Reading/Watching Log #37

I’m posting this log early since my long-awaited holidays have finally arrived and I’m flying up to Auckland for my birthday! I’ve been looking forward to it for ages, and the main event will be seeing Disney’s Aladdin on stage at the Civic Theatre.

It’s certainly going to be a year for that character seeing as the live-action film opens in May, though it did lead to an amusing conversation with my hopelessly confused work colleague when I tried to explain it all to her (in her words: “so Will Smith is coming to Auckland?”)

As you’ll see, January was defined by Star Wars graphic novels (specifically ones focused on Darth Vader) and A Series of Unfortunate Events, which I binge-watched over the course of two weeks (two episodes per day).

Between the two of them, it was a rather grim start to the year, so I also watched Crazy Rich Asians and the first season of Brooklyn 99, as well as the first books in my Treat Yo Self stack of reading material.

Details on the trip when I get back!

Nimona by Noelle Stevenson

Knowing that Noelle Stevenson was the showrunner behind the latest reiteration of She-Ra, I snapped this graphic novel up when I saw it on the library shelf. There’s a lot here that’s familiar to anyone that watched She-Ra, from the art style to the LGBT subtext, and I had to smile when I heard the news that it too is being adapted into an animated television show.

Set in a medieval kingdom that’s full of scientific advancements, Ballister Blackheart is the story’s villain – though it’s soon clear through his interactions with the shiny-haired “hero” Ambrosius Goldenloin that these are roles that are played rather than accurate descriptions of character.

Blackheart is investigating the activities of what passes for the kingdom’s Defense Department, helped by a mysterious and rather bloodthirsty young shapeshifter called Nimona. She’s gung-ho about becoming a villain, and Blackheart tries to keep her murderous impulses in check as she assists in his various schemes, learning more about her as they grow closer.

It’s a great story, filled with twists and turns and unexpected depth to all the characters. I’m usually sick of stories that posit the heroes as the REAL villains and the villains as just misunderstood, but Stevenson handles with such humour and imagination that it just works.

(Altogether it reminded me a bit of Disenchanted, only much better).

Saga: Volume 9 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

We’re well into the sprawling space opera by this stage, in which two soldiers from opposite sides of an intergalactic war struggle to raise their mixed-species daughter in a place of safety, but its dark-and-gritty tone is well and truly beginning to pall.

I think Vaughan has something to say about the inherent unfairness of life, but when every single likeable character not only suffers, but suffers as a direct result of their compassion and desire to do no harm, then what are you left with? This issue is a veritable bloodbath of pointless death and destruction, “shock” images and deliberate “I’m going to the most painful thing” twists.

Some might call it truthful, but I think I’ve had enough. (And with the release of this volume, the creators are going on hiatus, so perhaps even they’re getting tired of it).

Monstress: Volume 3 by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda

On the other hand, I’m still totally into Monstress. Perhaps that’s hypocritical considering there’s plenty of graphic violence and death in this volume too, but it’s not without its moments of grace and hope, not to mention Sana Takeda’s gloriously ornate artwork. If you can imagine a mash-up of Victorian, Asian, Egyptian and Art Deco styles, all mixed together in a Baroque cauldron with a little dash of steampunk, then you’re getting close to the magnificence of Takeda’s work.

The plot is still virtually impenetrable, but who cares? Half the fun is getting thrown into a female-dominated world of various warring sects and organizations and trying to figure out just what’s going on. It revolves around a young woman called Maika Halfwolf, who struggles to control the ancient demon that resides inside her. Now finally, the two are starting to work in accord, which makes her an even more valuable asset for the factions trying to gain a foothold over the world.

I’m so glad I found this series, as it’s become the perfect go-to resource for inspiration. Do you want to see beautiful landscapes? Check. Do you want to see a surplus of female characters of every possible hue? Check. Do you want to luxuriate in complex hierarchies and intrigues and interior design? Check. It’s just one of those stories that delivers no matter what you’re into.

