Reading/Watching Log #52

Well, if this lockdown has been good for anything (besides preventing the spread of a deadly disease) it’s in giving us plenty of time to binge-watch whatever we like and catch up on our extensive to-be-read lists. I hope everyone is managing well; here in New Zealand we’ve recently moved into Level 3, which means that fast foods places are back open, but other non-essential facilities (including libraries) are still closed.

Though I’ve largely stuck with my New Years’ Resolution of female-centric stories and creators, I loosened up a bit for the sake of stress-free viewing and just watched whatever I felt like in the moment. I’ll get back to my more rigorous screening process once this drama has wound down, but don’t be surprised if a few male-led films or shows are featured here.

I also managed to watch all the various takes on Emma (which I discuss in the post directly below this one) and the first two seasons of Killing Eve in preparation for season three. So glad that show is back!

I hope everyone's keeping safe out there.

Fierce Fairy Tales by Nikita Gill

After reading Gill’s book of poetry on Greek Goddesses, I ended up tracking down her previous work, which (obviously) focuses on fairy tales. Even with just a year’s gap between publications, I felt Greek Goddesses was a much better work, not just in the quality of the poems themselves but in the breadth and width of the themes she tackled.

The poems of Fierce Fairy Tales come in two flavours: that villains are all the inevitable products of abusive childhoods, and women deserve more than what the traditional stories have previously afforded them. This is deeply ironic, as in fandom circles these concepts are largely incompatible: if a bad guy has a sad backstory (as they usually do these days) then it is more often than not a woman’s responsibility to FIX him by providing him with endless second chances and boundless compassion, even if he’s the one that’s treating her like shit.

So even as we’re told that evil stepmothers and wicked witches and big bad wolves can’t help who they are because of past traumas, plenty of other poems implore women not to become doormats or to give themselves up in the quest to “save” the people who hurt or abuse them. You know that it’s usually the VILLAINS that are hurting and abusing them, right?

Look, I’m not saying that Gill herself realizes the discordancy between asking us to feel sorry for cruel, hateful, violent people, and her explicit message that women shouldn’t be mistreated… but take a gander at the excessive sympathy accorded to shitty characters in fandom and that attitude's close relationship to the anger that's directed at female characters (usually by women viewers) if they're not prepared to become their life coaches.

Obviously you can feel sorry for a bad person without endangering yourself in the attempt to help them, and clearly I’m bringing my own baggage into all this, but it made for an accidentally contradictory read.

East of the Sun, West of the Moon by Jackie Morris

I’ve had a copy of this book for years, having bought it at university while I was unemployed with barely any money to spend, but it was such a beautiful book – as in a beautiful object, with its glossy dustjacket and watercolour illustrations and gold embossing – that I HAD to own it. I even recall the girl behind the counter commenting on how gorgeous it was.

Written and illustrated by Jackie Morris, it’s another take on the old Norwegian fairy tale that has admittedly been done plenty of times before – years ago Naomi Lewis and P.J. Lynch collaborated on a picture book, and Edith Pattou is best known for her YA retelling, North Child. This falls in between those two genres, as a young reader’s chapter book with sporadic two-page-spread illustrations.

It’s biggest change is choosing to place it in a contemporary setting, with the family of the young heroine depicted as refugees struggling to be accepted in their new country, and the mysterious polar bear visitor promising them a safe place to live if they allow their daughter to come away with him. After that point, the modern-day setting becomes largely irrelevant, as we’re off into a fantasy world of palaces, forests, deserts and the titular castle that lies east of the sun and west of the moon. If you’re familiar with the traditional story, you’ll find it follows the plot closely (the girl’s transgression in looking at the prince while he sleeps, her journey across the world with the help of three mysterious women, the cunning she uses to outwit the troll queen’s daughter) but with far more detail and description than usual.

And it’s gorgeous – Morris fills the pages with sights, smells and sounds, giving particular depth to the three old women that assist in the girl’s journey, even providing a little smidgeon of pity for the troll queen’s daughter (without making it an excuse for the whole kidnapping and forced marriage thing). The reason it took me so long to read is because sometimes you have to do a book justice by sitting down with no distractions and just absorbing it.

The ending is a bit strange – after all the trials and tribulations she undergoes to find and rescue her love, the girl decides to leave him in order to reunite with the North Wind and continue her adventures around the world. Far be it from me to criticise a story that ends with a heroine choosing independence over matrimony, but it’s still an odd note to end on after all the work she did to win him back.

Gallows Hill by Lois Duncan

I well remember the summer of Lois Duncan – not the exact year it took place, only that I had recently moved from Older Fiction to YA and ended up devouring all the paperbacks by Duncan I could find at the library. And so continued my adolescent interest in supernaturally-tinged teen dramas (though she did plenty of just-plain-suspense as well).

This title was available on the library e-book app, so I downloaded for the sake of a trip down memory lane. Unfortunately, it was one of the copies that had been updated, which here resulted in a completely pointless reference to an mp3 player (while still using seventies-era technology in every other respect). It’s so idiotic – do publishers think teenagers can’t project themselves back into an earlier time?

Whatever. This is the story of Sarah Zoltanne, who is forced to move with her free-spirited mother to the conservative community of Pinehill after she shacks up with the married school principal. Cringing at the way the residents judge her mother as “the other woman”, Sarah struggles to make friends with her future stepsister Kyra, and is eventually talked into becoming a fortune teller for the school fair – gossipy Kyra will use a headset to feed her information about her customers, and because she’s a new face in town, everyone will be shocked at her inside knowledge.

But Sarah does have a genuine clairvoyant gift, and is soon in over her head when the most popular (and manipulative) boy at school organizes a secret fortune telling business, where students pay him for a session with “Madame Zoltanne”. I won’t give away much more, but suffice to say that Duncan rackets up the suspense when members of the community start spreading rumours that Sarah is a witch.

At the time I first read this I was kinda into the Salem Witch Trials, so it was doubly interesting to read this as a modern-day take on that dark time, though I dread to think of what historians OR believers in karma and reincarnation feel about the liberties Duncan has taken here. All that said, it’s a classic example of her distinctive work, and very fun to revisit.

Talking with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede

Reading this I realized I’m not a huge fan of “fantasy humour” like that found in Shrek or Disenchantment, and yet because I dislike epic fantasy even more (with a few exceptions) and am under the probably-false assumption that fantasy is a difficult genre to write well in, I end up reading most of the stuff anyway.

This is the fourth and final book in Wrede’s Chronicles of the Enchanted Forest quartet, though interestingly it was actually written first. Once realizing she had plenty of material, Wrede went back and wrote the “prequels” to this book, which then became the four-part series – with the third instalment in particular serving as clear setup to the events of this one.

