valley Coiners - a community of cottage weavers who, deprived of their trade during the early years of the industrial revolution, turned to a much simpler, though criminal, way of making money.

The nature of the crime is clearly played out as the local squire gets aboard - coin-cutting. Now, we may know similar modern parallels, but this was simply edging the gold from guineas to make more guineas. Incidentally, the Cragg Valley Coin Cutters cause a major problem to the British economy at the time.

Wooden acting? Give me a break. Shane Meadows is a master at allowing improvisation. I love it. It's intended, btw.

I'm local to Cragg Vale so really wanted to enjoy this. Yes it's watchable but ending poor and nothing about what happened after for viewers who don't know. Sadly there's much better historical dramas out there, love to see this remade in the future but done right. The characters came across quite wooden I wanted to like it more but fell short.

Also going all Peaky Blinders and playing modern music didn't do it for me! The stag scenes were just ludicrous almost comical just doesn't sit well for an historical drama.

There so much more that could have been made of this, let's hope someone picks up the reigns maybe make a film of it.