Star Wars: Darth Vader and the Ninth Assassin by Tim Siedell

As you can see, I had a very Vader-centric January. What happened is that I had a craving for Star Wars, settled on Darth Vader as the subject, and then reserved everything about him on the library catalogue, having no idea what the serial order was – I figured I’d work it out when I had all of them.

Tim Siedell’s two graphic novels are standalone stories of Vader released in 2013/2014, and so just missed out on falling under the umbrella of the new Star Wars canon. However, because of their self-contained nature, there’s nothing here that really contradicts what we know about the galaxy far, far away post-Disney takeover (save one throwaway Easter egg concerning what powers the Death Star).

Vader is obviously not a popular figure in the Empire, and one man has already sent eight assassins after him in the hopes of avenging his murdered son. Now the ninth has followed Vader to a planet where a strange cult resides, one that has their own plans for the Dark Lord of the Sith.

It’s not until the final few pages, which reveal a new perspective on what was really going on the whole time that the story starts to make sense, though the titular ninth assassin remains a giant disappointment. There hasn’t been a greater non-entity who somehow gained title-status since The Silver Chair in The Chronicles of Narnia or Bato of the Water Trible in Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Star Wars: Darth Vader and the Cry of Shadows by Tim Siedell

This one is a little different as it’s narrated by a Stormtrooper who was left for dead by his Jedi commander during the Clone Wars, only to survive on his own and eventually join the ranks of the Empire. It’s basically a slice-of-life tale told from the point-of-view of one of those faceless, nameless clones and his ensuring struggles with identity, meaning and his existence as a soldier.

Siedell’s take on Vader is as an unquestioning instrument of the Emperor, and there’s little in the way of personality or nuance here. One panel strongly suggests he slaughters even more children on his way to achieving the Empire’s goals, and the clone’s arc is very much built on his initial respect for the machine/man, followed by ever-growing horror at what he’s capable of.

Inscrutable and unanswerable, Siedell’s Vader provides an interesting comparison to what Gillen and Soule do with him.

Star Wars: Darth Vader 1 – 5 by Kieron Gillen

Kieron Gillen’s Vader arc paints him in a very different light. Set after the destruction of the Death Star, this is a Vader who is just as cunning and strategic and independent as Siedell’s was a subservient blunt instrument of force. More than that, it’s a Vader who already mistrusts the Emperor, all the more so when he discovers his master has arranged for a cybernetic specialist to create several new enhanced protégés.

Vader decides he needs his own pool of resources (mercenaries, credits, droids, etc) as an insurance policy should things go wrong for him. In this he hires an amoral young thief/archeologist called Doctor Aphra (now popular enough to head her own series) and her sadistic droids Triple-Zero and Beetee (essentially Dark Side foils to C3-PO and R2-D2) to get what he needs.

But more than that, he’s also on the hunt to discover the identity of the pilot who destroyed the Death Star – and perhaps this serial’s greatest claim to fame is showing us Vader’s reaction to learning he has a son.

It’s a great twisty-turny plot, in which Vader has to obey the Emperor’s demands while simultaneously undermining him and keeping two steps ahead of the Imperial personnel assigned to work with him. It can get pretty confusing at times, especially when Volume 3 (Vader Down) is actually a crossover with another series starring Luke, Leia and Han, but I got there in the end.

Altogether it’s a fun look at how Vader operated within the Imperial hierarchy, his relationship with the Emperor, and the myriad of support-workers who vied for power within the Empire’s ranks.

Star Wars: Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith 1 – 3 by Charlies Soule

Although this is the latest Vader comic-series to be released, it’s chronologically the earliest, set directly after Anakin’s awakening as Vader, still trapped to the gurney in the laboratory and grieving for Padme’s death.

Unlike Vader-the-instrument and Vader-the-plotter, this is Vader in his infancy, still getting used to his new body, new identity and new position in the Empire. There are some interesting scenes involving other Imperials struggling to understand where he’s come from and how much influence he wields, as naturally they’re suspicious and frightened of this imposing new figure.

The stories are fairly straightforward, such as the Emperor sending Vader out to find a new kyber crystal for his lightsaber, and some of the early skirmishes on Mon Cala that foreshadows that planet’s importance in the Rebellion to come. It also deals with the remnants of the Jedi that survived Order 66, and introduces the Inquisitors that played such a large role in the first two seasons of Star Wars Rebels.

