Some days ago I went to see The Favourite which has been justly widely praised. As usual with these things I was impressed by the period detail and the sheer level of time and effort involved in making sure that everything was historically correct. As far as I can tail this extends to the historical accuracy of the details of political manoeuvrings in the 1700s, although I imagine very few viewers will have the slightest knowledge of them.
The key three roles are each given to female actors, with the men playing peripheral and sometimes rather pathetic parts. The female players are also depicted as scheming, violent and manipulative in their use of sex which I would have thought was problematic for some people signed up to the #MeToo campaign.
One detail surprised me too _ the duck racing. Sidney Godolphin and the Court are portrayed as racing ducks which as far as I know was not really a thing in 1700s England. He was enthusiastic about cockfighting which, repellent as it seems to most people now, was definitely a thing in the 1700s. Was this just seen as too repellent for modern audiences? It jars to invent this non-historic detail into a film that generally gets its history right to an extraordinary degree, as well as paying tribute to cinematic classics set in the eighteenth century such as Tom Jones. It also makes Godolphin seem a bit of a weirdo when his real interest in cockfighting was a standard pastime at the time.
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