Autumn again. It feels we’ve had two weeks of summer and six months of winter, and now things are turning back towards the cold. Still, there’s a beauty to fall, especially in clear weather. I was walking through the park in the sunshine the other day and was struck by the ambiance: there’s a strange sort of darkness to the light, the shadows felt deeper, and the leaves are just beginning to turn even though the sky was solid blue.
I’m still seeking out variations on the stories of L.F. Baum, J.M. Barrie and Lewis Carroll, and in doing so it was interesting to note that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz each have definitive versions (obviously, the Disney and MGM films). And yet that’s not quite the case for Peter Pan, even though there are more adaptations out there of his story than the other two – by quite a far margin. I suppose that makes sense; if you’ve got what’s considered the iconic version of something, nobody else wants to compete with it.
More to the point when it comes to the multitude of adaptations, Peter Pan has been staged and retold so many times that many of the latest versions are aware of the weight of their predecessors, and so end up musing on the nature of the story itself.
This is the thousandth time Hook and Peter have crossed swords, the millionth that Peter and Wendy have said goodbye to each other. She can’t go and he can’t stay, and the legacy of that is a bit like the underlying theme of Hadestown: the story taken on a life and tragedy of its own, and so every time we tell it again, we hope it might turn out differently. But no, Peter Pan is still out there somewhere, as young as he ever was.
There’s no understating how deeply these stories have soaked into our culture. Remember when Neo followed the White Rabbit at the beginning of The Matrix? Or when Ofelia wore an Alice dress and pinafore in Pan’s Labyrinth? Or that a vampire movie could be called The Lost Boys and everyone would know the reference? Likewise, we all know the connotations Kingo is making when he calls Sprite “Tinker Bell” in The Eternals – not just her eternal youth, but her unrequited love for Ikaris. The term “flying monkeys” is a recognizable term to describe people who submit to narcissists and do their bidding. Then there’s Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch, which exists in a much more tragic context. These stories are everywhere.
Finally, I told myself that I would try and cut down on the length of these blog posts, as they’re getting increasingly long despite my lack of free time to actually write them. Then of course, I end up writing what amounts to three giant essays on Peter Pan. But for April, I really am truly going to try and cut back…
Macbeth (Isaac Theatre Royal)
Macbeth as a ballet was obviously something I had to see, and my sister and I lucked out when it transpired that friends of my parents had booked tickets, only to end up with another commitment on the same night. This take on the story drops the Scottish setting and reimagines things as a modern-day drama in which Macbeth is a board member who gets passed over for a promotion and so decides to take out the competition.
The Weird Sisters have become three deranged influencers with their phones constantly pointed at themselves, more contortionists than dancers who emit a range of sounds from banshee cries to barking dogs to hyena laughter. I thought they were pretty effective, though my sister was not so convinced, saying they were more like three insane people.
But it was Lady Macbeth (Ana Gallardo Lobaina) who stole the show – she was considerably taller than Macbeth and uses her sexuality to proceed with the assassination of Duncan (which here is giving him a poisoned drink). We first see her getting out of the bath in a body suit, situated on a raised platform above the stage, and she later takes her husband there to wash his hands clean of Duncan’s blood. Thanks to a nifty projection, you could see the redness start to pool in the water as they desperately tried to clean themselves.
By the time she goes mad, with loose hair and her dress in disarray, you wouldn’t think it was the same woman (seriously, I actually wondered if they’d swapped out dancers). In a nice full-circle moment, she eventually takes her own life in the bathtub, slowly sinking into its interior until she can’t be seen.
Plenty of other scenes were also well done: in this version, Banquo’s ghost at the banquet actually has him emerging from the table itself and advancing on Macbeth, knocking over plates and goblets as he goes. Macbeth’s demise plays out like a mental collapse, with the walls shifting as he tries to climb an incline, only to be stabbed by Macduff as he reaches the top. At this point we could very clearly see the dancer reach inside his shirt to burst the blood bag under his clothes, but then he toppled down the slope, leaving a trail of blood in his wake, so all was forgiven by how cool that looked.
On the downside, all of Macbeth’s murder victims become a tad interchangeable after Duncan, and they didn’t even try to depict the deaths of Lady Macduff and her son (they show the assassins pretend to throw gasoline over the stage which led to an impressive fire effect, but if the programme hadn’t told me this was meant to convey a car accident, I would have had no idea what was going on. There was no indication of that, not even sound effects).
But it was something different and I enjoyed it. Credit to the dancers for having to perform with so much fake blood all over them, and the effective use of repeatedly holding their clawed hands over their heads to form a crown (as you can see on the poster). It’s also the only ballet I’ve ever seen in which the performers actually speak. Right before Duncan’s death, Malcolm audibly says: “over his dead body!” as a joke which naturally comes back to haunt him.
The Importance of Being Earnest (The Court Theatre)
The National Theatre staged this play between November 2024 and January 2025 to great acclaim, so it doesn’t feel like a coincidence that our own Court Theatre is just wrapping up its own run in 2026. Surely the huge success of the former inspired our local theatre to stage the same material – and it was popular enough to be granted an extended run.
As it happens, I knew virtually nothing about the play going in. It was written by Oscar Wilde, it involves a man who pretends his name was Earnest, and there was a movie filmed in 2002 starring Reese Witherspoon and Colin Firth. That was it. My seats weren’t great as I decided to go quite late in the show’s run, so I ended up in the leftmost seats in the front row with absolutely no leg room. The actors sometimes had their backs to me, and I missed at least one very funny dramatic leap over the furniture – but oh well.
The play is a comedy of errors in which two friends – Algernon and Jack – admit to each other they have secret aliases they use in the city to give themselves a certain amount of freedom while they’re there. Jack is wildly in love with Gwendolyn, but her mother disapproves of the match on learning “Earnest” is a foundling… and for her part, Gwendolyn only wants to marry a man called Earnest. Meanwhile, Algie falls immediately in love with Jack’s ward Cecily, a girl who has long harboured dreams of marrying Jack’s rakish brother – who she knows only as Earnest. And what name should Algie be using at the time in which they meet?
Plenty of laughs and misunderstandings follow, and this particular production threw in some physical comedy as well – at one point Algie chases Jack with a potted plant, and at another the two of them pelt several muffins at each other. I was rather surprised by the farcical fairy tale quality of the ending, in which all issues are resolved by revealing that Jack is not a foundling after all, but a highborn lord and Algie’s own brother, who was accidentally mislaid as an infant by Miss Prism, Cecily’s tutor. What are the odds?!
It was played very broadly, with Jack (Tom Eason, who was the splitting image of Bertie Carvel) as a bit of a fop, while Algie (James Kupa, who I last saw on stage as Poirot!) was rather more sophisticated. Gwendolyn was very loud and awkward, and Cecily was a sweet little naif with a steely core (she informs “Earnest” they’ve been engaged for months, despite only just meeting each other).
I can see why it’s called a “drawing room play,” as the whole thing is set in one of two drawing rooms and a garden, which makes it all the more impressive that it manages to be so engaging. The audience was there to have a good time, and so were laughing enthusiastically throughout, even though I suspect a lot of this material would have been much more hilarious back in 1895.
And yes, I have the Ncuti Gatwa production saved for future perusal. I shall get to it in due course.
Stacey and the Mystery Money by Anne M. Martin
I was really looking forward to this one, simply because it’s the first mystery I’ve never read before! I stopped buying these at #9, so with the exception of Dawn and the Surfer Ghost, I’m in the dark about everything that happens next in the subseries.
On a day out with Charlotte Johanssen, in which they go mall shopping and pretend to be sisters, Stacey tries to buy a pair of earrings, only for the store clerk to identify the bill she’s using as counterfeit. There’s been a spate of it in the community lately, the logic being that crooks target small towns because the locals won’t know any better. However, the mall employees were given some training and sure enough, it’s counterfeit money.
Stacey’s mum (who works at Bellairs, remember?) is called down and takes care of Charlotte while Stacey returns to the police station to answer some questions. That’s a very trusting move, Mrs McGill.
Between the upsetting experience and Charlotte’s trauma over believing Stacey had been arrested, the babysitters decide to crack the counterfeiting case themselves, because of course they do. This leads to several chapters of the girls (sometimes with their babysitting charges in tow) staking out various photocopiers across Stoneybrook. Seriously, this is their plan.
They don’t achieve much besides annoying a bunch of people, though Claudia does notice a guy with an interesting tattoo on his earlobe (which is described in enough detail that you know it’ll be relevant later). The girls also suspect one of their teachers might be a counterfeiter because he keeps popping up in stationary supply stories.
In the related B-plot, Stacey has a new crush on a boy called Terry Hoyt, who has a little brother still young enough to need a babysitter. His mother calls the club for its services, though Kristy ends up getting the job (Stacey is bummed – she wanted to check out her crush’s house). Kristy likes little Georgie, but notices some odd things around the house: the family haven’t fully unpacked, there’s a cupboard that Georgie won’t let her open, and she notices a passport for Terry’s sister with a different name on it... which probably isn’t something you should just leave lying around.
Your brain has no doubt gone straight to “witness protection programme,” but Kristy begins to wonder – are the Hoyts the counterfeiters? Stacey also notices a few odd things on her date with Terry, like how he gets his middle name wrong when introducing himself to Logan. This is rather silly, since who on earth introduces themself by stating their middle name in the first place, but the ghostwriter obviously needed to get in that inconsistency and having him forget his first name would have been too much. In any case, Stacey refuses to believe the Hoyts might be crooks, because Terry’s eyes are just so dreamy.
The solution is fairly obvious once you match this subplot with the counterfeit mystery… yup, Terry’s dad is an undercover agent who travels from city to city in pursuit of counterfeiters, forcing his children to repeatedly change their names and never form any long-term friendships before they have to uproot themselves and move on. What a truly awful way to raise your kids.