An unexpected highlight is the inclusion of Jocasta Nu as an Archivist in the Jedi Temple. Remember that old librarian in Attack of the Clones who gently reprimanded Obi-Wan in his search for Kamino? It turns out she’s a Jedi, and she gets to kick a fair amount of ass in her attempts to retrieve and conceal the Order’s treasures. We don’t get many female warriors over the age of fifty, and this is a great example of taking a minor character from the films and writing them to their full potential.

Star Wars: Poe Dameron: The Spark and the Fire by Charles Soule

This is the final volume of Poe Dameron’s five-part run, and currently holds the fascinating position of depicting the most recent events in the Star Wars time-line, taking place after the Battle of Crait in the Millennium Falcon. Finally we get to see Rey, Finn and Poe (and BB8 of course) interacting with each other: sharing stories, information, banter and lessons.

I’m still grappling with confusion over why Rian Johnson decided to separate three such likeable and enjoyable characters the entire duration of The Last Jedi, but at least here we get a glimpse of what to look forward to in Episode XI.

Other than that, the volume is pretty much a “gap filler” – we learn how Poe escaped from Jakku in The Force Awakens, and what Black Squadron was up to during the events of The Last Jedi (most assumed Snap Wexley and Jessika Pava had been killed in action, but nope – they were just elsewhere. Hopefully they’ll return in Episode XI, along with actors for Karé and Suralinda).

It also touches on some of the hard-earned lessons in leadership Poe has had to grapple with, which will hopefully have some payoff come December. Nothing to do but wait now…

Court of Fives trilogy by Kate Elliot

I’ve loved Kate Elliot ever since reading her Cold Magic trilogy, and so have had my eye on this – her first YA trilogy – for a while now. And since I’ve decreed 2019 as Treat Yo Self year when it comes to my reading material, I decided to forego my massive To Be Read pile and just enjoy all my favourite authors.

There’s a lot going on throughout these books, but Elliot’s gift has always been to weave world-building and character development into her plots in such a way that each one is enhanced by the other two.

Jessamy leads an odd sort of half-life: as the daughter of an upper-class Patron and a Commoner mother she doesn’t fully belong to either world. She and her three sisters are always striving to be Patron-like, and yet are never allowed to forget that their mother is a Commoner, who remains unmarried to their father despite a decades-long relationship.

But whenever she gets the chance, Jessamy sneaks away to a training centre to practice the Fives, a difficult and multi-level athletic competition that bestows honour and glory on its champions. But on the day she finally decides to disguise herself and enter a competition, her life changes forever: not only because she meets the Patron princeling Kalliarkos, but because his ambitious uncle has a plan to tear her family apart.

At first glance, the emphasis on the Fives might suggest this is another reiteration of The Hunger Games, though ultimately the game takes up a limited amount of pages and the books are altogether more interested in the political landscape of Saryenia which was colonize generations ago by a bordering Empire. Now the indigenous people are preparing to take back their land and reinstate their culture, a conflict Jessamy and her three sisters find themselves right in the middle of thanks to their class-crossing heritage.

Elliot knows what she’s doing when it comes to matters of race, gender, class, and the oppressive systems that are built around them. Court of Fives have everything I wanted and expected from her: a three-dimensional heroine, a plethora of interesting female relationships, plenty of moral ambiguity and world-building that melded perfectly with the story’s plot and themes.

The Dolls’ House by Rumer Godden

Late last year I read The Fairy Doll and found it charming – in that dated, Enid Blyton-esque sort of way, so I sought out more of Godden’s work. I ended up with one of those anthologies that combines seven of her books in one volume (bonus: the cover art is by Jane Ray) and given that I’m also revisiting the Toy Story movies, it seems a fitting companion read.

It’s a pretty simple story, about the dolls of two sisters who long for a dolls’ house, are temporarily separated when one is donated to an exhibition, and who finally get their wish at a terrible price – the longed-for dolls’ house comes with a former inhabitant called Marchpane, a vindictive china doll.