Daystar has been raised by his mother Cimorene on the outskirts of the Enchanted Forest, and is well-versed in all the etiquette required to survive the magical creatures within. That’s just as well, since one day after an unexpected visitor, his mother hands him a magic swords and kicks him out of the house. Now he has to fend for himself in a forest filled with dwarfs, dragons and wizards, with very little understanding of what he’s meant to do.

It’s this complete ignorance that bothers me, as though there’s an in-universe reason as to why he can’t be told anything pertinent about his background or his quest, it still makes Cimorene look like a bad mother in not giving him basic facts about his father. Plus, if you’ve read the previous three books you already know who he is and what he has to do, so most of the book is just waiting for him to catch up. Perhaps there’s an argument to be made that this should be read in publishing, rather than chronological order…

In any case, it was interesting to read about the differences between the original manuscript and the later version that was tweaked so as to maintain better continuity with the other books, and I’m glad I’ve finally completed a series that’s been in my To Be Read pile for YEARS.

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

This is quintessential comfort reading. The humour. The style. The quirkiness. Thank you Diana Wynne Jones, I have no idea why more people haven’t capitalized on adapting your work for the screen, and the more I read of you the more obvious it becomes that J.K. Rowling stole a LOT of your ideas.

In what amounts to my third read of this book, I find that it’s still pretty damn hard to keep track of everything, given the myriad of characters and all the secrets they’re hiding. People get turned into animals or objects or the elderly, or are even melded with other characters to create brand-new ones. Stuff happens, and stuff keeps happening, and everyone’s plans and motivations are a mystery, but Wynne Jones isn’t going to bother explaining anything to you at any point – just pay attention and hope it’ll all coalesce somehow.

Which it kinda does, but even going in for my third read I knew I wasn’t going to catch all the clues and interconnections. What exactly was Howl and Calcifer’s contract again? And why did the Witch of the Waste turn Sophie into an old woman? (The Studio Ghibli adaptation manages to be even more confusing, and by the end I never have any clue as to what the hell’s going on).

As did Wrede in her Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Wynne Jones plays around with some of the familiar tropes of fairy tales, introducing Sophie as the eldest of three girls, and so unlikely to ever have any particularly exciting adventures of her own. Quiet and unassuming, Sophie puts in the long hours at the family hat shop, until one day she’s visited by the terrifying Witch of the Waste and transformed for reasons unknown into an elderly woman.

And yet she finds this transformation oddly freeing. No longer bound by society’s expectations or her own crippling self-consciousness, Sophie heads out into the world and finds a place for herself as a cleaning lady in the moving castle of the wizard Howl. He’s rumoured to eat the hearts of young women – but then, that’s not Sophie any more, is it?

Even if you’ve never read this book before, you probably know all about Howl – a vain, self-absorbed drama queen who leaves a trail of broken hearts behind him. He and Sophie immediately butt heads, but in her new form she sees no reason to be intimidated by him, and their life together – along with wizard-in-training Michael and the demon Calcifer who lives in the fireplace – begins.

The thing about this book is that the plot is so confusing. Confusing in a good way, and yet so confusing. Everyone has a secret, everyone has a secret identity, everyone’s true intentions and purposes are murky, and somehow a John Donne poem from the seventeenth century is of vital importance. Reading a plot summary helps, but damn I would have appreciated some clarification in the book itself!

Or would I? A children’s book that requires close attention is a rare thing, and the tangled knot of a plot means you can return to any number of times. Plus it’s really Sophie that makes the whole thing worthwhile – the way her personality changes when she’s turned into an old woman is hilarious, but also tinged with fascinating ideas regarding female liberation from gender norms. As becomes clear later in the book, Sophie subconsciously choses to remain under the spell that keeps her an old woman, because it is protection from the demands and expectations placed upon young women.

Oh for an adaptation that does all this justice…

Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman

This is the opposite of comfort reading, but I had it checked out of the library before lockdown, so battled on through. The story is based on a “what if” scenario, in which Africa colonized Great Britain instead of the other way around, leading to a powerful class of dark-skinned people known as “Crosses”, who essentially hold the same positions of power (and all the racial prejudice and discrimination that goes with them) over white people (or “noughts”). And yes, the upper/lower case spelling of those words is deliberate.

It’s a dangerous thing to do a fictional “switcharoo” between any real-life persecuted/oppresses factions (remember the ill-conceived Save the Pearls?) but Malorie Blackman writes from a position of authority/experience, and has a good handle on what she’s trying to convey.

And that’s not the logistics of an alternate history in which racial persecution is aimed at white people, but insight into the minds of her two protagonists: Persephone Hadley (or Seph), the daughter of an affluential Cross politician, and Callum, the nought son of working-class people. The two have been unlikely friends since childhood, when Callum’s mother worked for Seph’s family, and have managed to retain their bond into adolescence.

So the world-building is weak to non-existent, with little to no understanding of how this world operates in the grander sense. If you’re hoping for an accurate representation of a realistic alternative-world scenario in which Africa colonized Britain (as I was), then you won’t find it here – this is strictly about the emotional lives of the main characters.

And I didn’t find the love story that much of a love story. Most of the time Seph and Callum are fighting with each other, and their first sexual encounter is after Callum joins a paramilitary organization that kidnaps her. Seph goes on to insist it wasn’t rape, which it technically wasn’t, but for it to happen while she’s being held hostage is more than a little dodgy.

It can hardly be called a fun read, but there are plenty of twists and turns throughout, and Blackman doesn’t stint from depicting the tragedies that arise from communities which are built on bigotry and hate. I’m interesting in seeing how the BBC adaptation plays out…

Lured (1947)

This one was great fun. It was Tumblr (as usual) that inspired me to track this down, as the post in question depicted Lucille Ball in an evening gown and a look of exquisite scorn on her face, saying: “I’d like to be,” when asked by a guy if she’s alone.

Context is everything – it turns out she eventually marries the man who pesters her in this scene, but these old films always surprise me when it comes to their gender politics. You always assume they’re going to be horrendously sexist, and in many ways they are, but there are moments that catch you off-guard.

A man known as the Poet Killer has been targeting young women, including a friend of Sandra Carpenter (Lucille Ball) who works as a taxi dancer. How she deals with the men in her life is amazing – customers at the club complain when she doesn’t give them the attention they’ve paid for and she tells them to shut up, a police officer condescendingly hands her back the gun he’s lifted from her pocket, only for her to return the gun that she’s taken from his, and on choosing to make her bait for the killer, the chief investigator asks her to lift her skirts so he might inspect her legs, which she does with a droll comment.

