BBC SWEENEY TODD WATCH ONLINE TV

The script starts to gain its strength when we see Jonathan St Johnston building out the relationship between Sweeney and Mrs Lovett. Sweeney Todd (Ray Winstone) and Mrs Lovett (Essie Davis)

The film has a degree of grim grisliness in the depiction of SweeneyвЂ™s activities, especially when it comes to the shockingly crude medical procedures of the era вЂ“ although being made for television, it is unable to get as gore-drenched as it might and is forced to pull its punches on a number of occasions, particularly when we see Ray Winstone carving up bodies. And then I couldnвЂ™t not.вЂќ In particular, Sweeney is given a sexual pathology вЂ“ he has no interest in regular sex but instead peeps through a hole in the wall as Mrs Lovett couples with various customers and then shaves and kills them, serving their flesh back up to her for use in meat pies. There is a fabulous moment at the end where David WarnerвЂ™s blind judge asks Ray Winstone вЂњWhy?вЂќ to which Winstone shrugs: вЂњBecause I could. Jonathan St JohnstonвЂ™s script makes an interesting attempt to delve down into SweeneyвЂ™s psychological motivation.

Rather interestingly, this version has pared away all the songs and lurdily over-the-top Grand Guignol effects that mark the other versions and attempted to tell it as a grimly realistic historical story. This British television production was almost certainly mounted with the idea of getting in just prior to the release of the Tim Burton film.

BBC SWEENEY TODD WATCH ONLINE TV

The most popular incarnation was the 1979 Stephen Sondheim Broadway musical, which led to the high-profile Tim Burton film Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) and two earlier tv stagings Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1982) and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street in Concert (2001). Nevertheless, the story has gained enormous popularity and there have been a number of films about Sweeney Todd вЂ“ the silent British Sweeney Todd (1926), the silent British Sweeney Todd (1928), the British sound version Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936) with Tod Slaughter, Andy MilliganвЂ™s cheap Bloodthirsty Butchers (1970) and a British tv version Sweeney Todd/The Tale of Sweeney Todd (1997) with Ben Kingsley and Joanna Lumley as Sweeney and Mrs Lovett. At least one author has argued that Sweeney Todd was based on a real person, although no substantiating evidence has been shown to demonstrate this. The story of the demon barber Sweeney Todd and his razor and Mrs Lovett and her meat pies is something that has been tickling audienceвЂ™s fancies ever since its first appearance as a penny dreadful in the 1840s. When she returns to work and is taunted by customers about the sores on her face, she readily takes to the idea of sending them to Sweeney knowing that they will be killed. As he tends her through her illness, he confesses his secret to her. She then comes to him, suffering hideously from venereal disease. When she sends them to him for a discount shave, he slaughters them and then gives the flesh to her as meat for her pies. He declines her offer of a sexual relationship but watches through a peephole as she regularly has sex with customers. Afterwards, Sweeney buys Mrs Lovett the neighbouring premises so that she can have her own pie shop. Seeing that the husband beats her, Sweeney kills him during the operation. Sweeney is called by Mrs Lovett to operate on her ailing husband. Afterwards, she sends him meat pies daily. Sweeney also has some skill as a surgeon and befriends Mrs Lovett, a pie-maker in a nearby shop, when she asks him to perform an abortion for her. Sweeney Todd has become a successful barber but also develops a taste for slitting the throats of his customers with a razor while he is shaving them.

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