Godden likes to have fun with little details: all the dolls have personalities formed by what they’re made of (wooden Tottie is sturdy and strong, while Birdie is made of celluloid and rather flighty and empty-headed as a result) and they no power over anything except to communicate with children through intense wishing (which operates rather like prayer).

The terrible Marchpane is a great villain – vain and proud but with a truly evil streak within her. Even the name conjures up a dark sort of beauty.

It’s light and frothy at first glance, but there’s a poignancy here that stays with you: like the fate of the collectible dolls at the exhibition that live in boxes most of the time (a wax doll grieves for the caretaker’s daughter that she’ll never belong to) and a rather shocking turn of events at the end of the story that’s reminiscent of the Steadfast Tin Soldier’s fate in the Hans Christian Anderson story.

The debate over whether it’s better to be loved by a child or preserved forever in a glass case is very much a motif in Toy Story 2 (which I’m currently reviewing) and its presence here made me wonder if the writers were inspired by Godden’s book. Either way, I’d love to see this story made into a short film by Pixar: it would be set well before the Toy Story movies take place, but they could do so much with this material!

Zhongkui: Snow Girl and the Dark Crystal (2015)

This was a weird one, though I couldn’t resist that title. C’mon, Snow Girl and the Dark Crystal? How enticing. It’s a typical wuxia swords-and-sorcery plot, which is to say extremely ambitious in scope but pretty garbled in particulars.

As far as I could make out, the city of Hun is protected from hell by a simple scholar called Zhong Kui, who was turned into a mighty warrior through the consumption of an elixir that partially turns him into a demon.

After the theft of the Dark Crystal from the underworld (the removal of which does…something), and the arrival of Zhong Kui’s former lover – a mysterious maiden called Little Snow – to the city, all defenses are up to repel the evil that’s infiltrated Hun in the attempt to steal back the crystal.

It’s an interesting enough story, with plenty of difficult choices and hidden agendas along the way, but it doesn’t have any emotional resonance to go with it. I wanted to believe in the love between Zhong Kui and Little Snow, but they’re not given many scenes together and have no real reason to fall in love beyond the fact both are very attractive.

The CGI is especially disappointing, and at times it looks like you’re watching a video game, with badly-rendered monsters awkwardly fighting each other with no sense of danger. But hey, I’d rather which a flawed but unique effort than yet another regurgitated Hollywood clone, and in that sense this delivered.

Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

I was late to the party, but still managed to have a lot of fun. By now you should probably know the plot: economics professor Rachel Chu is talked into visiting Singapore by her boyfriend, only to learn while literally boarding the plane that he comes from a wealthy family. Like, mega-wealthy.

So she’s thrown into a world where renting a private island for a hen’s night is no big deal, and absolutely everyone has their eyes on her as she fumbles through the introductions and formalities. Her boyfriend’s mother Eleanor is her biggest challenge, as between Rachel’s single-parent background and American upbringing, she sees her as fundamentally unsuitable for her son.

It’s pretty basic stuff really, and there aren’t many surprises in store – instead the story leans on the usual staples of romantic-comedies: quirky side characters, plenty of miscommunications, heartfelt declarations of love, and a plucky heroine that you want to see succeed (though admittedly, it took a while for me not to see Constance Wu as Jessica Huang).

There’s no room for any critique of obscene wealth; instead the film revels in the Cinderella fantasy of being thrown into the world of extreme prosperity, but hey – it’s a romance. Just sit back and enjoy the lavish wedding which involves fireworks on skyscrapers, island getaways, free spa treatments and possibly the most beautiful church ceremony committed to film (I got a little choked up, and that NEVER happens).

Brooklyn 99: Season 1 (2013)

It was time to watch the source of all those “incorrect quote” memes that are so prevalent on Tumblr. Set in New York, this is the story of the clashing personalities in a NYPD precinct and their crime-busting escapades.