Realizing that the killer works through the personal columns, the police have Sandra answer suspicious ads and go undercover to try and smoke out their culprit. A lot of the film is taken up with false leads and red herrings, making it the first film I’ve ever seen that could be described as “comedy noir.” It’s silly in a lot of ways, but like I said – great fun.  

North by Northwest (1959)

Considered one of the greatest Hitchcock films, I found North by Northwest to be… fine. I’m gonna get killed for that, so let’s be clear: I enjoyed this, but in a very casual way. Possibly the problem is that all the content of this film has been homaged and parodied so many times since its release that going back to the original just doesn’t have the same omph has it did in the fifties.

But it’s classic Hitchcock: a twisty plot, a blonde femme fatale, iconic action sequences, an innocent man accused of a crime he didn’t commit (in this case thanks to mistaken identity, another favourite of his) and the use of famous landmarks for a climactic finish.

Out of nowhere, Roger Thornhill is abducted by two men and taken to a wealthy estate whose owner insists that he’s a spy called George Kaplan. After asserting that he’s not, the man orders Roger’s death – a fate he manages to escape. Trying to convince the police of his story is a waste of time, tracking down both George Kaplan and the real owner of the estate he was taken to only leads to more questions, and before he knows it Roger is on the run from government agents.

It’s one of those movies you should see for yourself with as few spoilers as possible, though you’re probably already aware of the famous crop duster, Mount Rushmore, and “train goes into a tunnel *wink*wink*” scenes. Cary Grant is his usual suave and arrogant know-it-all self (not strictly a bad thing) but Eve Marie Saint is such a quintessential classic Femme Fatale that the performance loops back around to transcend the archetype.

It’s a lot of fun, and I can see why it’s a favourite, but… yeah… it didn’t exactly blow my mind the way everyone said it would.

The Black Cauldron (1985)

Have you ever desperately wanted a movie to be better than it is? The Black Cauldron was probably my first experience of this kind of disappointment, being such a huge fan of Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain (even though I read the books years after seeing the movie; at such a young age that I can’t properly remember watching it for the first time). I’m holding out for a decent high-budget television adaptation one of these days, but not holding my breath.

There are five books that make up the series (six if you include a volume of short-stories) that cover not only the age-old battle between the forces of good and evil throughout the Welsh-inspired land of Prydain, but a coming-of-age narrative for its protagonist Taran, an Assistant Pig-Keeper who gains extremely hard-won wisdom over the course of the story.

This film tries to squeeze the first two books (The Book of Three and The Black Cauldron) into a single, self-contained story, and you can sort of tell by the way the plot shifts gears halfway through: Taran goes from trying to take the oracular pig Hen Wen to a safe hiding place, only to fail and end up attempting to track down and destroy the titular Black Cauldron before the Horned King can use it to resurrect an army of zombies.

Neither plot has much to do with the other (for instance, the risk Hen Wen poses is that she’ll show the Horned King where the Cauldron is hidden, but this ends up having no effect on how the artefact is eventually discovered) and the existence of three more books worth of story is ignored completely (the Big Bad of the series is replaced entirely by the Horned King, who was only the Starter Villain of the first book, but whose defeat here signals the happy ending).

This leads to some bizarre shortcuts in the storytelling, like – why the heck is Princess Elionwy roaming around the Horned King’s dungeons? In the book she was captive in another castle entirely, one that belonged to a character who actually had a reason for kidnapping her, and where it made much more sense that she’d have free run of the place.

That Taran’s parentage is a huge mystery throughout the books goes totally unexplored here, as does his gradual maturation from callow boy to sensible, thoughtful young man. Gwydion and Coll have been exorcised completely, and the three witches have gone from terrifying existential fey-like creatures to silly ugly crones (except one, who is an oversexed Abhorrent Admirer who shoves a guy into her cleavage. Hooray).

There are some odd creative choices as well, such as the many mentions of a war going on throughout Prydain, though we see nothing of it whatsoever, or that Elionwy is introduced by the light of her magical bauble, which serves no purpose and disappears completely for the second half of the film.

As for the characters, I watched this at a young enough age for the film’s physical depictions to slant my ideas contrary to how they’re actually described in the novels, which is a shame because Elionwy is meant to have red-gold hair and Fflewddur is certainly not an old man, and honestly, doesn’t need to be in this movie at all, as he contributes nothing. I have to give them credit for not spelling it out that Fflewddur’s harp strings break when he tells a lie, but it does nothing for his characterization, much less the plot.

Taran is portrayed as a total dick, whose development comes too late to really matter, and though they manage to capture Elionwy’s trademark prattle, they fail in establishing her sense of self-possession – and don’t get me started on their cringeworthy “romance”. Again, the fact that there are five books in the series means the love story can play out more elegantly across a longer period of time.

Also, Doli has been changed into a fairy for some reason, though it’s hilarious to think of how furious Doli of the books would be in seeing himself depicted as such. They also add a completely original character called Creeper into the proceedings, who is your typical annoying Igor, though someone must have liked him as his design was co-opted for the ogres that featured in The Gummi Bears.

Gurgi however – yeah, I really love this take on Gurgi, who is a perfect blend of marmot, gibbon and Old English Sheepdog. If a television series ever sees the light of day, I hope they keep this particular design and gurgly voice.

Largely regarded as Disney’s Red-Headed Stepchild, it’s unfortunately no lost classic, and yet not completely without value. The first animated Disney film that was rated PG, with no musical numbers and several incredibly dark sequences (at one point the bad guys threaten to cut Hen Wen’s head off) you can see the influence of Tim Burton in the visuals: the reptilian gwythaints, the Cauldron erupting from the ground beneath the swamp, and the resurrected dead are genuinely horribly-beautiful to behold.

This was the second time I’ve watched it as an adult, and I have to admit that I liked it more this time around – for what it was attempting rather than what it actually achieved. The Horned King in particular is a terrifying villain, possibly the most Satanically-inspired one since Chernabog in Fantasia (from which I’m sure they reused some footage here) and worth a look – if not just to mourn what might have been.

Groundhog Day (1993)

I have seen dozens of genre television episodes that revolve around this premise, but never the original flavour Groundhog Day Loop starring Bill Murray and Andie McDowell. And I was surprised at some of its distinctions. By this point we’re so used to seeing the loop get reset via the death of the protagonist stuck within it that I was stunned to discover Bill Murray’s character goes through no fatal accidents at all – he just continues to wake up in the hotel room each morning.

