Hacker News Reader

Comment by ikr678 | Hacker News Reader

Shows produced outside of the US are generally better on the diversity of appearance front. UK content particular is much more watchable for me, as actors are closer to regular people you'd see on the street vs the very thin, athletic, impossibly white toothed American casting ideal.

View on HN

I approve of the use of talented non-white actors in British period dramas, such as David Copperfield. It is obvious that the person's skin colour is ahistorical for the role. But it doesn't matter. We the audience are tacitly invited to look past this detail. It seems a little incongruous for about ten seconds, then just disappears into their fine performance.

See also Chernobyl being full of actors with British accents ... jarring for about 30 seconds, and then you don't even realise for the rest of the show, because it's just that good.

I've seen a making of commentary of Chernobyl, and the reasoning behind having non-accent actors was that a) it was Western production with Western casting and b) they wanted to avoid the old habit of portraying Russians as speaking bad English. I get both points, and it helped the immersion, because I speak English without a Russian accent.

And yes, Chernobyl is among the best shows ever produced. Only exception is the last episode, they could have focused more on the international reaction to it, and the fact that everybody wanted the total cost and impact of the disaster to be low. It was a choice, so, to focus on the Soviet perspective. Taking the Soviet trial for the last episode made perfect sense.

UK produced shows are going the same way though. Inter-racial families, asian/black detectives and police chiefs, people living in million pound homes despite having average income jobs, etc.

Maybe it's me but this doesn't represent regular people I see on the street?

You can tell if someone’s spouse is another race just by looking at a single person on the street? This is amazing, tell me more!

I think you've over reached here. 'regular people I see on the street' is a general term and shouldn't be taken too literally.

Inter-ethnic relationships in England and Wales rose by two percentage points between 2001 and 2011 (7% in 2001 to 9% in 2011).

Ten years later, I expect the figure to be much higher but nowhere near as portrayed on TV. Let's be generous and say the increase has been 50% - and is still a minority.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...

I should clarify, I meant diversity of appearance in all aspects, not just race/orientation.

Casting in non-US tv shows, to my eyes, seems to give a better mix of ordinary looking people (fat, ugly, disabled, scarred, plain, old, teens-actually-cast-as-teens etc). This is just as important for representation, not everyone can be insta-perfect.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com