{"id":377020,"date":"2025-12-28T23:40:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T23:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/377020\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T23:40:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T23:40:07","slug":"titanic-sinks-tonight-review-its-like-youre-reliving-that-terrifying-night-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/377020\/","title":{"rendered":"Titanic Sinks Tonight review \u2013 it\u2019s like you\u2019re reliving that terrifying night | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

April 2026 will mark 114 years since the night that the RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg, but our grim fascination with the disaster shows no sign of abating. There was, of course, a surge of interest in the Titanic in the late 90s \u2013 thanks to James Cameron\u2019s Oscar-bothering blockbuster \u2013 and there has been a steady stream of documentaries, dramas and podcasts about its demise ever since, some more sensitive than others (among the less tactful offerings: the 2010 film Titanic II \u2013 directed by Dick Van Dyke\u2019s grandson Shane \u2013 a cash-in about a replica ship ravaged by a tsunami). Occasionally, the subject matter lurches starkly from the past back into the present. In June 2023<\/a>, five people died on board an experimental submersible made by the company OceanGate; its passengers had hoped to see the liner\u2019s rusting wreckage up close.<\/p>\n

Titanic Sinks Tonight is a part-documentary, part-drama series playing across four nights, its episodes constructed from letters and diaries written by those on board, as well as interviews the survivors would give in the decades after. On the strength of the two episodes released for review, there\u2019s no denying that it sates our appetite for Titanic-themed content. However, in centring the words and memories of those who lived through the terror of that night, it restores much-needed agency to those people. It also does well to bring a sense of reality to events that can sometimes feel unreal on account of their ubiquity, and that uncanny valley of Titanic-themed media. Central to its success is the presence of experts such as historian Suzannah Lipscomb and former Royal Navy admiral Lord West, to sharpen the corners of the story that Hollywood has sanded down.<\/p>\n

Who will make it? \u2026 Charlotte Collyer, 2nd Class Passenger on a lifeboat. Photograph: BBC\/Stellify Media<\/p>\n

For the upper-class passengers, their quarters for the journey from Southampton to New York would have been \u2013 says Lipscomb \u2013 \u201clike a cross between the Ritz and an English grand country house\u201d. We meet one such traveller, a fashion designer named Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, as the actor playing her \u2013 the excellently named Candida Gubbins \u2013 smothers her face in a thick cold cream (it is, she says, \u201ca pleasure to go to bed\u201d in her lavish cabin). Duff-Gordon would have been eating roast duckling and foie gras just hours before the ship began to sink, revelling in what Lipscomb describes as a \u201cjoyful\u201d day; we even see a photograph of the real Lucy, Gubbins proving a strong likeness. Her comfort is contrasted with the likes of Charlotte Collyer (Lisa Dwyer Hogg), a seasick \u00e9migr\u00e9 to the US, whose lodgings were in the more spartan surroundings of second class. Even as strange, \u201cqueer\u201d noises rang out, Collyer had no reason to think anything was wrong, putting her trust in those above her in the social hierarchy: \u201cIf these people weren\u2019t worried, why should I be?\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, as Lipscomb shows, how much information you had very much depended on who you were. As opposed to a Jack and Rose, flip-of-a-coin situation where anybody could feasibly find themselves on a lifeboat, the \u201cchumocracy\u201d between the first-class passengers and those in charge put them at a major advantage when it came to surviving. Episode two, which airs tomorrow, also asks why the evacuation happened in the maddening way that it did, with Nadifa Mohamed explaining the \u201cSliding Doors\u201d moments that saw families separated or kept together depending on where they were on the ship.<\/p>\n

The Somali-British novelist proves to be one of the programme\u2019s biggest assets. She draws parallels between that period and today, when immigrants can put their trust in a new system and way of life, sometimes to their detriment: \u201cSomething I hear \u2026 is this belief that you\u2019ve entered a world of order and protection and security, so you don\u2019t have to worry about anything.\u201d It was, says Mohamed, \u201cso wrong\u201d in this context. She and fellow author Jeanette Winterson may not seem the most obvious talking heads, but they\u2019re great at it \u2013 their authorial skills adding to the many layers of world-building on show here. Maybe more writers should be invited to take part in programmes like this.<\/p>\n

Rich history \u2026 Gerry O\u2019Brien as Capt Smith realising his fate in Titanic Sinks Tonight. Photograph: BBC\/Stellify Media<\/p>\n

While the reconstructions are well-realised, there are perhaps a surplus of testimonies, and a failure to draw out the most powerful ones (among them, a truly intense performance from Tyger Drew-Honey as wireless operator Harold Bride). Really, though, Titanic Sinks Tonight is a rich history lesson that makes the familiar new once more; it also acknowledges that the truth is often far more frightening than any work of fiction.<\/p>\n

Titanic Sinks Tonight aired on BBC Two and is on iPlayer now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"April 2026 will mark 114 years since the night that the RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":{"0":"post-377020","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}