Likewise, we never get an explanation as to why the day keeps repeating (though plenty of other takes on this material also keep the reasoning a mystery) and the conclusion is strangely low-key. There’s no big, dramatic life-changing event or epiphany, he just finds peace within himself.

The most frightening thing however, is how long he’s trapped in the loop – long enough to learn languages, become an accomplished pianist, discover the backstories of everyone in town, and teach himself to make ice sculptures. Which throws up another unforeseen consequence, that of his mental health when he finally escapes the loop. What would it be like to go from living thirty or forty years within a single day, where you know exactly what’s going to happen at any given point, to returning to the real world and its sheer unpredictability?

But hey, this is a classic for a reason, and one of Murray’s best roles. Going from a self-absorbed creep to a generous man who is at peace with himself is a rewarding arc, and watching the background details of the township's residents is pretty fun as well. You’ve probably already seen it, and now I can say I have too.

Clueless (1995)

Well, after watching all the other Emmas, I obviously had to include this one too. It is perhaps the most nineties movie we have from that decade, from the computer system that picks out Cher’s outfits, to the giant cell phones and hats, the lip-liner and leopard print, knee socks and head-bands, the cassette tapes, shout-outs to Christian Slater and Mel Gibson movies, and everyone paging instead of texting.

Yet it’s managed to date extremely well, largely thanks to the exaggerated slang, fashion and setting, which capture a place and time that never really existed quite like this, and so edges into the timelessness of heightened reality (as seen in that running background gag of various high-school students walking around with nose-job bandages).

I do remember watching it for the first time with my eldest cousin while she was babysitting me, which meant half the jokes flew over my head, and I had no idea it was based on Emma until years later (hey, I may not have even known who Jane Austen was back then). Today it’s rather sad watching the three main actresses and knowing that one has died, one has gone off the deep end, and one’s career pretty much peaked with this, her big debut.

As an adaptation of Emma, there are some fun touches here and there. For some reason Elton is the only one who carries over his name from the book, and Frank is reimagined as gay, which makes perfect sense when you think about it. Things like Josh offering to dance with Tai and Cher disapproving of Tai’s first romantic choice actually translate pretty beautifully from the source material, though to this day I’m still bemused as to why they decided to make Josh and Cher ex-stepsiblings. Was justification to have Josh keep visiting the house? A nod to the fact Knightley and Emma were technically in-laws in the book?

But it’s imminently quotable, and still extremely funny. Perhaps my only complaint is that it paved the way for a torrent of material about wealthy, spoiled high school elites, none of which seemed realized that the appeal of Clueless was that its heroine was a good person. Or at least a harmless person.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)

I haven’t watched this movie since I saw it with a couple of friends back in high school, and knowing it was peak comfort-viewing I revisited it for the lockdown. In many ways the story behind its creation is just as interesting as the movie itself, with Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson seeing Nia Vardalos’s one-woman play on the subject of marrying a non-Greek man. They championed the film, insisted that Vardalos get to play the lead and remain true to her own vision, and ended up with the highest-grossing independent film of all time.

It follows the very predictable sitcom pattern, in which underachieving Toula Portokalos finally gets her life together and meets the man of her dreams – unfortunately he’s not Greek, and her traditional family aren’t happy about it. I suspect the reason it performed so well is that despite the broad caricatures that make up the Portokalos extended family (Andrea Martin as Aunt Voula is the highlight) everyone is depicted with fondness, and most of the obstacles that Toula and Ian face are entirely external.

As a couple, they are refreshing drama-free, right down to unselfconsciously acknowledging their attraction to each other without any games or deflections. Keep your bad boy man-children; any woman with half a brain knows that if a guy like Ian comes along, you lock that shit down.

Frozen (2013)

I watched this with my Disney-childhood-less friend before the lockdown started (I’ve been staggering the Disney rewatch commentary across several months) which nearly brings us to the end of the animated princess canon. I spoke extensively about Frozen years ago, so I won’t repeat myself except to say that I still think it’s an oddly structured movie, with plenty of seeded content that never really pays off.

So after seeing Frozen for what must be the third time (a number I’m sure many parents are envious of) I also watched Frozen Fever (2015) and Olaf’s Frozen Adventure (2017) to follow up on the Arendelle siblings before heading into Frozen 2.

The former is the shortest of the two, in which Elsa is determined to celebrate Anna’s birthday in grand style, to make up for the fact she missed out on the occasion throughout their childhoods. Unfortunately, she has a cold, which results in sentient snow-flurries every time she sneezes. Yeah, the writers never really got a fix on how Elsa’s magical powers actually work, and I suspect the “snowgies” are just an excuse to trot out more Frozen merchandise. Yup…

The second short clocks in at just over twenty minutes, and was inexplicably put ahead of Pixar’s Coco for its premiere, leading to many confused children and frustrated adults who just wanted to get to the movie they paid for! I never saw Coco in theatres, but managed to get angry just thinking about it. This time around the event to be celebrated is Christmas, during which the sisters realize their estrangement prevented them from establishing any holiday traditions.

Naturally Olaf goes in search of traditions they can share and naturally it all goes wrong, but in rediscovering Olaf the girls realize that they had used images of him to communicate with each other during Elsa’s isolation. It is a bit touching, but the two shorts remain pretty non-essential in the overarching story – which come to think of it, is a good thing. With franchises becoming more and more interconnected, I would have been annoyed to discover that one needed to watch these bonus shorts in order to understand the movies.

Little Monsters (2019)

The premise for this one is a winner: a devoted kindergarten teacher finds herself in the midst of a zombie attack and has to call upon all her resources to keep the children in her care safe while simultaneously convincing them it’s all just an elaborate game. How can you go wrong with that?

Well, you decide to render the goodhearted kindergarten teacher a supporting player and love interest to this guy:

… a creepy slacker who gets the tedious “loser must learn to take responsibility for the first time in his life” arc. He’s worse than useless: proposing to his girlfriend after she’s dumped him and moved on, sponging off his older sister and refusing to get a job, sending his nephew into anaphylactic shock and forgetting how to use the Epi pen, and generally making an ass of himself at every available opportunity. Of course, Miss Caroline is on hand to be won over by his absolute uselessness, because apparently grown women find this shit charming (they don’t).

Okay, in the interests of total fairness, the guy DOES come through by the end – putting his life on the line for the kids and thanking his sister for the sacrifices she’s made. But I remain baffled that the filmmakers believed we’d have rather followed this guy through the life-or-death scenario instead of  Lupita Nyong'o.