Manchild Jack Peralta, overachieving Amy Santiago, tough Rosa Diaz, earnest Charles Boyle, stoic Captain Holt, team dad Terry Jeffords, and the rather indescribable Gina Linetti – though each episode revolves around an investigation of some kind, it’s the interactions between these six that provide the comedic material.

And honestly, I’m finding it hard to say much more about it. Gifs of this show are everywhere on Tumblr, and most of the funniest lines have become memes. I suppose what I like most is that despite everyone’s quirks and foibles, they’re all competent cops that get the work done (well, except for a couple of the tertiary characters). And I like that it’s just as much a cop show as it is a workplace comedy.

That said, I think I have a lot less patience for Peralta than most viewers – he’d be fun to hang out with occasionally, but absolutely tedious to work with on a day-to-day basis.  

Trollhunters: Season 1 (2016)

It’s said that there are no new stories, only old ones in different packaging, which aptly describes Trollhunters. There’s very little here that will take you by surprise, as everything is taken straight from the Chosen One narrative.

Young Jim Lake finds a magical amulet that transforms him into an armoured warrior whose destiny it is to fight the forces of evil, leading to a double-life of juggling heroism with the pressures of high school. One overweight best friend? Check. One petite crush? Check. One mentor figure who turns out to be evil and another who is jovial and overenthusiastic? Check.

The obnoxious jock bully? The glasses-wearing nerd? The besties of the love interest who are boy-crazy and black respectively? The single workaholic mother who gets increasingly concerned about her son’s behaviour? An evil troll trying to break through to the human world by means of a magical portal? CHECK.

I feel like we’ve seen this a million times before – just off the top of my head, the lanky protagonist/chubby sidekick duo can also be found in Monster House and Paranorman, with parallels that that go right down to each character’s hair colour.

Yet this is not to say Trollhunters is derivative or boring. Based on the book by Guillermo del Toro (which I’m curious enough about to track down) the show takes the familiar tropes and tells a solid, albeit familiar story. It’s the little things that set it apart, like the time spent on Jim and Claire enjoying a nighttime moped ride, or Jim carefully taking off his sleeping mother’s glasses before leaping into battle.

There’s also plenty of scope for the imagination in some of the magical gadgets that Jim and his friends use to fight their enemies: a spell that causes Toby to literally devour words and the knowledge they contain, a device that stops time for exactly forty-two minutes, and a creepy little homunculus that binds the wellbeing of two people together – if one gets hurt, so too does the other.

But it’s the visual beauty of the world that’s most enjoyable: the underground Troll Market is filled with crystals of every shade and hue: amber, cerulean, vermillion, emerald (no, I’m not just going to say yellow, blue, red and green because those words don’t do the luminosity of these colours justice).

The ongoing attempt to prevent a terrible troll from invading the suburbia of Arcadia Falls becomes a quest for stones that can upgrade Jim’s armour, which in turn leads to a solo mission into the Darklands to save Claire’s little brother – the show is good in that it lays its narrative seeds early, but isn’t afraid to shift the goalposts when a particular storyline runs its natural course. That said, questions such as “should I work with my friends or alone so as not to endanger them?” have been exhaustively explored in everything from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Avatar: The Last Airbender, and nothing particularly interesting is added to the discussion here.

Oh, and one more thing – for a show created and produced by Guillermo del Toro, it stints in the strong female character department. There are only three significant women in the first series: Jim’s mother Barbara (as clueless as she is harried), Jim’s crush Claire (admittedly she improves once she’s included in the Trollhunting activities, but for a long time is The Girl That's Constantly and Justifiably Irritated by Male Lead's Unexplained Absences which Inevitably Casts her into a Bad Light) and an evil henchwoman who disappears halfway through. And that’s it. Par for the course for most shows, but surprising in a show from del Toro. He usually does much better than this.

If my comments come across as overly negative, don’t let it stop you checking this out. It’s not a bad show by any stretch, and naturally younger viewers (who haven’t overdosed on tropes yet) won’t know how much has been borrowed from other sources. I enjoyed it, and I’ll be back for more.

