I can't speak for news coverage elsewhere in the world (so please let me know by leaving a comment below), but if you live in England it can hardly have escaped your notice that exactly 100 years ago the White Star Line passenger liner Titanic would be on course for its fateful rendezvous with an iceberg.
Its sinking on the 15th of April 1912 is an awe-inspiring story of scale and hubris which cost the lives of over 1,500 people. It remains one of the largest peacetime maritime disasters, and provoked an overhaul of how safety is approached on large passenger ships. Recently, however, I have come to notice that the disaster has become inescapable.
With maudlin voyeurism, suddenly Titanic is everywhere.
I know that the 1,514 lives lost represents a huge personal tragedy for those involved, and in no way wish to undermine that but, similar to the death of Diana in 1997, seems to have been blow out of all lucidity.
The (more than a little ret-conned) story of an unsinkable ship smote in an instant as if by ancient gods may have been a timely reminder to humanity that it was not above natural forces, but it is one story in many.
Worse is that the centenary provides an excuse or opportunity for broadcasters to fill the schedules with documentaries, retrospectives, reimaginings, doc-dramas and Julian "My Idea of Drama is Watching Brittle Aristocrats Make a Face Like They're Sucking a Wasp" Fellowes' own attempt to exploit his new-found status as darling of the dickheads.
Unlike other human tragedies of the last 100 years like, say, the Blitz (and our own terrible reciprocation on the cities of Germany), there is a finite amount of story to ring out of the Titanic tragedy. You see, they made A Night to Remember in 1958, a very sober, stiff-upper-lip affair. Made within the lifetimes of many of the survivors, the film had a responsibility to be faithful. The film is of its era, but watchable. In 1997 James "Love Me!" Cameron released his own romanticised version as a doomed love story. I find the 1997 film so saccharinely awful I have never been able to watch it in one sitting and, I think, is to blame for how the disaster is perceived by many.
However, I can respect the film for exploring the story of the many unfortunates who were going to America to make a new life, even if it was done in the laziest most manipulative way imaginable.
But I feel those two films got everything out of the source material that there was to be had, and subsequent efforts must either rely on retreading old ground, or fanciful invention.
At the turn of this century there was an unfortunate fashion for sticking questionable actors in period dress and pretending to interview them as if they were in some way involved. Whether the fault of the actors or directors of these little efforts, the readings were highly on-the-nose and invariably ended with the poor fool staring dolefully off into middle distance while he "recalled" the tragedy.
I have long suspected Fellowes is a one-trick pony, but even I was shocked at how sleepily predictable his own anniversary outing was. The conceit of playing the action out in over-lapping time-frames only severed to highlight how little else he had added to the story. Fellowes has always fetishised the relationship between the "upper" and working classes as though it is some lost golden age that should be fondly remembered, but I found his choice of point-of-view characters tedious in the extreme.
Yes, I did know how it was going to end - actually that's not true. I knew what the ending would be, but not how it would end. You see, a good writer can tell you what the end of a story will be at the start ("A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life"), and still have you riveted at how the characters will act in the run-up to that ending. Just because the ending is known does not mean getting there cannot be interesting.
I'm not saying we should forget Titanic. In its own right it is an interesting event, and contains lessons worth learning, but other more interesting, more important things have happened in the previous 5,000 years of recorded human history, and in the 100 years since.
Maybe it is as Irwin puts it in The History Boys, "there is no period so remote as the recent past."
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