Reading/Watching Log #77

I’ve been taking it easy this month, trying to concentrate more on reading than watching things, though I can still get in a surprising amount just by sticking to my “one episode per night, two movies per weekend” rule. I clocked in two Robin Hood movies, two Poirot mysteries, and the two latest Scream instalments, not to mention two period dramas and the second season of Evil (still one of the strangest shows I’ve ever seen).

Seeing as it was a month for twos, I also read the first two books in The Babysitters Club series (ah, memories) and the next two books in Catherynne Valente’s Fairyland quintet (which I’ll refrain from commenting on until I can do a post on all five).

With the films featured here, I feel like I’m reaching the end of the Robin Hoods that have been adapted for the big screen – the remaining ones listed on Wikipedia are very obscure, though I’ll do what I can to find them. But I’ll probably be turning to the television shows soon, from the old Richard Greene serial to Maid Marian and her Merry Men (which I’m sure I watched as a child, though I’ve all but forgotten it). Also, remember The New Adventures of Robin Hood, which was essentially a Hercules/Xena Warrior Princess rip-off? Oh yeah, I definitely have to track that one down.

And apparently there’s something called Back to Sherwood about nineties kids that time-travel back to the Middle Ages and discover their ancestors were Robin Hood and the gang? SOLD.

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie

After watching the latest adaptation I naturally had to go back and read the original novel. Despite being one of Christie’s most famous stories, it’s hardly her best. Yes, the way the crime itself was staged is ingenious, but the book is filled with superfluous subplots and red herrings, many of which are dealt with off-page. It’s no coincidence that the film adaptations have found it remarkably easy to cut or switch around most of the characters.

I suspect it’s the location that makes it so memorable; there’s something about a trip down the Nile in the 1930s that conjures up a very specific time and place, and the backdrop certainly lends an air of tragic inevitability to the proceedings. I’ll go into more detail when I discuss the 2022 film below, but a lot of the adaptations actually do a good job in paring down some of the book’s more pointless threads and coincidences: the Allerton jewellery scam, Cornelia Robson, Charles Windlesham, the whole thing with Colonel Race and the hunt for Signor Richetti, Jim Fanthorp... so much extraneous stuff that either added nothing or could be streamlined more effectively.

(I find it amusing that every single adaptation combines Linnet’s two maids: Marie only appears at the start of the book, the one whose marriage prospects have been thwarted by Linnet, while Louise has a larger part to play throughout of the bulk of the story, having tried to blackmail the killers. All the films give Louise the backstory of Marie in order to provide her with more fleshed-out motivation).

Kristy’s Great Idea by Anne M. Martin

Yes, I’m doing it. I’m reading all the books in The Babysitters Club series, starting with this one. As it turns out, there are one hundred and thirty-one books in the series, as well as dozens more spin-offs and specials, resulting in well over two hundred books overall (I’m not counting the Little Sister series, as I have no interest in those). So we’re gonna be doing this for a quite a while.

Originally commissioned to write four books about teenage girls and their experiences in babysitting, Anne M. Martin came up with four distinct personalities (bossy, free-spirited, shy and sophisticated) and attributed them to four friends: Kirsty, Claudia, Mary Anne and Stacey. The first three have been neighbours their entire lives, the latter is a newcomer to Stoneybrook and quickly brought into the fold.

Martin’s formula, especially at this early stage, is to mingle a coming-of-age lesson with family troubles and babysitting hijinks. Later books would introduce things like boy trouble, squabbles within the club, Very Special Episodes (involving children with disabilities, racism, and in one case, domestic abuse), child-based events such as festivals or pageants or school plays, and – my personal favourite – the mysteries/ghost stories, though nothing ever strayed far from reality (as opposed to say, Sweet Valley High, which had evil identical twins, getting deserted on tropical islands and werewolves).

In this, the very first book, Kristy is struggling with her mother’s pending engagement to Watson Brewer and determination to dislike her potential stepsiblings Karen and Andrew, only to be gradually won over. She also comes up with the idea to form a babysitting club with her three friends so as to make money, care for children, and help out the parents in the neighbourhood.

I was surprised at how little Early Instalment Weirdness there was; usually in long-running series like this one it takes a while to iron out some of the kinks and get an understanding of what you’re trying to achieve, but the only inconsistency I noticed was the change in Kirsty’s mother’s name. Martin had a solid grip on continuity, and that was sustained well into the point when the ghost-writers took over.

Thanks to the Netflix show, however, I’ve finally realized that this whole time I’ve been pronouncing Kristy’s name wrong: Kirsty instead of Kristy.

But here we are, at the beginning of it all. Just today at work I had a chat with a regular customer who is also reading this series and was amazed that they’re still going strong today, which meant that the book’s final sentence actually brought a tear to my eye: “I hope that Mary Anne, Claudia, Stacey and I, the Babysitters Club, would stay together for a long time.” Oh Kirsty, if only you knew...

Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls by Anne M. Martin

I think I’ve mentioned in the past that Claudia was always my favourite of the babysitters, though a lot of her character-centric books weren’t particularly uplifting. Hers seemed to focus more on family troubles and friendship dramas than any of the others, whereas Kirsty had the “organizing a big occasion” events, Stacey had the mysteries, and Mary Anne and Dawn had the step-family drama that I quite enjoyed.

But Claudia... I remember the one where she and her sister don’t get along, the one where a new girl tries to poach her from the babysitters’ club, the one where her grandmother dies, the one where she had to babysit the racist kids, the one where she thought she was adopted, the one where her aunt miscarried... I think she also got stuck with the one that explored domestic abuse. All the heavy stuff!

