Reading/Watching Log #71

This month was all about spies and espionage, which not only meant three James Bond films, but also two television shows – one for adults and one for children – that first aired back in 2001, which I’m shocked to say was twenty years ago.

I also found out that three similarly-themed children’s books from various series I’ve read in the past have all released new instalments... pretty much at the same time! Enola Holmes, Wells and Wong and Sophie and Lil have all had unexpected continuations of their stories when I assumed they had come to a close. So that was a nice surprise.

And some Alex Rider, because you can’t have a spy-themed month without him.

Star Wars: Doctor Aphra: Fortune and Fate by Alyssa Wong and Marika Cresta

I’ve sworn off all things Star Wars (and Game of Thrones, and Marvel) for the time being, but on seeing that Doctor Aphra had a new graphic novel series, I couldn’t resist. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but she’s the best thing to come out of Disney’s acquisition of the franchise, and she runs rings around any of the company’s other attempts to deliver on complex, dynamic, multi-faceted female characters.

A rogue archaeologist, a mastermind criminal, a coldblooded assassin – Chelli Aphra has plenty of identities, though recently it appears she’s trying to grow something of a conscience. Maybe.

Having changed creative hands from creator Kieron Gillen to Alyssa Wong, you can’t help but feel there’s been a bit of a downgrade (though in fairness, this is just the first instalment of a new adventure; there’s plenty of room for improvement). The dialogue isn’t as snappy and Aphra’s ultimate control over the heist (her trademark characteristic) isn’t that impressive, whereas in the past readers have been left in awe at her cunning and foresight.

Neither is the story itself that creative: a quest to a very-easily-found lost city that hides two rings of immense “magical” power? There’s not a lot you can do with that, and aside from the aliens, droids and distinctive sci-fi grunge aesthetic, it doesn’t really feel like a Star Wars story either. Perhaps I should be commending Wong for trying something new, but if an archaeologist in the galaxy far, far away isn’t searching for something at least tangentially related to the Jedi or the Force, it feels a little weird.

There are traitors and backstabbers and double-crossers, though the villain of the piece is a spoiled rich boy who wants to accumulate precious works of art just so he can destroy them. That’s... a very specific brand of villainy, so we’ll see how this pans out in the instalments to come. If nothing else, he makes a perfect foil for an amoral archaeologist/thief who nevertheless respects the pieces that she’s stealing (for the most part).

Small Spaces by Katherine Arden

I nearly got through this in October, but just missed the cut-off day! There’s something about scary books for children that always intrigue me. As a kid who was fully into the Goosebumps craze back in the day, I ask myself: just how scary are you allowed to go?

Katherine Arden (better known as the author of The Bear and the Nightingale trilogy, which I will get to soon, dammit) manages to offset some of the terror with a rural, folklorish atmosphere. Pitting kids against a trickster spirit from a dark fairy tale is somehow intrinsically less scary than if they were up against... I don’t know, a demon from hell or something.

Olivia is still grieving the death of her mother and resisting any attempts from the remaining adults in her life to reengage with extracurricular activities such as chess or mathematics club. Mostly she finds refuge in reading, which is why a strange encounter with a woman at Lethe Creek, one who is attempting to throw a strange little book into the water, ends with Olivia grabbing said book and making a dash for home.

The story is written by a farmer’s wife who grows increasingly concerned over her husband’s behaviour and his claim that he’s made a deal with “the smiling man”. Olivia is still reading during her class’s fieldtrip to Misty Valley Farm, which seems to be the location of the events described in the old book. Then, on the return trip, the bus breaks down and the driver utters a strange warning: “run”.

Small Spaces is one of those puzzle-box plots in which a bunch of seemingly random things happen, only for everything to eventually snap together and form a coherent whole by the end. Sure, there are some stretches of credibility (such as the importance of the term “small spaces”, which turns out to be... not hugely important really – a high space, or an isolated space would have worked just as well) but for the most part everything hangs together nicely.

After reading the Harrow County graphic novels last month, this was a fun continuation of that particular aesthetic: pumpkins, mists, scarecrows, acres of farmland, miles of forests, and a half-tamed wilderness teeming with ghostly spirits. Olivia’s personal hang-ups are tied in well to the misadventure that befalls her, and I’m always up for a battle of wits and will between young mortals and ancient fey creatures.

Dead Voices by Katherine Arden

The direct sequel to Small Spaces, this changes locations but continues characterization, with the same basic premise: a battle of wits between three adolescents and an ancient trickster-spirit (known as “the smiling man”). This time around Ollie, Coco and Brian travel with the formers’ parents to Mount Hemlock to enjoy some skiing, only for things to go south very quickly.

Snowed in and suffering a power outage, the trio are stuck with their parents, the lodge-owners and the ghost hunter Mr Voland in the middle of nowhere as the temperatures drop. Learning that the lodge used to be an orphanage that’s said to be haunted by the ghost of several children and their vicious headmistress, the friends grow increasingly nervous as all sorts of apparitions start making themselves known...

It’s a fun, spooky book, but it doesn’t have the autumnal ambiance of Small Spaces, and the solution to the “game” they find themselves in not quite as clever. Furthermore, there are some elements that don’t quite fit into the unfolding story – one of the ghosts is that of a missing teenager who got lost on the mountain while on a skiing trip, but he never really affects the story in any meaningful way, and doesn’t have much in the way of characterization or closure either.

The focus is on Coco rather than Ollie as the protagonist this time (is it safe to assume that any third book will give Brian the spotlight?) and I have to say I preferred her to Ollie. With her short stature and pink hair, Coco is used to being underestimated and learns to use this to her advantage, especially when up against an ageless chess-master determined to have his revenge on those that thwarted his plans the last time around.

As a sequel it’s a little week, but I’ll stayed tuned to see if a third and final book can pull all these threads and characters together. Surely if the smiling man has tried to take his revenge once, he’ll try again, and third time’s the charm when it comes to defeating evil.

Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb

The second book in Robin Hobb’s Farseer trilogy is at least twice as long as the first, and contains all the pros and cons of the High Fantasy genre, reminding me of why I don’t read much of it, and why it nevertheless builds up massive fanbases.