It has some good laughs throughout, usually courtesy of the kids and not Josh Gad (who I don’t hate as much as everyone else seems to, but his shtick of a children’s television personality that’s actually a foul-mouthed asshole is old the second it emerges) so watch with reasoned expectations.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

I had my eye on this film long before gif-sets started flooding my dashboard, and it’s as romantic and rewarding everyone’s been saying. It’s 1760 and artist Marianne is transported by boat to a remote island where she’s been commissioned to paint a wedding portrait of Héloïse, a young woman recently returned from a convent after her sister’s death.

The catch is that Héloïse is furious about her impending marriage (she’s taken the place of her sister in the match), and refuses to sit for anyone – so, her mother asks if it’s possible that Marianne introduce herself as a companion, and study her subject discreetly so that she might paint her in secret.

It’s a great setup, though the plot doesn’t really get cracking until the ruse is admitted, Héloïse offers to pose properly so that Marianne might paint something that truly captures her, and her mother leaves the island with strict instructions that the portrait be completed in five days. Marianne and Héloïse are left alone on an island of women.

This more than anything is the true joy of the film: it is a film about women. Just women. We only see one man during the course of the story: the boatman who drops Marianne off at the island, and whose reappearance at the kitchen table near the film’s conclusion signals that their time together has come to an end. For the duration of the film, it’s only Marianne, Héloïse, her mother, the housemaid Sophie, and a few others who gather at a beach bonfire to talk and sing.

And yes, the world of men is always there, always patiently waiting to steal upon the time these women snatch for themselves, but we never even get the name of Héloïse’s husband-to-be, much less see his face. Or for that matter, the man who impregnated Sophie. You’d think it was an immaculate conception for all the difference it makes.

It’ll come as no surprise to learn that attraction and love blossoms between the two women, but how and why it happens it worth discovering on your own. It moves slowly but steadily, at its own pace, with a blend of extreme close-ups on the women’s faces, and wide, expansive shots of the island on which they roam.

There are a few subplots that seem a little extraneous; for example, I’m not sure what the point of the little housemaid getting an abortion was all about – for although Héloïse gets Marianne to paint the scene, thereby creating a work of art that no man could possibly produce, we never see the finished product or how it affects her ongoing career. There’s also a discussion on the meaning of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and how it relates to our own pair of lovers – it made me smile since that particular myth is getting a lot of traction lately. *cough*Hadestown*cough*

As with most queer love stories, especially ones set in the past, there exists the deep-rooted awareness that (whether tragically or bittersweetly) the lovers will have to part; that the world won’t permit them a happy ending. If they each manage to continue on with their separate lives, it comes with the implicit understanding that “what was will have to be enough.” But the beautiful thing about the conclusion of Portrait of a Lady on Fire is that their short but meaningful love affair WAS enough.

They each go on to live rich and fulfilling lives, particularly Marianne who teaches art classes to female pupils and whose artwork continues to be inspired by the time she spent with Héloïse. And when she discovers another portrait of her former lover on display in a gallery, she sees with more happiness than regret that Héloïse has not only had a child, but that her finger holds open a book turned to page twenty-eight (a number significant to both of them).

The film guilds the lily a bit too much with a following scene in which Marianne glimpses Héloïse at a concert, because the scene in the art gallery is perfection in itself. When Héloïse sat for that portrait, she knew Marianne would one day see it and understand its significance. In turn, Marianne is content in the knowledge that their love has been immortalized through art, hidden in plain sight, untouched by the world around them. Knowing that it happened, knowing it’s their secret, is truly enough for them.

Ready or Not (2019)

This is a fun slasher/horror/comedy, in which a young woman marries into a wealthy family and then realizes (on her wedding night, no less) that there’s a pretty hefty consequence. A lot of the tropes featured here are well-used: a Deal with the Devil has given the family great wealth, and to sustain it they have to sporadically hunt down and kill one of their family members – through if said member can survive the night, then the deal is reneged and the remaining family destroyed.

As you’ve probably guessed by the title, the game in question is hide and seek, and after bemusedly agreeing to the game without any idea of what’s happening, Grace finds herself fighting for her life in a gorgeously macabre mansion. Certain family members – including her new husband – want to help her survive the night, but others are hellbent on completing the ritual.

It’s a fun watch, with Samara Weaving doing wonders to ground the insanity with her performance, which goes from dazed “I’ll just play along,” to stark terror, to absolute righteous fury at what she’s been put through. There aren’t any huge surprises in the plot, but it takes the familiar tropes and uses them solidly – it’s actually quite refreshing not to be bombarded with twists and subversions, but rather just one woman’s determined attempts to survive.

One noteworthy thing is how they handle Grace’s new husband regarding what he knew and how he deals with it. At the start I remember thinking: “Grace, please do not stay married to the man who knew your death at the hands of his family was a possible outcome before he brought you to meet them,” and though I won’t give the particulars away, they handle it very satisfyingly.

(Coincidentally, this is also the second film featuring Andie McDowell I’ve watched this month).

The Invisible Man (2020)

Released in the wake Universal’s botched attempt to create a linked “Dark Universe” with its classic monsters, the failure to launch a new franchise was probably the best thing to happen to The Invisible Man. Now it’s a standalone sci-fi thriller that finds the perfect context for exploring the true horror of invisibility: a woman desperate to escape an abusive partner who can literally render himself unseen. Able to stalk and gaslight Cecilia with ease, psychopathic Adrian Griffin fakes his own death and leaves his fortune to the woman that successfully escaped him, only to start the real torture when her entire support system believes he’s safely out of the picture.

Despite being the titular invisible man, this is 100% Cecilia’s story, and it’s harrowing enough to be triggering for some people. After successfully escaping Adrian’s security-and-camera laden beachside house, she tentatively starts to rebuild her life until the inevitable happens: a moved knife here, a near-gas fire there, and soon she’s in that most fatal of all feminine states: hysteria.

It makes for great suspense, with plenty of great setups and payoffs (how they introduce a ladder that’s essential to the proceedings is actually pretty charming in how contrived it is) though it does end up going to a pretty nasty place, with a character death that isn’t hugely necessary. This has the consequence of making the inevitable climactic confrontation between Cecilia and Adrian less triumphant than it could have been, less cathartic than it is bittersweet.

Still, it’s a solid film; would recommend.  

Thunderbirds Are Go: Season 3 (2017 – 2020)

It wasn’t until the final few episodes of this season that I realized it would be its last. And honestly, I’ve dug this fun little show – it had no deep characterization or overarching story to speak of: each episode was just an emergency that could only be solved by problem solving, common sense, team-work, and one or more of the Thunderbirds. Something so straightforward, with a guaranteed happy ending, was good enough for me.