This book was the exception, and it was definitely one of my early favourites: a burglar is on the prowl in Stoneybrook who is said to call a house, say nothing, then rob the place if no one answers. Naturally the babysitters are nervous about this, especially when they start getting strange phone calls while at their jobs. They come up with codes, homemade alarm systems and other safety measures, only to eventually discover that boys from school were just calling them up and trying to ask them to the school dance.

It was the first mystery of the series, of which there would be many more to come.

Two more things: Anne M. Martin was always very reticent about the amount of money the girls earned while on their jobs; she never clearly states what the going hourly rate is for a teenage babysitter. But here, we do get the following statement from Stacey: “I’ve earned sixteen dollars in the last two weeks.” This is phrased as something impressive. Sixteen dollars! In two weeks!! Holy moly, I know it was 1986, but that’s pathetic.

Second of all, this book features a school dance called the Halloween Hop, which gives it a specific date and time. I realize that in books to come, all the girls enter a sort of limbo state in which neither they nor anyone else get a year older, so I’m counting this as the first mention of Halloween and am curious to see how many more they’ll go through while remaining thirteen years old.

Robin Hood (1973)

I would say at a guess that this film clocks in behind 1938’s The Adventures of Robin Hood, ITV’s Robin of Sherwood and maybe Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves as the most well-known adaptation of the Robin Hood legends, especially (and obviously) among kids. Ask a Gen-Xer to picture their Robin Hood and they’ll think of this one, forever linking the fox with the man.

Of all the films made during Disney’s Dark Age, this is probably the one remembered the most fondly, despite the choppy story and scratchy, recycled animation (there are so many scenes in which figures are superimposed over the movements of characters from The Jungle Book, The Aristocats and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs – it’s especially obvious in the forest dance).

It even recycles itself at times: we see the little girl rabbit fall over laughing twice, and the recording of Little John’s line “Fortunes forecast! Lucky charms!” is repeated at different points in exactly the same way.

And of course, Little John has the exact same character design as Baloo, and voiced once more by Phil Harris. I actually have a vivid memory of watching this movie in primary school and a friend pointing this out as though it was something scandalous.

The movie plays out like a series of vignettes, or an episodic television show (it would have actually done well as an afterschool cartoon) in which Robin is in the midst of his usual cat-and-mouse games with Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham while King Richard is away on the Crusades. Interestingly, the only Merry Men are Robin and John, with Friar Tuck (a badger) as their go-between and Allan-a-Dale (a rooster) as little more than the narrator and occasional drop-in character.

As far as I know, this is the only adaptation of Robin Hood in which Will Scarlett does not appear, which is a shame as I can easily imagine him as a raccoon or even a robin (I’m thinking of the red breast). But structuring the story this way gives it a wider scope – you can easily envision more adventures happening on the outskirts of the main action. Like I said, it would have made a good television show.

It’s not hugely visually creative (I recall an interview from a Disney engineer who said there were plans to turn this movie into a ride, only for everyone to quickly realize there was nothing to work with) as aside from the character designs the only images that really spark the imagination are Robin and John’s various disguises (disguises are always fun) and the absurd gag of Sir Hiss sticking his head inside a balloon and using his tail as a propellor to scope out the archery tournament from the air.

But I did like the multitude of supporting characters: the elderly owl couple, the widowed rabbit and her multitude of children, Otto the blacksmith with his broken leg, the mouse sexton and his wife... it gives Nottingham a sense of community that’s missing from many Robin Hood adaptations.

I especially liked that Maid Marian is given a lady-in-waiting called Lady Kluck, who ends up being one of the best characters in the film (why don’t more adaptations give Marian a handmaiden/lady to talk to? She should be a staple part of the legends by now, like the Saracen character). But it’s disappointing that the two of them disappear for the film’s climax, even though they could have easily been worked into the jailbreak – in fact, there was originally a longer resolution to the film in which John takes an injured Robin to the church where he’s tended to by Marian and nearly killed by a pursuing Prince John until Richard arrives just in the nick of time.

As it is, the problem just resolves itself off-screen, when Richard returns from the war and arrests his brother... between scenes.

But it does contain its own distinct charm, not to mention providing the opportunity for female bonding between women when they abashedly admit they were attracted to this version of Robin (as for me, I’ve been creeped out by anthropomorphic foxes ever since reading Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, though this did something to alleviate that).

Princess of Thieves (2001)

It’s been years since I last saw this, and it was never a favourite of mine even when I was the target audience. However, I think my sister was mildly obsessed with it back in the day – enough that she had it on DVD, which is how I watched it last night. A Disney home movie that was filmed in Romania and released to wide indifference, its one claim to fame is being an early project for both Keira Knightley and Stephen Moyer.

It places itself at the end of King Richard’s reign, with news of him dying in France and Prince John preparing to become king in his place. Robin Hood and the outlaws have reached middle age, and are eager to put Phillip of Cognac on the throne instead. This was Richard’s dying wish, but naturally John has sent all manner of assassins after Phillip in order to stop him from seizing the crown.

Phillip of Cognac was in fact a real person: the illegitimate son of Richard and an unknown mother, virtually nothing is known about him beyond the fact that he died without issue. Naturally, we’re dealing with an alternative history when it comes to the fact that this Phillip does in fact become king, though they try to cover for it by saying: “history may have forgotten the reign of Phillip...” which suggests he either died almost immediately after his coronation or people just... forgot to write it down?  

