Now you’ve suggested a topic that I can really warm to.
When I started researching historical fiction on TV a year ago, I was so surprised by the lack of contrast between entertainment publications, by the failure of entertainment journalists to criticize, and by the peculiar recourse to the practice of publishing…

I say Moore is imitating Bergman's technique—but I do not fault Bergman's use of it. Bergman's silences and hesitations were expressive: Moore seems to be wasting time, while we watch Claire stirring the medicine or Jamie and Fergus riding from here to there.

The adolescent boys are looking for the more familiar reaction to bitter cascara, which has a violent laxative effect. This effect was covered in Moore's "Outlander" during the scene in Master Raymond's shop when he discusses it with Claire and when Claire experiences its effects herself, beginning in the scene in…

As for Gabaldon and the cast who ape Moore’s point of view, I think anyone is naïve who brings any expectation of truth to what these folk say about Moore’s “Outlander,” even Diana Gabaldon. Their remarks belong to the recurring loop of information managed by Moore and Starz to promote his “Outlander” to Starz's…

I am impressed by your familiarity with Weiss's play, which you seem to understand quite well. It is lodged in my head, so we have that in common. But you don't understand why I use it as an example. I used Marat/Sade as an example of "historical fiction" not as an example of "historical scholarship." My three…

I take your point. Nasty discourse has kept printers (and scholars!) well-fettled for centuries—even the twenty-first. Don't you think some of the name-calling and verbal clawing on comment threads nowadays comes out of a recent surge
of anti-intellectualism in American life (maybe not just American)? Or is this…

I think you know exactly what I mean when I say that Moore deserts Gabaldon’s genre-blending story for the typical epic narrative that drives most of what we see on television and in feature films today. It is written by men and for men. Which means you might have a chance to land a writing gig on Moore’s “Electric…

It's refreshing to read the comments you post. This view of Moore's seems a product of the fact that he's embedded in the entertainment industry and has been all of his life.

I just don't care.

Name-calling is the resort of the . . . you fill in the blank. I just don't care what you think.

People do not know how to debate a point any more without taking offense. I have noticed that while you often do not express yourself as forcefully as I do, or try to justify what you feel, when you go to the trouble of explaining your ideas, you can be effective, as in your explanation of some of this episode's…

Then enlighten me: What do you find accurate about Moore's depiction of France circa 1745?

Sorry I took so long to respond. You might be fed up with me, but I hope you are not fed up with looking at Moore's "Outlander" with a critical eye. Comment threads are about the only place where genuine criticism of film and television is possible, because most entertainment journalists are compromised by also…

My argument was not based on history per se. I'm arguing that other writers working in historical fiction give a much more nuanced interpretation of French society prior to the French Revolution and in its wake: Peter Weiss in "Marat/Sade," Charles Dickens in "The Tale of Two Cities," and Diana Gabaldon in…

[SPOILER: Do you think Moore will have Stanley Weber play the adult Fergus if the series is renewed for a third season?]

Over the weekend The Guardian reported that Harvey Weinstein, who produced the BBC’s recent adaptation of “War and Peace,” has plans to adapt Charles Dickens’s “The Tale of Two Cities” (1859) for the BBC. So I’ll start there, to try to explain how Dickens gives a more nuanced portrayal of the French aristocracy than…

Don't class it up so much.

Kayla's recap has almost nothing to do with my criticism. Just don't read what makes you uneasy.

Don't class it up too much.

You remind me of people who refuse to see what is right in front of them—or forgot what they saw just a few weeks ago. No amount of education can fix that deficiency. You already know what small pox looks like from Episode 1 this season. Why does Moore trot out the whole thing again in Episode 6? I'll tell you…