And you’d be amazed at some of the voice talent they managed to get hold of: the big sell is Rosamund Pike as Lady Penelope, but they’ve also featured Gemma Chan, Sacha Dhawan, Sheridan Smith, Sylvester McCoy, Jennifer Saunders – and that’s just this season! I came on board because Angel Coulby was voicing Kayo (an updated Tin-Tin) but was pretty touched to find they hired David Graham to reprise his role as Parker, and Sylvia Anderson, the original Lady Penelope, gets a chance to play that character’s great-aunt.

The scale model miniatures are designed at Weta Workshops and are truly gorgeous to look at, and even though the stakes are so high in many of the episodes, it still managed to be oddly reassuring. The idea that there are people out there who know what they’re doing, even if one of them is a teenager who knows how to fly a rocket ship into outer space, is extremely calming.

For some reason season three’s episodes were staggered between March 2018 and January 2019 (with that long a hiatus, you wonder why they didn’t just divide it into seasons three and four) but it all comes together in the two-part season finale, where they pull out all the stops and give every significant character a moment to shine when the boys launch a mission into deep space to rescue their missing father. Even EOS the AI programme, last heard in episode eight and whose actress I suspect became unavailable, is given the dignity of a quick shout-out.

Thanks Thunderbirds, it’s been fun, and I have to admit that the countdown always sent chills down my spine. Still have no idea what “F.A.B.” means though.

Legends of Tomorrow: Season 4 (2018 – 2019)

In my absolute determination to get through all these CW superhero programmes, and to watch the crossovers in their correct order with the corresponding lead-up in their respective shows, I thought there was no better way to kill time than a giant binge of the Arrow, Flash and Legends seasons that aired in 2018 – 2019 (I watched the corresponding Supergirl season last year and skipped the crossover episode).

I’ve still got a few episodes of Arrow and The Flash to go, so I’ll deal with them at the end of next month, but the shorter run of Legends meant I could wrap it up sooner. Then I gotta get prepped for the Crisis crossover, which apparently means I have to catch up on Black Lightning too…

In any case, the success of last season’s finale, in which the team merged together to form a giant plushy Beebo and fight a demon, clearly gave the writers’ room the courage to be as outlandish as they want. This has mixed results, as though there are more hits than misses, the misses are pretty inexplicable. They go all-out basically, with a Bollywood musical, a bloodthirsty unicorn, an evil fairy godmother who still acts like she’s come straight out of a Disney movie, a foul-mouthed puppet, a demon-possessed nipple, and a life-giving singalong.

The revolving cast has always been the show’s strength, as it can usher out characters whose arcs are complete, while bringing fresh blood into the narrative whenever needed. Season three had what was probably the best combination of characters and dynamics that the show will ever have, though that’s gradually taken apart here.

Amaya said her goodbyes at the end of season three, along with Jax and Professor Stein partway through, and this opens with Wally also gone without explanation – though no one seems to have noticed. Poor kid didn’t even get a farewell party.

The new arrivals include John Constantine, whose integration into the Arrowverse is now complete, Nora Darkh, who was given an out by Ray in the previous season and is now trying to become a better person, Charlie, a shapeshifter whose abilities mean the writers can keep Maisie Richardson-Sellers, and Mona, who is super-annoying.  

Constantine brings with him a brand-new plot – now the Legends have to deal with the magical creatures that’ve escaped from the hell after their actions in the last finale, which means hunting down unicorns, fairy godmothers, leprechauns and the like across the usual spectrum of time periods. This leads to several of the show’s more questionable storylines, like Nate’s father deciding to open a theme park to host the creatures they’ve been collecting, or a misbegotten romance between Nate and Zari, or Nate choosing to leave the Waverider and join the Time Bureau, which means more time in office spaces than period settings.

Sensing a common element here? Look, I don’t hate Nate, but it’s pretty clear that he’s the Creator’s Pet at this stage, with almost every other character having an important rapport with him, and his relationship with his father becoming a focal point of the overarching plot. I mean, they throw him a goodbye party when he leaves to join the Bureau, but we don’t actually see any less of him.

Constantine also gets a huge amount of focus, though that’s slightly more forgivable considering the team is dealing with all manner of hellbeasts and demons, and his relationship with an ex-boyfriend is fairly central to the plot. Astra also makes a return, which is fascinating since she was first introduced back on his own cancelled show and leads me to wonder if we’ll ever see Angélica Celaya as Zed or Harold Perrineau as Manny again (probably not).

His plot feeds into Ray’s, and Brandan Routh gets to have some fun as a possessed version of himself, and the return of Nora Darkh (played by his real-life wife) means he can finally get a love story that doesn’t end in death or abandonment. Nora gets some good material as well, and the girl we first saw strapped to a gurney in an insane asylum ends the season in a fairy godmother dress, singing hand-in-hand to help bring back a fallen comrade. That’s adorable.

But Mick and Maisie Richardson-Sellers’ Charlie are completely wasted, shunted aside to make room for insane amounts of Mona and Gary, the latter of which ends up betraying the team, gaining the power of a fairy godmother, and punishing the Legends by wishing them into humiliating circumstances. Naturally all is forgiven by the final episode. Have they been mean and dismissive to him? Yes. But what he does is weak and treacherous, and definitely not deserving of a second chance without any work put into it.

But that’s par for the course these days, isn’t it. If a character decides to go out and brutally murder innocent people, it’s everyone else’s fault for not giving them enough positive feedback.

And Mona, who is seemingly a three-year old in the body of a grown woman, but IMDB tells me her role is minimized in season five, so I won’t waste time complaining about her.

As for my two favourites, they’re not treated particularly well. Sara has gone from Captain of the Waverider to Agent Sharpe’s girlfriend, and honestly, I find Ava totally unappealing. She’s a black hole of demanding neediness who freaks out if something doesn’t go her perfectly prescribed way, and the fact these writers keep trying to shackle chill, laidback, adventuresome Sara to this joyless neurotic is just depressing. Most of her storyline this season is running around after Ava, so she barely gets to spend any time with her team or in her White Canary costume, and you certainly wouldn’t think she was the main character of the whole show.

As for Zari, she becomes Nate’s love interest this season, and though it’s cute and funny when she states: “we’re not passing the Bechdel Test” to the other women on the ship when they raise the subject of a hook-up, it gets continually less funny when said hook-up becomes the main  purpose of her arc this season. To add insult to injury, she’s wiped from existence when Nate is brought back to life and her place on the ship taken by her brother. Presumably she’s still alive somewhere, but because the Legends have changed the past, she’s not going to be the same Zari we’ve spent the last two seasons with. And it's not even the first time this franchise has wiped a female character from existence and replaced her with a male one!