Then, because there’s no way any of this can get wrapped up in a sensible manner, Stacey and Charlotte are at the mall again when they see a suspicious-looking guy in the carpark run by with a big bag full of fake money that he drops. (I’m surprised the bag didn’t have a giant dollar sign on it). Do they call the cops immediately? No – trusting that he’s going to come back to retrieve the money, Stacey calls Claudia to join her with a camera so they can take incriminating photos of him. Stacey also calls Terry, because the plot also requires him to be present.
Realizing none of this is very safe for a child, they get rid of Charlotte (I’ve honestly forgotten how) and get some pics of the guy when he inexplicably returns to the carpark, which they then have to wait to get developed. Yes, it’s the guy with the ear tattoo. They take the evidence to the police, who bust him off-page in a totally unexplained sting operation, we never find out what he was running from at the mall, and the cops tell the girls in no uncertain terms that what they did was completely insane. Which it was.
Terry confesses his life-story to Stacey, asking her to never tell anyone who he really is (which resolves the mystery established at the beginning of the book, when Stacey tells the reader she has a secret she’ll take to the grave). His family will be moving on now, but he promises they’ll meet again one day. Will we see him again? I don’t know. Sometimes these stories surprise you with their continuity, other times things just fall into a black hole.
Other observations: at the beginning of the book Claudia and Stacey are talking about their preferred eye-colour, and they say green like Vivien Leigh’s or purple like Elizabeth Taylor’s. Yup, it’s obvious this was written by someone in the nineties who grew up in the sixties.
On the subject of the counterfeit money, they’re told they’re mostly “big bills, like twenties and fifties being passed.” Yeah, nineties economy considers a twenty-dollar note a “big bill.” Then there’s little Charlotte, who says she’s got a whole $4.79 to spend, and is so excited about being in a “real restaurant” (she’s seriously never been in one before?) that she “didn’t eat more than a few French fries and a couple of bites of her cheeseburger,” which feels like a huge waste of money.
I also suspect these mysteries were all ghostwritten by the same person, as there are plenty of callbacks to the previous books: the Gardellas and the missing diamond ring are brought up as the last time Stacey was suspected of a crime she didn’t commit and the desk cop from Dawn and the Disappearing Dogs reappears when the girls go to the police station for more information about the counterfeiters (and is just as unhelpful here as he was then).
But I’m excited about what comes next – I have a whole plethora of nineties Babysitters Club Mysteries ahead of me that I’ve never read before. Whoo-hoo!
Dawn’s Big Move by Anne M. Martin
There’s very little to say about this one. As has been foreshadowed for a few books now, Dawn wants to return to California to be with her father and brother for a while. I’m not entirely sure why, as this plot is just a retread of Dawn on the Coast in which she decided she definitely wanted to remain in Stoneybrook, only this time around she’s asking to go back to California for six months.
(I suspect it was more of a publisher’s decision than a writer’s one, though even then I can’t quite see the logic. Dawn’s spin-off potential wasn’t realized until much later on (leading to The California Diaries) and she still features in plenty of books in the main series for a while yet (I think her last one is #88, though even then she still gets a few Mystery books to her name). And if for whatever weird reason they only wanted one blonde in the club, it doesn’t make a lot of sense that Shannon is clearly being set up as Dawn’s replacement. Maybe they just wanted plots set in California, like they did with Stacey in New York until fan outrage brought her back to Stoneybrook – though in this case, no one cared enough about Dawn to campaign for her return).
After discussions with her father and the guidance counsellors at each school to make sure she won’t fall behind in regards to the curriculum (which is odd, since the girls have been in a time flux for the last fifty or so books) they agree to let her go. Dawn is a bit taken aback by how easy it is, and then by how calmly everyone else takes the news of her imminent departure. Mary Anne is happy for her, her mother is remarkably calm, and Kristy only puts up a mild stink at the shortage of babysitters she’ll have to deal with.
The rather banal B-plot is a fundraiser called Run For Your Money that takes place between Stoneybrook and the neighbouring Lawrenceville, in which different teams from each town compete in a variety of games for charity. The girls enter a dance relay and a football match with a giant inflatable ball, while other competitions include a three-legged race, an egg-and-spoon race, and a race in which you have to run while stripping to your underwear. Dawn has such a good time that she decides it’s a mistake to leave and calls the whole thing off… in the penultimate chapter. The next one begins with her on the plane, writing in her journal about how her mother talked her into going after all.
Other observations: Jessi visits her hometown in New Jersey over the course of the book and returns with a very Laine-esque story about how her cousin/best friend Keisha has changed since the last time they were together, and now just wants to try on makeup and hang out with the cool kids. It’s sad, but so true to life. It happened with my cousin too.
In the first chapter we’re told: “It began with the ringing of the doorbell and the opening of the front door. “What smells so fabulous?” Enter my mum, Sharon.” Er, why’d she ring her own doorbell?
Other chapters are pure filler, like the Papadakis family finally having their Greek heritage acknowledged in the most clichéd manner possible: they throw a giant family reunion and eat a lot of Greek food. It’s like the ghostwriter has to make it all extra Greek to make up for having ignored the obvious for so long.
We also get Dawn’s description of the seating arrangement at club meetings: “Kristy sitting in the director’s chair, Claudia, Mary Anne and I on the bed, Stacey on the desk chair and Mallory, Jessi and Shannon on the floor. It was a ritual. We did it automatically.” Yes, Shannon is still attending meetings with no explanation about how she gets there or why she’s suddenly always present, though I suspect she’ll be happy to stop having to sit on the floor with the plebs once Dawn is gone.
And for all my sarcasm, I admit to getting a little teary-eyed at Sharon’s goodbye to her daughter just before she boards the plane: “Let Daddy love you as much as I do.”
A Stocking Full of Spies by Robin Stevens
As you can tell by the title, this is a festive instalment of the Murder Most Unladylike series, and it’s been since Christmas that I’ve had it on hold at the library. It took its time getting to me, but ah well – better late than never. Moving from Daisy and Hazel as main characters to the latter’s little sister May and her friends Nuala and Eric, the story picks up in 1942 in the midst of WWII.
After a bomb is dropped on Deepdean School and May tries to run away after hearing on the wireless that Hong Kong (where her family live) is under attack, she and Nuala are collected by the Ministry of Unladylike Activity and taken to Bletchley Park. This is partly to keep them out of trouble and partly to help solve a mystery.
One of the park’s codebreakers has been shot, presumably by Daisy’s brother Bertie, but after a cracked German code was found in his pocket, Daisy and Hazel aren’t so sure. With their own important work to attend to, the girls set up May, Nuala and Eric as messengers running notes between the various buildings of Bletchley in the hopes of picking up any pertinent information. Was the death an accident or murder? Was the dead boy a traitor or the victim of a frame-up? The chapters move between the first-person narratives (as told as journal entries) of May, Nuala and – for the first time – Eric, as they attempt to solve the mystery.
I’m not sure how many books Robin Stevens plans for this sequel series, but so far each one has been set in a different location: first Coventry just before its destruction, then London during the Blitz, and now Bletchley Park in the dead of winter. Stevens’s descriptions of the place seem pretty accurate (at least judging from my virtual tour on Google maps) and she’s especially good at capturing the pervading atmosphere of both dread and the “pull your socks up and get on with it” mentality of WWII-era Britain.
That the story begins with a bomb dropping on Deepdean sets the tone: nowhere is safe and war is inherently unfair. The characters are forced to make all sorts of compromises for the greater good over the course of the book (for example, the girls decide not to tell Eric that his father might have perished at sea, because they need him to have his full attention on cracking a code) and nobody is ever sure whether or not they’re doing the right thing. Likewise, Stevens gets across the immense frustration and sense of helplessness felt by those contributing to the war effort, and how their desire to save everyone must be whittled down to a “do what you can” mentality if they simply want to make it through each day.
More specific to this book is Stevens’s interest in her theory that there were high levels of neurodivergence clearly present at Bletchley Park. To quote her afterword: “At Bletchley Park, neurodivergent people were able to be their odd, hilarious, intense selves, but there was also a terrible cost. A group of people prone to vast empathy, high anxiety and meltdowns or shutdowns when they’re pushed beyond their sensory limits, forced to work at high intensity with life-or-death stakes for years without a proper rest? It must, and I don’t say this lightly, have been hell for them.”
It didn’t really strike me until finishing the book, but she does describe many of her characters with various neurodivergent symptoms – most obviously, May has ADHD.
Though it’s enjoyable, it’s not perfect. Stevens is clearly uncomfortable with Eric’s voice, as his chapters are pretty slight and not quite as convincing as those narrated by the girls, and I found May to be a bit of self-absorbed headache this time. She barges ahead of herself, loses evidence, and treats her sister like dirt. To quote Nuala: “May is so awful around Hazel. She always acts as if Hazel’s personally to blame for everything that goes wrong in her life.” You’d think that three books in, she’d have had some character development by now.
Also, the solution to the mystery is straight out of Strangers on a Train. Heck, the killers even come up with their plan on a train. I know I shouldn’t complain as she’s always done this (one of the books in the original series is called First Class Murder and is literally set on the Orient Express) but still.
Finally, Stevens ends with her own family story about how her uncle was killed during the war while serving as a radio operator at sea, and how her father would visit the only neighbour on his housing estate who read The Times, which in turn was the only paper that printed information about which ships had been lost. Her father was the first one to find out his brother’s ship had gone down, and he had to tell his parents at age nine. As she concludes: “We would love war to be glorious and meaningful – we dream of sacrificing ourselves for a greater good. But that is just a dream. The reality is far sadder.”
Perhaps we can’t really blame her for giving her characters an Everybody Lives conclusion. It’s not very realistic, but sometimes we need a win, even if it’s just in fiction.
The Sinclair’s Mysteries by Katherine Woodfine
Next on my list of children’s book series I’m reading from start to finish is The Sinclair’s Mysteries, which granted, are rather obscure and not exactly classics (they were published between 2015 and 2021). But my library recently acquired Secrets on the Shore, formerly available exclusively as an ebook, and now finally published as a hard copy. I’d have taken any excuse to read these books again, they’re so delightful and would make a perfect cozy television series. I’ve even got the cast sorted out: Kiersey Clemons as Sophie and Lucy Boyle as Lil.
Set in the Edwardian era, Sophie has fallen on hard times. After the death of her father and government seizure of her family estate, she now has to work for a living and so gets a job as a salesgirl at Sinclair’s Department Store. Owned by an American (and roughly based on Selfridges), it is the epitome of glamour and luxury. Woodfine is clearly having a great time describing the sights and smells of the place, from the rooftop gardens to the grand exhibition hall to the confectionary and restaurant.
Sophie soon makes friends with the vivacious Lil, who works as a mannequin (essentially a store fashion model), Billy the desk clerk (who loves detective stories) and Joe the stablehand (who has recently escaped a street gang). She’s beginning to get comfortable in her new life when the clockwork sparrow, part of an exhibition of art held at the store, is stolen – and Sophie the prime suspect! Thus the title, The Clockwork Sparrow.
Each of the four initial stories involve a mystery surrounding the enigmatic Baron, a Moriarty-like figure whose identity becomes less opaque with each passing book. As it happens, the mysteries aren’t that difficult to solve (they’re more crime stories than mysteries) but Woodfine writes with an elegance and precision that just flows across the pages. There’s that old saying “a place for everything and everything in its place,” which perfectly captures the way these books feel: orderly and neat, though not without suspense either.
Worth noting is that the stories are set at the height of the British Empire, and the characters are naturally all for king and country. Woodfine doesn’t delve anywhere near as deeply into subjects of colonization or prejudice as her fellow mystery writer Robin Stevens does, but at times she does push back against certain assumptions of the day, including some light commentary on class differences, ableism and the suffragettes. Still, she loves the Edwardian aesthetic and period details too much to launch a full-frontal assault on the Empire, or the human cost of its accumulated wealth.
Each new book expands the cast of characters: The Jewelled Moth brings us Mei, a mixed-race girl living in the Chinatown of London whose family has a connection to the jewelled moth of the title. Leonora Fitzgerald is a disabled painter who (like Sophie) is framed for the theft of a painting in The Painted Dragon, while Tilly, a housemaid with a perchance for mechanics, arrives in The Midnight Peacock.
Woodfine does a great job of expanding this little found family while still keeping her focus on the core four of Billy, Joe, Lil and Sophie (especially the friendship between the two girls) as well as the widening circle of their friends, family members and clients. She always ensures everyone gets something important to do as the Baron’s crimes start to escalate and his ties to the Society of Dragons is slowly revealed. It’s this attention to detail that makes these books special, my favourite being when we’re given a glimpse of the crowd at the opening of Sinclair’s, including this short observation: “a young man turned shyly to talk to a girl with roses in her hat about the novel she was reading to pass the time.”
This boy and girl don’t figure into the story in any way whatsoever, we don’t even learn their names, but in the fourth and final book, in a description of the New Year’s Eve crowd milling around outside the store, we’re told:
“Watching from the pavement, a girl with roses in her hat turned excitedly to the young man beside her. “Look, isn’t that Mr Felix Freemantle, the actor? We saw him in that play, The Inheritance!” She squeezed the young man’s hand. “Isn’t it funny to think that this is exactly where we first met – on the very first day that the store opened? If it wasn’t for Sinclair’s, we’d never have found each other!” The young man grinned at her shyly.”
It’s clearly the same couple who appeared in the first book, and again, that’s all we get from them: just a tiny snapshot of their lives. It’s lovely, and Woodfine never forgets a detail, from the love affair between Phyllis and Deveraux that takes place in the background from book to book, to the recurring dragon symbol that is established early and often, to how the name “Beaucastle” is mentioned at the end of the first book before coming to prominence in the second. There’s also room for a few little in-jokes, as when a character says: “perhaps you’ve always yearned to return to the country village of your childhood and grow prize-winning marrows?” referencing Poirot’s earnest desire to do the same in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
Woodfine also likes to write what I can only describe as “wideshot montage” scenes, in which something drastic will happen and we’ll get a running description of everyone’s reaction to it, no matter where they’re situated. It gives the book an almost storybook quality, as she’ll leave a character’s narrow POV to provide more of a bird’s eye view of events, and she’s exceptionally good at keeping track of where everyone is and what they’re doing.
Perhaps there are a few too many “jolly goods!” strewn throughout, but these books are as enjoyable as sweet tea and crumpets, and the next four (which have more of an espionage theme) move into WWI as a backdrop, making them a perfect companion to Stevens’s Murder Most Unladylike series, set in the leadup to WWII. I’m not going to read the next four books straight away, but I’m looking forward to Secrets on the Shore, the novella set between these two quartets.
Alice in Wonderland (1951)
It’s official: I just don’t like this story. Disney’s animated take on the material is surely the most famous adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s book, and I can certainly appreciate it from an artistic standpoint, but I spent the entirety of its runtime feeling deeply uncomfortable. It delivers on visuals: the gravity-defying rabbit hole, the marching formations of the playing cards, the spatial relationships between Alice and her surroundings whenever she grows or shrinks, and I suspect the opportunity to animate such things is what drew Walt Disney to the project in the first place.
This is also considered the definitive version of the story to such a degree that it has influenced most later adaptations – for example, it’s very rare for any post-fifties retelling to omit Tweedledum and Tweedledee, even though they only appear in Through the Looking Glass, not Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Yet largely because they feature in this film, they’ve since become Carroll’s Breakout Characters and one of his most recognizable inventions. (I personally find them deeply unsettling. Their creepy sidelong glances at each other suggest actual malevolence towards Alice).
Disney also throws in a few original creations, such as the sentient doorknob and the array of strange creatures that Alice encounters in Tulgey Woods. Omitted completely are the Duchess and the Cook, the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle, and the giant puppy – though for some reason the film keeps the verse about the Walrus and the Carpenter, which is downright terrifying. The Oysters that the pair consume are depicted as actual babies, with their shells resembling little bonnets, and the lead-up to their demise drawn out like a horror movie. Genuinely disturbing stuff.
There are a couple of familiar voices: Kathryn Beaumont went on to voice Wendy in Peter Pan (thankfully it was that film and not this one that had the larger influence on my childhood) whilst Verna Felton was also Flora in Sleeping Beauty and the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella (making it strange to hear her distinctive voice in the role of villain this time around).
I don’t regret watching for two reasons: firstly just to see what’s considered the definitive take on this story, and secondly to watch it from start to finish for what might be the very first time. But yeesh! Never again. We widely assume that children’s stories are meant to convey a sense of comfort or meaning to their audience, and maybe that’s a misguided thought – but this is just random and unsettling. Can you imagine any child cuddling up to a soft toy of anything in this film?
Peter Pan (2003)
Everyone knows if you want the definitive Alice in Wonderland, you watch the animated Disney film. Everyone knows if you want the definitive Wizard of Oz, you (obviously) watch the MGM film. But not everyone knows if you want the definitive Peter Pan, then 2003 is where it’s at.
It’s not perfect – Peter Pan appears too soon, before the domesticity of the Darling household is properly established, and there’s a cramped, cluttered feel to the sets. The editing is sometimes too quick and choppy (come on, let those beautiful scenes breathe a little!) and some of the bluescreen effects haven’t aged well. But this is the closest we’re ever going to get to an adaptation that not only understands what this story is about, but is deeply interested in actually exploring its themes – oftentimes more explicitly than J.M. Barrie himself did.
(Having said that, I suppose the truest versions of Barrie’s work would have to be recordings of the stage play. These are naturally the purest expression of the author’s intentions, as they were written by the man himself.)
But if we’re talking about films, which are obviously not constrained by the limitations of the stage, then director P.J. Hogan’s take on the material is practically a metacommentary. At times it comes across as just as much a psychoanalysis of Peter Pan as it does an adaptation of the Peter Pan story, which is both good and bad. This is a movie that tries to explain Peter Pan, and once it does, it can’t follow through on its conclusions about him, which leads to an ending that no longer makes sense. Likewise, by honing in so precisely on Wendy’s coming of age and her eventual understanding of the difference between childhood and growing up, the story’s subtext becomes rather too explicit.
As far as I can tell it was the animated Disney film that started the tradition of depicting Wendy as reluctant to grow up. In that film, her father shouts in a pique of anger: “this is your last night in the nursery!” Something similar happens here, when a mishap at the bank ends with Mr Darling telling Wendy: “it’s time for you to grow up!” It’s a deeply ironic comment since at the time she was chasing after a letter from her teacher that accused her of doing something inappropriately adult in nature (that is, drawing a picture of herself in bed with a boy hovering over her).
But Wendy has already been teased with the implications of what it means to grow up. Earlier on, original character Aunt Millicent gets a look at her and exclaims it’s time to be thinking about marriage. Like her mother, Wendy has a hidden kiss in the corner of her mouth, which Aunt Millicent tells her is for: “the greatest adventure of all.” She’s intrigued, but also a bit apprehensive, and when Peter comes to the window, he tells her: “come with me, and you’ll never have to worry about grown up things again.”
Yet Wendy, standing in the liminal space of an open window, is hesitant: “never is an awfully long time.” Given the flirty nature of their interactions up till this point, one gets the definite sense that it’s the attractiveness of Peter himself that lures Wendy away (after all, he was the boy in her drawing), not just the thought of escaping impending adulthood.
But therein lies the rub. The Wendy of Barrie’s book went to Neverland not to escape the prospect of growing up, nor because of any burgeoning sexuality, but in order to become the mother of Peter and the Lost Boys. Yes, it seems ironic that she goes to the land of perpetual childhood to prepare for her role as an adult – in her case, becoming a mother (don’t forget this book was first published in 1911), but it makes perfect sense when you consider that Neverland represents a child’s imagination, for what child hasn’t played at being an adult? Heck, all children’s play is preparing in one way or another for becoming an adult.
And there’s no getting around the fact that Wendy very enthusiastic about this role for herself: “when she sat down to a basketful of their stockings, every heel with a hole in it, she would fling up her arms and exclaim ‘oh dear, I am sure I sometimes think spinsters are to be envied.’ Her face beamed when she exclaimed this.”
Yet book!Wendy knows a truth that Peter does not – before she can become a mother, she must first become a wife (again, 1911) and Peter the Eternal Boy cannot or will not fulfil this role for her. While she’s playacting as a mother, she knows on some level that it’s an incomplete picture – Neverland may allow her to practice adulthood (not that she’s consciously aware of this, it is a metaphor after all) but it’s ultimately unsatisfying to her (because it’s just pretend).
This is quite different to what happens with later Wendys, who regard Neverland more as a stay of execution in the face of impending adulthood, only to realize once they’re there that arrested development and perpetual childhood has its own downsides. This provides a natural arc for Wendy, in which she gains wisdom through experience, which is presumably why so many adaptations lean into it. In the animated Disney version it’s made crystal clear: she runs away after her father’s scolding but at the end returns to say: “I’m ready to grow up.”
Other adaptations have followed its lead by having their Wendys also recognize the benefits of growing up, building on the Disney interpretation instead of looking to the original text, in which making Neverland a temporary escape is a fundamental change in what Neverland is for Wendy.
(It reminds me of the change in Beauty and the Beast retellings – again, after a Disney animated film reconfigured the dynamics. Before the Disney version came along, it was Beauty who was required to learn something from the situation; namely that the frightening-looking Beast was actually charming and courteous. She was the one who had to learn not to be deceived by appearances, largely because the story was originally designed to convince young women to accept much older men as their husbands. Later, Disney made the Beast a ferocious, bad-tempered creature that Belle successfully tames with her beauty and goodness, and we’ve been left with that interpretation ever since.)
In this film, P.J. Hogan decides to crack open this subtextual nut even further, to the point where the whole thing almost plays out like Wendy’s psychosexual development. Hook and Peter are framed as two choices Wendy must make, almost like a love triangle. And as with most love triangles, each boy/man symbolizes a different path in life, in which it’s made very clear what each one can (or can’t) offer her. Captain Hook is undeniably adulthood and the range of emotions that come with it. He’s introduced sans a shirt, and when Wendy first glimpses him, the narrator (her older self) tells us: “she was not afraid, but entranced.” Later he has her brought to his ship for what can only be described as an attempt at seduction, offering her a place on board as its resident storyteller and telling her: “you are my new obsession.”
Meanwhile, Wendy has been attempting to make overtures to Peter, which are clearly not entirely one-sided. The story begins with Peter breaking into her room and reaching for the kiss hidden at the side of her mouth (the implications of this are clear when she gets in trouble at school for drawing this scene, with the teacher asking: “if this is you in bed, then what is this?” She’s forced to admit that the figure hovering over her is: “a boy.” Wendy means it literally, but of course the teacher assumes it’s just insight into her psychology. Which I suppose it also is. It’s that kind of movie).
Later the two of them have a romantic dance in midair after seeing two fairies embrace (the credits describe them as “fairy bride and groom,”) and it’s Wendy’s hidden kiss that eventually restores Peter to full health after she tells him: “this belongs to you, and always will.”
It’s important to state at this point that none of this romantic material – at least not from Peter – is in the book. When asked outright by Wendy what his feelings for her are, book!Peter replies: “those of an affectionate and devoted son.” When she chooses to leave Neverland: “he held out his hand cheerily, quite as if they must really go now, for he had something important to do. She had to take his hand, and there was no indication that he would prefer a thimble.” When at the end of the book she asks him: “You don’t feel that you would like to say anything to my parents about a very sweet subject?” his response is: “No.”
And when it comes to the jealousy Tinker Bell feels towards Wendy: “Peter could not understand why [Tinker Bell attacked Wendy], but Wendy understood; and she was just slightly disappointed when he admitted that he came to the nursery window not to see her but to listen to stories.”
But in this film, feelings are somewhat more mutual... even if they’re never truly fulfilled. Not to start with of course, because when the subject of love comes up between the two of them, Peter claims that: “I’ve never heard of it.” When Hook is giving his pitch to Wendy, he tells her: “[Peter] cannot love, that is part of the riddle of his existence” (in the book, this riddle referred to the terrible nightmares that plagued him). Later Wendy decides to leave Neverland because Peter is “deficient.” When he asks her how, she replies: “you’re just a boy.”
Of course, she’s not going to become a pirate either, though she grasps the differences in Peter and Hook, describing the latter as “a man of feeling,” and clearly being rather flattered by his offer to join the pirate’s crew. The film even leans into the fact that in the stage play, Hook and Mr Darling are usually played by the same actor. This probably had no deeper meaning when the tradition began, it instead just being way to save money on hiring actors, but Hogan definitely recognizes the Freudian elements at work.
Here, Jason Isaacs plays both Mr Darling and Captain Hook as opposites: the former as nebbish and emasculated, the latter as passionate and sexual, though he's also clearly meant to be a darker version of Wendy’s own father (perhaps because he’s subconsciously the only man she knows?) As they say in that vaguely unsettling expression: a girl’s father is her first love, though we also can expect every adolescent teenager to go through a bad boy phase later in life. In the case of this film, both Peter and Hook embody that role, albeit in different ways.
And yet in an early scene, Mrs Darling describes her husband as “brave” for getting up every morning to do his duty and make sure his family is provided for, having put away many of his childhood dreams in order to do so. One gets the sense that Wendy recognizes this kind of bravery by the end of the story, and that she’ll end up marrying someone quite like him in the future – someone without the irresponsibility of Peter or the inherent danger of Hook.
It’s a rather delicious Freudian soup, and a source of much bemusement to me that whoever Wendy does end up marrying, the man who is father to her daughter Jane, remains a complete non-entity. We learn absolutely nothing about him.
But back to Peter and Wendy. Across the course of the film, there is mounting evidence that Peter does in fact possess romantic feelings towards her. Hook discovers his adversary would go to Wendy’s window in order to hear what are essentially love stories – Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty – which he points out all end in a kiss. This leads him to the conclusion that: “He does feel. He feels something for you.” This realization gives him the edge in the ensuring battle, in which he’s able to deliver a Hannibal Lecture to Peter about how Wendy was leaving him, that he’ll be forgotten and replaced with “husband.”
Cut down by his words, Peter is nearly killed until Wendy’s hidden kiss revives him. Love is triumphant! A happy ending awaits! But then as the movie starts to wrap up, something strange happens. Because it has emphasized the love story between Peter and Wendy to such an extent, the story can’t reach its natural conclusion. Unlike in the book, when Wendy’s feelings simply aren’t reciprocated and it’s been made clear throughout that Peter can never give her what she wants, it’s been established here that he is somewhat intrigued by the thought of what adulthood can offer him (namely, Wendy).
We’ve watched Hook figure out that Peter does have feelings for Wendy. She claims he was lonely and so came to her window to hear love stories. When he denies any feelings, she tells him: “so you say, but I think it is your biggest pretend.” He’s later stricken at the thought of her marrying another. Her kiss rejuvenates him from near-death, he feels the euphoria of young love, and in the film’s final minutes he stands at the nursery window, right on the threshold, staring longingly at the family within and saying to himself: “to live would be an awfully big adventure…”
If you had never heard this story before, it wouldn’t make sense that Peter opts to go back to Neverland after everything he and Wendy went through together. There’s been too much build-up regarding their love story, to the point where it feels narratively wrong that they must lose each other. In the context of this film, he’s ready to face the prospect of growing up.
But of course, Peter Pan cannot grow up any more than Romeo and Juliet can live. Some things are set in stone, even if they’re fiction. Peter is by design a static character – but this particular version of the story grants him a level of growth that doesn’t make sense because the whole point of his character is that he doesn’t grow. It’s there in the title: the boy who wouldn’t grow up! It’s important to keep in mind that none of this is in Barrie’s book, this near-taming of Peter. And the problem is the film does it too well. All of the sweeping music and the heartfelt performances and the gorgeous cinematography come together to give Peter this one chance to take that step into the nursery, to grow up and become a man alongside Wendy... and then he doesn’t.
But to unravel the riddle of his existence, to understand the true reason he was crying, to bring him to this point and then not take it to its natural conclusion – well, we needed more of a reason behind why he chose to leave that’s not just “cos it’s in the book.” A kiss can save you from certain death, but apparently Love Cannot Overcome when faced with the prospect of an office job. Even P.J. Hogan clearly felt confused and/or conflicted about what he ended up with, as although the book’s ending, in which Peter returns to the nursery window only to find that Wendy has grown up in his absence and had a daughter of her own, was filmed with Saffron Burrows as the older Wendy, it was ultimately omitted from the final cut. You can watch it here:
I actually recall him saying in one interview or other that the film’s focus had been so intently upon Peter and Wendy that it felt wrong to pass on the torch to Jane, and I can understand that. To have Peter return in this epilogue, too late for Wendy to ever rejoin him, would have been too heartbreaking given the amount of time they poured into their love story. Even Barrie felt the sting of it when he described Wendy’s wedding: “Wendy was married in white with a pink sash. It is strange to think that Peter did not alight in the church and forbid the banns,” a passage that suggests a part of him did want them to be together.
But an easy solution would have been for Peter to simply promise to return to Wendy in a year’s time for spring cleaning, as he does in the book. It literally and figuratively leaves the window open for their reunion, and a second chance together... maybe. But then they jettison this completely when Burrows’s voiceover says: “but I was not to see Peter Pan again.” He just forgot her. Come on, that’s even worse than the alternate ending!
So instead, perhaps the film is meant to be an ode to first love. Peter Pan is a typical bad boy: they’re charming and alluring and fun for a while, but a pain in the ass if you stick around them long enough. In many ways this plays out like a cautionary tale – girls, you cannot change that man or tame that bad boy, and if a guy tells you: “I always want to be a little boy and to have fun,” then that’s your cue to run a mile. There’s nothing like young love, but you can’t keep it. You have to let it go so it doesn’t stymie your own development. Though Wendy isn’t sure what comes next in life, she knows it’s something that becomes clear when you grow up, which Peter will always reject.
Ultimately, Wendy returns home for the love of her mother, having reached the mature understanding of the pain she’s causing, and knowing that there is a relationship she can always count on. The window will always be open for her. So she says goodbye to her childhood, somewhat ironically through the adolescent sharing of her first kiss, but one that is also a goodbye. Wendy will surely end up marrying someone like her father – a good man, but not exactly young love’s dream, because that’s the way life goes.
This interpretation makes sense of the added love story as a metaphor for Wendy’s growth, and that psychosexual development is all over this film, from the picture she draws in class to the weirdness of her father playing a hot shirtless Hook. The emphasis placed on Peter’s mutual feelings for her means that there’s an added cruelty to the book-mandated requirement that he remain a boy in Neverland (the script forces him chose himself over love after taking him to an emotional place where the alternative might have been possible; the closest a Pan has ever gotten to taking steps into adulthood) and with that in mind it’s no wonder Hogan felt compelled to delete the epilogue with Jane and a grown-up Wendy. It doesn’t match-up with the emotional story he’s just told, whereas in Barrie’s original text, Neverland was always a rather heartless place.
Yet for all that, the film still stands as the best adaptation of Peter Pan to date, perhaps because of rather than despite these additions and changes and analysies. It all certainly gives you something to chew on.
Miscellaneous Observations:
This film has a truly gorgeous score by James Newton Howard, and if there was any justice in the world, this motif would be as inseparable to Peter Pan as “Hedwig’s Theme” is to Harry Potter. It also had an incredibly evocative trailer which utilized the strains of Coldplay’s “Clocks” to great effect:
Unfortunately Ludivine Sagnier as Tinker Bell doesn’t make much of an impression despite her fun expressions, which means the “I Believe in Fairies” sequence both does and doesn’t work. The emotions and chanting and score all come together perfectly, but that it hinges on the wellbeing of Tinker Bell – a character we haven’t really been given a reason to care about, weakens it in the context of the film entire. It also has absolutely nothing to do with the film’s main emotional thoroughfare: the relationship between Wendy and Peter. In this regard, the animated Disney film still reins supreme. There will never be another Tinker Bell like the one that understandably went on to become the company’s mascot.
There are some original details in this retelling that are fascinating to ponder, firstly that when Peter comes to take the Darlings to Neverland, the pendulum clock in the living room stops ticking. It’s a perfect little detail that connects Peter’s presence to the otherworldly timelessness of Faerie.
Secondly, the film gives him a sort of Fisher King connection with Neverland when it comes to his presence, absence or internal emotional state, all of which have a physical effect on the weather. While he’s in London, Neverland is encased in ice and snow. When Hook notices the sunlight returning, he cries: “he’s back!” When Peter grieves for Tinker Bell, darkness falls and a cold wind blows. After he receives Wendy’s kiss, the aurora borealis forms in the sky. The implications of this are a little perturbing (does this mean the Lost Boys have to hunker down in the winter cold every time their leader takes a sojourn into the real world?) but it speaks to a relationship between boy and place that’s never really been touched on in any other adaptation.
The film also takes the concept of a “hidden kiss” and gives it to Wendy instead of Mrs Darling (though she still has one, it’s forgotten about almost as soon as it’s introduced). In the book, it’s her kiss that Peter takes when he returns to Neverland at the end of the story, implying that Mrs Darling also knew him as a little girl, but here it’s obviously Wendy who bestows this secret kiss upon him.
Lynn Redgrave as Millicent is another new addition, and though she’s not essential, I like that she’s the one to introduce Wendy to the idea of adulthood without being a strict, overbearing governess-type. By the end of the story, she adopts Slightly, the implication being that she was his mother before he (presumably) fell out of his pram as an infant. So she’s clearly not so bad – even participating in the “I Believe in Fairies” montage.
Speaking of the Lost Boys, as with 2011’s Neverland, there is a familiar face among them. Can you spot it?
Yup, first on the left is George MacKay. I honestly didn’t recognize him and only realized it was him after doing some online reading about the film. And hey, Bruce Spence is here too as one of the pirates! Now him I did recognize for the first time!
It was 2003, and so Wendy is given some definite “not like the other girls” vibes. To be frank, this mentality doesn’t really bother me as much as it does some people (at this stage, fandom is ready to level this accusation at any young woman who claims she likes reading) but it’s an interesting artifact of the time. Wendy is seen sword-fighting with her brothers, retelling the story of Cinderella in which she battles pirates, and taking umbridge at being called “girly.” Once in Neverland, there’s a scene which is clearly there for her to “prove her credentials” by correctly identifying the make and capabilities of Hook’s ship. In 1961 this characterization would have been unthinkable, yet by the next Peter Pan movie in 2023, it’s passé.
They also remove any signs of jealousy between her and Tiger Lily (instead, Tiger Lily is depicted as having a crush on John), and Tinker Bell’s love for Peter is nowhere near as prevalent as it usually is.
Most films always gloss over the fact that the children actually stay in Neverland for a long time (either by positing it as All Just a Dream or relying on the Year Inside, Hour Outside nature of Faerie), though this one is unique in that it actually does show the Darling parents grieving for their lost children (a deleted scene also depicts Mr Darling punishing himself by sleeping in Nana’s dog kennel. This is true to Barrie’s story, but it was probably the right call to leave it on the cutting room floor). That said, I would not have said no to some sort of montage of the children’s adventures in Neverland, the ones that even Barrie glosses over, just to give us a greater sense of the time they spent there.
But the film doesn’t neglect the forgetfulness that Neverland instils in its inhabitants, and the dangers that this imposes on those that visit. In fact, Wendy’s impetus for going home is that they have to return: “before we, in turn, are forgotten.” There’s also a Missing Trailer Scene in which Hook asks Wendy: “do you even remember your mother?” to which she replies: “well of course I…” before trailing off uncertainly, as well as a running gag in which Peter absolutely cannot retain the fact that Wendy has two brothers that’ve accompanied her to Neverland in his head. It all takes a turn for the bittersweet when he promises not to forget her, when of course, we all know he will. Again, there are big shades of Faerie here.
There’s a lovely moment at the end of Peter and Wendy’s fairy dance in midair in which Peter pops Wendy’s bubble and she slowly sinks to earth – clearly her happy thoughts of romance have left her, and their ensuing argument about love takes place on the ground. At the same time, Hook watches over them and understands what they don’t about what they’re feeling, finding a way to use it against them later.
Unbelievably, they keep Hook’s famous: “proud and insolent boy, prepare to die,” but omit Peter replying: “dark and sinister man, have at thee.” Why would you not include that whole exchange??
There was some controversy over the fact that it was Jeremy Sumpter, an American actor, who played Peter Pan (complete with his own accent) instead of an English one, though it totally worked for me. Not just in the sense that I could tolerate it, but that I enjoyed it. Making him American amplifies his roguish, egotistical persona, but more importantly, gives him an exotic quality (to a prim English schoolgirl) that any boy from another world should obviously possess. More than any other Peter Pan I’ve seen onscreen, it’s Sumpter who actually captures that essential Puckish quality.
However you feel about it, an American Pan works much better than a Cowboy Hook (see Pan below).
This was a movie of surprising firsts: the first time a boy had portrayed Peter Pan on screen, the first time Mr Darling and Hook were the same person outside the stage, and (as far as I can tell) the first time a real First Nation actress (Carsen Gray, now a successful singer) plays Tiger Lily – though sadly she doesn’t stick around for long.
Peter and Wendy’s kiss kind of reminds me of another famous first/last kiss, that which takes place between the Phantom and Christine. Yeah, there are hundreds of differences: that theirs was largely coerced, that it was between two adults – but both are still framed as an act of kindness that manages to save the day, between an ordinary girl (relatively speaking) and an otherworldly male. Soft power and The Power of Love at its most powerful.
I mentioned Disney’s Beauty and the Beast earlier, and what also vibes with Wendy as depicted in this film is when Belle sings: “I want adventure in the great, wide somewhere.” It’s a standard desire given young female characters after a certain point in history: not to dream of marriage and children, but of adventure and excitement. And yet like Belle, whose “adventure” is comprised of getting trapped in a castle and then falling in love, Wendy also has to put aside this vague wish for “something else” in her adult life in exchange for domesticity. I only bring this up because the 2023 take on Peter Pan (reviewed below) comes up with another solution to the puzzle of trying to bring more modern sensibilities to an old-fashioned story. We’ll get there…
Finally, I don’t think I’ve seen any of these children (except George MacKay, and I didn’t even realize it was him!) in anything else. But wherever they are now, they’re all grown up.
Pan (2015)
Well, it had colour and spectacle. A lot of big budget blockbusters don’t bother with either of those things these days. I went into Pan knowing only three facts: it was purported to be a prequel to Peter Pan, it was the biggest flop of 2015, and it was beset with controversy regarding the casting of Rooney Mara (not to be confused with Naomi Rapace, which it turns out I’ve been doing for the past twenty years) as Tiger Lily.
Not all financial flops are bad, but – well, this one definitely is. As a prequel it fails completely, in which concepts like “think happy thoughts” and “second to the right and straight on till morning” are thrown into the dialogue with no context whatsoever, and the major story hook (no pun intended) of how Peter and Captain Hook became mortal enemies is never even touched on. Not even a little bit! Hook doesn’t even lose his hand to the crocodile! Why on earth would you bother with a Peter Pan prequel if you weren’t going to cover this ground? (You’d also think Peter meeting Tinker Bell would be a big deal, but nope – she’s just there all of a sudden).
As it happens, we already know Peter Pan’s backstory: he ran away from home when he was just an infant because he didn’t want to grow up. That’s it. That’s the story. You can read it in Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, as written by J.M. Barrie himself. But this film decides to throw in that most tedious cliché of any fantasy epic: the prophesied Chosen One. Blergh. Here, Peter is the son of a fairy prince and a mortal woman, who leave him on the steps of an orphanage when he’s just a baby for his own protection, as one day he’s destined to return to Neverland and defeat the evil Blackbeard.
Hugh Jackman unleashes his inner theatre kid to play Blackbeard (who really should have been Captain Flint considering that’s the famous pirate who gets namedropped most often in Barrie’s text) and borrows a trick from 2011’s Neverland miniseries by kidnapping Lost Boys to mine for “pixie dust” – which is again reimagined as a mineral with magical properties. I honestly can’t remember what he wants to do with it once he’s got it. Meanwhile, Garrett Hedlund is James Hook In Name Only, bafflingly playing him as a Texas cowboy/Han Solo mash-up, complete with romantic feelings for a princess and turning up for several Changed My Mind, Kid scenes whenever required.
Rooney Mara is Tiger Lily, and yes, even though the role should have gone to a First Nation actress, the film misguidedly reimagines the entirety of her tribe as a melting pot of cultures, from an Aboriginal chief to an Asian champion. So I can see what they were going for, and how they might not have thought a white Tiger Lily would matter in the midst of such a complete racial overhaul – but it still doesn’t work, least of all because the story isn’t very good. More pertinent is that the only significant character from this tribe is the white one, and that she gets a romantic subplot with Hook is just bewildering.
Levi Miller gets the “and introducing” credit as Peter Pan, and – he’s fine I guess, though as in many of these adaptations, there’s nothing of the fey quality about him. Here he’s just a self-doubting but good-hearted Chosen One. But it is rather shocking to see how many other familiar faces popped up: Amanda Siegfried, Adeel Akhtar, Nonso Anozie, Kathy Burke, Cara Delevingne, Emerald Fennel… I had no idea any of them were in this.
A few moments here and there were nicely done. This is the first adaptation of Peter Pan I can recall that depicts the Never-birds, and shifting the period from Edwardian to WWII means there are some crazy scenes of pirates stealing boys from their beds during an air raid and then evading the RAF over the London skies. There’s even a bit of transcendental insanity when Hugh Jackman and the Lost Boys engage in a rousing performance of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” – but it’s not really worth the rest. As Hook would say: bad form.
In hindsight, it’s probably remembered most for the Tiger Lily casting controversy, for along with Noah Ringer as Aang in The Last Airbender (2010) and Johnny Depp as Tonto in The Lone Ranger (2013) it was probably one of the last times Hollywood thought they could get away with whitewashing a character and hoping no one would care. Amazing how much this has changed in just a decade.
Peter Pan and Wendy (2023)
Of all the live-action remakes of animated classics that Disney has been churning out over the last decade, did you even know they’d tackled Peter Pan? I wouldn’t blame you for not realizing it even existed, as this was dropped on Disney Plus without so much of a flicker of promotion back in 2023. I went in with zero expectations, and as such felt it had a few interesting ideas nestled away in its rote, by-the-numbers, studio-mandated script.
That it’s called Peter Pan and Wendy is telling, as this is Wendy’s story first and foremost. Like other recent Wendys (most notably Rachel Hurd-Wood exactly twenty years ago), this is a tomboyish variation on the character who sees Peter and Neverland as an escape from growing up – though not from the vague threat of marriage and womanhood as in 2003, but due to a reluctance to attend boarding school. That is a very pertinent difference, as we’ll see soon enough…
It’s insinuated that Wendy’s desire for an escape route is what calls Peter to the Darling residence in the first place, even more so than his missing shadow, and soon she and her brothers are dowsed in pixie dust and flying through the London skies to the shores of Neverland. As ever, they’re immediately caught up in the ongoing feud between Peter and Captain Hook, which is when the story branches into two distinct storylines.
I’ll get the less interesting one out of the way first. This film provides James Hook with a new backstory: that he and Peter came to Neverland together as children, only for Peter to exile James when he expressed a longing to see his mother again. Being unable to find her in the real world, he returned to Neverland as an adult in order to seek revenge on his former friend.
Naturally, this development totally misses the point of both their characters, in which youth defeats the dark and sinister specter of miserable old age, but it does make sense as commentary on a feud that’s been retold for over one hundred years now. In many ways it’s part of the legacy of Peter Pan, for in this take Peter and Hook acknowledge the fact that their feud is what gives each other’s prolonged existence meaning – the implication being that they’d have nothing to do without each other to fight. Like Batman and the Joker, they’re destined to clash in each new iteration, and the final scene reveals Hook survived his plunge into the ocean, smiling with something like relief as Peter returns to Neverland to pick up where they left off. After a certain point, enemies need each other on a psychological as well as a narrative level.
Of course, the revelation that they were once friends can’t go anywhere or change anything, and Peter’s tearful apology to Hook is a narrative dead-end since obviously Hook can’t forgive him, as the story can’t very well end with the two becoming besties (again, it’s like how the 2003 film went way too hard with the Peter/Wendy love story, to the point where Peter leaving for Neverland felt narratively unsatisfying, and only doesn’t happen because you simply can’t have Peter grow up, any more than you can have Hook learn to love children and live happily ever after. That’s the risk of playing around with the material like this – sometimes you end up with what feels like the wrong ending because certain elements of the original text are set in stone).
However unwieldly it is, at least it’s better material than what was given to them in Pan, in that it actually explains the animosity between them, something an entire prequel just forgot to do.
Let’s get to Wendy’s growing-up arc, which contains several solid ideas, even if it’s baked into the film’s exasperatingly modern update. Look, if you’ve read any of my reviews before, you’ll know I don’t care that there are Lost Girls or that Tinker Bell is played by Yara Shahidi or that it’s Michael and John instead of Tiger Lily who get chained to Marooner’s Rock… but even I rolled my eyes when Wendy saves herself from walking the plank without any assistance from Peter, telling Hook: “this magic belongs to no boy!”
I mean, Barrie provided a reason as to why there aren’t any Lost Girls (“girls are much too clever to fall out of their prams,” though I’ll spare you any discussion about the positive discrimination of this remark) but that Tinker Bell’s fairy dust and the ability to fly has somehow been monopolized exclusively by boys up until this point is an issue that’s never actually been an issue before. Not even in this movie!
With this in mind, it’s fascinating to note the way one change to the story necessitates another. Here Tiger Lily and Tinker Bell are not Wendy’s romantic rivals for Peter’s attention, but her friends. (Worth noting that this version of Tiger Lily refers repeatedly to Peter as “little brother,” which also speaks volumes). I’m not going to complain too much about a general decrease in depictions of female jealousy, but this does rather miss the point of the original story’s dynamics: that these girls want Peter to be something to them that he refuses to become.
As I’ve stated, book!Wendy uses Neverland as practice for becoming a wife and mother, whereas modern Wendys (even the animated one in 1953) use it as an escape from impending adulthood. But while the 2003 Wendy does subconsciously want to enter the adult world and experience love, only to sadly realize that Peter is “just a boy” and has no intention of returning her romantic feelings, this Wendy has no interest in them either! In fact, the actor playing Peter is clearly several years younger than the teenage Wendy in order to further offset any romantic angle.
She also verbally rebuffs the idea of becoming the Lost Boys’ mother, and is given the most overt “searching for herself” arc of any Wendy I’ve ever seen. This does lead to one pretty good creative concept. At the beginning of the film, on leaving the nursery window and having to pull together some “happy thoughts,” in order to fly, we get a montage of such thoughts comprised from her early childhood. Later, when she’s on the plank and again attempting to think positively, she instead looks to the future, imagining her graduation day, flying a plane, writing a novel, and reaching contented old age. (Pointedly, there’s no depiction of marriage or babies. I mean, it’s not 1911 anymore, girls have options!)
In the midst of all this girl power self-actualization, is there even any point to Peter Pan? By removing Wendy’s desire to become a mother and the bittersweet romance angle entirely, Peter becomes almost superfluous to her arc. He’s more wrapped up in his dark backstory drama with Hook anyway.
It’s akin to my comments on Chani, and how the screenwriters clearly felt obliged to make her a warrior and a skeptic who leaves Paul before she would ever capitulate to becoming his mistress, regardless of how this effects the story. I clearly wasn’t the only person to notice this, see this i09 comment, which captures my point:
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Relatedly, our next movie night at work is going to feature Hitchcock’s Rebecca, and on doing some research for it, I discovered that way back in 1920 Hitchcock wanted to make the unnamed protagonist more assertive and confident, which of course completely misses the point of the character. (I’m reminded also of the terrible Netflix adaptation, which ended on a misbegotten attempt to give Lily James more proactivity. They clearly felt they had to put that in).
