DAVID THOMPSON: No Escape From Now.

“Why Is The Next Wave Of Period Dramas So White?” asks the headline of the article [in British Vogue], with the obligatory note of disapproval. An understood tutting, one presumed of its readers. Yet I’m struggling to picture Ms [Hanna] Flint making demands that period dramas produced in China and set in the Han Dynasty be adjusted so as to accommodate “excluded or marginalised” actors who resemble Jack Hawkins or Charles Gray.

Ms Flint, “a mixed-race woman, of British and Tunisian heritage,” informs us that, despite her enthusiasm for the genre, “I was left somewhat cold by the news that all these remakes had cast the protagonists as white once again.” Yet this train of thought terminates before reaching the possibility that others, perhaps some larger number, might be left somewhat cold by modish anachronism and jarring contrivance.

Read the whole thing.