Reading/Watching Log #57

I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but we’ve got only three months left before 2021.

As it happened, I had some very overdue leave that needed to be taken, and in the two weeks I had off I decided to focus more on movies and books than television, leading to a whopping ten films watched and nine books completed.

This month was very much about the biopic: Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Marie Curie, Tonya Harding, Mary Shelley and Queen Anne (sort of), and the usual assortment of superheroes, fairy tales, and YA fiction. And somehow, two entirely separate stories about detectives called Agatha.

I also ended up watching Legend of the Seeker for the first time in years, which was fantastic. There was a Tumblr post floating around that said a lot of people rewatch things over and over again because there is a type of comfort to be derived from knowing how a story is going to pan out, and after being burned so badly by so many big-budget franchises, settling down to a series in which the heroes are uncomplicatedly good, the love story based on clear communication and mutual respect, and a plethora of interesting female characters, was like a balm to my soul.

I’ll keep posting about each episode separately, so there won’t be an entry for the season in full below the cut…

Not One Damsel in Distress by Jane Yolen

Well, the title says it all. These days there are probably more fairy tale compilations that eschew the cliché of the distressed damsel than those that traditionally feature them, but who am I to complain? I’ve read dozens of such collections by this point, but there are always a few inclusions I’ve never heard of before, probably because contemporary storytellers are now casting their nets wider to fill the pages of such books, leading to more international stories being shared. (Of course, every single one of them will also include Burd Janet and Kate Crackernuts, which are really not as rare as compilators seem to think).

Jane Yolen has been around for a while now, and she writes with confidence and wit, giving each girl a distinct personality despite the simplicity of the tales, managing to capture some of their culture and traditions, and thankfully not shying away from some of the more bloodthirsty aspects of tales. But perhaps the most touching part of the collection was Yolen’s introduction, in which she bequeaths this collection to her granddaughters, telling them they need the stories she never had as a child, ones that can show them how strong and intelligent they are.

Yet at the end of the book, there’s an open letter responding to this claim from her granddaughters, in which they point out they’ve already grown up with plenty of strong female characters across film, television and books, and that it’s just as important for boys to read female-centric stories as well.

Sometimes it’s nice to be reminded of how far we’ve come.

The Lost Tales by Isabel Otter

Yes, another one, and told with much the same motive and purpose as above. It’s a more attractive book, having coloured illustrations and text that is formatted with much more care than Yolen’s, but the stories are slighter and more impersonal. It also expands its scope to include material from around the world, though you can always tell if a particular tale is part of a much larger mythos that has to be severely pared back in order to fit the limits of a “fairy tale”.

But where Yolen often focused on warrior women, the protagonists of The Lost Tales are more about using their wits, compassion or innate talents (sometimes all three) to safely navigate the stories they’re thrown into. It’s a nice way of celebrating femininity without making every character a Bradamante or an Atalanta (though I’d never say no to a woman in armour either). Between the two collections, there’s almost a perfect balance of masculine and feminine traits in the heroines each chooses to illuminate.

And oh look, Burd Janet and Kate Crackernuts. Seriously, there is nothing “lost” about these tales.

Zatanna and the House of Secrets by Matthew Cody and Yoshi Yoshitani

I’ve been working my way through these DC graphic novels, which are essentially YA offerings to any newcomers that are unfamiliar with the most popular of the DC’s female character line-up (or at least, have only seen the recent films and want to learn a bit more about the likes of Princess Mera, Harley Quinn, Selina Kyle, Raven Roth, etc).

As such, each one is a standalone story that’s completely divorced from any greater continuity in regards to the DCU, largely existing as introductory primers on certain characters that establish their backgrounds, personalities, skill-sets… and not much else. Which in a way, must be extremely freeing for the commissioned authors and artists, who are given a fair amount of freedom in concocting their own stories within a wide framework.

Perhaps because she’s a second-tier character in the comics, perhaps because I personally wasn’t all that familiar with her outside her supporting role in Young Justice, but Zatanna’s story is easily the best of the series I’ve read thus far. Enhanced by Yoshi Yoshitani’s extremely stylized (but cute!) illustrations, we’re introduced to Zatanna, the daughter of a stage magician who lives in a strange old house that the rest of the neighbourhood whispers about.

When she leaves a school dance early after an altercation with her friends, she returns home to find her father missing and her house transformed into a sinister maze… think Labyrinth, what with a young girl forced to find a lost family member in a magical but hostile environment.

The strength of the story is its self-containment. Having read the books focused on Harley, Mera, Raven and Selina, I couldn’t help but feel they were an awkward blend of origin story and intertextuality, in which a wide variety of material from the comics is inevitably shoe-horned in despite not being particularly relevant to the story (Harley and Selina’s stories both include a young Bruce Wayne, for example).

But Zatanna is free to stand on her own two feet, and her story unfold on its own terms. My limited knowledge of her background meant I recognized her tactic of casting spells by talking backwards, and the presence of Klarion the Witch Boy, but they exist as an integral part of this story and not just irritant cameos.

As such, it truly manages the accessibility which I think was the modus operandi of this entire project. You could put this in the hands of any reader, even one that has never touched a comic book in their life and has no idea who Batman or Superman are, and they would not only understand but enjoy it.

Bulfinch’s Mythology by Thomas Bulfinch

After one-and-a-half years and over twenty reissues from the library, I finally finished.

Bulfinch’s claim to fame is that his three-volume compilation of myths and legends from around the work was the first work of its kind to make such things accessible to a wider English-speaking audience. According to him in his own preface, the main goal was to allow casual readers to better understand and enjoy the mythological allusions made throughout the work of popular writers and poets of the day (from Shakespeare to the Romantics).

The three volumes cover Greek and Roman mythology (with brief looks at Norse and Egyptian as well), the Arthurian legends (with some Welsh and Irish myths in there too) and finally the legends of Charlemagne, which were of most interest to me considering I had never come across them in their completed form before. 

Turns out they’re very closely related to the stories of King Arthur, in that they’re formatted around a court from which various heroes go on quests, but there’s some incredibly strange stuff in there. Merlin makes an appearance. There are Shakespearean levels of love potions and love-at-first-sight. A hippogriff! And then… Rinaldo ends up on the moon in order to find a cure for one of his comrades, a place full of all kinds of allegorical landmarks and strange symbolism. Nothing prepared me for that.