Whatever, I’ve always felt that a story about the child (or children) of Robin Hood and Maid Marian is a decent premise for a film or television show, though this has clearly not become the posterchild of that concept. Instead, its main point of interest is that it taps into a very specific type of late nineties/early noughties Girl Power mentality, which is both endearing and exasperating by today’s standards.

Princess of Thieves is essentially Not Like The Other Girls: The Movie.

It ticks every box you’d expect: our heroine is the daughter of a famous male character, she’s better than all the boys at everything she does, she’s politically progressive, she’s feisty and headstrong and outspoken, and she cuts her hair short, cross-dresses and declaims passionately about wanting to be treated on an equal footing as men. She has no female friends of any kind – in fact, she’s the only female character of note in the entire story, and anything feminine is looked upon with abhorrence (for the most part, she does wear a dress at the end).

At the same time, she’s undermined by the narrative constantly, and her greatest achievement is to make men fall in love with her so that they’re inspired to do better. You still see plenty of these traits in modern fiction, but Gwyn is the essence of the Strong Female Character ™ distilled.

The opening scene sets the tone: the Sheriff of Nottingham receives word that Robin and Marian have had a child, and he immediately puts a bounty on its head – only to find out the baby is a girl. A GURL?? HO HO HO HAHAHA, I’m not threatened by a GURL! Cue evil laughter.  

Yes, a girl called Gwyn is born to the happy couple, raised in a monastery among the monks (including Friar Tuck and a novice called Froderick – actual spelling – who is clearly in love with her) while her father is away on the Crusades.

And yikes, Marian is dead. How dare! There’s really no reason she couldn’t be in this story, but of course all spunky female heroines of the nineties/noughts had to have a dead mother. How else could they be confused and resentful at the idea of impending womanhood? At least Marian serves as the narrator, so she’s not totally absent, but as someone still seething over Marian’s death in the BBC’s Robin Hood all these years later, reducing her to a heavenly voiceover and a pair of hands in the prologue gets my goat.

The whole thing is basically just your standard Robin Hood adventure but with older Merry Men and Gwyn cast as the protagonist. Phillip of France arrives in England to take Richard’s place as the future king, and teams up with Gwyn (who is unaware of his true identity) as she tries to prove herself to her father. There’s some surprising talent on display here: Malcolm McDowell as the Sheriff, Jonathan Hyde as Prince John, Stuart Wilson (you’ll know him best as Rafael Montero in The Mask of Zorro) as Robin.

Keira Knightley was only fifteen years old when she played Gwyn, and look... she seems like a cool person in her interviews, so I feel like a dick for saying this, but as an actress she just makes my teeth itch. All the more so looking back on her earliest work and realizing she hasn’t developed her craft AT ALL since then (well, I think she deepens her voice later, as it’s surprisingly high-pitched here). I won’t dwell on the subject, but I’ve never seen her disappear into a role; every time I’m acutely aware that I’m watching Keira Knightley acting, with the same affected mannerisms, the same overly-clipped tone, the same pursed lips/come-hither expression, the same toothy simper every time.

She’s been doing this for the last twenty years, and that it’s made her an A-lister while so many other more talented actresses languish in near-obscurity continues to bewilder me. But her resemblance to Daisy Ridley and Katie McGrath is uncanny at times, as is Del Synnott’s (Brother Froderick) to a younger Jonny Lee Miller. I also spent most of the movie thinking that Phillip looked just like that guy from True Blood before realizing it was in fact, Steven Moyer.

So what else can we expect from an early noughts heroine? Of course there’s a YA love triangle between herself, a handsome prince (he has long hair and white billowy shirt, check and check) and an emasculated childhood friend who hasn’t the slightest chance in hell. Also, she doesn’t have to eat, apparently. Seriously: people keep urging her to eat something and she never does. It’s weird.

But most importantly, there’s the staple feature of any girl power story of the time: that the female lead is in truth completely ineffective and a largely negligible part of her own story. Seriously, I kept very careful track of what Gwyn does and does not achieve throughout this movie and it’s pretty alarming. Thanks to her daddy issues she’s determined to ride off and help her father find Prince Phillip, and on reaching a township she intervenes in a child’s arrest, unknowingly causing a distraction for Robin and Will to sneak by unnoticed.

But Gwyn only escapes the soldiers because Froderick has come to her rescue, and the soldiers chase them into the forest, forcing them to split up. She’s saved by her father and Froderick is captured, which in turn leads to Robin’s capture when he goes to rescue him. Meanwhile, she accidentally stumbles upon Phillip and tries to steal his horse. When he realizes she’s a woman he offers her the horse out of chivalry, which she naturally takes offense to, saying (and this is quintessential nineties feminist outrage, I love it): “I’ll steal a horse fairly but not take it for reason of my gender.”

Girl, you got stuff to do. Just take the horse.

Later she manages to win the archery competition that gets her and Phillip into the banquet to find and rescue her father, BUT they have to leave almost immediately and without achieving anything after Phillip spots the assassin that nearly killed him earlier. In the forest skirmish that follows she’s almost killed before Tuck saves her life, and when Phillip is targeted by the Sheriff it’s Froderick who takes the bullet for him (her contribution: yelling “NOOOO!” in slow-motion).

