MUMBLING ACTORS DETRACT FROM 'SS-GB'.

Once again, television viewers have risen up to complain about the difficulty of understanding dialogue in a BBC production. This time, it's been the new drama series 'SS-GB', the first episode of which was broadcast last Sunday evening. As one of the 6 million or so who are thought to have switched on, I have to say that I also found some of the dialogue to be hard to distinguish from general background noise.

The specific complaint has been that some of the actors simply 'mumbled' their dialogue. There is no doubt that this is true and turning up the volume or fiddling with other sound effects made no difference - some of the dialogue could not be heard in any understandable way. By this, I do not mean the occasional interludes of German which were part of the script and actually easier to hear than some of the mumbled English.

For some reason, the BBC seems not to understand that it's a good idea to let its viewers hear the words spoken by actors in its drama productions. Is this poor quality recording, is it a deliberate ploy by 'with it' directors to try to increase the sense of dark and dramatic mystery or do the actors simply 'mumble' ?

Many years ago now, Marlon Brando mumbled his way through many great films and yet was perfectly understandable; his mumbling was highly theatrical but worked. I suspect that today's mumbling is, at least partly, an attempt by second rate directors and actors to recreate the Brando magic but, simply put, they don't have the talent to pull it off. It is also the case that many of today's younger generation speak very quickly in mumbled sound bites which are often impossible for those of an older generation to comprehend. Sadly, it seems that the days when actors were taught to speak clearly and to project their voices are long gone; far too many have probably never experienced live performance in a theatre and are far too used to modern studio production methods, as well as being natural 'mumblers'.

The BBC's response to viewer complaints has been to say they will look at 'sound levels' which will surely achieve nothing. The problem is the quality of the speech, not the quality of the sound and only directors and actors can resolve that. Sadly, it's no doubt far too late to make any difference to 'SS-GB'.