Here you have a text to read and answer the questions.
The key is below the text.
Have a nice weekend!
WAR AND REMEMBRACE
War is hell but War and Remembrance (ITV) is worse.
Even the baritone promos which have been filling
commercial television for weeks give the project
overtones of a natural disaster. In 1983, “the voice-over
croaks, thirteen million people were swept away by The
Winds of War”. If true, this would be a reversal of the
usual process by which people sweep rubbish away. But
despite having suffered this grim fate, the same
13,000,000 are expected to be swept back by this sequel,
a further adaptation of the works of Herman Wouk. War
and Remembrance is, the sound track growler promises,
'the greatest television event of all time.' This, you
suspected, was probably a reference to the expense.
And so it proved, as the statistics began to spit: $
100,000,000, John Gielgud, ten countries, Robert
Morley, 32 hours of episodes, five years in the making.
The last is the one which makes you gasp; the show took
as long to make as the war did to fight. While you idly
hope that the same team might now like to begin work
on dramatising the 100 Years War with the same time
ratio, it is with this fact that the nature of the project hits
you. Usually, we look to war stories for a certain
selection of key events, even reflection on their genesis
and effects. War and Remembrance, however, has a
different agenda. American television has simply
restaged the Second World War, in its entirety. This is
the action replay, 50 years on.
This sounds as if it ought to be symbolic and the making
of War and Remembrance is indeed the perfect morality
tale for peacetime media America. The fiction mirrored
the fact to the extent that those who started the débâcle
ended up saying never again. The 32 hours finished their
run in the States short of audience and advertising.
Its bloated shape is not, though, the only problem with
the piece. Sanitised family dialogue leads, for example,
to a sailor saying 'the captain's scared out of his mind,'
which was a disappointment after all you'd heard about
salty naval talk. There is also Robert Mitchum. War and
Remembrance is centred on a family called the Henrys.
Those who were swept away in 1983 will remember that
the head of the Henrys is Victor, known as Pug and
played by Mitchum. In recent years, this actor's
performances have increasingly had less to do with
acting than with those nature documentaries in which a
camera is pointed at a flower for a year in the hope of
showing growth. Yet, even by those standards, his Pug is
a miracle of impassivity. So little energy does Mitchum
expend on characterisation that you keep thinking the
camera has jammed. In the first 90 minute episode (only
30 ½ hours to come), the Japanese, desperate to get a
reaction out of Mitchum, hurled everything they had at
the US fleet.
Read the article and circle the best answer, (a, b, c or d), according to the text.
1 Which of these does the writer consider to be “rubbish”?
A Books by Herman Wouk.
B Advertisements for War and Remembrance.
C The programme The Winds of War.
D People who watched The Winds of War.
2 How long would the writer like the programme
makers to spend on their next TV series?
A Five years.
B Twenty years.
C Fifty years.
D A hundred years.
3 According to the writer, War and Remembrance
A is not the kind of project the makers want to repeat.
B was highly successful in the USA.
C covers some of the incidents which took place during
World War II.
D consists entirely of film shot in the 1940s.
4 The writer feels that, in the context, the phrase
'the captain's scared out of his mind,' is too
A mild.
B vulgar.
C informal.
D literary.
5 Which of these phrases expresses something
the reviewer imagines?
A 'centred on a family called the Henrys'.
B 'known as Pug and played by Mitchum'.
C 'only 30 ½hours to come'.
D 'desperate to get a reaction out of Mitchum'.
KEY
1. C 2. D 3. A 4. A 5. D
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