When we watch a cinema film or television drama, we must suspend some expectations of accuracy. There will always be a degree of artifice and dramatic licence.
Good actors will use their skills and talents to adopt the persona of the character they portray, without necessarily delivering an impersonation of someone from real life or physically resembling them.
The action might be filmed somewhere other than the place in the story. Bristol, Liverpool and Birmingham have masqueraded as London; Glasgow and Toronto as New York; the Costa del Sol as Turkey; London as Oxford; Belfast as the English Midlands.
We must make the same allowance when buses are a backdrop to the plot, as I was reminded when Mrs M and I watched and greatly enjoyed Belfast, Sir Kenneth Branagh’s semi-autobiographical film about a childhood in his native city as the Troubles broke out in 1969.
