Titanic Sinks Tonight review: harrowing but unmissable

****

A four-part documentary on one of the world’s worst maritime disasters may not strike many as typically festive viewing. 

But if last week’s poor ratings for terrestrial television show anything, it is that there is no such thing anymore. One year, Gavin & Stacey rakes in 18 million, the next, an episode of EastEnders fails to make the Christmas Day top ten.

Made by Belfast-based Stellify Media, Titanic Sinks Tonight tells the story in real time, using actors to voice survivors’ accounts, with historians providing context. Adding to the ranks of talking heads were the writer, Jeanette Winterson, and JJ Chalmers, the former Royal Marine turned television presenter. This seemed odd at first, until I recalled Winterson’s radio series on the Titanic. Chalmers’ expertise, meanwhile, lay in crisis management. Both turned out to be excellent. 

The only thing better than a novelist and memoirist to tell the story would have been someone there at the time. This is where the technique of using actors came into its own. We heard from passengers in first class and in third, from officers on the bridge to engineers deep in the bowels of the ship. In the background, a clock marked the 160 minutes from just before the ship hit the iceberg to its sinking. 

Much of the detail was familiar from James Cameron’s Oscar-winning epic, but the filmmakers had added fascinating new angles. As one historian noted, the ship has become known for its wealthy passengers and deluxe surroundings. In fact, two-thirds of those on board were in second and third class. This was a ship of migrants, heading to America for a better life. The parallels with today hardly need spelling out. 

The migrants had something in common with the first-class passengers: neither could quite believe what was happening - the rich because they had paid for a safe, luxurious passage and expected to get it; the migrants because they thought they had left chaos and uncertainty behind. Things like this were not supposed to happen in the well-to-do West. 

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We also heard from a psychologist on how recollections of an event vary, but together form something close to the truth. 

What became obvious was how long it took for the Titanic to sink. A rescue ship could be seen on the horizon, but the radio operator was asleep. Just as you scoff in disbelief, Winterson appears with the information that ships were not then obliged to have operators available around the clock. Other circumstances conspired to make it impossible for the rescue ships to get there any faster. 

The upshot of all this was that passengers who were left behind had a cruelly long time to contemplate their fate. The story of the lifeboats could have filled an episode itself - on the port side, only women and children were allowed, but on the starboard side, the officer in charge kept families together. 

This was a harrowing but unmissable watch. Even after all this time, the fate of the Titanic exerts its siren power once more.