here Higher praise for Michelle Forbes and Rhys Ifans than for Richard Armitage – but nothing to complain about – and overall, it seems like Variety thinks this is definitely worth watching.
I simply have got to get my post written about the first two eps. Not sure what’s stopping me, except, perhaps, the American accent issue.
Armitage Agonistes 
Haha.. that man is supposed to be born in Germany and has spent his first 8-10 years here. He’s allowed to have some accent problems !!! 😉 Just saying…. He has German accent problems as well….
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I will get to that topic. I am not saying he should be speaking American with some slight German accent. I don’t think the directors went that far. I think he should be speaking American so that he doesn’t sound like a British actor speaking with an American accent. As I said, I will eventually write about it – but in some places, over the first two episodes, he ran into some of the same failings as many British actors do. (maybe his performance got better as time went on, if they shot sequentially, we’ll see it)
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I wound up here after watching the beginning of “Berlin Station”. The thought had crossed my mind before that Richard had ..uh hum… had his nose reshaped and now I’m certain. That’s fine-obviously. Even though I find him more ordinary-looking and a bit less interesting, he’s still terribly handsome and I don’t mind the wrinkles. We’re the same age and he’s a fine wine.
I will say that I am a classic RCA fan though, and wish he would take some lighter, quirky Englishman roles again. In the meantime, I’m writing my own novels and the ol’ Armitage is the hero. Cheers!
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Welcome Charlotte, Whatever path you took to get here. We’ve had some discussions here, in posts and comments about that reshaping. There are believers and deniers. And, it doesn’t help that the still lovely feature continued to change somewhat ( gravity) after the DOS promos. https://armitageagonistes.wordpress.com/2013/12/18/the-repackaging-of-richard-armitage/
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Am I imagining having read or heard, that during one of The Hobbits he had been hit with something, and required some plastic surgery, so decided he may as well take care of the crook since work was being done anyway? I didn’t think it was any big secret.
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I would like to set aside the accent topic, from my point of view it’s quite a superficial view/aspect of an actors work.
What came to my mind reading this review and the “higher” praise of Ifans work in comparison to Armitages was Armitages statement that he is better at playing dark characters. Now, in this role, his character (as far as we can follow it in the first two episodes) seems to be lighter, ar least lighter than Ifans. And, so far, Ifans role “pays off” while Armitages does not, in sense of “critics recognition”. But when I watched the two episodes I was striken how convincing and consistent he played the softer parts AS WELL AS the darker moments of his character! I felt that Miller is still concealing a large portion, and that the whole series is gaining suspense by this. I hold it that Armitages character will gain depth and complexity with the following episodes, displaying the full range between light and dark and that he will let us see and feel it. I think that softer, lighter scenes are not that much appreciated by critics as dark ones (probably because they seem easier to be played as not as “distant from normal “), though I hold them to be more difficult to be played convincingly (Heather: please correct me if your experience is different…).
When Armitage had these nice scenes with Claudia (you know, the kiss and so on), I, as audience, was wondering if Miller is really falling in love with her or just a damn good actor. So, that means Armitage acting as Miller is acting (or not acting?) to fall in love with Claudia, and making me, as audience, wondering about if Miller is just a damn good actor… That is quite some complexity in acting!!!
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