Basically, the world-building is immersive and detailed, the plots are both intricate and epic in scope, and even if you don’t immediately vibe with the characters, you end up sending so much time with them due to the massive page-count that you end up invested despite yourself.

FitzChivalry, bastard son of the former King-in-Waiting and now a trained assassin, is having something of an identity crisis. Ensconced in Buckkeep fortress on the shore, Fitz moves from adolescence to early manhood as he negotiates the dangerous world around him: having pledged fealty King-in-Waiting Verity and his Queen Kettricken, he is acutely aware of the threats that surround the royal couple: namely an aging king, an ambitious younger princeling, and a number of “Skilled” individuals who can communicate with each other across long distances and whose loyalty is in doubt.

Then there’s his love for the servant girl/chandler Molly, whose presence he must keep secret from his enemies, the Wit-bond he’s made with a stray wolf, something that he must keep secret from his allies, and always the ongoing threat of the Red Ship Raiders, who plunder the shores and leave their victims “Forged” – that is, mindless and emotionless shells of their former selves who prey on their one-time neighbours.

King’s Assassin contains that delicate balancing act of most High Fantasy: court intrigue, an existential threat, and a coming-of-age story. This was published too close to the release of the first books in George R.R. Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice to fairly accuse either author of copying anything from the other, but there are several eye-opening similarities between the two series, from humans that form a telepathic kinship with wolves, to creepy fools that pronounce strange portents, to a spoiled last-in-line boy-king who doesn’t know what to do with power once it’s in his hands... the parallels aren’t so much a coincidence as a staple part of fantasy, particularly this branch of the genre.

For me, High Fantasy is such a time commitment that I end up avoiding it, and because I have an annoying habit of finishing everything I start, I’m often left dragging myself through pages upon pages of material that I just don’t care about that much. It’s a curse.

So I couldn’t tell you why I decided to read this after so many years; the urge just crept up on me and here we are. I’m still not hugely engaged by the story or its characters, so I’ll read the third and final book in the trilogy (Assassin’s Quest) and call it a day, but with the renewed interest in High Fantasy (new seasons of The Witcher and The Wheel of Time are about to hit) it was nice to dabble my toes in the genre a bit.

The Magician King by Lev Grossman

Yikes, what to say about this one? The direct sequel to The Magicians, it picks up with protagonist Quentin and his friends Eliot, Janet and Julia as kings and queens of Fillory, in what is basically a riff on the end of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, when the Pevensie siblings take their thrones and then have an off-screen reign before returning to the real world (and their adolescent bodies) by the final chapter.

Like a lot of authors (Catherynne Valente and her Fairyland books spring to mind) Grossman is obviously interested by the implications and consequences of this, and The Magician King starts with Quentin once more grappling with his greatest enemy: ennui. Having reached his happy ending, he’s at a loss at what to do next. What do kings do when they’ve defeated the villain and inherited the kingdom?

He decides: they go on a quest. Using a trip to collect overdue taxes from a faraway island as an excuse, he puts together a crew and heads out into unknown waters to see what’s on the very boundaries of this world. Yup, it’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, only with a far more sardonic tone and some ice-cold undercurrents when it comes to grappling with fantasy’s greatest subjects: life, death, meaning, heroism and sacrifice.

Whereas The Magicians was quite episodic in nature, only for things to come together in its climatic scene, this sequel feels a little more scattershot. Although certain elements are seeded and paid off later at the right time and place, there’s less of a solid foundation to everything – this character might end up being the secret alias of that character, but does it really matter in the end?

There is also a whole other subplot at work involving Julia that runs concurrently with the events of the first novel, which fills us in as to what she was getting up to during Quentin’s experiences at Brakebills. As with the other story-threads running throughout this novel, it does eventually connect (and in a very significant way) with the greater narrative arc at work, though it culminates in a scene that... well, it was emotionally devastating and absolutely horrifying, so it clearly had the effect Grossman intended, and I can’t say that it didn’t a. catch me off-guard and b. make me want to throw up.

The first novel had a twist that was carefully set-up and calibrated to hit like a dagger to the heart. It was brilliant and heart-breaking and extremely clever. This twist is just cruel. I actually felt sick after reading it, and – no joke – had a nightmare about it the day after reading it.

SPOILERS... let’s put it this way: the first book climaxed with the male protagonist realizing that the story taking place around him wasn’t about him at all; that he was just a pawn in a much larger game of cat-and-mouse between two tertiary characters he was barely aware of. This revelation is a slam-dunk. The similarly structured twist of this book has its female co-protagonist work desperately (and I mean desperately) for what she wants in life, and when it’s finally within her grasp... it turns out it was all just a scam and she gets violently raped by a monster while her found-family is gruesomely murdered around her.

Like I said at the start of this entry: yikes. These books are very much about deconstructing fantasy tropes, and that’s definitely something I can enjoy, though there is a grim and existential darkness to this particular trilogy that’s... maybe a step too far? I can’t say that the lynchpin of Julia’s story comes out of nowhere OR that her horrific trauma isn’t portrayed without the seriousness that it demands, but I also finished The Magician King feeling like I’d been beaten up. In all honesty, I’m still processing the whole thing, so maybe I’ll come to a greater understanding (and acceptance) of its content in time.

I hope so, because there’s some stuff in here that I really loved. As Quentin is trying to find his way back into Fillory, he ends up at the country estate of the children who originally visited the place, where he takes advantage of a party as his cover to sneak in. It’s mysterious and atmospheric and strange, especially once he meets a little boy who – like him – is existing on the margins of this story:

“A more quintessential English moppet it would have been hard to find, right down to his having a spot of trouble pronouncing his l’s and r’s. He could have been cloned from Christopher Robin’s toenail clippings... He had that dismal air of spritely self-possession that some English children have. Just looking at him, you knew you were going to have to play a game with him.”

I loved this chapter and its liminal quality: of two outsiders looking for something on the fringes of a late-night social gathering. Maybe one day, if I return for a re-read, I can focus on these parts and not... others.

Ghostwritten by David Mitchell

Have you ever read something that makes you feel less intelligent? I’m not sure where my headspace was at when I read Ghostwritten, but despite knowing that it contained several interlinked stories between people spread all across the globe, I ended up relying on the Wikipedia summary to catch all of the connections.

