If even Pride & Prejudice has to have a ‘diverse' cast, the English period drama is dead

Telegraph

3 days ago

Five years ago the BBC website published an article headlined: 'Is It Time the All-White Period Drama Was Made Extinct?' Well, it clearly is now. These days every period drama has an ethnically diverse cast, regardless of when it's set: the 1920s (Wicked Little Letters), the 1530s (Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light), even 1066 (King and Conqueror, the BBC's forthcoming serial about the Battle of Hastings). So it came as no surprise to read, this week, that Netflix's new adaptation of Pride & Prejudice will have a diverse cast, too.
Personally I find this a fascinating trend. Producers of period dramas always go to the most painstaking lengths to ensure that costumes, furniture and decor look scrupulously authentic. Yet when it comes to casting, they do the opposite – and pretend that, 200 or 500 or 1,000 years ago, England was every bit as multicultural as it is in the 2020s. They would die of embarrassment if, in the background, viewers were to glimpse a set of solar panels, or double yellow lines. But black Anglo-Saxons? No problem at all.
It's a peculiar combination. If we've decided that historical verisimilitude no longer matters in casting, surely we should be consistent, and decide that it no longer matters in clothing or behaviour, either. Let Regency noblemen wear Arsenal shirts. Show the Normans riding into battle in Chinooks. Have Sir Thomas More take a selfie on the scaffold.
At any rate, the author of the BBC's article about making the 'all-white' period drama extinct seemed to approve of this new trend in casting. 'Finally,' she wrote, 'the industry is demonstrating that period drama is a genre in which racial diversity can be both reflected and celebrated.'
This is all very well. The trouble is, it makes it look as if racial diversity has been 'celebrated' throughout our history. To viewers, this must be puzzling. In recent years, we've been endlessly told that Britain's past was shamefully racist. Yet period dramas tell us it was a multicultural utopia, in which people of all races were welcome at every level of society.
Still, we mustn't carp. I'm sure this colour-blind approach to casting applies equally to all. I look forward to the BBC airing a period drama about the Windrush, in which the main passengers are played by Hugh Grant and Keira Knightley.
At last: a Labour policy I actually like
Normally I believe that a job should always go to the best-qualified candidate, and that preferential treatment should not be given to 'under-represented' groups. On this occasion, however, I'm going to be brazenly hypocritical and toss my principles aside. This is because, from now on, the Government wants all civil service interns to be working-class. And I think it sounds like a great idea.
Of course it's not meritocratic. But Whitehall is the one place that might actually benefit from a bit of naked class warfare. Remember that Laura Kuenssberg documentary from 2023, which revealed that, the morning after the EU referendum, civil servants were 'in tears'? How many working-class staff would have reacted like that?
If Nigel Farage is worried that a Reform government would be stymied by Brexit-hating mandarins, this dramatic change in recruitment policy should please him no end.
The trouble with the 'Islamo-Left'
In 1999, the writers of the satirical website The Onion published a very funny book called Our Dumb Century. It consisted of spoof newspaper front pages, inspired by the key events of the previous 100 years. And among its countless highlights was the headline of a story about Japan entering the Second World War on the side of Nazi Germany. It read: 'Japan Forms Alliance with White Supremacists in Well-Thought-Out Scheme.'
I always remember that phrase 'Well-Thought-Out Scheme', whenever I read about the Western anti-Israel LGBTQIA+ group that calls itself Queers for Palestine. Yet, no matter how often critics argue that it might as well call itself Chickens for KFC, its members remain undeterred.
Mind you, they aren't the only ones who believe there's a happy and united future for the so-called 'Islamo-Left'. The new party led by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana is likely to attract many others who see no drawbacks to forming an alliance between one group that's extremely liberal on social issues, and another that is sometimes, shall we say, a bit more conservative.
I wonder how many of these adorably well-meaning Corbynites are aware of what happened a few years ago in Hamtramck, Michigan. When the city elected America's first ever majority-Muslim council, local progressives were jubilant. This was a glorious victory for marginalised minorities – and a crushing defeat for small-minded bigots.
Imagine their shock, therefore, when the Muslim council then banned the flying of the LGBTQIA+ Pride flag from city property. According to the Washington Post, the local progressives felt not just appalled, but 'betrayed'.
'We welcomed you,' wailed a retired social worker. 'We created nonprofits to help feed, clothe, find housing. We did everything we could to make your transition here easier – and this is how you repay us, by stabbing us in the back?'
Sadly, as Robert Burns more or less put it: the well-thought-out schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley.