Reading/Watching Log #81

I made August period drama month, though there are a few things that will spill into September (I still haven’t gotten to Love & Friendship, and though I watched North and South this month, I ran out of time to write about it). I also finally got through two library books that I’ve been renewing since early last year, two more Babysitters Club books, the latest from Philip Pullman, and the fantastic Prey, which I definitely recommend.

Today is the first day of spring, which feels miraculous. It’s been a horrendous winter, with illness and flooding and anti-vaxx nutjobs and hideous weather, and I’m so profoundly glad it’s over. It really has felt like the longest winter of my life, and I almost wept yesterday when it was warm enough to wear a skirt.

There’s still a lot of crap going on, but it feels like we’ve turned a corner, albeit a very small one. And... I’m now working fulltime. One of my colleagues made the move to another library, I interviewed for her position, and now it’s official. I guess this means I’m a proper adult now.

Norse Tales illustrated by Ulla Thynell

I grabbed this one from the library based on the fact that I follow the illustrator on Tumblr, and amazing work is done here in creating the beautiful-but-eerie ambiance of Scandinavia and its folklore. With ancient tales collected from Norway, Sweden and Denmark (plus a few from Iceland and Finland) by a range of different sources, the book divides its material into three categories: Transformation, Wit and Journeys.

As ever, my interest in fairy tales lies in the similarities between them, regardless of where they originated from: expect a lot of kings with three sons, strange challenges that only a true bride can perform, taboos that cannot be broken, a tension between Christianity and the old ways of paganism, misfit youngsters who go out to seek their fortunes and receive inexplicable instructions from helpful elves, dwarfs or talking animals, prioritizing quick wits over brute strength, kindnesses repaid, bargains with the devil, at least one dragon, and happily ever afters with beautiful princesses.

Sometimes the parallels are even more pronounced: “Mighty Mikko” is essentially “Puss in Boots”, but with a fox instead of a cat, while “The Giant Who Had No Heart” has traces of “Jack and the Beanstalk” and the familiar search for a missing heart that’s hidden in a lake, on an island, down a well and inside a duck. Heard that one before. And hey, even Reynard the fox turns up! I thought he was a French character (though thanks to Lev Grossman’s The Magicians trilogy, I shudder every time I hear the name).

And because the stories are mostly Scandinavian, there’s a lot of cultural flavour: trolls, polar bears, the Aurora Borealis, seamanship, reindeer, and names like Pilka, Ilona, Osmo, Toller, Malfri and Hildur.

Since all of the stories are simply translated and reproduced from other publications, the real drawcard is Ulla Thynell’s artwork. It’s moody and dreamy and beautiful, with a careful colour palette of muted purples, blues and greens. Many of the images are landscapes, with characters appearing only as small figures beneath the sky, capturing the vast scope of the forests and tundra. If you’re looking for a collection of fairy tales from this specific part of the world, I’m sure you could do worse than this.

Stories of the Saints by Carey Wallace

This made for a surprisingly nice companion piece to the above book; dealing with Catholic tales rather than pagan folklore – though as ever, recurring motifs and symbols are repeated throughout.

There are seventy saints featured in total, presented in chronological order from Ancient Rome to modern day. It made for a rather fascinating history of Catholicism as it spread throughout the world (there are saints from Rome, France, Italy, Smyrna, Poland, Sudan, Peru – even one in America) and it was a bit startling when railroads were mentioned towards the end of the book.

Along with the most recognizable saints (Valentine, Nicholas, George, Augustine, Patrick, Joan of Arc, Mother Teresa) are plenty of obscure ones – though in saying that, they’re probably only obscure to me, a non-Catholic. The book actually resulted in a lot of “well, duh!” moments when it turned out the featured saint established something that’s now universally recognized, from the rosary beads to the Dominican or Franciscan brotherhoods.

Each chapter comes with a header that gives the birth/death dates of the saint in question, their location, emblem, feast day and what they’re the patron of – and there are some eye-openers here. Did you know there’s a patron saint of florists? Magicians? Lottery winners? AIDS patients? Television?

And I had always been under the misconception that in order to become a saint, you first had to become a martyr (that is, die prematurely for your faith). But apparently, that’s not the case? The introduction to the book doesn’t clear this up for me, but there is a nice nod at some of the more fantastical elements of these tales (“just because we can’t be sure a story really happened doesn’t mean it isn’t true in another way”).

And like I said, it was fascinating to read the history of Christianity by peeking through the keyhole of the saints as a subject: its story moves slowly from the persecution of Rome to the rise of the missionaries to becoming the most dominant religion in the world, and often various saints can pop up in each other’s stories. Ah religion, the original fandom!

With illustrations by Nick Thornbarrow, they reminded me a lot of Cartoon Saloon’s style. Look at that cover art! That’s something straight out of The Secret of Kells.