When you have books that are arranged as anthologies, with each segment focused on a different character, it’s unavoidable that some chapters will be more compelling than others: the terrorist that believes he’s about to experience a profound spiritual revelation, the delusional museum attendant who helps her lover plan a heist, the disembodied spirit that flits from body to body, searching for its origins with only a remembered fable as a clue to its past... there are some compelling stories here, and finding the links between them is part of the fun.

But there’s a lack of a wider cohesive narrative at work. Perhaps I was spoiled by The Magicians, but my half-formed expectation that everything – all these disparate people and stories – would come together in an eye-opening singular climax was not met. And that’s fine; this book clearly had a different purpose, which was in examining how different people on the periphery of an important event (such as a terrorist attack, or a financial crash) have their lives touched, to a greater or lesser extent, by its ripple-effect.

The book is extremely clever, in everything from its prose to its layout, though it didn’t exactly grab me. Mitchell is of course the author of Cloud Atlas, his most famous work, and knowing what I do about that book (and the film, and the interest the Wachowski siblings have in his work) the most interesting thing about this book was noticing the seeds of what was to come in his career. Right from the start there’s an interest in interconnectedness, in a far-reaching scope across space and time, and in the similarities between people regardless of their race, gender or background.

It was an interesting rather than a compelling book, and I may give Cloud Atlas a try in the near future...

Scorpia by Anthony Horowitz

The fifth adventure of the teenage spy capitalizes on the seeds that were sown in Eagle Strike – namely, clues that Alex Rider’s father was not all that he seemed to be. His long-time nemesis and quasi-ally Yassen Gregorovich died with a final missive for Alex to follow: “go to Venice. Find Scorpia. And you will find your destiny.”

One school trip later, and Alex is doing precisely that. Following the shift of formula introduced in the previous book, the narrative arc of Scorpia is marked by the fact that Alex isn’t acting as an agent of MI5, but rather following his own initiative in his search for the truth. A chance encounter with a motorboat bearing a silver scorpion sigil takes Alex down the canals of Venice to a fabulously opulent townhouse that just so happens to be hosting a masquerade party that evening.

When it comes to this instalment’s evil scheme, Horowitz is not fucking around. With the operation “Invisible Sword”, the terrorist network known as Scorpia threatens the lives of several thousand British schoolchildren if demands to the British government are not met. What’s more, they have no expectation whatsoever of getting what they want (the resignation of the American president, the pulling out of American troops from Middle-Eastern countries), rather the whole thing is just an opportunity to ferment discord between British/American relations.

Unfortunately, the secret component to the whole operation is deeply untimely. You guessed it, evil vaccines. Scorpia has surreptitiously been injecting children with seemingly-harmless vaccines that actually contain nanoshells that – when activated by particular terahertz beams – dissolve to release poison into an individual’s system. Standard spy-novel nonsense, and yet who could have known back in 2004 what such fanciful notions of James Bond villainy would lead to.

(I am under no circumstances blaming Horowitz for the stupidity of people who lap up on-line misinformation about vaccines; I am pointing out that various stories – of which there are many – which feature vaccines containing nefarious secrets have at the very least not helped. Let’s just lay this particular plot device to bed, shall we? Start putting the fictional microchips in junk food and see if that has a positive effect on obesity levels in real-life children)

Of most interest in Scorpia is the development of Alex himself. Now something of a wild card, he has questions regarding his father’s life and doesn’t particularly like the answers. As ever, Horowitz isn’t afraid to take his teen protagonist to some dark places, and according to his afterword (which strangely, contains spoilers for the next two books in the series) there was no small degree of sturm und drang when it was originally published.

The recent television series (see below) is already setting up for Scorpia, so it’ll be interesting to see how this particular instalment will be handled. I can’t imagine they’ll go the vaccine angle.

Enola Holmes and the Black Barouche by Nancy Springer

Presumably galvanised by the success of the Netflix adaptation of the first book in her Enola Holmes series, Springer presents a seventh mystery starring the titular young detective (and younger sister of Sherlock Holmes) eleven years after the publication of the seemingly final book in the series The Case of the Disappearing Duchess.

And... it’s fine. Despite the gap between this instalment and the last, it reads like something that takes place just after the conclusion of the prior story, and so there are no serious off-page developments. Enola is the same age, with the same personality and possessed of the same skill-set, though there is a dash of womanhood creeping into her life: the desire to look attractive, and the awareness of other people who are attractive to her.

On interrupting a session of her brother’s melancholia, Enola meets his newest client, a young woman called Letitia Glover, who believes that something terrible has happened to her twin sister Felicity. Having married above her station to the Earl of Dunhench, she’s just received a letter informing her of her sister’s death, and subsequent cremation. Not believing that her twin is dead, she asks for assistance in tracking her down.

As with previous books in the series, this involves plenty of disguises and subterfuges, culminating in a plan that’s genuinely clever, though not without some problems along the way. And in further proof that Springer recently watched the Netflix movie, she brings back the young Viscount Tewkesbury, Marquess of Basilwether (though the romantic angle is still missing).

A big disappointment is that Cecily Alistair does not appear – this is a young female character that Enola has helped on two occasions in the previous books, and though the events are recapped in Sherlock’s preface to this story, she isn’t named and never appears, despite Enola’s longing for the two of them to become friends. Perhaps Springer can pick up this thread again if she decides to write yet more Enola adventures.

I remain intrigued by how Netflix will proceed with the series – it seems unlikely that the films will manage to adapt all seven books, so which ones will they chose to adapt? Will Watson be introduced? (Mercifully, there’s still no sign of Moriarty in the books). Will they keep the basic outlines of the books or throw out the script entirely?

This one is less of a mystery than a straightforward case of a missing person, though Springer again brings in a touch of issues involving women – in this case, the ease with which husbands could get rid of troublesome wives by having them removed to mental asylums.

Once Upon a Crime by Robin Stevens

I’m so glad I could enjoy one more adventure (or several, considering these are short stories) with Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong, two schoolgirls in the 1930s who solve mysteries that are very clearly based on Agatha Christie novels (their latest one was set on a steamer boat in Egypt) but are still a lot of fun to read.

Daisy is Sherlock (aristocratic, unemotional, easily bored) and Hazel is Watson (empathetic, emotionally intelligent, the record-keeper) though in the latter’s case there’s a clear arc in which she grows in confidence and maturity – particularly in standing up to her best friend.

This collection gathers together some stories that had previously only been available as e-books and a couple of brand-new mysteries that were hinted at in previous books, such as the events surrounding Daisy’s Uncle Felix’s wedding. One involves a letter written by Alexander of the Junior Pinkertons, as he – along with his friend George – have their own adventure at their boy’s boarding school, one which is clearly based off The Hound of the Baskervilles. Sadly, there isn’t any material from the other girls at the girls’ boarding school – Lavinia and Kitty and the like.

It finishes with one starring May Wong, Hazel’s little sister, and if this were a television show it would be referred to as a “backdoor pilot” considering she’s about to headline her own series of more espionage-based mysteries in a brand-new series. Since WWII is right on the doorstep, it’s obvious what these will involve...

It’s a shame that the proposed television series never got off the ground, as these stories would make the transition from page to screen so beautifully, and is a great antidote to Enid Blyton mysteries: the same “jolly good” mentality, but with a much keener eye for people living at the time who weren’t proper white English schoolchildren. I’m sure both girls will pop up in May Wong’s adventures, but it really does feel like goodbye this time...

Taylor and Rose: Nightfall in New York by Katherine Woodfine

I didn’t want to start this book because I didn’t want to finish it. Woodfine’s eight-part mystery series (starting with the Sinclair’s Mysteries quartet, and ending with the Taylor & Rose Secret Agents quartet, which veered more into espionage than whodunnits) was an unexpected pleasure, with a solid period setting, great characters, and clear, crisp prose. Together with Wells and Wong and the Enola Holmes books, it made for a great “teenagers fight crime” series, though these ones skewed a little older – as in, the heroines are seventeen/eighteen as opposed to thirteen/fourteen.

As the final book in the quartet, it unsurprisingly takes Sophie Taylor and Lilian Rose to New York City at the turn of the century, having been extorted by the secret society Fraternitas Draconum into giving up a valuable Almanac containing various alchemical equations in exchange for their friend Joe, kidnapped at the end of the previous book (it’s not quite as outlandish as it sounds).

So after Paris, St Petersburg and Venice, the whole gang is reunited and headed for New York: Sophie, Lil, Billy, Mei and Tilly – and Lucky the dog. Woodfine is great at keeping track of all her characters (even the minor ones) and giving them important roles and a rousing send-off – or at least a cameo appearance to let us know how they’re doing.

Admittedly, it’s been so long since I read the first three books in this series that some of the twists and revelations didn’t quite land because I had forgotten the identity or significance of the characters involved. It’s also a wee bit of an anti-climax, with the gang’s plans pulled off pretty much without a hitch, though the bittersweet conclusion is offset by the hope that there may be more mysteries on the horizon. With the fellowship breaking up for the foreseeable future, perhaps there’s a chance for adventures in California or other American states.

Woodfine’s books are one of those low-key adventure tales that are immensely enjoyable precisely because they’re low-key. No one really seems to be talking about them, but they’re that perfect blend of cosy mystery and international espionage. For now, I’m really going to miss Sophie and Lil... and as with Wells and Wong, their adventures would transition so easily to the screen.

Speed (1994)

It was thanks to a feminist podcast that I ended up tracking this down, having seen it years ago and having my interest piqued by some of the comments that were made. Sometimes you’re just in the mood for a semi-intelligent action flick.

I say “semi-intelligent” because everything from the physics to the premise of Speed is patently ridiculous, and yet it knows what it’s doing when it comes to suspense, heightened emotions, and character beats. Keanu Reeves and his partner successfully thwart a Mad Bomber’s plan to cut the cables to an office block elevator and hold the occupants hostage, only to discover that he (somehow) survives the ensuring explosion and has placed another bomb on board an LA bus.

If the bus is to go above fifty miles per hour, the bomb will be triggered – after that, it will explode if the bus goes below fifty. Keanu must find the bus, warn the passengers, and then make sure it maintains its speed until the terrorist’s demands can be met, or the bomb get disarmed. Naturally, most of the film’s suspense comes from his attempts to commandeer the bus from the baffled driver, keep the frightened passengers calm, and come up with ways to keep the bus above fifty to buy enough time for his cohorts to track down the terrorist, come up with a plan, and figure out what to do with the bomb.

That’s where Sandra Bullock comes in: playing a commuter in the wrong place at the wrong time, she ends up taking on the role of driver and manoeuvring the vehicle through an increasingly difficult obstacle course of traffic congestion, unfinished motorways and at least one baby carriage.

Having watched it again for the first time in years, I was amused to realize that I had completely forgotten both the very beginning and the very end of the film – first the elevator shaft sequence, and then the subway car finale. Every memorable thing in this movie occurs on the bus, to the point where the opening and climax are completely forgettable.

The entire tone can be summed up with the introduction of Keanu Reeves: he arrives at the office block in a car that practically flies three feet through the air as it crests a rise in the road, and he chews gum throughout the ensuing hostage crisis. Naturally Keanu and Sandra Bullock are at their charismatic (and attractive) best, though I always found Dennis Hopper as the villain extremely off-putting. He’s not fun to hate, just whiny and annoying.

In hindsight, it could have been improved by delving a little further into the characterization of the other bus passengers – apart from Oritz and Stephens, we don’t really get to know any of them, though there was plenty of potential to be mined from the combination of human nature and such a fraught situation.

But it’s secured its place as a classic action movie for a reason: it’s exciting and fast-paced and has enough human moments to get you invested.

Casino Royale (2006)

With this month’s theme being espionage, and the final James Bond film starring Daniel Craig having been released a few weeks ago, it was clearly the perfect time to revisit his five-film tenure as the world’s most famous spy. It’s a little shocking to realize that this film came out well over a decade ago, perhaps because we’re so used to the instalments of various franchises being released in quick succession (*cough*Marvel*cough) but in all, it’s been fifteen years of Craig-as-Bond.