I once more find myself in the quagmire of generally wanting less sexist stereotypes, but also recognizing that “updating” certain aspects of a story can mess with the meaning of it. I’m always going to come down on the side of representation, inclusion and colourblind casting, but sometimes you just gotta let a story be what it wants to be, yah know? Otherwise, it’s just not that story.
In this case, the butterfly effect is in effect, as by building on the more recent idea of Neverland being an escape from adulthood instead of a metaphor for the preparation of it (and omitting other things like the selfishness of the children leaving their grieving parents behind, or the epilogue in which Peter returns to London only to find Wendy grown with a daughter of her own), then the adaptations end up Lost in Imitation, never fully understanding what Barrie was trying to say.
Throw in some of the updated material in order to keep things in line with modern sensibilities, and some of the bittersweetness is lost, while other parts fade out or make no sense. The story is still about growing up, but not in the same way it was before.
But of course, all this is compounded by the fact that this is the millionth adaptation of Peter Pan, and not one that many people watched anyway. The book being well over one hundred years old at this point, I don’t really mind that the screenplay does some chopping and changing with the specifics of the story. It’s not a definitive retelling, but it doesn’t have to be. Heck, all the versions that aren’t definitive exist so that something else can be definitive. There’s room for them all.
Miscellaneous Observations:
There’s another good moment that reminds me of the 2004 film Finding Neverland, which is about how Barrie wrote Peter Pan in the first place. There he witnesses one of the Llewellyn boys express concern over his mother, leading Barrie to note that he’s taken his first step into adulthood (interestingly, it’s not by feeling romantic love, but expressing concern for another person, which is quite moving). Likewise, the film Fairy Tale: A True Story, which is about the famous photographs of the Cottingley fairies, also deals with the subject of growing up. At one point, one of the two main characters attends a production of Peter Pan which has no other relevance but to remind you of its themes, and later states: “I know what it is to be grown up. It’s when you feel what someone else feels.”
Here there’s a scene in which the Lost Boys and the Darling brothers have been captured by the pirates and set to walk the plank, and Wendy offers herself up in their place, something that Hook at least seems to recognize for what it is: growing up. Nothing more is said about it, but it’s a genuinely solid moment of meaning, largely carried by the comprehension on Jude Law’s face. It takes the bravery of responsibility and self-sacrifice to grow up – and as Mrs Darling said of Mr Darling in 2003, there are different kinds of bravery that someone like Peter Pan can’t comprehend.
Speaking of, they somehow roped Jude Law into this, and naturally he’s great as Captain Hook. Almost too good, though between Dumbledore (Fantastic Beasts) and Jod (Star Wars) and Yon-Rogg (Captain Marvel) he’s certainly been ticking off a lot of genre roles lately. He manages to walk the thin line between foppish and truly threatening, and appears to be having a good time with it all.
Other highlights are that a lot of the scenes are clearly set on-location and on an actual island, and the ensemble of pirates who sing some very catchy sea shanties whenever they’re up to no good. Tiger Lily has a much more prominent role, and gets some great shots of horseback riding across the terrain. Hearing the strains of “You Can Fly,” certainly brought back some childhood memories, though Alan Tudyk and Molly Parker are completely wasted as the Darling parents. Almost every adaptation leaves out their grief at the disappearance of their children, and as such the overriding theme of youthful selfishness that must be overcome if you want to grow up properly.
A bigger problem is Alexander Molony as Peter, who has a very different style of acting than every single other actor present. He’s come straight off the Disney factory production line for overly precocious child actors, and like most Peter Pans, captures nothing of the fey quality or vague menace that should always be present. Remember that SNL song about the things we all hate, and one of them is “child actors who speak like adults?” Yeah, that’s this guy. I really can’t find the words to describe how jarring it is for Peter Pan, the Eternal Child and Spirit of Youth, to look and sound like a miniature adult.
Meanwhile, I thought the actress playing Wendy was the splitting image of Anna Popplewell and Sophie Lowe smushed together (seriously, it’s uncanny) and then found out she’s the daughter of Milla Jovovich. That also tracks.
After the visual splendour of Pan, this murky, muddy colour palette contrasts badly (Pan may have been bad, but at least it knew it had to deliver on colour) but it was more interesting than I thought it would be. It is a film that requires a degree of foreknowledge or at least familiarity with the Peter Pan story, as it deliberately builds on past versions and subtly comments on its legacy, assuming you already know the basics of what will happen. That’s the case in a lot of these live-action Disney remakes, this need to be in conversation with their predecessors, and sometimes even make apologies for them.
Looking back over all these takes on Peter Pan, I do find it fascinating how Wendy’s story has evolved from the 1911 book (which is undoubtedly pretty sexist), to the “not like the other girls” mentality of 2003 that leans heavily into the romance and psychoanalysis, to this 2023 offering, which completely desexes everything and posits adulthood as a positive thing (rather than just an inevitable thing). Watching the way they’ve all built on each other, the intrinsic elements that have been retained and the modern sensibilities that been added and then dated in their turn, the parts that have to change and the way they do so – it’s just as interesting as the story itself.
Interestingly, most adaptations also try to give Peter a degree of development, even though the point of him is that he’s completely static: the animated Disney version had him refuse to fly while fighting Hook, the Peter of 2003 fell in love, this Peter had to reckon with his past sins, the Pan of 2015 has to accept his destiny, even Peter Banning in Spielberg’s Hook has to come to terms with his true identity – and none of it never really works. It’s Wendy’s story for a reason.
Wicked: For Good (2025)
It was a given going into this movie that it wasn’t going to be as good as its predecessor, since that’s the way of it in the stage musical as well. All the best songs and plot developments are in the first act, and the second suffers from the impossible creative decision to take all these characters and stuff them into their roles as they exist in The Wizard of Oz, whether or not it makes any sense. (And it doesn’t).
This story probably would have worked better as more distant prequel, as tying it this closely into the events of The Wizard of Oz makes for a very unwieldy conclusion. Why does Fiyero accompany Dorothy down the Yellow Brick Road? Do he and Boq recognize each other in their new forms? Why’d they bother asking the Wizard for a heart and a brain? Nessarose gets a Bridge (or House) Dropped on her, which is a pretty unsatisfying end to her storyline, and even some of Gregory Maguire’s original plot-points, such as the Wizard being Elphaba’s father all along, have no weight to them whatsoever. Elphaba never finds out, and the reveal comes too late to have any impact on the story. Leave it out and it makes no difference whatsoever.
Likewise, it feels odd that the entire first half of the film is gearing up for Elphaba to fight an oppressive regime and expose the truth of the Wizard’s machinations – only for everything to get smushed into the events of The Wizard of Oz instead. You’re probably better off just watching Wicked: Part I and then going straight into the MGM film – the two flow into each other reasonably well, while Wicked: For Good just throws the whole thing into confusion.
For instance, it’s not clear why Elphaba even needed to fake her own death. If Glinda can take care of Morrible, the Wizard, and their oppressive regime as easily as she does, then why the big subterfuge? And what happened to Boq after Elphaba’s presumed death? Or the Cowardly Lion? Early in the film, Elphaba wants her silver slippers back, and then stops caring because the plot requires her to. It’s an incredibly messy plot all things considered, and worth pointing out that the likes of Fiyero becoming the Scarecrow and Boq becoming the Tin Man is NOT what happens Maguire’s story – those prequel components are the invention of the musical.
This adaptation does add some things to tidy up the musical’s plot a little, namely that the talking animals eventually return to Oz in safety, including Doctor Dillamond who just disappears halfway through the stage musical, never to be seen or heard from again. (Though he’s technically not heard from in this movie either, as he never speaks a word onscreen. I guess they only had enough money to pay Peter Dinklage for one film).
But hey, adaptations of Oz have always been rife with inconsistencies. For instance, it’s a little strange that they stick with the (book accurate) silver slippers, despite ruby ones being the iconic fashion statement of the MGM film, and yet keep Elphaba’s green skin (which granted, was an important plot-point in Maguire’s book) even though she’s never described in such a way in Baum’s original story. But hey, you just gotta embrace the scattered canon of it all. Even the continuity of Baum’s own books is hard to keep track of.
At least the film understands the main relationship is between Glinda and Elphaba, and despite the latter escaping Oz with her love, it still feels like a greater tragedy that the girls are parted; that a friendship has to end in order for them all to survive.
To conclude, I had to roll my eyes when the very last shot is a recreation of the famous Broadway poster (Glinda whispering in Elphaba’s ear) and as much as I can and do enjoy Wicked for what it is, I also have a grudge against it for being the first really big story t0 recuperate an iconic villain by making everyone else either a flake or a baddie, a trend I’ve since come to despise.
Hustle: Season 6 (2010)
It’s taken me this long to realize the joke of Mickey Bricks’s real name being Michael Stone. D’oh!
We’re over halfway through the entire show at this point, and the new team of Mickey, Ash, Emma, Sean and Albert are a well-oiled machine. I certainly find Sean more enjoyable to watch that the relentlessly self-aggrandizing Danny, and Emma makes for an interesting contrast to Stacie. She’s clearly much younger and not quite as confident as her predecessor in using her sexuality to get what she wants, and her dynamic with Mickey is more that of a protégé than a partner (which makes their Will They, Won’t They a little uncomfortable). That Emma’s Day in the Limelight episode involves her father whilst Stacie’s revolved around her ex-husband is telling.