Reading through the work from start to finish was interesting in a number of ways. Occasionally a familiar name or plot would pop out that was clearly been repurposed by the likes of Tolkien or George R.R. Martin, but what struck me more was that Bulfinch’s Mythology itself has become a relic of an older time: namely, the Victorian Era. Bulfinch takes it as a given not only that Christianity is the religion his readers are part of, but that its teachings are literally true and correct (noticing any correlation between, let’s say, the crucifixion of Christ and Odin hanging himself from a tree, goes completely unmentioned).

Likewise, most of the sexual or violent aspects of the old myths are exorcised (Sappho is mentioned, but her sexuality is pointedly not) and you can’t help but notice a patronizing veneer whenever he talks about Eastern religion or culture – though there were moments when he surprised me (after all, the sanitation of the myths was done because he actually wanted women to read his work and become more familiar with the material. Baby steps, I guess).

It’s a window into another time that’s a window into another time, though I’m mostly relieved that I finally got through it.

Aggie Morton: The Body Under the Piano by Marthe Jocelyn

Who doesn’t love a girl detective? I think secretly we all wish we could be as precocious and tenacious as twelve-year olds who not only think it’s perfectly okay to question complete strangers about a murder, but actually end up solving mysteries before the police do. The protagonist of this book sneaks out in the middle of the night on her bicycle to deliver a message and I sighed with envy.

In case you couldn’t tell from the title, this is very much built around Agatha Christie’s early life: her family, her place of residence, her maiden name; it all matches up with the facts of Christie’s existence, but the author merely uses this as a template to craft a completely fabricated mystery that the young Aggie can solve: an unpleasant old woman is found dead at a local dance studio, and suspects abound.

Throw in the usual period-appropriate obstacles, and you’ve got a story that vibes incredibly well with this month’s Enola Holmes and Robin Stevens’s Wells and Wong detective series. It’s pretty light all things considered, and sometimes you just want a completely inoffensive work of fiction, which neither adds nor detracts from the world as a whole.

Darkwater Hall by Catherine Fisher

Funny story: I read this book YEARS ago, possibly when I was still in single-digits, and was able to retain nothing about it beyond the cover art, the notion of a deal with the devil, and the idea of a staircase that moved up and down through time. Then, when searching the library catalogue for another book entirely, this popped out at me and I wondered: “is this…”

Yes it was, though hilariously – that staircase barely figures into the story. It’s a throwaway bit of world-building, and I’ve no idea why I remembered it so clearly despite being so inconsequential. In any case, revisiting a book you haven’t read in ages and can only barely recall is always a treat, as if you’re lucky to find that it holds up, all sorts of images and notions of childhood can re-emerge.

In this case, Darkwater Hall reminded me of that blissful ambience I enjoyed so much in the books I read as a child: that very specific atmosphere concocted by writers based in Britain: of standing stones and forest paths and mist-soaked moors and ancient manor houses. Think Alan Garner and Susan Cooper and Lucy Boston and Jenny Nimmo’s The Silver Spider and Helen Cresswell’s Moondial and a couple of Diana Wynne Jones’s offerings.

This story is divided into two parts: the first dealing with a young slattern called Sarah whose family were once in possession of the grand Darkwater Hall before her grandfather gambled it all away in a card game. Bitter about how far her family has fallen, she’s in the right mental space to be manipulated by the new Lord of the Manor, who takes her on as an assistant in his alchemical experiments, and eventually makes her an offer: the return of her estate, rightful inheritance, and one hundred years of life in exchange for her immortal soul.

One hundred years later, and the community has (obviously) profoundly changed. Darkwater Hall is now a school, and Simon occasionally helps clean it for extra money – when he’s not avoiding the local bullies. But as Christmas arrives, he feels there’s something strange in the air, especially after he meets a mysterious girl who can see Tom… his twin brother who died at birth and has haunted him throughout his life (it’s not as random as it sounds).

There is plenty of connective tissue between these two time periods, but a lot of the story is deliberately kept opaque. In the hands of a lesser writer, this can often come across as lazy or seemingly riddled with plot-holes but Catherine Fisher knows what she’s doing, and you’re left with a sense of great forces working their will for and against the world, without getting anything spelled out for you. It fits the moody atmosphere of the novel perfectly, and was quite a trip to re-read after so long.

Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend

This one had been on my radar for a while, with it being frequently vaulted as “the new Harry Potter”. That label is just as much a curse as it is a compliment (and not just because J.K. Rowling refuses to stop digging that hole of hers) because… well, would you want your debut novel to be compared to a cultural juggernaut? I started reading and was unable to prevent myself from comparing the two.

There’s an eleven-year old outcast who is ushered into a world of magic and mystery, with little understanding of how important they are to the new society that surrounds them. There’s a sinister foe who is spoken of only in whispers, who has a connection to the protagonist that fills them with dread. There are school bullies, and magical trials, and wonderment and whimsy on nearly every page, from elaborate Christmas celebrations to special gifts on your birthday. Even the term “Cursed Child” comes up a lot.

But whereas Harry was ushered into the wizarding world with love and reverence for his status as The Boy Who Lived, Morrigan Crow has to be smuggled into her magical surroundings; an illegal immigrant with a big secret. Though she had about as much luck with her family as Harry did: born on an unlucky day, and so considered the harbinger of disaster and grief for every citizen in her village, she’s the bane of her father’s existence.

It comes as a profound relief when she’s whisked away by a Dumbledore analogue, the red-headed, top hat-wearing Jupiter North, who promises her a life well away from the stigma and misery of her old one, and is just as frustratingly obtuse when it comes to telling Morrigan pertinent information about her abilities. He kinda sucks.

But for Morrigan to stay in Nevermoor, she must join the Wundrous Society, and to do that she must pass four trials to test her abilities and talent. Problem is, Morrigan is very sure that she has nothing to offer the panel of judges, and Jupiter’s attempts to alleviate her fears is giving her twinkly smiles and telling her to “trust me.” Yeah, he definitely sucks.

Thankfully we have Morrigan to enjoy: rather gloomy and droll thanks to her miserable upbringing, but one who gradually comes out of her shell once she’s surrounded by kindness and warmth – though she’s never able to fully let go of the cruelty she endured as a child. I felt her anxiety and nerves very keenly, as well as her growing desperation at wanting to stay in Nevermoor.

