Today I discovered that I’m not the only one who notices agricultural errors in film and television dramas.
William Hayes of the Meat Trade News Daily is well placed to comment on livestock breeds in the south of England where he grew up. ‘You see these magnificent period dramas, with beautiful costumes and every detail just right – but then you see friesian cattle. When I was a boy growing up you would only ever see Devon, South Devon and Shorthorn cattle. No black and white cattle. What a lot of people don’t realise is that there were only dual purpose cattle around then. Beautiful big Devon cattle that could eat all day and all night. There were no friesians in Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset until the 1960s.’ William went on to say that friesian cattle would have been brought into the UK after the war (WWII) from the Netherlands, and friesians would have arrived in the south of England from Wales, during the 1960s.
Producers of historical dramas would not contemplate trotting out the wrong model car, clothing fashions or technology – so it’d be nice if they’d put more effort into getting the livestock breeds accurate as well. If the precise breeds can’t be found, at least film another breed of a similar colour and shape – at least stock less conspicuous than the world’s most unmistakably patterned dairy cow.
And, please, no more ‘voice overs’ of mooing temperate-climate cattle such as Herefords, when it is a tropical breed such as Brahmans that we’re seeing on screen. This gaffe is akin to dubbing Abba singing over the top of KISS concert images, or squealing rubber car tyres on a sandy track. Sound is an integral part of the atmosphere. And how hard can it be to whip the microphone out in front of a mob of brahmans, it’s not as if they’re especially quiet.