A Series of Unfortunate Events: Season 1 – 3 (2017 – 2019)

I read A Series of Unfortunate Events – my sister’s copies – years ago, when they were first published, and saw the movie starring Jim Carrey as Count Olaf back in 2004 (it generally wasn’t very well received, but my sis liked it enough to get it on DVD, and you can’t say that it didn’t nail the Gothic Victorian Edward Gorey aesthetic).

In any case I was deeply curious about how Netflix would tackle Lemony Snicket’s (actually Daniel Handler’s) thirteen-book testimony that chronicles the misadventures of the Baudelaire siblings: inventor Violet, bookworm Klaus and bity toddler Sunny (who later discovers her calling as a chef).

Despite the cinematic qualities of Snicket’s weird alternative world, featuring over-the-top villains, plucky children and Dickensian place names, his two most definitive stylistic elements pose an adaptational challenge: firstly the narrative voice, which is filled with asides and explanations as to the meanings of various words and idioms, and secondly the fact that Snicket never provides any solid answers to the myriad of riddles, secrets and conspiracy theories that are woven throughout the narrative.

Unlike Harry Potter, Unfortunate Events more or less disappeared from the cultural zeitgeist after the publication of the final book (apparently Handler has written a prequel series, which I’d never even heard of before writing this review), which I suspect was due to his refusal to wrap things up in a neat little bow.

However you may feel about Harry Potter, it stuck the landing when it came to providing closure to its plot and characters, whereas Unfortunate Events is more like LOST, another massive hit during its run, which dropped off the cultural radar almost immediately after its finale aired and viewers realized there had been no master plan and no forthcoming answers to its array of mysteries (instead the writers insisted it was about character development the whole time).

There’s no telling whether Handler’s theme of “you will never know everything” was something he planned from the very beginning, or whether the growing complexity of his conspiracy backstory became too much for him, leading to a decision to resolve things with a lesson about the unknowability of the world. (Of course, the fact that Handler’s true intentions remain a mystery also fits into the general theme of the books).

But I recall there being no small amount of frustration from readers regarding the end of the series. Who started the Baudelaire fire? What was in the sugar bowl? Why was there a secret passage leading from Dark Avenue to the Baudelaire house? Did the Quagmire triplets survive? We never find out, and in my experience, a mystery that doesn’t provide a solution isn’t one that readers are going to feel particularly motivated to re-read any time soon. (Yes, there are some exceptions to the rule, but Handler isn’t Joan Lindsay or Shirley Jackson).

Of course, there’s only one response to complaints about a depressing end to books that have been called A Series of Unfortunate Events, and that’s: you can’t say you weren’t warned.

So how was the Netflix series going to handle these difficulties, especially as there wasn’t a particularly loud demand for an Unfortunate Events adaptation anyway? The show’s best innovation was something the film also did: cast Lemony Snicket as an actual character. But whereas the film’s use of Jude Law limited him to a voiceover and a few silhouettes, Patrick Warburton is put front and center of the show’s action, lending his droll voice to the usual Snicket witticisms and monologues, either walking in on scenes as they happen (though in the style of someone presenting evidence to an audience; it’s obvious he exists in a different timeframe), or appearing long after the events have occurred, as a detective might at a crime scene.

The show’s framing device is Snicket’s investigation into the Baudelaire siblings’ disappearance after the fire at Hotel Denouement, not only allowing Handler’s wry narrative dialogue to remain intact, but also giving them the opportunity to end things on a slightly brighter note than the books allowed.

As it happens, Snicket’s grim forebodings and frequent warnings to the audience are because the Baudelaire adventures aren’t happening in “real time”. By the time Snicket starts recounting the tale, several years have already passed, and the trail has gone cold. No wonder he’s so depressed.

However, it gives the show an opening: to go past the end-point of the books and depict Beatrice Baudelaire (daughter of Kit, niece of Lemony) as a young girl who has been looking for her uncle – one that she finally discovers and shares her story with over a root beer float. It provides a level of closure that the books simply didn’t, and though many subplots and characters go unaccounted for, it was a wise call.

