Thanks to BBC1’s new World War One drama The Crimson Field, I know now how to fake the symptoms of syphilis. All you need is a red hot needle, to create a genital blister, and some condensed milk, for realistic-looking discharge.
You had to do this if you wanted to get sent home from the front, because the horrible public school officers didn’t believe in namby-pamby mental illnesses like shell-shock, and had absolutely no sympathy for the poor privates who wept when they listened to Madame Butterfly.
Is it possible to make a WWI drama without resorting to cliché? Yes, actually: the BBC’s adaptation of Parade’s End managed it a couple of years ago.
Still, they at least had a book to go on. Something makes me doubt Sarah Phelps, who churned out the script for this new six-parter set in a field hospital in Boulogne, did much research beyond Wikipedia.
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