Selective Mumbling

So, the cold which struck me down over the weekend continues to blight my week off.  Although the worst symptoms have gone, I woke up this morning with a sore throat which makes it feel as if I'm swallowing barbed wire every time I try to eat.  Also, whilst the incessant cough which was lingering yesterday has largely gone, it has left me with aching ribs.  Overall, I spent today feeling utterly exhausted, either in bed or on the sofa, barring one brief excursion outside to buy a newspaper.  I didn't even have the strength to catch up with my TV viewing, bar an episode of The Persuaders.  Meanwhile I seem to have stumbled into a world where a non-league reserve goal keeper eating a pie during an FA Cup ties is not only considered news, but is apparently also enough to see him charged with breaking FA betting rules.  Then there's the matter of the alleged mumbling of dialogue in SS-GB, which also considered headline news.  This seems to come around every time the BBC launches a new drama.  I can only speak personally here, but I could understand the dialogue without effort.  But complaining about alleged mumbling is fast becoming the new hobby for the moaners and nitpickers out there.

Actually, there is one current BBC drama I've had problems with, mumbling-wise, to the extent that I completely gave up on it after a few episodes: Taboo. However, this Tom Hardy starring Regency drama has become something of a critical darling, so the mumbling problems never seem to get aired in the press.  Yet the entire scenario it presents is that of Tom Hardy in funny hat stalking around Regency London growling and mumbling his lines,  Oh, and every episode Jonathan Pryce tells someone to 'fuck off'.  Personally, I found the whole thing utterly ludicrous. I just couldn't take it seriously.   But what do I know?  I'm not a critic.  Still, mumbling notwithstanding, I'm sure the problem a lot of the right-wing press have with SS-GB is that that think it is a documentary.   They probably also feel that it portrays the German occupiers in too negative a light, arguing that the UK would have seen any hypothetic German invasion in 1941 as a fabulous opportunity...