For the record, the show goes further than this in resolving things, perhaps knowing that stringing out a mystery for so long and not providing concrete answers just makes a person feel cheated. So yes, we do find out what’s in that damn sugar bowl. We do get closure on the Quagmires (reunited), the Widdershins (found their stepfather) and the acting trope (finally got the on-stage validation they were after). We even get an on-screen dramatization of the schism, Olaf’s Start of Darkness and Lemony’s love for Beatrice.

Heck, looking at it now I’m surprised at just how far the show went!

On its own terms, Netflix’s take on the books makes for a satisfying enough adaptation to preclude any reboots, sequels or spin-offs for quite some time. I think the format would have worked better as ninety-minute episodes per book as opposed to two forty-five-minute episode per book, which stretches out the material to near-breaking point.

It’s also (as the title very clearly states) incredibly depressing, with most characters put into one of three categories: a. competent, kind and dead, b. incompetent, kind and useless, or c. evil. Watching the likes of Jacques Snicket, Olivia Caliban, Larry-Your-Waiter and the Quagmire parents die pointless, cruel deaths gets incredibly tedious after a while, and binge-watching the whole thing makes it even worse. That hope, answers and safety are constantly just out of the orphans’ reach gets infuriatingly repetitive, and Snicket’s bleak cynicism at the greed and stupidity of their array of guardians is not something you want to absorb if you’re already in a somewhat melancholy state of mind.

Speaking of the Quagmire parents, the first season pulls off what is perhaps the cruelest Bait and Switch I’ve ever witnessed on children’s programming. Heck, on adult’s programming. At the conclusion of the first episode, we see two characters credited as “Mother” and “Father” (played by Will Arnett and Cobie Smulders) being driven off in an armoured van, discussing the trouble they’re in and the wellbeing of their children. I’ll admit I rolled my eyes: it would seem that Netflix was already tinkering with the source material and setting up an eventual happy ending.

We’re privy to the swashbuckling adventures of the couple as they escape from prison, bush-whack through a Peruvian jungle, hijack a plane and finally make it to a door that leads to their children, just as the Baudelaires learn that two unidentified people are waiting for them on the other side of the Lucky Smells Mill door… only for a Cut Apart trick to reveal the parents and the Baudelaire children are in completely different locations, and it’s the Quagmire triplets that the Mother and Father have been trying to get home to.

And then they immediately die in a fire. Off-screen.

It’s staggeringly sadistic, and felt like a dagger to the heart. It’s difficult to know what else to say about it.

Neil Patrick Harris was clearly having a ball as Count Olaf, and the character is a gift to any actor who enjoys costumes, accents and Bad Bad Acting (though I have to say, I preferred Jim Carrey, if not just because his height made him more of a physical threat). To back him up, Netflix brings in a range of familiar character actors as guest-stars: Joan Cusack, Aasif Mandvi, Alfre Woodard, Patrick Breen, Allison Williams, Roger Bart, Tony Hale, Nathan Fillion, Catherine O’Hara, Richard E. Grant (even if you don’t recognize the names, trust me – you’ve seen their faces).

But the show is almost stolen by Lucy Punch as Esmé Squalor (her attempts at an Evil Laugh had me in stitches, and her wardrobe is reason enough to endure the relentless misery – especially the octopus dress!) as well as Kitana Turnbull as Carmelita Spatts (I hate to say it, but she totally outshines Malina Weissman and Louis Hynes, who naturally have to play things straight despite the mounting chaos around them). And of course, Sunny (Presley Smith) who grows from baby to toddler across the three seasons and is totally, utterly adorable – and I say that as someone who isn’t a baby person.

And as was to be expected, the whole show does justice to Handler’s unique aesthetic, as captured in Brett Helquist’s illustrations. The landscapes, the architecture, the costumes – everything is grim, bleak and dilapidated – yet put together with such care and attention that it manages to be oddly beautiful at the same time.

So that was A Series of Unfortunate Events. It’s not something you really enjoy, and to be honest, I was spurred into watching it by the fact my work colleagues kept talking about it and I wanted to join in the conversation. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it improves on the books, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it’s frustrating, sometimes it’s satisfying. Which is all very much in keeping with Handler’s vision.