We’re now fifteen minutes out from the finish line and she still hasn’t done anything useful. While the outlaws and villagers attack the castle, she and Phillip sneak inside to rescue Robin – Phillip is clearly calling the shots, but at this point she does in fact save both Phillip and then Robin with two miraculous shots: one through the assailant’s hand to rescue Phillip, and one that knocks the Sheriff’s arrow out of the air to save Robin. Then she goes to support Phillip in crashing Prince John’s coronation, though he had things pretty well under control there anyway.

Basically, her most important achievement is to make Phillip fall in love with her so that he’s inspired to stay and rule over England. It’s him and not her that gets the actual character arc of the story.

So Princess of Thieves a real curiosity piece: not hideously unwatchable, but you are left wondering why it exists in the first place. There are some fine character actors elevating the material, at least two up-and-comers that have since become household names, and I suspect it holds a fond place in a few younger Millennial hearts.

As for me, I prefer this movie not as a movie but a time capsule, specifically one that contains that very awkward type of strong female character that was so prevalent at the time. It’s a near-perfect time-specific depiction of the tension that existed between rah-rah girl power and the inability to write a woman as the mover-and-shaker of her own story; the difficulty in balancing the Naïve Newcomer and the Faux Action Girl tropes, and of knowing your female lead has to have flaws and make mistakes, but being unable to write them in such a way that doesn’t make her look like an idiot who endangers everyone’s lives including her own.

So we end up with a character who is brimming with anger and passion and conviction – and aside from three well-shot arrows it’s all just lip-service. Ah, those were the days.

(Also, if the 1973 movie is the only Robin Hood story I've heard of that hasn't featured Will Scarlett, then this is the only one that hasn't included Little John).

Scream 4 (2011)

The problem (if you want to call it that) with the Scream franchise at this stage is that it has to keep finding ways to outdo itself: to be more twisty, more shocking, more meta than ever before. As astounding as it is to realize this movie is now over ten years old, it had already been over ten years since Scream 3, and it was difficult to see how the story could continue since Sidney’s arc had been wrapped up pretty perfectly at the trilogy’s conclusion.

SPOILERS

Scream 4 finds a reason for its existence – and a thoroughfare into its meta-commentary – by leaning into the concept of reboots and remakes (a trend that was already well underway a decade ago, and which certainly hasn’t let up in the subsequent years) with a sprinkle of commentary regarding the ever-growing dependency on subversive storytelling that has since destroyed many a good tale. In hindsight, it’s funny that this film came out the same year as Game of Thrones’ first season, a show that eventually destroyed itself in its desperate need to “subvert audience expectations”.

Here it’s played more for black comedy, as spelled out in the franchise’s prerequisite “someone explains what tropes to expect in this movie” scene involving the school’s movie club, which argues that “the unexpected is the new cliché”. This mentality is held out by no less than two fake-out openings to the film – two victims watching Stab 6 who are themselves the victims of Stab 7, one of which openly calls out the unsurprising nature of horror remakes, who is herself being watched on television by the first two real victims of Scream 4.

If you understood that sentence, then good for you. I’m not even sure if I did, and I’m the one that wrote it.

Ultimately, the killer’s identity forms the entire crux of the film. With Sidney having completed her character arc in Scream 3, it would seem the role of protagonist is being passed to her younger cousin Jill... only for her to eventually reveal herself as Ghostface. Jealous of her cousin’s notoriety, Jill’s motivation is to seize her fifteen minutes of fame by any means necessary, thereby mingling social commentary (specifically on concepts like on-line fame, live-streaming, going viral and everyone’s obsession with those things) with meta commentary (the film’s iconic line is Sid’s: “you forgot the first rule of remakes – don’t fuck with the original.”) It’s all very droll.

Scream 4 underperformed at the box office, leading to another ten-year wait before Scream 5, but as someone who was prepared to call it a day after Scream 3, I liked this instalment well enough. It was fun catching up with the lives of Sidney, Gale and Dewey who are all reasonably successful and happy (sadly, this won’t be as true for two of them in Scream 5) though it was a shame that Sidney’s familial connection with her aunt and cousin was so undersold.

There was no indication whatsoever that Sidney had extended family in the first three films, and her Aunt Kate (played by Mary McDonnell, no less) only gets one interesting comment in about her dead sister Maureen before she’s offed. Likewise, it doesn’t really hurt that Sidney is betrayed by her cousin – in who she sees a lot of herself – simply because the two of them don’t spend a huge amount of screentime together. I did like the eerie way that Sidney was referred to as “the angel of death”, and it makes sense that writing a book would be part of her healing process.

In the grand scheme of things, it’s probably going to end up the odd duck of the franchise. The first three films form a coherent arc, and Scream 5 is a “unifying” sort of film that picks up threads from the prior films, provides closure on others, sets the main characters on a new course, and has already been greenlit a sequel. Scream 4 isn’t totally ignored, but in parodying remakes/reboots (and then subverting that intention) it’s more of a standalone offering than the others.

Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

I rewatched this for the first time since seeing it in cinemas just to prep for Death on the Nile, though it wasn’t strictly necessary since the two are self-contained mysteries – and annoyingly, what little continuity there is, is faulty. The photograph that Poirot looks at of his former love isn’t of the actress that plays her in the sequel, and the in-joke at the end in which he’s called off to investigate “a death on the Nile” clearly can’t refer to Linnett since she’s still very much alive by the time he gets there.

And honestly, I don’t think Orient Express translates well to the big-screen. It’s to my eternal regret that I saw the 1974 film before reading the book, as would have loved to know whether I could have solved the case, especially since it seems so obvious once Poirot establishes that everyone was connected in some way to the Armstrong family. I mean, it’s clearly not a coincidence that all these people are on the same train together.

It’s also a very fiddly mystery, with the killers throwing out red herrings, changing passports, booking empty cabins and tampering with the crime scene, all to throw Poirot off his game – something that doesn’t translate well to the screen, which needs to maintain a more elegant parsing of clues and information. Also, so many of the plot-points were specific to Agatha Christie’s day: for example, it’s meant to read as strange that so many nationalities are onboard this train, which is a clue pointing to the melting pot that is America (where they all live), but would any modern viewer bat an eye at this these days?

Still, it’s a beautiful film to look at and the cast is stacked. Michelle Pfeiffer, Willem Dafoe, Penelope Cruz, Jedi Dench, Derek Jacobi, Daisy Ridley, Josh Gad, Johnny Depp. Even Academy Award winner Olivia Colman is here for like, three scenes.

Though in a way there’s no other choice in a murder mystery: you have to cast either nobodies or superstars, or else the famous people in the most important roles will give away the plot. And with this many characters, it’s easier for audiences to tell them apart if they’re already familiar with the actors.

Death on the Nile (2022)

I’m beginning to think production on this fledgling franchise is cursed – the first one was released at the peak of the Johnny Depp controversy, though that was nothing compared to the Armie Hammer allegations (and it was kind of funny watching the final trailer and how desperately it tried to cut out all of his scenes). Also, there’s a reasonable chance this is one of the last things we’ll see Letitia Wright in outside the MCU considering her anti-vax stance, though I suppose only time will tell with that one.

I can actually sympathise with the Hammer situation. It was far too late for them to cut him out and recast, and considering his career is well and truly over, I don’t think it makes much difference that he features here. And hey, of all the bragging rights a film can have, being the swansong of a cannibal is pretty matchless.

Poirot is on vacation in Egypt when he’s drawn into the wedding party of Simon Doyle and the fabulously wealthy Linnet Ridgeway, two newlyweds who are living it up in style. But Poirot has a guarded response to their happiness: he’s seen them before at a nightclub, in which Simon was very much attached to an entirely different woman (and practically dry-humping her on the dance floor – what was that about?)

So it doesn’t come as much of a surprise when the scorned Jacqueline De Bellefort shows up; making the couple’s honeymoon a living hell with her continued presence. Simon and Linnet appeal to Poirot to speak to Jackie and make her see sense, but Jackie is hellbent on seeing her sabotage through to its bitter end. A few days later, on board the paddle steamer S. S. Karnak, Linnet is found shot dead in her cabin. Jackie is the most obvious suspect, but as the investigation begins, Poirot finds that everyone had means and motivation.

SPOILERS

Watching the screenplay chop and change the cast is an interesting exercise in how adaptations are crafted: the Allertons are gone completely (as they were in 1978), though Windlesham makes an unexpected return, played by Russell Brand of all people. This character only appears once in the book and has nothing whatsoever to do with the murder mystery, so he’s been merged somewhat with Doctor Bessner.

Salome Otterborne has been reimagined entirely, from a drunken novelist to a successful jazz singer, and Rosalie from her long-suffering daughter to her niece and agent. French and Saunders reunite to play Mrs van Schuyler and Mrs Bowers, the former as a staunch socialist (merging her with Ferguson) and the latter as her nurse and long-time secret lover. There’s no sign of poor Cornelia, but Tom Bateman as Bouc (along with Annette Bening as his mother) returns and is the only carryover from Orient Express, once again as Poirot’s line of entry into the proceedings.

I really enjoyed Bateman in the last film, though he ends up the third and final murder victim here, as part of a subplot that actually works surprisingly well. Orient was too complex to stray far from the source material, but Nile manages to weave in some surprises, from a missing tube of red paint to providing a decent reason as to why so many people with a grudge against Linnet “accidentally” ended up on a boat with her in Egypt.

But annoyingly, the film skips over the two most important conversations of the book: the one Poirot has with Linnett, and the one he has with Jacqueline. In the former, he gently chides Linnet about the fact that she stole her best friend’s man, pointing out that the reason she’s reacting so badly to Jackie’s presence is that she secretly feels guilty about what happened. In the latter, he forms a paternal bond with Jackie, encouraging her to give up what she’s doing, forget her bitterness, and go live her life.

Each conversation is so important for establishing the minds and motivations of these women, to the point where Christie pulls off the clever trick of making readers not-particularly-sorry for Linnet’s death, while Jackie’s failed plot and ultimate demise is deeply felt. Here, Gal Gadot’s Linnet is far too sympathetic: Poirot offers no rejoinder when she points out Simon couldn’t be expected to marry someone he no longer loved, and her final scene has her apologizing to Jackie for what happened between them.

Conversely, the film doesn’t bother to make Simon or Jackie anything but psychotically evil. In the book, their toxic relationship provides the fatal formula for murder: Simon casually floats the idea of marrying Linnet, killing her off and inheriting the money, but has no idea of how to go about doing it successfully. Jackie, out of desperate love for him, comes up with the scheme in order to please him and prevent him from getting caught.

A tiny part of you can’t help but root for them, but here it’s clear that they’re plotting Linnet’s demise right from the start as opposed to enabling each other’s warped psyches. It’s a shame this nuance is lost (along with the great moment in which Jackie throws in a misdirection by telling Poirot that someone is spying on their conversation).

It’s a fun movie, but I think the 1978 and 2004 versions manage the cast relationships better.

Scream 5 (2022)

I’m sticking a 5 on the end of this even though it was released as simply “Scream,” something I don’t understand the point of and which the movie itself pokes fun at.  

If Scream 4 was a parody of reboots/remakes, with a younger cast more-or-less lining up with the original teens of the first film: Jill as Sidney, Kirby as Tatum, Charlie as Randy, Trevor as Billy, Robbie as Stu (only to subvert most of these roles – turns out Jill was Billy) then Scream 5 announces itself as a “requel” a hybrid of a reboot/sequel in which original new characters are in some way related to the old ones, and there’s an emphasis on call-backs and continuity nods. Think Jurassic World, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Independence Day: Resurgence, Indiana Jones, Terminator: Genisys – and of course, Star Wars.

SPOILERS

We have a brand new (and indisputable) lead called Sam Carpenter, who starts the story getting a call from a school friend telling her that her younger sister has been attacked by a masked assailant. She and her boyfriend race back to her hometown: Woodsboro, where another killing spree is kicking off.

On being reunited with her sister and her old school friends, she blurts out a confession: she’s actually the secret daughter of Billy Loomis, a fact she found out years ago in her mother’s diary, which led to a confrontation between mother and daughter, which in turn was overheard by her (supposed) father who promptly left. Convinced that she’s the reason for her broken family, Sam took off.  

But with another murder, this time of the nephew of Stu Macher, Sam decides to stick around and try to figure out who attacked her sister. This naturally takes her to Dewey – who isn’t doing too well. Forced into retirement, divorced from Gale, living in a trailer, suffering from the aftereffects of multiple injuries... but there’s no way he’s going to turn away from someone in need.

It turns out that Sam isn’t the only one connected to the Woodsboro “legacy characters”. Chad and Mindy are the twin nephew/niece of Randy Meeks (complete with cameo appearance by their mother Martha Meeks, not seen since Scream 3). Judy Hicks is back from Scream 4, along with her son Wes. And of course, it’s only a matter of time before Sidney and Gale turn up, though it’s clear that they’re no longer the main characters.

They’re there in order to help out the newcomers, and I appreciated that they’re allowed to be badass while implicitly acknowledging that their arcs have been played out. Recognizing that fact not only lets Sam take centre-stage, but also avoids overriding their well-earned success and contentment (well, except in Dewey’s case).

There are some genuinely clever twists and turns along the way, along with the franchise’s usual meta-commentary on the genre. For instance, I love that Tara, the first victim in the prologue, actually survives the initial attack and makes it all the way to the end of the movie. On the other hand (though we all knew it was coming) this ends up being Dewey’s swansong, who is killed about halfway through and whose death prompts Sidney’s return to Woodsboro.

I wasn’t as upset as I thought I’d be, as it’s a fitting death, and there’s a certain poignancy to the fact that Dewey and Gale apparently split up at about the same time Courteney Cox and David Arquette did.

(I was, however, surprised the film didn’t buck the trend of having only two killers. I really thought they’d end up with three this time around. On that note, this left me wondering if anyone can actually deduce who a Scream killer is based on the evidence seeded into the story and not just intuit who it is based on tropes and expectations).

The film clears up some loose ends that were left dangling at the end of previous films – remember Mark Kincaid from Scream 3 who went mysteriously unmentioned in 4? Turns out Sidney married him and they’ve had at least two kids together. Oh, and Kirby whose death was rather ambiguous in Scream 4? She doesn’t appear in person, but a YouTube video confirms that she survived.

There are some “digs” at elevated horror such as The Babadook and The Witch, but the motivation of the killers is pretty amazing: turns out they’re both superfans of the Stab franchise, and are furious that it lost its way after Stab 8 that was directed by – get this – Rian Johnson. Yup, the psychotic murderers are toxic fandom. I suppose it’s sad in a way that the problem has gotten so bad that they’ve become the villains of a beloved franchise, but at the same time it’s a glorious “fuck you” to that particular demographic.

Hilda: Season 2 (2020)

Thank God for this show. It exists to be charming and relaxing, from the low-key stakes to the muted colour palette. It kind of reminds me of those screensavers we had back in the nineties. After a frustrating day at work, I could simply put on one of these episodes and unwind with a blue-haired little girl exploring the bucolic Scandinavian countryside with her friends.

I’d already read Luke Pearson’s Hilda graphic novels, and so knew going in that they’d make perfect material for an animated adaptation. Most of Pearson’s plots were already covered in the show’s first season, though the very last episode of this one is an adaptation of The Stone Forest, complete with a cliff-hanger that leads into The Mountain King (the last graphic novel, and the movie-length finale of the show).

That leaves the other twelve episodes as original standalone stories, usually to do with Hilda’s adventures with new characters Freda and David, her school chums. David is particularly sweet, as a rather timid young boy who gets dragged along by the more daring and outgoing girls. However, Freda deserved more focus when it came to her apprenticeship as a witch (does it... run in the family? Is she just naturally gifted?)

Some of the stories are genuinely beautiful. There’s one in which Hilda’s little fox-deer feels a call back to his own species, and we’re treated to gorgeous images of them ascending into the sky across bridges made out of the lights of the aurora. Another has the children finding a secret door leading to a hidden room in the library... which leads to another door... then another... and another, until they’re wandering through a landscape of beautiful book-rooms, each one stranger and more mystical than the one before.

The music is gorgeous too, I’ve been listening to the soundtrack on Spotify at work. Thankfully, there’s one more season to come, so I don’t have to bid farewell to Hilda just yet...