Estranged and Estranged: The Changeling King by Ethan M. Aldridge

These graphic novels are gorgeous, and I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to notice them given they tick every box on the “things I like” checklist. Dark fairy tales, fraught family dynamics, changeling tales, beautiful artwork, clever twists... it’s all here.

As you’d expect from a changeling story, it involves two protagonists: a mortal known as the Childe who lives in the realm of Faerie (or the World Below as it’s referred to here) and a fey called Edmund who lives – rather uncomfortably – amongst the humans. They were switched at birth by the king and queen of the World Below on little more than a whim. Human children are fashionable, you see.

Naturally neither Edmund or the Childe feel completely at home in their separate environments, but when the World Below is taken over by a cruel sorceress, the Childe realizes that there’s only one person he can call upon for assistance: the very individual who is currently living out his life with the Childe’s real family. Edmund isn’t particularly interested in helping out the people who traded him for a mortal infant, but you won’t be surprised to hear that the two boys are soon working together in order to win back the kingdom. Cue witches with bird hands, carriages drawn by warthogs, werewolf-like assassins, glimmering crystal caves – there’s a wealth of creativity on display here, and the colours and detail are just incredible.

I really can’t rave enough about the artwork. Artist/writer Ethan Aldridge has a mastery of perspective and characterization, filling the pages with beautiful underground realms and imaginative fairy creatures. There are all sorts of cool little touches, like the pages between the panels being either white or black depending on whether the action takes place in the human world or the World Below, or the detailing on Whick, a golem made of white wax who loses the ability to move when the lit flame atop his head is extinguished. You know how when you light a candle, the wax starts slowly pouring down its sides? That visual is what’s used for Whick’s hair. It’s just ingenious.

Given how The Changeling King ends, it would appear there’s going to be at least one more book in the series, though by the looks of it, Aldridge is working on an entirely different project before getting back to this one. Hopefully no one will have to wait too long.

The Art of Goosebumps by Sarah Rodriguez

Like every Nineties Kid, I was well into the Goosebumps books as a child, only for my interest to gradually peter out as I got older. But anyone of my generation will tell you that the popularity of this series was built on two things: the Big Twists and the Cover Art. I well remember staring at some of these covers, letting the images soak into my brain, knowing they depicted things that might not be all that appropriate for young minds and feeling suitably creeped out by their implications. They were designed to be provocative in a very specific way (there’s a reason these books were contested so regularly by the censors) and obviously I wasn’t the only child who felt their pull.

And the stories were okay too, I guess. Remember the one about the kid being terrorized by a monster at summer camp only for it to end with the reader learning the whole experience was a simulation designed by the kid’s parents to test how well he could survive on Earth because they were actually all aliens? Wild.

This book brings together all sixty of the covers that were painted by Tim Jacobus during the original print run (only two were contributed by other artists) as well as the various branches of the franchise (Goosebumps 2000, the Pick-a-Path books, short story collections, posters, postcards, etc). It’s not hugely informative, but there are plenty of fun facts strewn throughout, plus Jacobus’s original artwork showcased on big glossy pages that show them off to best effect, without the titles, taglines or logos of the actual book covers.

R.L. Steine contributes comments throughout (though unsurprisingly, these decrease once the ghost-writers took over) and I actually ended up learning something about the publication process. Unbeknownst to me, the books were released in four distinct “series”. Series one contains the most iconic titles (Monster Blood, Night of the Living Dummy, The Ghost Next Door, The Haunted Mask, The Werewolf of Fever Swamp, One Day at Horrorland, The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight, Ghost Beach). Series two features most of the sequels, and often drew their inspiration from classic monsters: vampires, the mummy, the wolf-boy, the headless ghost, the abominable snowman, the phantom of the opera – even superheroes (or rather, supervillains).

Series three is when the shark gets jumped, and it’s obvious that the ghost-writers have pretty much taken over by this point. The covers match the storylines in their more whimsical tone, with evil snowmen, Viking women, human/velociraptor hybrids, giant blobs, creepy fish, and mutant slugs as the featured monsters. This phase also contains How I Learned To Fly, a charming morality tale about the pitfalls of fame that cannot be remotely classified as a horror tale in any way, shape or form.  

Finally, series four rebranded itself as Goosebumps: 2000 as a darker, scarier upgrade for the new millennium (which is ironic since only one of the titles was published in the year 2000). Why’d they bother? Unclear, but Jacobsen was given leeway to make the artwork more gross, violent and scary to match the darker stories, though the whole thing came to a rather abrupt halt when Steine’s contract with Scholastic expired. I can only assume that by that point the sales had fallen.

Jacobus was commissioned by Scholastic because the Goosebumps editors felt he captured the right blend of horror and comedy in his artwork, and the covers are filled with his distinctive style. This book is great at pointing out some of his trademarks, which I’d never really clocked as a young reader: warped perspectives, POVs from the floor, juxtapositioning the mundane with the terrifying, lime-green slime, Converse sneakers, tiled floors, skies at sunset (often with silhouetted trees) and saturated colours. Despite how many there were, he was actually fairly ingenious in making sure each cover had a very distinct colour scheme.

There’s also the interesting fact that he never got to read any of the books before starting on the art – this led to plenty of discrepancies between the covers and the actual stories, though not as many as you might suppose. There’s a fun anecdote about the fact that the cover for Say Cheese and Die (surely the most memorable and iconic cover of the entire series) had no corresponding scene in the text itself, but since the editors were so enamoured of it, they asked Steine to justify its existence by incorporating it into the story. He delivered by turning it (a family of skeletons having a barbeque) into a dream sequence, which is truly one of the most R.L. Steine things I’ve ever heard.

For the record, Steine’s favourite covers are Night of the Living Dummy, The Curse of Camp Cold Lake, The Barking Ghost (ironic since that’s one of his least-favourite stories, along with Go Eat Worms) and The Haunted Mask. The most stressful cover to create was A Night in Terror Tower, which forced Jacobson to pull a thirty-hour no-breaks session due to time constraints.

There are other interesting titbits: only a few Goosebumps books were written in third person, there was never any blood depicted on any of the covers, only two books deal with time-travel (A Night in Terror Tower and The Cuckoo Clock of Doom) which were released consecutively, the shortest book is I Live In Your Basement and the longest one is Invasion of the Body Squeezers Part II, only two titles haven’t been reprinted since the original run (Werewolf Skin and Legend of the Lost Legend – yes, that’s the correct title) and even though the most iconic villain of the series is Slappy the ventriloquist dummy, he wasn’t even the main villain of the first book in which he appeared (he does however, get the most sequels, is one of the very few villain protagonists, and can boast the only book in the whole series not told from the perspective of a child).

As someone who grew up with Goosebumps, it was fascinating to absorb these backstories and fun-facts – though sometimes the trivia can feel a little irrelevant. Ghost Beach is apparently the only book wherein every human character shares the same last name. Uh... okay? Good to know.

But almost every two-page spread contains Jacobsen’s pencil sketches, mock-ups and photo models, as well as a breakdown of his colour usage and comments from Steine. I spent a whole afternoon just perusing through it, reexperiencing my youth.

The Ghost at Dawn’s House by Anne M. Martin

The second Dawn title is also mildly notable for being the first one to switch up the sequential order of which babysitter each book pertains to. Dawn’s first book was #5, directly following Mary Anne’s, so logically you would expect her to be placed at #10. Instead, she swaps places with Mary Anne and takes the ninth instalment slot.  

Why does this matter? It doesn’t. I just think it’s vaguely interesting.

At this point Dawn is still being characterized as the most sensible and down-to-earth member of the club (Stacey would qualify if not for her boy-crazy tendencies) which is somewhat ironic as later on she becomes one of the more divisive mains, largely considered sanctimonious and pedantic while simultaneously also being the only character deemed popular enough to get her own spin-off: The California Diaries. But I digress.

This is the first mystery/ghost-themed book in the series and for that it’s one of my absolute favourites. Having already established that Dawn lives in an incredibly old colonial homestead, the story dives headfirst into the strange experiences she’s been having in the house: strange creaks and groans, rustling sounds in the walls, and the uncovering of the house’s history that suggests it may be haunted by the ghost of Jared Mullray.

Then one dark and stormy night she and her brother Jeff discover a secret passage leading from Dawn’s bedroom to the barn. The “evidence” of a haunting is a myriad of strange objects that keep appearing and disappearing from the length of the passage: a key, an ice-cream cone, a belt buckle, a handful of peanut shells... there’s one scene in which she heads down the passageway stairs, spots a book she’s never seen before lying on the ground, and screams her head off. End chapter. It’s actually remarkably chilling.

Of course, there ends up being a logical explanation, but in a choice that will be repeated in practically every single mystery and ghost story that follows there is exactly one thing that is never fully explained – leaving open the possibility that there is some degree of the supernatural at work.

And for what it’s worth, the new cover art actually fixes an error from the original: Dawn and Jeff discover the passageway during a blackout, though the first cover clearly had a light on in the room behind them. This accurately shows them in the dark, though it still depicts the staircase as leading up when it’s very clearly described in the text as leading down (how on earth could it lead up anyway? It’s an underground tunnel leading to a trapdoor in the barn!) It’s one of the more iconic covers I suppose, so maybe they felt it couldn’t be changed too much.

Logan Likes Mary Anne! by Anne M. Martin

The second Mary Anne-centric book works with the irony that she, the shyest of all the babysitters, is the first one to get a proper boyfriend, even though she and Logan aren’t technically dating by the end of the book.

