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Yes that made me chuckle, too, especially the bit where he wrote 'Judaeo-Christian morality' as one of the reasons!
And of course it was all for nothing, as eventually he had to kill him in self-defence anyway.
Here in the UK we have almost no legally owned guns - but plenty of illegally owned firearms and lots of knives and plenty of criminals/terrorists willing to use them.
I think they had 80s decor because the family didn't have much money (Walt didn't earn much as a schoolmaster and I don't think Skylar worked, plus they had a son with disabilities and a new baby on the way). In the early episodes we see Skylar selling things on Ebay to make money, so they probably just had 80s furniture they inherited or bought second-hand from yard sales, Goodwill stores etc.
Thanks. What puzzles me is why amateurs like me can spot these things, but films with huge budgets can't pay a historical advisor to get things right.
Millennials would probably react to Laurel and Hardy the same way that the secretary reacted to Stan when he tried to see her boss in the movie. She obviously had no idea who he was and kept calling him 'Mr Lauren'.
IIRC correctly Trabant was taken over by Volkswagen and the former factories in the DDR were re-tooled to produce VW cars.
It's meant to be the early to mid 1920s. Around 1925, probably. But it has a very 1960s/70s feel to it - the late 1960s/early 1970s style was very influenced by art nouveau and art deco and the era just before and after the Great War - think of Sgt Pepper, Lord Kitchener's Valet, Adam Adamant and all that. Although some of the interiors are very stylised, eg Joseph Cotton's house and the hospital, there's nothing in the film that looks totally anachronistic to me apart from some of the mens' hairstyles - men didn't 'have big sideburns and long hair in the 1920s, especially not police officers - but that's a common anachronism in 1970s films presumably because short hair was so totally 'uncool' that even actors refused to cut it for a part.
Just before the nurse goes to bed, the detective suggests that she takes a sleeping pill - perhaps she didn't wake up when she got the Brussels sprout 'facial' because she was in a drugged sleep.
Yes, it was horrendous but remember that new-money people often don't have much taste and all they care about is making a statement, they just want things to look like they cost a lot of money, that's why they wear bling jewellery, drive flashy cars etc.
It's generally believed Hitler had Parkinson's Disease in his final years, which can cause shaking in the limbs particularly on one side of the body. It also tends to go with the kind of dark depressive moods that Hitler suffered from.
I thought that too. I got the impression she was something of an inexperienced actress. I thought her friend, the other secretary with the slightly odd (but still pretty) round face was a better actress.
Well spotted. It's possible that the kid was referring to Queen Caroline, wife of King George IV, although it is not likely as she was separated from him and lived abroad most of the time, so was not a well known figure.
Some others: when Dickens jumps the barrier at Paddington station and is pursued by PC Copperfield, the latter blows a police whistle - these were not in use until the 1880s. Police in Dickens' time used a wooden rattle to sound the alarm.
The poster for the talk where Dickens meets the man who says 'are there no workhouses?' uses an anachronistic font and layout, as do the internal pages of the printed edition of 'A Christmas Carol'.
During the funeral service, the parson recite 'Rest eternal grant them O lord' &c. This prayer was not included in the Church of England funeral service until 1928.
When the customers are queuing to buy the book at Hatchard's, we hear the sound of a cash register going 'ker-ching'. The cash register was not invented until 1879.
When Dickens' father is seated at dinner he is shown in his shirtsleeves (his waistcoat is mentioned). No 1840s man with aspirations to being a 'gentleman' would sit at dinner in mixed company without wearing his coat. This, along with showing men going hatless in the streets, is a fairly common mistake in historical dramas.
I noticed this too. It could be that it was meant to look as if the old lath and plaster walls had cracked/moved and the paper had bulged in places, or it could have been meant to look as if it was just done very slapdash and on the cheap - the landlord of 10 Rillington Place obviously wasn't bothered with repairs or maintenance.
Is there any evidence that Christie was a Roman Catholic? If not, why would he be talking to what is obviously an RC priest?
This struck me as another bit of nonsense from writers who have watched too many Jimmy Cagney movies and who don't realise that the official religion of England is Anglicanism, not Roman Catholicism.
Christie was a War Reserve Constable. This was a hurriedly established auxiliary police force set up on the outbreak of war in 1939, staffed by men too old or otherwise unfit for active military service, somewhat similar to the Home Guard. They were armed and expected to assist the military powers in the event of German invasion; they were not really expected to be career policemen so that is probably why few checks were made into candidates; they were just glad to get them.
IIRC in the old days becoming a Special Constable was sometimes done very hurriedly - in the General Strike of 1926 I believe thousands of men were sworn in as specials, given a tin helmet, whistle, truncheon and armband, and sent off on policing duties with no training whatsoever.