culture shock

[ironymaiden]

thinking more about the new All Creatures Great and Small; they chose to bring in Herriot's Scottish accent, but turned the Yorkshire waaaay down. or at least for as much as i was willing to watch. my memory is that part of the humor in the early stories was in Herriot's culture shock, transitioning from city life to rural life and his inability to understand the English spoken by his clients. the 1978 show certainly plays this for laughs from the first episode.

i found a quote from the actor who played Herriot in the original series; they told him he wasn't to sound Scottish (even though the character is from Glasgow) because it would make him less relatable (gross). but apparently it was fine to lay the Yorkshire on thick. which could be interpreted as othering the Yorkshire folks.

as an American i don't know all the implications. today we wouldn't do a bit like the jive talk scene in Airplane (which isn't actual AAVE and i don't know if that makes it better or worse). but Hot Fuzz seems to get away with the idea of the city dude not understanding the older locals. so is it considered offensive to make jokes about regional speech being incomprehensible to the POV character? is that why it doesn't seem to be a part of the new show?

Comments

[nostalgia]

I've always felt there's an underlying "othering" going on but I reckon TV could get away with it. Especially Yorkshire, I find you can get away with saying Yorkshire people talk funny.

[ironymaiden]

Would tv say that Scottish or Welsh people sound funny? Or is that crossing a line?

[nostalgia]

The Scots would complain about it, but I'm sure I've seen "funny Welsh accent" fairly recently?

[oursin]

The Welsh would presumably be talking actual Welsh? - cite here to amusing tale of gammon bloke harassing hijab lady in a shop somewhere in Wales saying if you come here you should speak the language and she and shopkeeper point out that she's speaking Welsh.

I suppose if talking to an incomer, English with Welsh accent. I'm not sure it's as automatically otheringly hilarious as certain English regional accents, or stereotyped versions of same.

[swingandswirl]

I wonder if part of it isn't also pandering to an American audience? I've seen that Americans think basically only RP accents, plus one specific kind of Scots, Irish, and Welsh accents exist. (Why the hell is Darcy not talking more like the country gentleman he's supposed to be, talk about a missed on-screen opportunity there).

(That said, yeah, the mutual unintelligibility is a legit thing; a coworker and I, native speakers of English both, he from a tiny-ass village in Scotland and I with a reasonable but not super pronounced Indian accent, wound up speaking French to each other because attempting to understand each other in English was futile.)

[melindalucy]

No, but there’s a penguin on top of the telly.

(Sorry. I know that wasn’t helpful but I couldn’t resist. I’m sure Britbox is searchable, Or do a reverse search; when I’m looking for shows I look at Amazon Prime and then sigh at how many of them say “available now for an additional membership to Sky1/the Beeb/TTV/NHK/HBO……..”)