Perhaps the enduring legacy of his time in the suit is the way in which the five films are tightly interwoven. Characterization, plot and theme is carried over from one film to another, and some instalments are clearly direct sequels to their predecessors.

Sometime around the release of Spectre this caused some “franchise fatigue” among critics and fans who had become exhausted with the need for absolutely everything to be part of a greater interconnected narrative (see also: Gatkiss and Moffat’s Sherlock, which took standalone stories and wove them into a – somewhat incoherent – overarching plot) but in hindsight, it would appear that James Bond pulled it off better than most... though keep in mind that at the time of this writing I’ve not yet seen Spectre or No Time To Die.

Prior Bond actors have played the character as little more than a blank slate, coasting along on charm and the mystique of being an international man of mystery – and it worked, as no one really took James Bond films all that seriously. He’s the epitome of the male fantasy. But Daniel Craig did something interesting in that his James Bond is an actual person, and his arc in Casino Royale tracks his descent into darkness and apathy.

Already a 007 agent for having killed two people, he’s already on something of a precipice, yet over the course of the film he seems to be walking himself back – specifically through his interactions with Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), with whom he genuinely falls in love.

But of course, this film also serves as something of an origin story, and we know deep down that everything is about to turn to shit – the genius of Casino Royale is that even in depicting the inevitable, we feel its sting. We want James to leave MI6, we want him and Vesper to sail away into the sunset... but we know it’s not going to happen.

There are other ways in which Casino Royale sets itself apart from the crowd: a Bond villain who is killed off well before the third act, and an evil scheme that doesn’t amount to much more than “funding terrorism”. No world domination, no stealing of precious resources... just making sure the wrong person doesn’t win at poker. As with Skyfall, by sticking with relatively low-stakes the script can make the emotional beats land all the harder, and it serves as further proof that sometimes going bigger isn’t always better.

More than anything, Craig’s stint as Bond has tried to deconstruct the mystique of the character, particularly in regards to his toxic masculinity and his relationships with the various Bond Girls. In fact, I’d go so far to say that this Bond is defined by his Bond Girls.

You’ll be unsurprised to know that I’m fascinated by the evolution of the Bond Girls, as much like the Disney Princess line-up, they provide blatant insight into changing beauty standards, the evolution of female characters, and the type of roles women can expect in male-lead franchises.

Prior to Craig’s films, the Bond Girls worked by a very strict formula. There were always two that could fall into one of three categories: the good girl who gets fridged to motivate Bond, the bad girl who is the villain he must defeat, and the final girl that he hooks up with by the end of the film. Give or take a little shuffling, and this is the way in which they invariably fit into the narrative. I had this sussed by the age of thirteen.

Now, the Craig films are FAR from perfect when it comes to its female leads (as we’ll get into), but some of the choices made are clearly a deliberate attempt to avoid these reductive stereotypes. Here there are Bond Girls that Bond doesn’t have sex with. There are Bond Girls that sleep with him and don’t get fridged. There are Bond Girls whose deaths aren’t just shrugged away, but have a prolonged and haunting impact upon him.

Spectre gave us the oldest Bond Girl (Monica Bellucci at 50), Skyfall race-lifted Moneypenny (into Naomie Harris) and – as far as I know – Quantum of Solace features the first Bond Girl who has no romantic interest in Bond whatsoever. Camille gives him a goodbye/thank you kiss and then walks off. And of course, in Skyfall it is Judi Dench’s M that is the undisputed Bond Girl, with their relationship being the emotional anchor of the film.

Like I said, it’s not perfect. Bond Girls like Strawberry Fields and Severine are treated abominably. But all things are relative, and not all fridgings are created equal. At the end of Casino Royale, Vesper is undeniably fridged – killed off in order to serve Bond’s characterization and his ongoing narrative. He returns to MI6, having lost the last remnants of his soul in the wake of her betrayal.

And yet Vesper is one of the most complex and three-dimensional of the Bond Girls, her death is framed as an absolute tragedy (while not denying her agency), and her legacy is maintained throughout the next four films. She’s not someone that can be effortlessly forgotten – her death had meaning. And at the end of the day, this IS a franchise about James Bond, not the Bond Girls.

(Of course, there’s also Solange, whose purpose is for James to not go ahead and sleep with her because she’s already given him the information he needs, and then gets tortured/killed offscreen just to demonstrate how completely disassociated James is. Like I said, these films are still far from perfect).

So going forward, it’s fascinating to see how the Bond Girls are portrayed and how they’re used in this overarching narrative – some of them are the most interesting and significant that this franchise in its entirety has to offer, and they’re not as disposable as you might expect (well, not ALL of them).

Quantum of Solace (2008)

I knew going in that this was considered a huge let-down after the heights of Casino Royale, and though I hoped that would prove to be an exaggeration... yeah, they’re right. With the exception of Bond Girl Camille Montes, it loses pretty much everything that made its predecessor so special, from its too-high stakes, to its non-threatening villain, to the awful (and nonsensical) treatment of Strawberry Fields.

One of the few direct sequels to a prior Bond film, it picks up right where it left off, with James driving Mr White to a safehouse to question him about Quantum of Solace, one of those mysterious international organizations that aren’t really all that interesting once you start finding out more about them. It turns out that they’re much closer to MI6 than expected, so Bond goes in search of them... at least for the first half of the movie. They kind of disappear after the set piece at the opera.

Some interesting stuff is introduced – such as Bond unknowingly sending an undercover agent to his death – only to be completely ignored, and I eventually lost track of the increasingly convoluted plot. Stuff happens, and you just go with it. Something to do with oil and hoarding water?

You can’t help but become more invested in Camille’s storyline, as it’s the only one that really makes sense: she wants revenge on the man who murdered her mother and sister (yeah, she doesn’t get fridged, but they compensate by taking out the rest of her family). The man in question is a vile rapist, and watching her track him over the course of the film is at least a narrative thoroughfare that audiences can grasp.

The one big surprise for me was that the story follows up on the subject of Vesper Lynd’s boyfriend, the man that she betrayed Bond for in her misguided attempt to pay his ransom money. Turns out that she was being betrayed in turn; the guy was a sleaze who deliberately seduces women in order to extort them. Um... shouldn’t the whole movie have been about this guy? Bond tracking down his rival and investigating his relationship with Vesper would have brought in the personal element that this film was otherwise entirely lacking.

Even the return of René Mathis and his final words to Bond had less impact than it should have, simply because it exists in a movie that has no serious emotional beats.

And it’s a damn shame on the heels of one of the best Bond Girls of all time, and side-by-side with a Bond Girl who has no romantic or sexual interest in James whatsoever, we’re forced to endure one of the shallowest and uninteresting Bond-types ever. Gemma Arterton is brought in to accompany Bond back to MI6 – he steamrolls all over her, relocates them to a swanky hotel, makes a dumb joke about looking for stationary... and this is apparently charming enough for her to dutifully follow him into the bedroom.

Um... what? You would think that the first woman Bond is intimate with after losing the love of his life would be handled with a bit more weight than this, but after their inexplicable one-night-stand, she ends up coated in oil and her dead body dumped on his bed. Classic fridging, complete with Bond not really giving much of a shit. They even have M tell him: “see what your charm has done”, to lampshade the fact that three out of four Bond Girls have already ended up dead, even though he put in absolutely zero effort to seduce her. It happened because... you can’t have a James Bond movie with a sex scene? I guess?

In many ways Fields fulfils the same purpose as Solange in Casino Royale: she dies in order to examine Bond’s reaction to her demise, and to contrast it to how he responds to the next one. Here at least, the film does something interesting. While the final set piece is burning down around them, Bond and the villain hear Camille screaming, and said villain jeers: “another one.” And in stark contrast to how Vesper met her demise, Bond successfully leaps to Camille’s rescue and gets her out alive.

Then, in what has to be a deliberate response to the villain’s sneering assessment of Camille, that she: “won’t sleep with you unless you give her something,” she doesn’t end up sleeping with him, and he doesn’t ask her to. I can’t help but feel that this rather revolutionary spin on the usual Bond Girl modus operandi was wrestled with great effort into existence – and that what happened with Strawberry Fields was the price someone had to pay to make it happen.

In a word... frustrating. What prevented Quantum of Solace from being a worthy follow-up to Casino Royale was the reiteration of the old and tired tropes of a typical James Bond film, and their lack of courage in not leaving them behind.

Skyfall (2012)

I guess after the disappointment of Quantum of Solace and in knowing this was the franchise’s 50th anniversary, there was no small degree of pressure to get things right for Daniel Craig’s third outing, and for the most part, they deliver. Skyfall remains the highest grossing Bond film of all time, and for many it’s considered one of the best James Bond films of all time – certainly of Craig’s tenure (though I think that honour definitely still belongs to Casino Royale).

We’re thrown right into the action, in which Bond and an as-yet unnamed female agent are chasing down a man who has stolen a list of MI6 operatives, many of which are stationed in undercover roles around the globe. If it gets leaked, then thousands of missions and secret identities will be blown sky-high.

It all ends with Bond getting shot by his partner and being presumed dead for several months, though he pops up again when things start to get serious in the land of the living – five of the names on the list have been released, and a bomb takes out most of MI6 headquarters.

It soon becomes apparent that their shadowy nemesis has M as his specific target. Javier Bardem as Raoul Silva takes a surprisingly long time to show up, but when he does it’s with no small amount of panache. Easily one of the best Bond villains in a long time, he’s effective for a number of reasons: by having a personal vendetta, through being a dark mirror to Bond himself, and for walking that half-threatening, half-campy tightrope that’s surprisingly difficult to pull off.

There are some great set pieces here, from the eerie and almost psychedelic office assassination/fight in Shanghai to the Home Alone showdown at Bond’s ancestral home in Scotland, giving us our first real glimpse into where he came from. We get our introduction to both Q (now played by Ben Whishaw) and Moneypenny (Naomi Harris) and a reasonably clever Bait and Switch when it comes to Ralph Fiennes’ true identity. Old reliable Rory Kinnear is here too, reprising his role as Bill Tanner.

There’s even something that comes remarkably close to a theme at work: whether or not MI6 (and by extension, Bond himself) is worth salvaging due to its age and dated techniques, with Silva using cutting-edge technology to infiltrate MI6, M being hauled in front of a committee to defend her decisions, and Bond being almost explicitly compared to Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire (in which the famous warship is hauled off for scraps).

Naturally, things eventually fall on the side of Bond and MI6, with the former using very basic tools and tactics to finally get the better of Silva, and the organization that he serves returned to its former glory by the end credits.

Unfortunately, amidst all this solid material, Skyfall is profoundly unkind to its female characters. Putting aside the fact that M succumbs to her wounds and is promptly replaced by a man, that Moneypenny’s biggest contribution to the plot is to nearly kill Bond before deciding to become a secretary instead of a field agent, and the presence of a wordless, nameless woman who has sex with Bond just to reassure the audience that he’s not celibate while living off the grid (heck, even Helen McCrory shows up, only to be interrupted by Ralph Fiennes while she’s in the middle of a sentence) there’s the matter of Severine.

As badly as they treated Strawberry Fields in Quantum, Severine’s fate is even worse. After establishing that she was a former child sex-slave, she seals her doom after inviting Bond onto the boat that will take them to the villain’s secret lair, and after a sexual encounter of extremely dubious consent, she’s unceremoniously shot dead in front of a Bond who is supremely indifferent to her fate. I mean... what the hell is this?

Granted, the screenwriters were not to know that this was the midpoint of Craig’s tenure as Bond, but surely, after the redemptive quality of his decision to save Camille’s life, Severine was likewise perfectly positioned to be a woman that Bond a. gets out of a dangerous situation, and b. doesn’t take sexual advantage of. Instead she’s just a disposable sex toy. It’s deeply disappointing and cruel.

On a more minor note, it’s a shame that the plot-point of the list of MI6 agents just sort of disappears from the film halfway through. If you’re looking for a suspenseful but reasonably low-stakes drama for a James Bond film, then Bond being tasked with getting an exposed operative out of a dangerous situation would have been a sure bet.

Three down, two to go. Despite my grievances, I’m looking forward to what’s next, and even when the treatment of female characters disappoints, it’s fascinating to look at how what is successful about them manages to struggle free of the deeply restrictive expectations placed upon them.

Alias: Season 1 (2001 – 2002)

Despite being fairly big at the time, the Alias bandwagon completely bypassed me, and as to why I’m tracking it down now, especially while being fully cognizant of JJ Abrams’ terrible track record with projects like this, is something of a mystery even to myself. Heck, it fits the theme of the month.

Sidney Bristow lives a double life: studying to be a teacher and getting engaged to her long-time boyfriend, while working as an operative for SD-6, a secret branch of the CIA. Or so she thinks. As the pilot episode lays out, SD-6 is actually a faction of a terrorist agency working against the best interests of the United States.

After she divulges her real life’s work to her fiancé, he is killed by her employers in order to maintain secrecy, and she starts digging – helped by her father, to whom she is estranged, who also works for SD-6 as a double-agent. Offering her services to the CIA in a similar capacity, she and her handler Michael Vaughn start to organize counter-missions to secretly sabotage SD-6.

If you can get your head around the fact that SD-6 would execute any family member who finds out about their spouse/parents/child’s secret life and still expect loyalty from the agents whose loved ones they’ve just murdered, it’s a pretty solid setup. Sidney has to negotiate the strains of a triple life: hiding her spy activities from her friends and hiding her CIA affiliations from the rest of the SD-6 employers, including her trusted partner Dixon.

Plus trying to rebuild a relationship with her father, whose distance during her childhood/adolescent years now makes perfect sense. Oh, and there’s a significant subplot involving her journalist friend Will Tippet, who starts investigating her fiancé’s death and ends up drawing ever-closer to Sidney’s secret identity.

Coming off the heels of the nineties, in which three iconic female characters (Xena, Buffy, Scully) pretty much changed the game when it came to how women were depicted on television, Sidney is an interesting “second tier” feminist offering. She’s very much the type of character you’d expect from this specific point in time (that is, the early noughts): tough and kickass but also emotionally vulnerable; seldom morally compromised, always immaculately groomed, and whose complexity as a person is only slightly undermined by the requirement that she frequently dress up in skimpy clothing and crazy wigs.

That said, it’s fascinating to see the gender-flipped use of a loved one being Stuffed in the Fridge. This is usually the role of the female character (usually a wife) for the sake of the male protagonist’s development, though here it’s Sidney who loses her fiancé to the needs of the plot. Said fiancé is barely a character (his most notable scene is proposing to Sidney by yelling the lyrics to Fill Me Up Buttercup at the top of his lungs – and seriously, if there are any dudes out there trying to get ideas for how they’re going to propose, I beg you not to do this) before he ends up shot dead in the bathtub.

Sidney is also the show’s only notable female character (at this stage), whose most important relationships are invariably with men: her father, her handler, her dead fiancé, her best friend, her employer at SD-6... she does have a housemate called Francine (who unfortunately falls into the Token Black Friend category) and an ongoing subplot involving her mother, but for the most part she’s overwhelmingly awash in a sea of testosterone.

And towards the middle of the season she edges into Special Snowflake territory: her SD-6 employers are obsessed with a Renaissance artist/inventor called Ronaldo who made a number of strange devices and portentous prophecies: I groaned out loud when one of them turns out to revolve around Sidney, and it’s a rather bizarre streak of fantasy in what’s otherwise a fairly grounded drama (you can definitely see the genesis of LOST in here though).

You can tell some subplots are introduced only to be snipped away when the writers realize they’re uninteresting (pretty much anything to do with Francine’s boyfriend) and I can already tell that Sark is going to get a bigger role going forward (he’s a white British prettyboy that murders people, I can look back into the past and clearly see the shippers going nuts).

I absolutely do not expect any kind of satisfying resolution to any of the myriad mysteries strewn throughout this season, and I’ve been prewarned that things take a dive in season three. For now, it’s just fun having a first-time look back at something that’s already twenty years old, with a plethora of familiar actors who look like they’ve magically shed two decades worth of age: Bradley Cooper, John Hannah, Quentin Tarantino (!!) and Gina Torres – though obviously she hasn’t aged a day since then.

Totally Spies!: Season 1 (2001 – 2002)

Starting the same year as Alias, it’s again fascinating to see where we were with the depiction of female characters twenty years ago. Obviously this is geared at children as opposed to adults, so the spy-hijinks are considerably toned down (I wasn’t sure how fanciful things would get – suffice to say, they’re time-travelling to the Middle Ages by the third episode, which should give you some idea) and it’s clearly not meant to be taken particularly seriously (heck the show is called Totally Spies with an exclamation mark – that sums it up perfectly).

Sam, Alex and Clover are teenage spies for an organization called Woohp (World Organization of Human Protection) though how they got recruited and trained is a mystery for the ages. Likewise, the infrastructure around Beverly Hills High where they go to school is insane: whenever their handler Jerry wants to get hold of them, he opens up a trapdoor or a portal in a garbage can or a mailbox and they slide down a massive tunnel to Woohp’s underground facility. Just... think of the billions of dollars required to make this work...

They get their assignments, an array of gadgets to help them out, and then usually fly on a rocket ship (yes really) to an international location. It’s a pretty fun premise, though I have to say that it gets incredibly weird sometimes. For me at least, the fun of spy dramas is that the characters are grounded in some semblance of reality, required to use their smarts and agility (and a few clever gizmos) to complete their missions. Making things too insane removes that intrinsic appeal from the genre.

And as nice as it is to watch three female friends who go on daring spy missions together, there’s a lot of early-noughts baggage in their depictions: their iconic outfits are catsuits and high-heels, they’re largely defined by their love of boys and shopping, there’s the inevitable over-the-top bitchy rival who goes out of her way to bait them, and they’re... kinda stupid sometimes. As in, two of them get hit by a freeze-ray and the third one keeps on having a conversation with them because she hasn’t noticed.

It also lacks heart. At one point Jerry thinks the trio have been killed in action, and he’s completely unfazed. As obvious as it is that the girls love each other, there’s never any meaningful conversations or interactions among them, and their obsession with getting one-over on Mandy (the Alpha Bitch) is just tedious.