(Also, at one point Mickey spends an episode flirting with a mystery woman, which makes Emma instantly transform into a jealous, whining child. It’s not only awful but completely contradictory to how she rejected his advances when they first met. More to the point – Stacie would never act like this!)
With six more heists, the writers are perhaps struggling just a teensy bit, as some of the ingenious solutions concocted by our six-steps-ahead antiheroes are more akin to magic acts than confidence tricks. Heck, some of them seem to be taken straight from Jonathan Creek, such as hiding a painting behind a fake wall and utilizing an ice sculpture that melts in warm temperatures to give the illusion of a statue disappearing. And although the technology is slowly but surely catching up to the present day, I still had to laugh when a character states: “the next big thing is Blue-Ray” or when a detective threatens Mickey with fifteen years jail: “you’ll be out by 2025.” Wow, time flies.
The litany of familiar genre faces continues, including Indira Varma (Ellaria Sand from Game of Thrones), Mark Benton (the first character to die in the revival of Doctor Who), Simon Day (the hilariously stupid Jordan Strange in the “House of Monkeys” episode of Jonathan Creek), Danny Webb (most recently seen in possession of massive equipment in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms) and Daniel Mays (the informant that Cassian shot at the beginning of Rogue One). Hey, even the Sixth Doctor has a cameo appearance, as do the venture capitalist hosts of Dragon’s Den (which I never watched, but given the way the sequence is staged, it would be pointless if it wasn’t them).
Unfortunately, there’s also a growing veneer of misogyny that’s deeply unpleasant to watch. In the final episode a simple con turns out to be a police sting, with a female MI6 agent “hiring” the team to carry out a bank heist. She ends up having sex with Mickey, who secretly records the encounter in order to have leverage over her when the inevitable backstab comes – at which point Ash mocks her for having penis envy while her male colleague calls her a stupid bitch. Yeesh. I’m all for karmic comeuppance, but did it really have to play out like this?
Nancy Drew: Season 4 (2023)
I come to it at last, the fourth and final season of the CW’s Nancy Drew. Somehow it survived the massive cull that occurred across this network during the worst of the Covid years, and these days four seasons is nothing to sneer at.
But now it too has come to a close, and clearly much earlier than the writers expected. Judging by the hurriedly truncated storylines, it’s clear they were preparing for at least one more season before they got the bad news. According to chatter online, they found out around the filming of episode eight that cancellation was imminent, and with only five episodes left to wrap everything up – well, it’s not incoherent, but it’s clearly on a speedrun. (Which on some level is kind of fascinating to watch from a writing perspective).
Every time I discuss this show, several important points always come up. First, this is Nancy Drew In Name Only. Seriously, that the main character is a redhead called Nancy who solves mysteries is almost the only thing this show has in common with the books you read as a preteen. She’s also got friends called Bess and George, a lawyer father called Carson and a quasi-love interest called Ned Nickerson (he prefers to go by “Nick” and they’re not the endgame couple), but that’s it. No River Heights, no Hannah Gruen, no Togo the dog – technically Nancy isn’t even a Drew.
Secondly, the books were strictly non-supernatural, whereas this show is so replete with magical rituals and possessed spirits that the characters start making meta-jokes about it. It’s more Scooby Doo than Nancy Drew – that is, if you count the Scooby Doo episodes that actually did have witches and ghouls, and not just greedy real estate developers in rubber masks. Perhaps a better comparison is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as I really did love the friendship dynamic that builds between our five main characters.
Thirdly, a really weird thing goes on with the casting in that the actors playing the fresh-out-of-high-school teenagers are clearly in their late twenties/early thirties, while the assortment of actors playing their parents look extremely good for their age. As such, we end up with two generations that only look a handful of years apart in age. Heck, George’s father actually looks younger than she does! It can get a little disconcerting at times – as in the first season, when fandom unwittingly started shipping a father/daughter pairing before their familial connection was revealed.
Finally, this show kept Scott Wolf employed for years. He even directed a few episodes, and for that I’m happy for him. That sounds condescending, but honestly, it was genuinely nice to see him and know he was getting a steady paycheque.
This is light viewing, so I don’t retain a lot of memories from prior seasons, though I do recall that the third season ended with Nancy and Ace hooking up, only to be torn apart by the curse of a dying witch who uses her last breath to ensure that one of them will die if they ever act on their feelings. Just go with it. I’m not a big shipper at the best of times, but I have to admit I got a little caught up in their slow-burn romance, mostly because it wasn’t initially planned. Nancy was obviously paired up with Ned/Nick to start with, only for the writers to gradually change course when they realized each one was better suited to other characters.
As such, Nancy and Ace’s attraction grew organically and gradually over the course of several seasons as they slowly got to know each other (a little bit like Korra and Asami – I love it when characters slowly awaken to their feelings). It’s a pity then that the show loses sight of what made them so appealing in the first place by turning them into overwrought star-crossed lovers. The whole charm of them was that their relationship was so chill!
They even do that annoying thing when one confides to the other that they were secretly in love with them back in school, before the story even started. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before did this too, and it’s so undermining. The beauty of these types of ships is that we get to see the dawning realization in real time, which starts in a place that genuinely has no endgame in mind. To retcon it by having one character say: “it was you all along!” takes away the surprise and joy of discovery and replaces it with boring, undynamic fate.
Basically, this ship was sweet because Nancy and Ace were two strangers who unexpectedly found each other, and now they’re just tortured, mopey and not really themselves. We don’t even get to see them as a normal, everyday couple, as they’re kept apart for almost the entire length of the season.
In fact, the show makes the strange decision to introduce new love interests for all five main characters, as well as Nancy’s two dads, which means some of them end up with people we’ve just met over relationships that’ve been building for four seasons. I can’t say I really care who ends up with who, but it’s a rather bizarre creative decision. Nick and George nearly got married back in season two, for heaven’s sake!
The seasonal plot delves into the history of Horseshoe Bay, in a story which includes reincarnation, time travel, a dark secret kept by the community’s founders, a shapeshifting Sin Eater who ends up being Nancy’s latest love interest, and some of the familiar tropey episodes that always turn up in shows such as this one: the Jumanji board game that comes to life, the Body Swap experience (Kennedy McMann nails Ace’s “resting vacant face”) and a giant spider that lays eggs in Nancy’s stomach. How many times have we seen that one?
In seriousness, the show has always been quite good at unfolding its twisty plots, though it’s rather clumsier in the details (this season involves a mystical stomach pump for heaven’s sake). But there are some solid ideas throughout, and plenty of reveals you don’t see coming.
Unfortunately, it becomes clear about halfway through that the showrunners were informed of cancellation very late in the game, leading to a sprint to the finish line. Previous seasons have been quite good at introducing new characters which are gradually merged into the overarching story as the episodes unfold – here you can clearly identify some of the plotlines that had to be nipped in the bud. The new Sheriff of Horseshoe Bay was obviously going to be a more prominent character, and then isn’t. The main bad guy gets away without facing justice, as there simply isn’t any time to deal with her. Given all the emphasis on a monster being reincarnated into new bodies and one of the prominent guest stars announcing her pregnancy, there’s a good chance this infant was meant to be the next vessel for the Sin Eater, a possible storyline that was also cut short.
The writers have even come out and said that Tristan, Nancy’s love interest, was going to become a regular in their planned season five, but instead the hugely complex reincarnation plot he was involved in has to be whittled down to almost nothing. Many of the big reveals (the identity of the Sin Eater, Nancy using the Black Door, the true identity of her first past life) are hurried through so quickly that they just don’t have time to land properly. We’re essentially watching two season’s worth of storylines crushed into five episodes.
Some of the relationships are a bit shortchanged (Nancy, George and Bess barely get any one-on-one screentime together), it bugged me that they kept using the phrase “the supernatural” instead of “the occult” to describe magical rituals and phenomena, and the writers are nuts if they expect me to believe that the entire show has taken place in under a year (Nancy’s mother died three months prior to the start of the show, yet this season they mark the one-year anniversary of her death), but it’s a valiant effort to not only get the major points of their story across, but give all the characters the sendoff they deserve. A lot of the supporting cast are brought back: George’s little sisters, Ace’s deaf father, Cooper the long-suffering mortician – even Tom Swift (who appeared in a Backdoor Pilot in an earlier season) gets a mention that attempts to wrap up the cliffhanger that his cancelled show ended on.
It didn’t quite end on its own terms, but it got closure and a degree of rewatchability. I’m going to miss these characters (tough-but-vulnerable George, dependable Nick, vivacious Bess, laidback Ace – seriously, he reminded me a lot of Oz from Buffy – and irrepressible Nancy) as well as the ghostly New England nautical vibes and its adorably woke tone (such things can get a bit obnoxious in other shows, but not here. When a stint of time travelling includes an otherwise pointless scene in which Nancy gets into an argument with a college student complaining about women taking men’s places at law school, it’s just delightful).
I have a few mixed feelings on the fact the friend group decide to all go their separate ways (to hark back to Buffy again, I’m glad her show ended with her surrounded by friends and family), but that the very last character beat goes to George and Nancy was very sweet, and that the writers managed to pull off an emotionally satisfying ending under such conditions is laudable.
Now, does anyone want to pick up my idea for a Nancy Drew television show which adapts the actual books in their original 1930s setting?
That's the season of Hustle where Indira Varma got cast as a new recurring foe, then had to drop out and in the last episode they have her appear over a video message whilst also having a replacement character who took on the rest of her lines, isn't it? I guess production was left in a tight spot but always struck me as odd you could so visibly see the join.
ReplyDeleteThat is correct. It was very obviously meant to be Indira Varma both times, but considering how the story goes for her replacement, I'm rather glad Indira was spared that episode.
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