But it’s not all bad. The theme of love having its own kind of power miraculously managed to work in a deliberately cheesy way. That the season opens with Woodstock and ends with a communal singalong to bring Nate back from the dead make for two strong bookends to the season, and they even foreshadow it throughout the episodes, from Nate’s dad singing James Taylor, to a quick cameo from Tinkerbell to get us prepped for the whole “clap him back to life” number. Hey it works, and if it was for a character I cared about more than Nate, I probably would have cried my eyes out.

Jane Carr is a hoot as the fairy godmother, there’s a fun cameo from Vandal Savage of all people, an amusing reason as to why the Legends didn’t join in this year’s crossover, the sight of the Monitor eating popcorn in the crowd, and a good setup for next season with Astra and the souls of history’s greatest monsters.

But this was an extremely mixed bag, and boy do these writers need to get a fix on what works and what doesn’t. Ditch the Time Bureau and all its shitty, time-wasting characters; stick with the Waverider crew and their squabbling family dynamics.

Elseworlds crossover (2018)

The fifth annual Arrow, Flash and Supergirl crossover (though the Legends sat this one out) starts with Barry and Oliver waking up in each other’s lives: Oliver is married to Iris in Central City, and Barry is crimefighting in the green hood in Star City. More concerningly, all of their friends and family members are convinced they’re in the right places, leading Barry to suggest visiting Earth-38 and finding Kara, who may exist outside the influence of whatever spell they’ve been laid under.

It’s a plenty filmy contrivance to get her involved, but whatever. The three of them team up in order to figure out what’s going on, Barry and Oliver try to train each other in their respective skill-set, and it eventually becomes apparent that the whole thing is a “test” organized by a being known as the Monitor, who has gifted a mad scientist with a reality-altering book as a way of… well, monitoring how Earth’s heroes will respond.

So ultimately it’s all just a setup for the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover (and it’s going to be ages before I can catch up on that) with first-time appearances for Elizabeth Tulloch’s Lois Lane and Ruby Rose’s Batwoman. (I’ve actually watched the first eight episodes of Batwoman, but stopped before the crossover episode. Like I said, there’s a lot to catch up on).

It’s turn-off-your-brain fun, not just in the identity-switch between Barry and Oliver, but the grand way in which they introduce us to Smallville and Gotham (the former is heralded by Remy Zero’s Save Me, and the latter gets all the ominous/triumphant drumming you could hope for). But was anyone else confused that Gotham exists in Earth-1? Yes there’s a joke from Oliver about how no one ever mentions it, but surely it would be better off existing in Earth-38, given the longstanding relationship between Metropolis and Gotham? And the fact that Batman and Superman are described as “frenemies” makes no sense. How do they know each other if they exist on different Earths?

I was also surprised to discover that The Flash is very much the axis on which this crossover turns, seeing as Caitlin and Cisco are the only two supporting characters to play a significant role across all three episodes (Diggle is in all three as well, but in a much less important capacity). It was ultimately more about the teams than the families: Iris, Felicity and Alex get the emotional focus of each episode with their respective superhero, but it’s really the working relationships between Oliver, Kara, Barry, Clark and (with this crossover) Kate that make up the crux of the story – with Caitlin and Cisco in surprisingly big roles. I mention it only because I’m curious to see if this dynamic is what plays out in Crisis.

Miscellaneous Observations:

My hopes for some of the dangling plots left in 2015’s Constantine to get closure (or at least a nod) in one of the Arrowverse shows are dwindling, as Jeremy Davies here plays John Deegan, who also had a fairly significant role as one of Constantine’s allies in his own show. It would be interesting to see how Constantine would react if he ever met him, though I did find out that Juliana Harkavy (now Dinah Drake) also had a guest-starring role in Constantine. Small world.

They finally establish that the pipeline cells under Star Labs actually do have toilets! I guess the secret unlawful prison is okay then!

It’s been a while since I saw season four of Supergirl, so it took me a while to realize what Clark and Lois were talking about in their discussion of Agent Liberty and Argo City. Right, Argo City… where Kara realized her mother was still alive, played by a completely different actress, with absolutely no emotional heft to their reunion at all. That Argo City.

In terms of just how massive this franchise is getting, John Wesley Shipp appears not as Jay Garrick, but as Barry Allen of Earth-90 – that is, as the protagonist of The Flash that aired in the nineties, meaning that yet another show has been retroactively added to this ever-expanding multiverse. Apparently they even used his theme music, composed by Danny Elfman twenty-eight years ago. I am impressed.

Remember when Amazo was the name of the ship that Professor Ivo captained off the coast of Lian Yu in the first season of Arrow, and it was just a fun little Easter egg for the long-standing DC fans? Now the actual A.M.A.Z.O. turns up, and… gawd, I hate this character. Having technology that can replicate any of the superpowers it’s attacked with is just ludicrous, and makes the android so absurdly powerful that its defeat always feels like random good luck.

There are some fun artefact cameos in the storage rooms of Arkham Asylum, and perhaps even a nod to Batman vs Superman given the appearance of the Flash appearing from another dimension with a frantic warning about what’s to come. There are probably dozens more gags and references that I didn’t pick up on, but this was a pretty fun ride and a nice setup to Crisis. Which I will watch… eventually.

Chernobyl (2019)

This is an incredible miniseries, but definitely not one you should be watching during lockdown. If you haven’t seen it already, just wait until things calm down, for its portrayal of government incompetency will only stress you out.

At just five episodes long, it recreates the night of the disaster and its aftermath, both immediate and ongoing. It’s distressing and it's terrifying, as much for the existential threat of radiation (your heart starts pounding every time you hear those Geiger counters) as it is for the secrecy and menace that exemplifies the Soviet Union.

The series was exhaustively researched, though inevitably some elements are changed – yet the writers have been surprisingly open about this. In the closing credits viewers are informed that Emily Watson’s character was an invention designed to represent all the scientists involved with monitoring the fallout of the disaster, and for the sake of consistency, there is no attempt by the actors to use any accents but their own.

But the power of this story cannot be denied, nor the way in which the actors, directors and writers choose to tell it. All dramatic liberties aside, there is such compelling truth in the way it all unfolds, with truth itself as the theme that links all the characters and the way their lives were altered by the disaster. As the final monologue of Richard Harris’s Valery Legasov points out:

To be a scientist is to be naïve. We are so focused on our search for truth, we fail to consider how few actually want us to find it. But it is always there, whether we see it or not, whether we chose to or not. The truth doesn’t care about our needs or wants. It doesn’t care about our governments, our ideologies, our religions. It will lie in wait for all time. And this, at last is the gift of Chernobyl. Where I once would have feared the cost of truth, now I only ask: what is the cost of lies?