But when I say “Nevermoor”, I’m not entirely sure what I mean. First of all, it’s not a moor but a city (yes, I know it’s a play on words, but bear with me) and one that’s not very clearly described in relation to the rest of Morrigan’s world… which also rather muddled in its presentation. There are four states, I think, which make up a Republic… and Nevermoor is a secret fifth state that nobody else knows about… for some reason? I also have no idea what Wunder is, how the Wundrous Society operates in relation to it, or why any of it is so important to this cast of characters. The world-building isn’t great, in fact it’s downright confusing.

But I’m in it for Morrigan herself.

Wundersmith: The Calling of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend

More than the overarching story of Morrigan’s trials and the strange forces that swirled around her in the first book, I enjoyed the little subplots in which she makes friends, explored the hotel in which she lives, or just had fun for the first time in her life. Townsend has a vivid imagination, and sharing it with the reader through Morrigan’s experiences was the best part of the novel.

So I was pleased to find that this was largely the case in the second book as well – though as with most sequels it also expands the world, puts the protagonist on the next step of her development, and delves deeper into previously established plot-points.

SPOILERS

If you’ve read the first book you’ll know that Morrigan is a Wundersmith, one of an elite group of magical people that can attract Wunder, the electrical-like magical substance that powers the world. Unfortunately, every recorded Wundersmith in history has been a villain: evil and twisted and highly dangerous, and there aren’t many people outside Morrigan’s inner circle that believe she won’t end up the same way.

But she’s so thirsty for friends and companionship that she’s willing to jump through any number of bureaucratic hoops to stay at the Wundrous Society, whether it’s suspicious teachers, boring classes, wary schoolmates – and then, blackmail letters. One of the conditions of her entry into the school is that no one outside her circle of eight classmates should know Morrigan is actually a Wundersmith.

But now the group is getting anonymous notes demanding that they complete certain tasks by a specified time, or else the secret is out – and they all get expelled. Now resentment takes hold of the group, which isn’t even the biggest of Morrigan’s worries: there’s also people disappearing from around Nevermoor, sightings of the dead coming back to life, and the lingering shadow of Ezra Spall, the other Wundersmith, who claims to have big plans for Morrigan.

BIG ACTUAL SPOILER

The book sort of putters along, dipping in and out of all these subplots without really committing to any of them, which makes for a surprisingly relaxing read (it almost reminded me of Studio Ghibli at times). Many of the threads remain dangling for the third book in the series, though it does wrap up the blackmail plot… and it turns out that the whole thing was manufactured by the school in order to test the loyalty of the students to each other.

I mean, my God. Gaslighting children into capitulating to blackmail demands under the assumption that they would have been expelled had they taken this matter to an adult? Who ARE these freaks? Jupiter North’s reticence on all things concerning Morrigan’s wellbeing in the first book was bad enough, but THIS is a whole new level of emotional manipulation. Morrigan, honey, I know this place has sentient rooms that refurnish themselves according to your personal tastes and elaborate themed parties every week that include ballrooms flooded with water in order to host real aquatic life – and that’s all very cool – but I’m not sure you want to be part of a society that thinks this secret test of character blackmail bullshit is acceptable.

Look, maybe Townsend is going somewhere with this, and there’s a reckoning on the horizon for the way things are run at the Wundrous Society. We’ll have to wait and see. But for now, it was like a fly in the pudding. Morrigan is a great heroine: observant and introverted, empathetic and self-aware, but also carrying around the great burden of having been raised to believe she’s unwanted. She deserves better than a largely indifferent mentor and a messed-up facility.

Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo

The second book in Bardugo’s Six of Crows dulogy, which I really should have finished last month (having completed Six of Crows in July) but got completely swamped with library books. The thing that most impressed me was how different it was from Bardugo’s debut trilogy of books, starting with Bone and Shadow. They were a fairly straightforward YA fantasy story, with all the familiar tropes: normal girl has special powers, love triangle between childhood friend and dark broody bad boy, fate of a kingdom at stake and all that. In terms of originality, all it really had going for her was her amazing world-building, which (in my opinion) kickstarted the current surge in Scandinavian/Russian-inspired fantasy.

But this duology has no chosen ones, no prophecies to be fulfilled, no restoration of the rightful king, no clear-cut villain – the main characters are the dregs of society (they’re part of a gang that’s literally called The Dregs) who are approached to pull off a nigh-impossible heist, and inevitably get in over their heads. Ultimately the enemy they have to defeat is the system they live in and their own inner demons, which automatically lends this story more depth and resonance than its predecessor.

The heist itself took place in Six of Crows, and Crooked Kingdom is about picking up the pieces. I trust it won’t be too much of a surprise to learn the teenagers (yes, all of these criminal geniuses are still adolescents) were promptly double-crossed after bringing back the object of their enterprise, and what follows is the story of how they expand their venture from personal gain to social reform… or at least what passes for it in a YA book. That wasn’t meant to sound snide, Bardugo is actually quite nuanced when it comes to depicting the cruelties of the world, and manages to walk a fine line between hope and realism.

What really interests me though is the fact that Netflix plans to combine the Six of Crows duology with the Shadow and Bone trilogy in their adaptation – which seems utterly bizarre to me. Not only do they have two completely different sets of characters that have nothing to do with each other whatsoever, but the tone and content is profoundly different. One is a straightforward fantasy, the other is a prison break. And sure, you can have a heist take place in a fantasy world, but when side-by-side with a story that has all the trappings of a classic fantasy… well, they’re going to go together like oil and water.

I’ll reserve judgment till I get the chance to see it play out on-screen (which may be a while yet), but it strikes me as a very strange creative decision.

Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox (2013)

I’m cheating again, but the mood came upon me to watch the DC animated films, Wikipedia told me that a select few were in the same continuity, and since I’m on leave at the moment, I can do whatever I want.

This is a weird story to adapt if you want to kickstart a new cinematic (or straight-to-DVD) universe. I’m not a comic book expert by any means, but this is a complex narrative and one that will only work for viewers who are already familiar with the usual iterations of these characters. For Flash to suddenly find himself in an alternate world where the likes of Wonder Woman and Aquaman are tyrannical warlords, you first have to know that this is profoundly out of character for them.

Still, I suppose there are only so many times you can depict a young Bruce Wayne watching his parents get shot outside a theatre, or an infant Kal-El being jettisoned to Earth before you’re ready to hit the ground running (no pun intended) and jump straight to the good stuff.

CW’s The Flash has also tackled the premise of the Flashpoint storyline: Barry Allen goes back in time to save his mother’s life, and ends up sending shockwaves through the space/time continuum. In this case he gets his mother back, but other DC characters are profoundly different people in very altered scenarios: it’s Thomas Wayne who became Batman after his son Bruce was killed, Kal-El never became Superman because his pod landed in Metropolis, and Wonder Woman and Aquaman are at war with each other over control of New York. Grappling with these seismic changes, Barry searches for a way to get things back to normal before things get worse (and boy do they get worse).

Weirdly, this film doesn’t actually depict his decision to go back in time and save his mother – Barry just wakes up one day and discovers he’s in the Flashpoint timeline, which means that he never really grapples with the realization that he’s responsible for what’s happened, or is tempted by the choice to keep his mother despite this dramatically changed new world. I even rewatched the beginning just to see if I had somehow missed a scene, and glancing through the film’s TV Tropes page, it would seem some explanatory elements from the comic book run were omitted.

And for what it’s worth, the continuity is a little scratchy this early on – many of the Justice Leaguers clearly know each other well in this story, though the next film in the series (Justice League: War) has them meet for the first time. Though perhaps that has to do with the residual changes made to the timeline, even after Barry sets things right. Eh, it’s time travel. I suppose I should just go with it.

The good or bad thing about this film (depending on where you stand) is that it takes every opportunity to “shock” the audience by leaning heavily into sex and violence in a way that’s borderline gratuitous. Have you ever wanted to see Billy Batson get killed while still a child? Or Wonder Woman have sex with Aquaman and then behead Mera to steal her crown? Or Batman break the Flash’s fingers in an attempt to extract information? Or a hideously malnourished Superman, the result of a lifetime of government experiments? Well The Flashpoint Paradox has you covered!

There are moments of heroism, but for the most part the alternate-world scenario gives them license to be as grimdark as possible. You’ll know your own threshold for stuff like this, but often adult cartoons that go this dark are usually just trying to see what they can get away with, as opposed to focusing on the story itself.

But the voice cast is pretty top-notch (Michael B. Jordan, Cary Elwes, Nathan Fillion and Ron Perlman are the biggest names), the animation good, and the stinger promising the inevitable arrival of Darkseid. There’s even a cameo from President Obama (it’s not voiced by him and he isn’t named, but it’s very clearly meant to be him). It scratched a very specific itch I had, so I’ll continue watching one of the series per month – though I may skip the ones I’ve already seen.

Inside Out (2015)

Sometimes the mood grabs you and you’re compelled to rewatch something. That doesn’t happen very often these days, as there’s just too much new material coming out to justify revisiting something I’ve seen already, but I woke up and had the irrepressible urge to watch Inside Out, for the first time since I saw it at the movies in 2015.

Its high concept premise is extraordinary really: a teenage girl called Riley is relocated with her family from Minnesota to San Francisco, finds it difficult to cope with the transition, makes the decision to run away and then changes her mind, returning home to reconcile with her parents. But that’s not where the bulk of the action lies: the story largely takes place inside Riley’s head, in which personifications of her emotions: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust, grapple with the ramifications of her inner turmoil and attempt to regain equilibrium.

I mean, damn. Who came up with that? Along the way we visit areas in Riley’s head such as abstract thought, the subconscious, and imagination land, where dreams are staged by actors with the help of a perception filter, and a “train of thought” glides over towering shelves of spherical memories, each colour-coded to denote what emotion helped form them. The level of creativity and imaginative force on display in this film is staggering, with hefty themes such as “sometimes it’s good to be sad” and concepts like “core memories make up our personalities” presented to the audience like a buffet of ideas to muse over. And you won’t forget the existential terror of Riley’s imaginary friend being forgotten forever in a hurry…

In hindsight, it’s a wonder that fandom didn’t embrace this premise more fully – the template of personified emotions could have inspired any number of memes, fan art or character metas, but despite its initial success, the film never really permeated pop-culture osmosis. Fandom doesn’t talk about a character’s “islands of personality” or their “Joy” is squabbling with their “Sadness” or anything of that nature, and there are no lines of dialogue or scenes that were repurposed to convey the wider fandom experience (I had a quick look on Tumblr, and the only post I can spot is Luz from The Owl House hugging Amity, interposed with the “GIRL GIRL GIRL” alarm scene that takes place in Jordan’s head at the end of the film).

Perhaps that’s for the best though; the film is so unique and insular that it can’t easily be co-opted for the usual fandom antics.  

The whole thing is bursting with colour and light, with especial beauty to be found in the bubbly textures of the emotions themselves (I can easily imagine that this was a nightmare for the animators) and a fine line drawn when it comes to our two protagonists, Joy and Sadness, who could have been unbearably annoying in the hands of lesser writers, artists and performers.

While I was at it, I also watched the short film Riley’s First Date? which capitalizes on the joke that ends the film: getting a glimpse at the emotions in other people’s heads and how the subsequent personality modifications effect their behaviour. (Basically a boy turns up at Riley’s house and her parents scrabble to ascertain whether it’s a date or not).

The Secret of Marrowbone (2017)

I am stunned that I had never heard of this film until three years after its release, and only because a couple of gif-sets appeared on my Tumblr dash. I mean, a period drama set in a bucolic American small town in the 1960s … I would have been first in line to watch this at the cinema!

And yes, it does look beautiful, bringing to mind the aesthetic of Pan’s Labyrinth and The Others in particular… but then there’s the actual plot. A clearly traumatized woman and her four children arrive at her childhood home, where they make a pact to leave the past behind them. They’re clearly running from something, and things become even more complicated when their mother dies of illness and they’re left to fulfil their promise to her – that they’ll stay secreted away until the eldest Jack is twenty-one and can legally take possession of the house.

And then one day, their father turns up. And then in the next scene, we’ve skipped forward six months. Clearly something happened in the interim that we don’t know about, and unfortunately it turns out that the family’s isolation isn’t so much a premise to be explored as it is a plot-point that allows the rest of the story (and its twist) to kick in.  

I would have been perfectly happy to watch a story about four orphans struggling to keep their mother’s death a secret from the world – especially with a helpful librarian and a suspicious lawyer sniffing about, but that’s simply not what the story is about. And the easiest way to be disappointed in something is to pretend it’s something it isn’t. The Secret of Marrowbone veers into a suspense-thriller when we begin to realize that the children’s father still poses a very real threat to them.

SPOILERS (I’M NOT KIDDING)

Also, can we call a moratorium on thrillers that end with either a. one of the main characters being dead all along, or b. most of the characters only existing in another character’s head? I’ve seen these twists so many times, and how they’re utilized here is not only predictable but also utterly cruel. There’s no real catharsis or peace to be found at the conclusion of the story (they try, but the loss is too great for it to work) just abject misery and failure.

There are some truly beautiful scenes and compositions in the first half of this film – if I could go back I would have watched them and pretended the kids lived happily ever after in their little Eden-like corner of the world.

I, Tonya (2017)

I was ten years old when the Kerrigan/Harding incident went down, and I remember it mainly because we had a VCR recording of an unrelated movie that contained adverts – including a news expose (60 Minutes probably) that described the participants as “Tonya the Terrible and Nancy the Innocent.” To this day, I can recall with perfect clarity the relish in which the voiceover guy pronounced those monikers, and it perfectly incapsulates the narrative choices the media made in covering this story – a Madonna/Whore Complex if ever there was one.

I, Tonya is a mockumentary-style dramatization of the assault on Nancy Kerrigan, an Olympic-winning figure skater whose knee was struck by a hired assailant with a police baton – though Nancy herself barely features in this movie. It’s really about Tonya Harding, whose ex-husband hired the hitman via a third party, and the degree to which Tonya knew about the attack has been the source of speculation since the day it happened.

The film covers her childhood, adolescence and early adulthood (it’s important to recall that all this happened before she was twenty-five), exploring her father’s absence, her mother’s emotional terrorism, and her abusive relationship with her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly. Throughout it all, she commits herself to figure skating, the one thing she excels at, the one thing that gives her life meaning, eventually becoming the first American woman to pull off the Triple Axel in a competition.

As we go, various figures in her life either sit for faux-interviews or interrupt the dramatizations to complain that what they’re doing never actually happened, thereby milking the Unreliable Narrator conceit for all it’s worth.

So what really happened? The film is less interested in that than it is in the inherent tragedy of Tonya’s life. This is a woman who just can’t get out of her own way; who seems incapable of disentangling herself from toxic relationships, and whose downfall comes because her inner circle is a circlejerk of dim-witted ineptitude, who sabotage her career simply because they got too caught up their own delusions of grandeur.

Throughout it all, Tonya refuses to take any responsibility for the problems that befall her, and much of it truly isn’t her fault – as she’s told over and over again, her redneck background and financial difficulties mean she’s looked down on by the skating community (specifically the judges, who refuse to give her the points she deserves because “we also judge on presentation”).

It takes us through the chaos and turmoil of the attack on Kerrigan, in which Tonya becomes the eye of the storm – every story needs a villain, and the press called open season on her entire existence, unable to resist the narrative of two feuding ice-skaters – one a trashy redneck, the other an elegant princess.

As it happens, Kerrigan also came from a poor background, and I was fascinated to find that in the years following this incident, she had her own (minor) fall from grace – this is perhaps the one glaring omission in the film itself; a complete lack of perspective given to Kerrigan. Perhaps they were respecting the real Kerrigan’s privacy, perhaps they didn’t have enough material to work with, but anyone who uses this as their introduction to the whole bizarre affair will be baffled at how little focus it has on the actual victim of the assault.

It’s a great movie though; truly the epitome of “truth is stranger than fiction”. It was great seeing Julianne Nicholson as Tonya’s soft-spoken coach, and Paul Walter Hauser is insufferably hilarious as Jeff’s “brains of the operation”, a man who actually seems to believe he’s an international spy who’s playing 3-D chess with everyone. He folds immediately under pressure, and as one of the reporters says of his cohorts: “we had no idea that a plan like this could be carried out by two of the biggest boobs in a story populated solely by boobs!”

And by the time all the chaos dies down, the news cycle has already moved on… to O.J. Simpson’s arrest. What a crazy trip.

Mary Shelley (2017)

There was plenty of material for a decent biopic of Mary Shelley, and it wasn’t until I checked her Wikipedia page that I realized how truly scandalous her early life was. She really did run off with a married man, facing ostracism and debt wherever she went, and giving birth to an illegitimate child who died very early. She really did take her stepsister with her when she left her father’s house, who in turn had an affair with Lord Byron and gave birth to her own illegitimate child, and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s wife really did commit suicide by drowning.

You can’t make this stuff up; if you tried, you’d be accused of being too melodramatic. This film covers Mary’s late childhood living with her father and stepmother in a bookseller’s, her meeting with Percy Shelley in Scotland, their running away together after he sought her father’s patronage, their tempestuous life together, that famous stay at Lake Geneva, and the trouble she faced in trying to be recognized as the true author of Frankenstein.

It’s a lot to cover, and there’s definitely a struggle for the script to find the correlations between Mary Shelley’s life and the content of Frankenstein – I’m no expert, but the novel is so unique, so unlike anything that ever existed before it, that I tend to believe it came to Mary through a random bolt of inspiration not unlike the lightning that struck the skies above Geneva that fateful night. Her life was awash in sadness and tragedy – not just her, but the likes of Percy Shelley and Doctor Polidori and Claire Clarmont also came to pitiful ends, and this sense of melancholy permeates the entire film.

At times the film isn’t quite sure what it’s trying to convey – the characters talk at length about love and death and philosophy, but it never quite settles on a solid thesis. Are they deconstructing Mary and Shelley’s love affair, or celebrating it? Is Frankenstein a reflection of Mary’s inner self or not? What exactly is she looking for in her life, and did she get it? Obviously real life is never so neatly arranged, and the script could only work within the parameters of what actually happened, but as a biopic it unfolds with far less sure footing than I, Tonya or On the Basis of Sex.

Still, it’s always fun to play: spot the B-lister! Stephen Dillane! Joanne Froggatt! Maisie Williams! Derek Riddell!

The Favourite (2018)

I was excited to watch Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara’s The Favourite, the latter having also penned this year’s The Great starring Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult, though ultimately it left me a little cold. The difference is no doubt to do with each story’s heart: The Great focuses on Catherine as a young woman: beautiful, optimistic, passionate and driven. The Favourite focuses on Queen Anne in her twilight years: aging, depressed and suffering from ill-health. Which one sounds more cheerful to you?

Though the witty dialogue and caustic humour remained the same, there is a dreariness to The Favourite that’s entirely missing from The Great, which very much revolves around the court rivalry that emerges between Sarah Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough and one of Queen Anne’s oldest friends (not to mention her secret lover) and the newly arrived Abigail Hill, Sarah’s younger cousin whose gambling father has ruined the family and left her destitute. She throws herself upon Sarah’s mercy, and finds herself installed as a scullery maid.

Sarah isn’t above using her influence with the Queen to promote her own political agendas, and Abigail makes the most of her long absences in and around Parliament to ingratiate herself with the Queen. Whereas Sarah is honest to the point of brutal (I’m sure you’ve seen the “you look like a badger” clip) Abigail is all wide-eyed awe and naivety. Much like the chocolate and cake that Sarah forbids her to eat, the insecure Queen Anne understandably wants to devour Abigail.

And so the stage is set: Sarah versus Abigail, each one armed with their own weapons, talents and intelligence; winner takes all. But the film continually refuses to paint either woman as wrong or right. For instance, Sarah genuinely cares about her country, and is sincere in her attempts to make the right decisions on its behalf, whereas Abigail is explicit about the fact she just wants to secure her own safety above all else.

But Sarah is determined to back a costly and devastating war that nobody actually wants to fight, and even as Abigail’s desperate social-climbing grows ever more mercenary, we’re never allowed to forget that her determination to regain her status is not born out of greed or ambition, but a very real terror of prostitution and destitution. This commitment to moral ambiguity is both the film’s strength and weakness: you can’t like either woman, but you can’t judge them either, so all you can do is watch and feel depressed.

They’re doing what it takes to survive, it makes both of them miserable, and there are no good choices. If only Sarah had been willing to share Anne with a woman who probably would have fallen out of favour eventually. If only Abigail had stopped at her advantageous marriage and left it at that. If only they didn’t live in an 18th century patriarchy, where the menfolk are ready and willing to destroy both of them if they don’t destroy each other first.

Queen Anne’s pet rabbits are introduced early as a heavy-handed metaphor for the surplus of miseries that she’s endured, so it comes as no surprise that the film’s final shot depicts how much they’ve multiplied since the beginning of the story.

All that aside, however, it is fun to spot Tony McNamara’s tells – not just his ear for scathing dialogue, but the debauchery of court, the world-weariness of women (both this and The Great have a casual inquiry as to whether anyone has been raped), Nicolaus Holt, and ridiculously hilarious anachronistic dancing. I defy you to watch this and not laugh:

On the Basis of Sex (2018)

Well of course I was going to watch this movie this month; in fact I did so the day after Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s passing and cried like a baby.

At the time we meet Ruth in this biopic she’s already married with a baby daughter. We watch as she enters Harvard Law School, learns that her husband has testicular cancer, and struggles to find a job after graduating from Columbia Law School (she transfers after her husband gets a job in New York because the Harvard Dean refuses to let her complete her Harvard degree there). Finally she takes a job as a professor, teaching “Sex Discrimination and the Law”.

Inspired by her daughter and students, Ruth takes on Moritz vs Commissioner, a tax law case in which a man was denied a tax reduction for the nurse he hired to assist him in taking care of his elderly mother while he continued to work. Realizing this is an example of a man being discriminated against on the basis of his sex (because the law assumes only women can be caregivers) Ruth accepts his case in the hopes of setting a precedence that can be drawn upon in future scenarios that discriminate against women.

As someone who has very little understanding of how the law works, the film does a good job of explaining the ins and outs of why this case is important and what it might mean for the future of American law. There’s a frustrating kind of poignancy in the fact that the case which kick-started this particular branch of the woman’s rights movement had to be centred around the injustice done to a man – as Ruth points out, male judges will be more sympathetic to a fellow man than whatever woman they could have found suffering under the same prejudice – as with most everything, it’s first and foremost their feelings that have to be taken into consideration.

Before this I would have described Felicity Jones as a good actress but not a great one (as much as I liked Rogue One, her performance was a little underwhelming) though here she does a fantastic job of depicting Ginsberg’s strengths and flaws, with a calm surety that covers deep reserves of righteous anger. I loved the costume designer’s choice to frequently dress her in a deep vivid blue; it gives her the colour-based iconography of a superhero, especially in the film’s final shot, where Jones climbs the steps of the Supreme Court building before Ginsberg herself appears to make the final few steps.

Armie Hammer backs her up as her slightly-too-good-to-be-true husband, with Justin Theroux and Kathy Bates in supporting roles, and Cailee Spaeny as the teenaged Jane Ginsburg, a role that deserves more credit considering she excellently balances the inherent brattiness of that stage in life with the growing realization that her mother is on the verge of changing history. Directed by Mimi Leder, I was also fascinated to discover that Daniel Stiepleman – Ginsburg’s own nephew – wrote the script.

It’s a complete love letter to this incredible woman, and why the hell shouldn’t it be? Even in toning down some of the chauvinism she faced (there’s nothing of the vile right-wing slander she experienced over the years) the mark she made on American history deserves to be honoured.

The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019)

I’m going to have to reconcile myself to the fact that my “female protagonists and female directors” New Years Resolution just hasn’t worked out the way I initially planned. There were just too many enticing films which didn’t fit those prerequisites that I couldn’t say no to. Armando Iannucci’s take on Dickens’ David Copperfield was one such film, especially after watching his Avenue 5 earlier in the year (still gotta get to Veep though). Along with Tony McNamara, he’s currently one of my favourite screenwriters, as both are razor-sharp when it comes to dialogue, and aren’t afraid to give plenty of it to their female characters.

Of course, that’s more difficult with David Copperfield, in which there are few female characters of note, and two of them are bland love interests. Iannucci does his best with the likes of Agnes and Dora – and I was especially grateful for the kindness with which Dora is eventually ushered off-stage – but Dickens himself only had four types of female characters: angels of the house, tragic waifs, cruel battle-axes and deranged maiden aunts.

The joy of this particular adaptation is to be found in the cast. Never has a film been so gleeful in its colour-blind casting, not only Dev Patel as Copperfield (he’s perfect, it’s ingenious, there’ll never be another acceptable take on this character) but Rosalind Eleazar as Agnes, Benedict Wong as Wickfield, and Nikki Amuka-Bird as Mrs Steerforth. There are no weird looks, no self-conscious congratulations – they have simply chosen the best people for the roles, and it pays off magnificently. We’re also treated to Tilda Swinton as Ms Trotwood, Hugh Laurie as Mr Dick, Ben Whishaw as Uriah, and Peter Capaldi as Micawber (Gwendoline Christie as Jane Murdstone also features, but between Hunger Games and Star Wars, I’m beginning to despair that she’ll ever get a meaty big-screen role).

