The West Country accent is often mimicked and sometimes, most shockingly, even mocked, but it is one that is not easy to get right if you are not from round these parts. Even highly talented actors have struggled to get the accent right at times and a bad West Country accent has the potential to spoil the enjoyment of a film or TV show for West Country natives.
In the history of film and TV, there are famous examples of actors butchering accents. Dick Van Dyke's comically bad Cockney accent in Mary Poppins, for example, and Don Cheadle's equally unusual effort in Ocean’s Eleven, for example.
There are also some unforgettable attempts at recreating the accent of the South West. The West Country accent is quite distinct and those who don’t naturally have it struggle to emulate it. This has been proven over and over again in films and TV shows in recent years.
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The accent that we know and love is not a particularly easy one to copy, particularly if you’ve never spent any length of time with a 'native speaker', but there have been some quite dodgy imitations on the screen, that either the production team overlooked or simply didn’t care about, .
So, courtesy of our friends at DevonLive, here are some of the most criticised West Country accents in the history of film:
Poldark (2015-2019)
Poldark (2015-2019) - While not a film, this popular TV series based on Winston Graham's novels is set in Cornwall and depicts the dramatic lives of the Poldark family in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Irish actor Aidan Turner played the leading character in the show, but he admitted that people were right to slam his accent.
War Horse (2011)
War Horse (2011): This heart wrenching adaptation of the Michael Morpurgo novel with the same name. While the film itself received critical acclaim, some viewers and critics noted that the Devon accents portrayed by the characters in War Horse were inconsistent and occasionally veered into generic West Country accents instead.
The Long Call (2021)
The Long Call (2021) received hundreds of complaints for actors using a 'generic' west country accent to mutter their lines. Based on the Anne Cleeves novel of the same name, The Long Call is a four-part detective series, but landed in hot water with locals who did not appreciate the poor performance of the accent.
Fisherman's Friends (2019)
Fisherman's Friends (2019): This comedy-drama is set in Cornwall, which shares some similarities with the Devon accent. However, some viewers felt that the accents of the characters, particularly those portraying locals, were not consistently accurate or natural of the West Country.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018)
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018): This film is set in Guernsey, which is obviously not in Devon or the West Country but has some regional accent similarities. Despite being a critically acclaimed film, some critics noted that the accents were inconsistent and did not fully capture the nuances of the local speech patterns.
It isn’t all doom and gloom for the West Country in TV and film, some directors manage to capture the accent perfectly.
Hot Fuzz (2007) is set in the fictional village of Sandford and features quirky and lovable local characters. Scattered with pretty convincing West Country accents, Hot Fuzz proves it isn’t as hard mimicking the local accent as it’s made out to be.
