I’ll try to ask more clearly. Which is true:
In TKS, Rush sounds like
- an Australian normally would now
- an Australian would then (in case there’s a difference)
- an Australian who has only somewhat conquered his accent
- an RP “well bred” Brit
Oh boy, Rab C. Nesbitt. I watched an episode of that once (the one where David Tennant plays a transsexual) and I think I only understood about 10 words that he said (Rab, not Tennant.)
There’s a new trailer out that shows more of Tennant’s role, and it sounds like he’s using his British Doctor Who accent. (It’s hard to tell from just like 3 lines, but it’s not American, Thank God!
)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIYXDvp4IYE (and it’s in HD!)
You’ll like that trailer. 
Yes. The first time I watched Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels I wanted to put on the subtitles but forced myself not to do so. On subsequent viewings I’ve gotten much better at understanding it, but I’ve actually watched a lot of movies made in the UK and that was one of the first I had a very difficult time following the dialog even though in theory they were speaking my native language.
Speaking of fake accents, whenever the new BattleStar Galactica series came out, something about Lee Adama’s accent bugged me, or rather, something about the way he talked. It just felt unnatural or forced somehow. Granted, the character (in the miniseries) was something of a stuck-up snob, so that sorta worked.
Turns out, the actor who played him, Jamie Bamber, had played a military officer in another series I had seen… he was Archie Kennedy in Horatio Hornblower, who not only had an English accent, but was temperamentally the opposite of the spit-and-polish Lee Adama.
Similarly, it also weirds me out to see Ioan Gruffudd playing Americans (Fantastic 4 and Blackhawk Down, for two examples), since I am used to him being English (Horatio Hornblower is the big example, though he spoke in the “Queen’s Latin” for King Arthur when he played Lancelot).
Which is funny, because he is evidently very Welsh. Saw a King Arthur documentary he was hosting (when the movie he played Lancelot in came out), and his opening monologue would start in the textbook Horatio Hornblower accent, and the longer he talked, the more and more the accent would slowly slip and give way to his Welsh accent. By the end, I could only understand what he was saying because I had been following him through the whole transition.
Jamie Bamber is Australian. His accent in Galactica is an affectation.
oh. oh, MY…
:::thud:::
you could say i liked it, yes.
btw, if this remake is a hit, rumor has it a franchise could be developed around tennant’s character. the who sites are alreay buzzing about it. yeah, works for me… 
Jamie Bamber was born in England and grew up in England. His parents are Irish and American.
And “affectation” isn’t really the best term for an actor’s use of an accent for a particular role.
I’ve become used to people from Northern Ireland finding my Northern Irish accent unconvincing 
Nonsense. There are authentic Cockney accents of various grades of heaviness. There is no reason that in order for a Cockney to be understood he must sound fake.
Guess I was misinformed.
Well that’s all I meant.
It’s still jarring to tune in “Law & Order UK” on BBC America and hearing Apollo talking like 'Enry 'Iggins.
Not quite any of of the above I’m afraid… In Logue’s time educated middle to upper class Australians would have been taught to speak RP at school and possibly by their families as well – in the same way that Brits of the time were discouraged from using their regional/working class accents. However there is commonly an Australian colouring to their version of RP. An actor of Rush’s age would have also been encouraged to speak RP. And come to think of it Logue was something of an actor too.
Has anyone heard Rush use a strong Australian accent anywhere?
So the opposite of my reaction. I suspect that it’s easier to fake American accents than it might be for English accents just because we’re so wide spread out. How am I supposed to know how someone from Baltimore sounds, for instance?
Of course, maybe that’s why the “default” American accent is from somewhere around Wisconsin. Fewer people to recognize it as being off.
The default American accent is not that spoken in Wisconsin. These articles say something like the default accent is spoken somewhere between Nebraska and Ohio:
The accent spoken in Wisconsin is different:
See, now I didn’t know those were different accents. All I know about how folks in Wisconsin talk is that supposedly they all sound like Garrison Keller (who has a show in Minnesota, so maybe not representative of Wisconsin anyhow)