Evil: Season 2 (2021)

At the end of the first season it was very clear to me that – like Lost and The X-Files and dozens of other genre shows before it – there was no clear masterplan behind the overarching plot of Evil. Instead there’ll be a series of one-off mysteries that will never get resolved with any degree of satisfaction, and narrative threads that the writers are clearly making up as they go along. By the final episode of this season, they’ve raised far more questions than they’ve answered and I’m not holding my breath for any decent pay-off.

But I knew that going in. I’ve watched too many of these shows to be fooled into thinking anyone knows where they’re going or what they’re doing with any great clarity. So I’ve just decided to enjoy it on an episode-by-episode basis: the creepy aesthetic, solid acting, plenty of jump scares, insights to how the Catholic Church operates, and to not expect too much.

Kristen Bouchard, David Acosta and Ben Shakir are employed by the Church to assess strange phenomena and report back on whether it warrants further investigation: hauntings, demonic possessions, exorcisms gone wrong, and so on. This provides the Mystery of the Week format of the show, though you can be sure that the resolution to each one will be made up of equal parts scientific explanation and inexplicable supernatural occurrences.

As Nietzsche put it: when you look into the void, you risk the void looking back at you, and Kristen’s work begins to bleed into her everyday life, whether it’s her irresponsible mother getting involved with the loathsome but manipulative Leland Townsend, or her four girls (Lynn, Lila, Lexis and Laura) being drawn into their own adolescent mysteries. Last season’s cliff-hanger centred on the question of whether or not Kristen murdered a serial killer who was threatening her children: turns out she did, and now her mental state is on a downward spiral.

This ongoing arc is woven throughout the weekly case-by-case format, though given the recurring cast and the interconnected threads that keep popping up (a dodgy fertility clinic, creepy dolls that seem to talk to their owners, children who seem possessed with certain powers, whatever the hell Leland and his cohorts are up to...) it’s sometimes hard to keep track of what’s going to be important going forward, and what belongs to a one-shot story.

I live in hope: maybe this IS all building to something specific. So far it’s been a long and winding path, but as strange as the show can be at times, I can’t deny it’s not compelling. This season definitely takes definite steps away from reality-based solutions to supernaturally-tinged phenomena, so the scales should be falling from Kristen and Ben’s eyes sooner rather than later. And the sooner the better – perhaps then the writers can start providing real answers to their myriad of mysteries.

The Gilded Age: Season 1 (2022)

A new period drama by Julian Fellowes? Well of course I was going to watch it. Possibly the closest of his projects in spirit to Downton Abbey since its conclusion in 2015, this is essentially that show in 1882 New York. As is to be expected, there’s an ensemble cast of upstairs/downstairs characters, though The Gilded Age focuses more on the wealthy to the point of it taking a while to get a grip on who’s who among the household servants (Downton was much more even-handed in this regard).

The entry point is protagonist Marian Brook, who unfortunately – though perhaps deliberately – is the most boring character of the whole show. After the death of her father she goes to live with her Old Money aunts Agnes and Ada van Rhijn, who live on Fifth Avenue across the street from the epitome of New Money: the Russells.

On second thought, perhaps Carrie Coon as Bertha Russell is this show’s protagonist, as her arc is the narrative centrepiece and clearly the story Fellowes is most interested in. Carrie Coon sinks her teeth into the role: a classy but shameless social climber whose grand ambition is to be inducted into the upper echelons of Old Money New York.

Most of the stakes – what little there are – revolve around this gradual ascent, and though it’s hard to care that much if an extremely wealthy woman manages to win over a bunch of inbred elitist snobs, she does it with no small degree of panache. You’re at least convinced that she cares very deeply about her social standing, which pulls you along too.

But it’s Christine Baranski who nearly steals the show, though that’s not surprising since she’s Christine Baranski. She’s essentially playing Maggie Smith’s part as the snobbish but insightful, unexpectedly wise and generous-deep-down autocratic matriarch, who rules the house with an iron fist and gets all the best lines – obviously she’s a delight, though I’m not sure whether to be charmed (at her) or exasperated (at Fellowes) that such a stanch class loyalist who won’t set foot across the street to visit her neighbours would employ a Black secretary without a shred of prejudice.

I mean, it’s not an impossible psychology or scenario, and I’m reminded of a quote from Fellowes in which he said he treats every character as if they’re good deep down (perhaps that’s why there are never any stakes in his work) but it’s still a bit of a stretch. Or maybe I just don’t give people enough credit.

Speaking of said Black secretary, Anna Scott is another great character, who gives us a chance to get a period-accurate depiction of wealthy Black society in 1800’s New York: a slice of history you don’t see very often. She has ambitions to be a writer, and I appreciated that she had to deal with prejudice in a real but lowkey manner. It’s not ignored, but neither is it relentless misery porn (there’s a place for that, but it’s not in a light period piece from the writer of Downton Abbey).

Most of her story revolves around her ambition to be a published writer, which is unfortunately subsumed by a “secret baby believed dead but actually quite alive” plot that isn’t half as interesting. Rounding things out is Agnes van Rhijn’s grown son Oscar, played by Blake Ritson doing his usual Blake Ritson thing, and proving that Fellowes cannot conceive of a gay man in a period piece who isn’t a conniving schemer.

As you’d expect the details and accuracy is impeccable (well, I’m not sure about some of Mrs Russell’s gowns) and it exists to be a picture-postcard tribute of the time and place. You can’t help but pick up some interesting tidbits, such as the early arrival of the Statue of Liberty’s hand on display in Madison Square. See you in season two.

