MovieChat Forums > Mercy Street (2016) Discussion > Great period authenticity

Great period authenticity


I am very pleased with the authenticity of the set, the dress, and the actors in this great period series. I really appreciate these factors, as this is my favorite period in American history. One can see the painstaking efforts by the production crew and staff to make the setting as realistic as possible...it puts one back in time and finally gives us a true-to-life Civil War-period piece that this time truly deserves.

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I agree holograms, and I'm really getting caught up in the characters lives and the acting (which is excellent) too. I think this series will be every bit as good as Downton Abbey.

Ans I'm not saying it's Downton Abbey's replacement. Just that it's as good.

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It's one of my favorite periods too and I still see a number of mistakes.

Just to use as an example, in the first episode the staircase in the big house was completely wrong. It would not have existed in the 1860s. The design of the staircase could be no earlier than the 1890s.

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I hate it when they get the staircases wrong!

What we got here is... failure to communicate!
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How authentic is the syringe used by the doctor? And, BTY, the women's hairstyles are always wrong, they were always flat and tight-parted in the middle, too severe to be attractive for today.

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Just heard a reference to a "care package" on the show. I think that's a 1950s term. If not, tell me when the phrase was first used.

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According to Wikipedia, you're mostly correct, though it started a bit before then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARE_Package

P.S. I wasn't aware the name was initially an acronym.

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W-a-a-a!..W-a-a-a!..How do you like it?!?..W-a-a-a!

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Maybe WW2? I think that is when soldiers based overseas would get packages with luxuries like cigarettes, chocolate, etc.

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Redbrioche,

The syringe was a medical instrument long before the Civil War began. It was used for a variety of medical treatments. During the Civil War it was used to infect wounds with powdered morphine, to reduce pain, and to administer mercury to one's private parts to stave off verenial diseases. The hypodermic needle was in existence, but not widely known. Yes, Dr. Foster trained in Europe, but still, that he would know about the needle when other European-trained doctors did not is odd. "Care Package" is a term that dates from at least WWII. Yes, families and friend sent packages to soldiers during the Civil War, but they were never referred to a "care packages." From the use of my grandparents and great-aunt and great-uncles, I assume care package was a term created during World War II.

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I couldn't disagree more. Almost all of the actors read as woefully contemporary (this makes it seem like a high school production), the dialogue they are forced to utter is virtually nothing authentic to the period, there is an unevenness of tone in speech and circumstance, and the clothing looks superficially correct but the dresses worn by the confederate women do nothing to suggest the suppression which they are constantly complaining they must endure.

It's one of the worst PBS series I've ever seen, and I have two friends amongst the cast. They enjoyed making the series but at least one of them (very prominent in the series and experienced on stage and screen) confided that they were pretty much choking on the things they were required to speak.

And it's yet another Glorious Lost Cause piece of tripe in which the genteel, wronged Southerners must suffer unjust occupation and ill treatment by the rude and graceless, uncivilized Yankees. The black men and women are either complacent to their masters or treated worse by the Yankees than ever they were treated as slaves. It's really awful stuff. I stayed with it to see if it would improve and I wanted to believe it would. It did not.

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You really think every Southerner was a Black-Hating maniac and every Northerner was some Noble Abolitionist? People aren't that binary.

As for the contemporary-ness of characters...well, it's not much different from Downton Abbey and no one complains there.

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You really think every Southerner was a Black-Hating maniac and every Northerner was some Noble Abolitionist? People aren't that binary.

Never said or implied anything of the sort.

As for the contemporary-ness of characters...well, it's not much different from Downton Abbey and no one complains there.

An utterly ridiculous and laughably false statement. Virtually every episode of DA has involved some conflict about the push-and-pull between the conservative old mode of behavior and the exciting uncertainty of changing times.

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An utterly ridiculous and laughably false statement. Virtually every episode of DA has involved some conflict about the push-and-pull between the conservative old mode of behavior and the exciting uncertainty of changing times.


Downton Abbey suffers from how they had to maintain some political correctness to keep from disgusting the audience too much. Violet could be written as a conservative, but she couldn't be written as truly racist and class-ist an Aristocrat of the 19th Century would've been without making her too repellent.

The show's always been more about showing how cool the Edwardian Era was moreso than anything else. That's why a character like Branson started off as being against the Upper-Classes and then ended up as an Estate Manager for one.

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The show's always been more about showing how cool the Edwardian Era was moreso than anything else.

The Edwardian Era ended (after a mere 7 or so years) in 1910. DOWNTON ABBEY began in April 1912.

Violet could be written as a conservative, but she couldn't be written as truly racist and class-ist an Aristocrat of the 19th Century would've been without making her too repellent.

Violet has had zero problem expressing class superiority from the first episode.

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The Edwardian Era ended (after a mere 7 or so years) in 1910. DOWNTON ABBEY began in April 1912.


The Crawleys are very much products of the Edwardian Era though.


Violet has had zero problem expressing class superiority from the first episode.


But no real racism or xenophobia a woman like her would have.

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I am enjoying this show by putting aside qualms about authenticity. I have seen worse. (But then, I've seen horrible.)

Dialogue is a little too contemporary, but then they have to balance lines that sound a little like the 19th century with ones that sound contemporary enough to be understood.

The trope of the doctor who has been trained in Europe almost makes us overlook how atypical such a doctor would have been. A book I read pointed out that in 1860 most doctors in Paris were using the stethoscope while practically none in America knew what one was.

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Dr Foster made a request for a thermometer which reminded me of an issue I read about GONE WITH THE WIND. Melanie was using a thermometer on a soldier which some historical buffs insisted could not be accurate. The defenders for the film came back that, yes, clinical thermometers did exist.

What was not discussed in 1939 was that the only clinical model that existed in the 1861-1865 time period was a 12-inch model that took twenty minutes for a reading. Melanie's much smaller model did not exist until 1867.

Still, I am doubting that the writers thoroughly vetted the historical background of Dr. Foster's request.

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