I think Friesians are gorgeous but they look very upright-kind of like a Saddlebred.
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Yes. Priorities.
Altho’ I did LOL at those lines at dinner about the upcoming competition …
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Yeah, me too, as far as the clothes and cookware and surgery things. They look right to me but I don’t know enough to tell (or even really care – like the non-horsepeople re the Friesians lol). I mean, until the Season 1 Christmas episode I thought Siegfried’s green roadster was an early-model MG …
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Not sure if you’ll be able to read the link, but the props department does try to source original household stuff Yorkshire Post article
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Me too!
In HS Richyrichgirl had a vintage MG she drove to school.
I don’t even remember her name, but I sure recall her car - same forest green as Siegfried’s Rover.
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3 of my HS classmates had MGs, 2 red and 1 baby blue. 2 were current - model MGBs; the other, IIRC, was a ‘50s MGA. This was in the Sixties.
Those were richy-rich kids.
Then there were the economy-car kids. Drivers of Beetles and second Hand Chevies. and parents’ second cars. Like my family’s little Opel. 
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My bil has their dads 52 MG that was a total mess til he had it refurbished a couple years ago. Beautiful car.
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Hey I didn’t drive when I was in high school my mother would not allow it. I had a part-time job working split shifts at a drive-in restaurant as a CarHop and it was 9 mi from our house. she drove me and my sister there twice a day and she would drive herself home so she would make eight trips a day to take us to work because she didn’t want me to drive
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Or Percheron.
Bummer.
My mother drove me to my first job, at the closest public library branch, about 3 miles from home, and then came back to pick me up. And to early-morning pre-season band practice in the summer.
But on those mornings, after band practice, she would drive me out to a new subdivision under construction, where there was no traffic, and teach me how to drive the stick-shift Opel.
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Historically inaccurate Friesians are one of my total movie/tv pet peeves. My husband starts laughing now when I begin yelling at the TV for it.
I have known two of them as riding horses, both happy lower-level ammy dressage horses. But I feel like that is a very very recent thing–like since early 2000s.
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they are so flashy and gorgeous, (and who doesn’t love black horses?) I understand why they are used so much. The great unwashed will not know the difference. OOH, pretty horsie! The article from the Yorkshire Times mentioned how hard they try to get it right. Maybe someone here could drop them a link to this thread!
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The two I knew, I met in 2006-2007.
I’ve been thinking the same thing, reading articles about the series. IMO an animal supply company for TV/movies should supply animals as accurate to the time and place as any of the other suppliers. I can’t believe there are no companies in England that can’t supply an ID, a Cleveland Bay (or the modern CB-TB cross), or a draught cross if a pure draught is not appropriate for the role. Is a special animal-casting company necessary when all that’s called for is a pretty horsey to just stand there? Let an actor pretend to work in its mouth? Look at all the locally sourced horses Midsomer Murders has hired to do walk-throughs in a brief scene. Surely that blonde could have managed a local Riding Club/Pony Club mount for a short scene.
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Same! As soon as horses appear on-screen my husband looks over and asks, “Okay, what’s wrong with those horses?” If they are black and hairy he asks if they are inappropriate Friesians 
, which of course they usually are.
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My understanding is that for a number of reasons if you want an animal on a film, you go through a licensed, insured, reliable, animal handling company. We have a movie industry here and we have folks who specialize in movie horses.
Even if the horse is not doing any tricks, it needs to be super reliable. Remember that while the final scene looks like an empty pasture, right behind the camera are a whole array of spotlights reflective sheets, multiple camera men directors etc, maybe dollies or camera cranes. Horse needs to stand still and repeat action quietly for multiple takes.
Film crew is also paying for the human handlers to bring and remove animal and adhere to SPCA and other rules.
And have everything insured and super safe, stunt doubles if needed.
In other words, no professional film crew just sources a random horse and gets their valuable actors to climb on board and hope for the best. There’s a whole support system built into the animal casting system.
The cost of doing it properly is way less than if that pony club cob took offence to the reflective sheets being moved, refused to stand still, wasted hours trying to get the shot.
Film is incredibly controlled, each shot and movement mapped out in advance.
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I’m glad I’m not the only one who has noticed the Friesian craze in Hollyweird for the last two decades or so. Does that mean that all those Andalusian horses of the 90s and 00s are out of work actors waiting tables in the Valley?
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Paints.
In the more recent (2015 - 2019) Poldark series, which takes place in Cornwall at the end of the 18th century, they showed, several times, one of the upper class toffs riding a beautiful paint across the tops of the cliffs.
At a time when no gentleman or gentlewoman would be seen dead riding a “spotted” horse.
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Janet speaks the truth about spotted horses. Gypsies had spotted horses in the UK, not the gentry. They didn’t even have spotted ponies for children. Lower classes might buy a cob for deliveries, but not your going-to-church horse.
Americans were more accepting of spotted horses and ponies, but they also held deep prejudices against owning and using them in many locations. My own Grampa would not look at a spotted horse of any sort. Didn’t matter how nice the horse was. Only slightly less against spotted ponies, they were buy, train, sell fast, for him.
Not a Fresian fan, but they are readily available as driving horses in Europe. Many funeral service companies have them for horse drawn hearse services. Horses pay their way doing this! They match easily, attractive with the flowing manes and tails. I think the hair creates much of their visual appeal to non-horsey observers.
Finding Cleveland Baýs that drive would be much more difficult. Safe for movies? Probably hard to locate. Most people ride but not drive them. We have Partbred Clevelands that drive well, pretty accepting of odd things. Still not sure they would be real tolerant on a movie set.
I agree with others that TBs would have been the most common horse in the manor house stables. Not hairy horses like Fresian or Percherons. They probably would have had Clevelands as carriage horses, easy to match and useful as heavy hunters. Some folks used Clevelands and Partbred Clevelands as plow horses, along with riding and driving them, back in those days. Their ability to be a multi-use horse was legendary.
I seem to remember tales of UK folks wanting to use things made in their own country, they didn’t like the French in particular. So French Percherons would not seem a choice they would make in draft animals. Suffolks, Shires, crosses for big, stout animals would have been the norm. Don’t forget that drafts of those times were NOT the huge animals seen now. 15-16h hand animals were much more practical, needed less feed, cost less to keep on small farms. My Grampa (again) said horses over 16h were inefficient with long legs, needed more grain, could not keep their weight up on good grass. Cash money was hard to come by, to purchase oats. Along with that was the DAILY effort harnessing and unharnessing tall horses. Draft leather harness can weigh close to 100 pounds, then to throw it up and over the horse is real work!!
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Ah, the fact that Friesians are almost identical might give them real value as movie horses because you could use several to portray one horse if you needed different tricks. They are genetic stunt doubles for each other.
As late as the 1960s the American Paint registry was started because QH people thought pinto coloring in QH was a sign of impure breeding. I always assumed they meant mustang by that. And one reason there are so many crazy colors in mustang herds is that the Spanish apparently shipped a lot of their out of style old baroque wild color horses to the Americas so North America in particular became a reservoir of funky color genes and even mutated a new one (Frame Overo).
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