Everyone is so energised and enthusiastic, you can feel it emanating through the screen, and that’s reason enough to watch this take on the material.

Because of course, this is one of Dickens’s longest novels, so there’s inevitably going to be a deep sense of truncation with what plays out on the screen. People and places whizz by at a hectic pace; every time you think things will slow down and we can get to an actual plot, there are still twenty more characters left to be introduced. I almost found myself wishing they could have completely done away with some of the storylines (as memorable as Micawber is, is he really necessary?) and focused on one particular thread of Copperfield’s life – as it is, the entire plot involving the Peggotty family and their upturned boat feels like it belongs in a completely different film, and that’s not even getting to Uriah Heep’s nefarious plans for the Wickfields. The story can’t help but feel bloated to the point of internal combustion.

Still, Iannucci is clever in finding the thematic thoroughfare throughout all three of the major storylines: that of an interloper encroaching on domestic bliss and leaving pain and misery in his wake. It’s not difficult to see the similarities between Mr Murdstone destroying Copperfield’s happy childhood home, Uriah trying his level best to do the same to the Wickfields, and Copperfield himself being the unwitting accomplice in the destruction of the Peggoty family with his introduction of Steerforth into their midst (there is a lovely moment in which Copperfield returns to their boat as an adult, finding it very different from the idealized vision he’s carried of it as a child).

But Copperfield himself is more an agent of joy than misfortune: he finds a way to alleviate Mr Dick’s anxiety and his aunt’s financial difficulties, and there’s strength to be found in his absolute innocence (even as it makes him excruciatingly vulnerable). It’s a classic Iannucci sequence when David realizes he’s in love with Dora, and so sees her name and visage everywhere he looks – I won’t give away the pinnacle of this gag, but you’ll know it when you see it and laugh as much as I did.

For all my complaining about the squished-in curtailing of the story, there are bits and pieces that are missing. It’s a shame they skip that wonderful moment of Mrs Gummidge rallying herself (and the family) when Emily goes missing, and Rosa Dartle is exorcised completely (she’s easily one of Dickens’s most fascinating female characters, though they give her facial scar to Mrs Steerforth instead) but Iannucci is clearly familiar enough with the book to keep little details such as Dora offering to hold David’s pens, even as he takes much of Dickens’s sermonizing and plays it for laughs instead (Copperfield’s drunken night out is comedic instead of shameful, and – as mentioned – Dora gets a much kinder send-off).

I really loved it, mostly for its wit and warmth and the way the cast embrace their roles – it really feels like they believe they’re part of something special, and that Dickens, of which this was his most personal and autobiographical novel, would have approved.

Radioactive (2020)

My month of biopics continues; this one covered the life and times of Marie Curie. As played by Rosamund Pike, she is brittle and imperious, with little time for sentimentality. It takes us through the main beats of her life: meeting with and marriage to Pierre Curie, their experimentation together, his untimely death under the wheels of a carriage, her controversial affair with a married man, the Nobel Prizes, the nationalistic prejudice she faced in Paris, and the medical work she and her daughter engaged in throughout World War I.

What sets this biopic apart from its fellows is the use of flashforwards, depicting what history does with the discoveries that the Curies make, whether for good or ill – cancer treatment, atomic weapons, nuclear testing, and of course, Chernobyl. It’s an interesting narrative conceit, but these segments are so long that they severely detract from the flow of the film itself.

There are a few other annoying bits and pieces – I’m not sure Marie could have been that ornery in public life, and there’s the inevitable argument between husband and wife in which the latter accuses the former of treating her as a lowly female and taking credit for her work, even though he’s clearly done no such thing across the entire course of the film. It’s like they knew they had to wring some sort of feminist rage out of Marie, but forgot to add the part where her husband actually fails her in some way (she also has to deal with condescending male peers, but she clearly couldn’t care less about them).

A few familiar faces dutifully turn up for a pay-check: Simon Russell Beale, Aneurin Barnard (popping up for the second time this month), Katherine Parkinson – and then who should appear but Anya Taylor-Joy as Marie’s adolescent daughter. I laughed out loud, and I honestly don’t know why this game delights me so much.

As it happens, I watched this before On the Basis of Sex, and during that movie I found myself pondering the fact that eventually Marie’s work will figure heavily in the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg once her husband is diagnosed with prostate cancer. Realizing such a thoroughfare exists through the lives of these two women was surprisingly inspiring.

Enola Holmes (2020)

So nice, I watched it twice. And guys, you have to understand how incredibly rare that is for me, though it probably only happened because I’m currently on leave. But this movie is the definition of charming – it takes your hand and says: “just let me lightly entertain you for two hours. I’ve got fun character actors and pretty cinematography and a winning heroine and a plot you don’t have to think too hard about.”

Based on the six-book series by Nancy Springer (I made an attempt to get hold of them before this dropped on Netflix, but time was against me) it tells the tale of young Enola Holmes, the hitherto unmentioned little sister of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, raised by their mother in a country house in near-isolation. When she wakes up on her sixteenth birthday, it’s to discover that her mother is missing, leaving behind only a gift of assorted cyphers and codes and booklets that may reveal her whereabouts.

With the arrival of her brothers and the imminent threat of finishing school, Enola runs away to London in pursuit of her mother, colliding with a similarly-aged runaway marquis on board a train who is grappling with his own family problems. The two join forces to escape a man with a bowler hat intent on murder, and two distinct plots begin their intwining dance: Enola’s quest to find her mother, and the mystery surrounding the assassination attempts on young Tewkesbury’s life.

What sets it all apart from the usual YA fluff is Millie Bobby Brown as Enola, who (if Stranger Things hadn’t already tipped you off) is a tour de force. It’s not a flashy, iconic role in the same way Eleven is, but there is a lot resting on her ability to win over the audience and carry us over some of the flimsier aspects of the plot. Breaking the fourth wall to make little asides to the viewer is always a hard sell, and the inevitable Mary Sue accusations were hanging over her head (she’s the unmentioned younger sibling of a famous literary character for heaven’s sake) but she not only carries it off, but does so in a way that looks effortless.

(Weird point of comparison: Anne Hathaway pulls off Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises, but she is clearly working incredibly hard to do so).

