Outlander is Here
“People disappear all the time.”
This is the voice over that opens the first episode of Outlander, based on the best selling novels of Diana Gabaldon. Already airing on Starz in the US, Showcase is bringing the series to Canada starting on Sunday August 24th 10pm, and they invited GEEKPR0N to a sneak preview of the episode. It was held at a Scottish bar on College and there may have been be-kilted men who’d lost their shirts!
These fine fellows were wearing the plaid, and not much else at the screening.
The series is the adventures of combat nurse Claire Randall . She and her war estranged husband are on a second honeymoon in the near Inverness when, after witnessing a druid ceremony, ‘falls through time’ from 1945 to 1743 in the Scottish Highlands. She faces primitive conditions and tensions between not only the Scottish and the English, but also between the various Scottish clans. It is also a production that does not shy away from the sensual aspects of the books, much to the screening audience’s delight.
Claire Randall is being played by actress Caitriona Balfe, whose largest role to date is the award winning digital series H+. Claire has, as one character puts it ‘the speech of a lady, but the language of a whore” and her language and demeanor poses problems for her. She is able to manage the rough and tumble and stare down both Highlanders and Captain Jonathan Randall, ranking officer of the local English troops and ancestor to her husband (and played by the same actor, Tobias Menzies seen as Edmure Tully in Game of Thrones).
For those who’ve read the book, the key question is who is playing Jamie Fraser? While not the first person that Claire meets in 1743, he is her first patient which shows her value, and for political reasons, he becomes her husband. The book focuses on both his fine physique and his red hair, which given that the action in the first episode is at night, is hard to see. Sam Heughan is the actor filling out the series most famous kilt. Heughan is best known on BBC shows including his role as Scott Neilson on Doctors, although he has been in various films, television shows and movies, and stage productions. Apparently he was also the fastest of the actors in putting on their kilts!
Jamie and Claire – Photo by permission of Ed Miller, Starz, and Sony Pictures Television
The books take pains to be accurate to the time period in medicine and social details. The production strives for the same veracity, with efforts including burning the British soldiers’ red coats with blowtorches to simulate the effects of war and gunpowder and to having a medical historian on staff to ensure that Balfe properly handled managed procedures including replaced a dislocated shoulder in her introduction to Jamie. Outlander is a double period piece, starting in 1945 and going back to the Jacobite rebellion years of the 1740s. It’s a political story, a time travel story, and a love story. It has already been renewed for a second season and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Sunny hard at work with the Showcase team!
