Excellent review! It encapsulates why this extremely flippant version of Casanova (come on, RTD does flippant like NO-ONE ELSE) annoyed me (all the historical a-chronicities) while managing to get under my skin.
You don't mention Rupert Penry-Jones as Grimani; and yet it's terrific casting, because it uses RPJ's essential weak-chinned insubstantiality (which spoils Cambridge Spies, his one scene in Match Point, that excruciatingly boring Stephen Poliakoff thing in which he's a Cabinet Minister, etc.) to construct the character and his flaws. RPJ is not a good actor, but on occasion he falls excellently into parts. He's an interesting Adam in Spooks because it's simultaneously about submerging himself into an alias, and making a show of testosterone as a sligtly dodgy version of Edgy Action Man. Adam folds; Tom breaks.
Casanova's memoirs in the original French are amazingly modern. In that respect RTD is the right person to appropriate something of them.
no subject
You don't mention Rupert Penry-Jones as Grimani; and yet it's terrific casting, because it uses RPJ's essential weak-chinned insubstantiality (which spoils Cambridge Spies, his one scene in Match Point, that excruciatingly boring Stephen Poliakoff thing in which he's a Cabinet Minister, etc.) to construct the character and his flaws. RPJ is not a good actor, but on occasion he falls excellently into parts. He's an interesting Adam in Spooks because it's simultaneously about submerging himself into an alias, and making a show of testosterone as a sligtly dodgy version of Edgy Action Man. Adam folds; Tom breaks.
Casanova's memoirs in the original French are amazingly modern. In that respect RTD is the right person to appropriate something of them.