The better something is, the less there is to say about it, but you don’t need me to tell you how chillingly applicable this message is to the world we’re currently living in.

Nancy Drew: Season 1 (2019 – 2020)

This is the latest in a what is now a very long line of shows/films taking familiar IPs and giving them a contemporary spin, though in this case the Nancy Drew stories are so emmeshed in their 1930s to 50s context that you have to wonder why they bothered. If there aren’t going to be tartan skirts and ascots then what’s the point? I’d give anything for a deeply stylized and book-faithful Nancy Drew series.

At the same time, it’s interesting to see what they’ve done with the familiar characters. Here, Nancy is a college dropout introduced having casual sex with Ned, who is now a car mechanic that goes by the name Nick, Bess is an impoverished lesbian living in a trailer, and George is Asian (the last name Fayne has been switched to Fan) with an alcoholic mother.

Yup, that’s pretty much what you’d expect from the CW. It’s a little baffling: though everyone has been “updated”, they missed an obvious opportunity to make George transgender, I’ve no idea why Ned is now being called Nick (Ned is hardly an old-fashioned name, especially compared to Bess or Nancy) and god forbid Bess be “plump” (to use the adjective most commonly ascribed to her in the books).

There is a single overarching mystery across the eighteen-episode season and it’s completely bonkers, involving a woman that’s murdered outside a crawfish restaurant where the protagonists work (and is perpetually void of customers) that’s somehow linked to the murder of a Prom Queen back in 2000. Everyone refers to that as “twenty years ago”, which is accurate but horrifying.

Despite their differences, Nancy, Bess, George, Nick and Canon Immigrant Ace team up to try and solve the mystery, which eventually gives way to the existence of demons and spirits. Yup, ghosts are real, which is a shame. Nancy occasionally dealt with supernatural activity in the books, but it always turned out to have a rational explanation, and – much like Scooby Doo – it kinda ruins our understanding of the franchise to change that.

Heck, even a murder is well outside the bounds of a Nancy Drew story, so if you decide to give this a go, be aware that eight episodes in we have the town sheriff saying in complete seriousness that: “someone in town has been tampering with the spirit world.” It gets progressively sillier, with random serial killers and psychopaths taking advice from evil spirits popping up, culminating with Nancy getting trapped in a haunted room and an evil sea-spirit terrorizing the gang with visions of their deaths. Is this show set on a Hellmouth?

But I loved the setting: a small maritime New England town on the coast? Hell yeah. It reminded me of poring over I Spy: Treasure Hunt as a kid, which was set in a near-identical location. There are nods throughout to book-related elements (Shadow Ranch, Lilac Inn, River Heights, and probably dozens more I missed) and there is something to be said about the way the five teenagers can barely stand each other at first, only to come together as a team as the mystery unfolds. Their dynamic is pretty cute, and reminded me of Buffy’s Scooby Gang from back in the day.

And they even brought in Scott Wolfe to play Carson Drew, who I haven’t seen since his Party of Five days. It’s kinda endearing how the CW is making sure all those nineties stars have comfortable work.

The English Game (2020)

Nothing but the promise of a decent period drama would convince me to watch anything involving football (or sport in general, if I’m being honest) but Julian Fellowes was credited as co-writer, so it seemed like perfect lockdown material.

It follows the athletic lives of Arthur Kinnaird and Fergus Suter, two football players who played not only for opposite teams, but different walks of life. Kinnaird is captain of an upper-class amateur team, while Suter has been secretly hired by a factory owner to help boost the strength of a working-class team. At this stage of the game’s development, professionals are looked upon with contempt, and their presence considered a form of cheating.

This leads to an interesting commentary on who “owns” the game: the upper-class players do so for entertainment, and argue that paying professionals will result in teams that are put together by those with the most money to spend on them – ignoring the fact that they already have the monetary advantage of better food and more leisure time to train.  

It’s pure Fellowes at times: plenty of sympathy for the lower classes, but a disdain for violent protest and union strikes. According to him, all it takes for fairness and equality to flourish is for one kindly gentleman to understand the people and use the power he wields for good. (History spoiler: it’s not). I also had to laugh at the fact that the upper-class ladies are depicted as supportive and sympathetic towards the working-class players, even above loyalty to their own husbands. Hah! The staunchest supporters of the status quo are always the privileged white women who benefit most from it.

But I don’t want to be too snotty about this, as the whole thing is written to be a crowd-pleaser. There are subplots concerning Arthur’s wife Alma and Fergus’s love interest Martha, who each have interests and storylines of their own (you can always count on Fellowes for this) and a good eye for period detail and dialogue.

Naturally there’s plenty of guff about how football is an intrinsic part of everyone’s life, and yet surprisingly little time spent on people actually playing football. Ah well, I liked it; a nice way to while away the lockdown.

The Letter to the King (2020)

This was apparently based on a bestselling Dutch novel for children, though something has certainly been lost in its translation to the screen. It’s hard to explain what it is exactly, but there’s just something off about its pacing, characterization, and complete lack of urgency in what is meant to be a pretty hectic quest narrative.

For instance, the protagonist’s stepfather gets two Character Establishing Moments: one is passionately defending his stepson’s bravery to the men that are mocking him, the other is telling said stepson that if he doesn’t perform well in a tourney, he’ll be a disgrace to his name. The whole story is filled with this sense of uncertainty, from the opening narrative, in which we’re told the lands to the north have waged war on a country “known only as Eviellan” (why “only” since the other named countries are also single-word names that have less syllables than Eviellan?) to the final shot, in which a flock of birds in the shape of a face reappear to remind us that this particular plot-point (the main character was attacked by them in the first episode) was never explained.

One of the characters in the main group of heroes betrays her comrades and gets off scot-free, it’s never entirely clear what the bad guy is doing or what he hopes to achieve, and the ostensibly important queen – who is actually a pretty fun character – mucks about in an irrelevant subplot about who she’s going to marry.

The gist of the story is that a young squire called Tiuri is placed with other candidates for knighthood inside a chapel to hold vigil throughout the night. They’re interrupted by a frantic knocking at the door, and on answering, Tiuri is given possession of a letter that will prove Prince Viridian’s treachery to his father. He rides off, his comrades are paid to hunt him down, and various adventures in the standard fantasy setting – taverns, ferries, monasteries – commence.

It’s beautifully filmed in New Zealand and the Czech Republic (I’m pretty sure they reused the castle from Prince Caspian) but it never quite finds its feet, or even the point of what it’s trying to convey. I watched all six episodes, and my response on finishing was: “huh.”