I was already a teenager by the time this aired, but I was aware of its existence, alongside Winx and W.I.T.C.H. as the three big “girl power” cartoons of this era. It’s been interesting to get a taste of what Gen Z kids were watching back then, and a contrast to how things have improved since then (not that there haven’t been better examples of female characters before Totally Spies, or worse ones afterwards, but they do provide an interesting snapshot of what things were like two decades ago).

Alex Rider: Season 1 (2020)

Adaptations of Anthony Horowitz’s popular teen-spy series have struggled: first the Stormbreaker movie bombed in 2006, and now an eight-part miniseries has... not exactly taken the world by storm (though it’s apparently been well-received enough to get a sequel series).

At first glance, it’s difficult to see why. Published at the inception of the teen-spy craze (Spy Kids, Kim Possible, Agent Cody Banks all followed in his footsteps) Alex Rider was a bestseller with a winning premise: essentially James Bond for young readers. (It had been done before, most obviously with James Bond Junior, but a good idea is a good idea forever). Recruited to MI5 after his uncle’s mysterious death, Alex is given a crash-course in espionage after his handlers realize the usefulness of an agent that’s still too young to arouse much suspicion.

The stories are fast-paced and Alex is a quintessential hero... so what keeps going wrong? For my money, it’s the struggle with tone – not too overt in the books, but difficult to master on the screen. Horowitz’s plots are pure Bond stories at their silliest: secret societies, miraculous gadgets, clones, brainwashing computer games... but the author is very careful to keep Alex himself as realistically a teenager as possible, complete with PTSD and survivor’s guilt, in keeping with the traumatic toll his covert missions take on him.

That’s a difficult circle to square, and it’s not entirely pulled off with this series. On the one hand, this story adapts Point Blanc, in which the evil plot revolves around enrolling troubled rich kids (the children of influential world-figures) at an isolated school and replacing them with identical clones. On the other, every actor plays this material with deadly seriousness, in a series that’s given a distinctly grey and washed-out ambiance.

The plot is too hokey for adults, and the atmosphere too grim for younger viewers (with scenes that include Alex getting tortured, people getting shot in the head, and plenty of glum adults having board meetings in dark rooms). It’s difficult to know who it’s for exactly.

Despite Stormbreaker being a Franchise Killer over ten years ago, this follow-up choses to adapt the second book in the series instead of repeating itself (though naturally it takes some bits and pieces from the first in order to induct new readers). Alex lives with his uncle Ian Rider and housekeeper Jack Starbright, completely unaware that his uncle works as a spy for MI5. After Ian’s death in a car accident (though the audience is privy to the real events) Alex starts investigating, with his ingenuity and agility catching the attention of Alan Blunt, the director of Special Operations, who notes that a fourteen-year-old has just run rings around specially trained agents.

Alex is recruited (or rather, strongarmed) into attending Point Blanc as “Alex Friend,” the son of a wealthy businessman. The mission is simple: just integrate himself and report back to his handler at regular intervals... which is immediately stymied when his transmitter fails to reach anyone. Instead, he starts investigating on his own.

It’s eight episodes long when it could have quite easily been six (it’s not until the very end of episode three that he even reaches the school), including several subplots that could have easily been cut (Alex being hunted by the friends of the rich girl he’s forced to pretend is his sister is in the book, but it doesn’t make much sense here, especially as Alex goes out of his way to introduce himself to these friends when he could have just as easily avoided them entirely).

But it’s not a bad adaptation... just a somewhat lacklustre one. I liked Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo as Jack Starbright (though on realizing that they’ve race-lifted the housekeeper into the show’s only Black woman, the writers quickly throw in a line about how she’s studying for a degree) and Otto Farrant provides a stabilizing centre as Alex, giving the character a realism and vulnerability he doesn’t necessarily have in the books.

It appears that we’re skipping Skeleton Key and heading straight for Eagle Strike due to Covid restrictions making the former’s exotic locale more difficult to shoot, but I’m interested to see where it all goes from here.

Ted Lasso: Season 1 (2020)

Yes, it’s the show everyone is talking about. Talking about it so much in fact, that there’s not much more to say about it.

Even if you haven’t seen it before, you probably know the gist. An optimistic and upbeat football coach called Ted Lasso travels from America to England to coach a soccer team despite knowing very little about the sport. The reasoning behind this soon becomes clear: the owner of the Richmond team, Rebecca Welton, has handpicked him precisely because he has no experience and deliberately wants Richmond to lose in order to spite her ex-husband.

And yet, as in most Pollyanna stories, magic starts to happen. Ted’s boundless energy and unique outlook starts having a positive on the players, who become a more cohesive team as a result. There are little side-plots including Keeley, one of the player’s quirky girlfriends, or Roy Kent, an aging player dealing with the inevitable end of his career, as well as a bunch of minor characters with their own issues to deal with – look, you’ve seen how a sitcom ensemble works.

I think the joy of the show is that its seemingly predictable premise doesn’t always pan out the way you expect it to. People respond to things in surprisingly realistic ways, whether it’s the public slowly coming on board with Ted’s persona, to Rebecca realizing she’s on the wrong path and barely taking any time to beat around the bush before apologizing to those who deserve it.

It’s not just the show’s genuine heart, but its emotional intelligence that makes it stand out. Ted doesn’t offer empty platitudes, he seems to be possessed of the ability to look beyond a person’s outer bullshit and see what’s really bothering them. He’ll give you a second, third and fourth chance with a level of fortitude that I know I don’t possess. He truly wants to help people, just for the sake of doing the right thing and making the world fractionally better.

On a meta level, it’s great to see Hannah Waddingham’s career take off in the wake of the show’s success. She’s nearly fifty, and yet is playing a glamourous, complex, ultimately kind-hearted women whose arc is the most rewarding on the show (can you believe she was the evil nun on Game of Thrones??) In the wake of a humiliating divorce, it’s understandable that she wants to take revenge on her emotionally-abusive ex in the only way she knows how, only to realize that it’s not making her happy and is hurting innocent people in the bargain.

(Shout out to Anthony Stewart Head, who plays her ex-husband with an oily charm that almost-but-not-quite hides his manipulative and downright cruel tactics when it comes to his treatment of Rebecca. It’s the subtlety of his abuse that’s downright unsettling at times).

If you haven’t already, watch it.