The film is very much inspired by the tone and aesthetic of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, what with the swift-cut editing between fight scenes, deductive scenes, the seeding of clues and the moments of revelation, but also Fleabag, given the aforementioned fourth-wall breaking (and I definitely laughed on finding out that director Harry Bradbeer has indeed worked on Fleabag). This seems to be a point of some contention among the reviews I’ve read, but Brown handles it with aplomb, leading to some of the film’s best scenes – on hearing Tewkesbury in distress on the train, she recalls her mother telling her to focus on her own problems, and then turns to the audience with a silent “just give me a second” raise of her finger before heading back to lend assistance. It’s gorgeous.

There are clearly some holes in the plot if you peer too closely: like what on earth was Enola’s mother thinking?? She just up and leaves her daughter on her sixteenth birthday without telling her what she was up to, even though a simple explanatory note with the words: “burn after reading”, would have sufficed? It was a profoundly dick move to pull on your own child, and (even if you take into account the possibility that it was some kind of elaborate test) a completely unnecessary one.

Furthermore none of the adults in Enola’s vicinity seem particularly fussed at the fact that such a young woman is running around London unsupervised – but then, this is a version of London where the streets are clean and the sky is blue, so maybe they knew instinctively that she would come to no harm… even though the fight scenes with the assassin are staged deadly seriously, with blood and suffocation and strangling. Enola actually ends up killing a guy before the end. Yeah, there’s also maybe a bit of a tonal problem at work throughout.

But the rest of the cast are game, turning up in in supporting roles with the understanding that the show belongs to Enola, and giving us the chance to play “spot the British thespian” – Madame Maxime from Harry Potter! Elinor from Sense and Sensibility! Caroline from Killing Eve! Burn Gorman, doomed to play slimy villains for all time! And naturally, Helena Bonham Carter as the only woman who could conceivably raise the likes of Sherlock and Enola Holmes, Sam Claflin playing against type as the stuffy Mycroft, and Henry Cavill looking hilariously buff as Sherlock (not that I’m complaining).

And the best part: no Moriarty.

Having watched Enola Holmes and On the Basis of Sex this month, I was struck by a similarity: both are essentially about the progression of the feminist movement, the excruciatingly small steps taken on the road to gender equality, as achieved through court proceedings and political reforms. And in both cases, the woman who are struggling to win this seemingly-miniscule inch-forward must do so by making sure that men are in the right place, the right frame of mind, and with the right levels of sympathy towards making a change, in order to achieve their goal.

For Ginsberg, it’s appealing to an all-male panel of judges on behalf of another man who has been discriminated against on the basis of sex, knowing her gambit will only work with a male plaintiff to stir up the necessary feelings of camaraderie among the judges. For Enola, it’s saving the life of a young lord who has the deciding vote in a Reform Bill (presumably 1884’s Representation of the People Act) that teeters on passing in the Houses of Parliament. The lord in question has already decided to vote in favour, but it’s up to Enola to get him safely to his destination.

I… don’t really have any point to make with this, only that the pattern of “woman must rely on men to make the right choice for the sake of progress” was apparent in both films, and lends both a certain amount of poignancy. God knows we’re still fighting this fight, and these stories underline just how contingent it has so often been on nothing but the goodwill of men who have held the power throughout.

Agatha Raisin: Seasons 1 – 3 (2014 – 2020)

I’m a sucker for a cozy mystery set in a small English village, and M.C. Beaton’s mysteries (always well-stocked at the library) are so much the embodiment of that subgenre that the main character is clearly named after Agatha Christie – and has a lot of Miss Marple in her too.

Agatha Raisin has resigned from a successful P.R. career in London and settled in small rural Carsley, where her ostentatious outfits and brash persona (let’s be honest, she’s totally a Karen) cause a bit of a stir – all the more so when she takes up a career in private detecting. As with many small fictional villages, there is a surprising number of mysterious deaths, and Agatha takes the opportunity to start sleuthing…

Of course, any amateur detective needs a posse, and Agatha’s begins with her single-mum cleaning girl Gemma and gay ex-assistant Roy (commuting in from London on a surprisingly regular basis), soon to be joined by refreshingly chill vicar’s wife Sarah and rather hapless lord-of-the-manor Charles Fraith. And of course, the inevitable love interest: silver fox and next-door-neighbour James Lacey, who provides the Will They Won’t They tension – but I’ll get to that.

There’s also the police force: lovelorn DC Wong and DI Wilkes, the only two people of colour in the entire village – aside from the vicar – and the somewhat uncomfortable comic relief (not in regards to their race, but the fact that they’re just not funny). Finally, Toni Gilmour turns up in the third season to replace Gemma, who is last mentioned as having going on a camping trip she presumably never comes back form.

Let’s be honest, we don’t really watch these shows for the mysteries, but for the character dynamics and bucolic atmosphere. The stabbings and suspects and blood-soaked carpets are usually window dressing to the persona/tactics of the detective and the sight of rolling English hills. In this case the show stumbles more often than it soars: as mentioned the humour is awkward and cringy (aside from Ashley Jenson, no one has any comic timing), and Agatha herself can get more than a bit obnoxious at times.

And though I was at least partly drawn to the show on the basis of its lead character being a. single and b. over forty-five, the writing just will not stop harping on the fact that Agatha doesn’t want to be either of these things. *sigh* Constantly fretting over their age and singledom status is something women only worry about because television shows like this one tell them they should be worrying about it – the sight of an older woman living her best life with her found family apparently just can’t not include handwringing over her crow’s feet.

This leads to the aforementioned romance between herself and James Lacey, which is so repeatedly on-and-off-again that I stopped caring. Actually, I didn’t much care to begin with, as James is a complete stick-in-the-mud whose attraction to Agatha doesn’t make much sense, as they have no shared interests, no chemistry and no ability to have an honest conversation. I much preferred her with Charles Fraith, who may be a bit of a cad, but at least has a personality and knows how to have fun.

Annoyingly, the moment in which the show demonstrates that James is more worthy of Agatha than Charles is when the two men are discussing what to do about her disappearance: James insists that she’s in trouble and needs help, while Charles trusts that wherever she is, she’s got things under control. Turns out that the guy who doesn’t infantilize her was wrong, and they all rush off to rescue her from that episode’s killer… who Agatha manages to overpower on her own anyway. Gah.

In true British broadcasting quirkiness, the first season is made up of a ninety-minute pilot episode and eight forty-minute episodes, the second season is three ninety-minute episodes, and the third is four forty-minute episodes, each divided into two halves. The inconsistency is almost funny, and I’m looking forward to seeing how season four will be distributed.

Despite my griping, I don’t regret watching, as it is light and amusing and a perfect example of cosy mystery series… I just hope that James stays on his book tour.