Bridgerton: Season 2 (2022)

I’ll admit, I wasn’t all that fond of Bridgerton’s first season: all the best characters existed on the margins of the action and I found the central pairing to be profoundly unpleasant: Simon was obnoxiously smarmy and Daphne was unbearably insipid. The idea of the second season revolving around older brother Anthony’s search for a suitable wife wasn’t something that piqued my interest either since he came across as a bit of an ass (a spin-off of his lover/opera singer Sienna, on the other hand? Yes please).

So I wasn’t planning on returning for more, but then I caught a glimpse of the Sharma sisters and how could I resist them?

The second season is definitely a step-up from the first, though I’m still not as entranced by the project as a whole as others seem to be. I’m not really a shipper at the best of times, it takes a lot for my attention to be caught by an on-screen couple, and when it comes to the romance genre, I’m always stymied by the complete lack of suspense that’s inherent in all its stories. Spoiler alert: they hook up. I know what’s going to happen every single time!

And yeah, I know this is the part where people say “it’s not the destination, it’s the journey!” and “it’s a character study!” but again, modern romances pretty much always play out the same way, hitting the exact same beats every time. Hint: the two attractive people who get off on the wrong foot and declare to confidants that they absolutely hate the other will eventually hook up.

I suppose it’s ironic that I’m always in search of complex and three-dimensional female characters, and you can guarantee that there’ll be at least one in any given romance, whereas my preferred genre of speculative fiction – fantasy, sci-fi, horror – doesn’t have anywhere near as many female leads as it should. Romance is the one type of story that is always written with women in mind (mostly because it’s dominated by women writers) and yet it holds almost no interest to me whatsoever.

Ah well, if it’s a period piece I can at least enjoy the historical context and the pretty gowns.

With Simon and Daphne wedded off-screen, the focus turns to Anthony Bridgerton and his mission to find a wife/the next viscountess. Having had his heart broken last season and still traumatized by his father’s sudden death from a bee sting years ago, he wants someone charming, well-bred, eager for children, and (most importantly) low maintenance.

Enter Edwina Sharma, a new arrival from India who has entered the marriage market and is announced the diamond of the season by Queen Charlotte. She fits the bill, and Anthony goes about wooing her with all the passion of a man in pursuit of an advantageous business transaction.

But he didn’t count on Edwina’s older sister Kate, who is fiercely protective of her younger sister, all the more so when she overhears a conversation that reveals Anthony’s mercenary attitude to marriage. Look, I loved Kate’s character, so much so that I made her April’s Woman of the Month, and there’s not much to repeat here.

The romance unfolds with all the dramatics you’d expect: by the time Anthony and Kate are ready to acknowledge that they’re ferally attracted to one another, Anthony is already deep into a relationship with Edwina, and Kate refuses to spoil her sister’s happiness. Everything else is from the romance playbook: a horserace in the dim morning hours, a spontaneous sexual encounter in a gazebo, a panic-stricken demonstration of affection when one’s life is at risk (Kate gets stung by a bee, and apparently the book has Anthony suck the poison out of her breast – so happy they cut that) and plenty of deep, agonized stares.

I didn’t dislike Anthony and Kate as a couple – I believe they love each other and that they enjoy each other’s company (you’d be surprised how many romance stories fail to achieve this very basic requirement) but I’m not in the raptures of ecstasy that most of social media seems to be (even taking into account Twitter/Tumblr’s tendency to overact). I think I’ll probably enjoy them more in season three in which they can just be happily married and not caught up in the turgid requirements of a Regency romance.

As for the rest of the cast, I’m not entirely sure the writers realize just how badly Penelope is coming across – yes, she’s called out on what she did to Marina, who certainly isn’t having a great time of married life, but the show also has Marina encourage Colin to pursue Penelope, which is a pairing the writers seemingly want us to root for even though it’s far more than Pen deserves at this point. Are we really meant to ignore the fact that Pen has slandered two of Colin’s sisters in the Lady Whistledown papers? Or that she’s sitting on a stash of money while the rest of her family faces financial ruin?

I like the character well enough, but like I said, I’m not convinced the show realizes how terrible she’s being or how difficult it will be for Colin to forgive her after the truth comes out.

As for the rest of the Bridgerton family, I was surprised that Eloise struck up a friendship/budding romance with a young printer’s apprentice given she seemed to be quite blatantly queer-coded in the first season, and at the same moment I finally gleaned the difference between Colin and Benedict I discovered there are actually two younger Bridgerton sisters. I knew the very youngest girl was called Hyacinth, but apparently there’s a whole other sister called Francesca that's been there the whole time. The hell??

Rupert Young (still as tall as ever) appears as the Featherington family’s unscrupulous cousin, Anthony Stewart Head gets a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo as Edwina’s grandfather, and the likes of Adjoa Andoh, Ruth Gemmell, Golda Rosheuvel and Polly Walker get more to do this time around as various no-nonsense matriarchs (sigh – see what I mean about romances and female characters? It’s a gift, especially to older women).

But – as is fitting – the season really belongs to the Sharma sisters. I don’t think I’ve ever seen two such beautiful actresses on television before, and they along with the equally lovely Shelley Conn as their mother are better than anything in the first season.

The show is settling into its groove, and the instrumental covers of pop songs and the candy-coloured outfits are clearly the vibe the show is getting more comfortable with. They were wise to lean more into that this season, as no one is taking this show very seriously (or at least, they shouldn’t be) and keeping things light is the best way forward. Next is... Benedict or Colin? They set both of them up to be one half of the main couple next time around.