At this point the girls are still living in a universe in which time passes, so this opens with all of them back in school after the summer break – though this may well be the very book in which the timeline grounds to a halt. Mary Anne has her thirteenth birthday and after that I’m pretty sure they’re all caught in stasis for the remainder of the series.

Finding themselves inundated with new clients, the Babysitters Club leaps at the chance to induct another member when new student Logan Bruno introduces himself to them over lunch in the cafeteria. Having had babysitting experience in Kentucky, and expressing a pretty blatant interest in Mary Anne, he’s eager to join up. Problem: Mary Anne finds herself almost unable to function in his presence.

The thing about Mary Anne is that she’s meant to be the quiet, kind, gentle and sensitive one, but reading this through the eyes of an adult... she’s really not. She can actually get pretty passive-aggressive at times. At one point she accidentally kicks her shoe off at a dance and is (apparently) so embarrassed that she sits on the side-lines and refuses to participate further. However, it just reads as her having a sulk because her friends laughed at how she lost her shoe.

Later, the babysitters go to all the trouble of throwing her a birthday party, but she’s so mortified at being the centre of attention that she runs home after they bring out the cake. The hell? Who does this? Again, she just comes across as an ungrateful weirdo, especially since nobody actually springs a surprise birthday party on her. She knew full-well she was going to a party; she just didn’t know they were going to bring out a birthday cake while she was there.  

I think going forward Mary Anne is going to end up my least-favourite of all the girls. Kind of like how Beth is your favourite Little Woman when you read it for the first time as a kid (because she’s the sweet, quiet one) and then you get older and realize she’s actually incredibly boring. I can relate to being shy and self-conscious, but here it manifests as Mary Anne drawing more attention to herself by making over-the-top scenes.

So definitely not my favourite of the books so far, though it does have significance in how it introduces three major characters: Logan Bruno as the first of the club’s two associate babysitters (Shannon is the other one, turning up in the next book) Jackie Rodowsky (the accident-prone redhead who will eventually get the spotlight in Kristy and the Walking Disaster) and Tigger the perpetual kitten.

On a minor note, this was also the first book I’ve read that I had to borrow from the library (not having my own copy) only to discover that they’ve changed the handwriting of the babysitters at the start of each chapter. To be fair, you can read it much more easily now, but c’mon! Those fonts were iconic!

The Imagination Chamber by Philip Pullman

It’s hard not to think of this book as something of a cash-grab. Every writer has a folder full of phrases and paragraphs that they cut out of their work but couldn’t bring themselves to delete; in fact, I recall an interview with Pullman in which he explicitly made mention of “the ghosts of the sentences I didn’t write” (or something like that).

This book of eighty-five single-sided pages feels like a book of all those passages cut out of the His Dark Materials trilogy that Pullman didn't throw away – truly, some of them feel like they could be neatly inserted into the text as “deleted scenes”. Others admittedly, were clearly written for this book (but not the majority).

That’s not to say it doesn’t make for an interesting, engrossing read. The title is derived from the term cloud chamber, a device which allows us to see otherwise invisible things like particles or cosmic rays. Pullman draws up a metaphor in which these things are very much like ideas, in which the “imagination chamber” provides the saturated vapour which brings into focus all these little short pieces which would have otherwise remained in the leftover folder.

We get little snippets of insight into the likes of Lyra, Will, Mrs Coulter, Asriel, Lee Scoresby, Serafina, Farder Coram, even Malcolm and Alice from the prequels (and I don’t think I drew the connection between Alice being Mrs Lonsdale before!) There are also glimpses of places like Oxford, Cittàgazze and the world of the mulefa.

Perhaps of most interest are the updates on Will, who (as far as I know) has not been explored post-The Amber Spyglass, and is here revealed to have become a physician. As ever, it’s all beautifully written, and Pullman’s gift is in compressing vast ideas and characterization and descriptive prose into very brief sentences. How does he do that?

My favourite page was the one that touched upon Lee Scoresby’s mother’s ring, one of the most impressive parts of the trilogy in that Pullman does not even remotely explain how on earth it came to be in John Parry’s possession, though for some reason you as a reader don’t require an answer. Pullman is one of only a few writers out there who can get away with this almost-random “just go with it” type of writing and though he doesn’t impart any answers here, it would seem he’s pondered the subject of the ring just as I have:

John Parry and the turquoise ring: how did he get hold of it? You could tell a story about the ring, and everything that had happened to it since it left Lee Scoresby’s mother’s finger; and you could tell a story about Lee himself, and recount his entire history from boyhood to the moment he sat beside the little hut on the flooded banks of the Yenisei, and saw the shaman’s fist open to disclose the well-loved thing that he’d turned and turned round and round his mother’s finger so long ago. The storylines diverge, and move a very long way apart, and come together, and something happens when they touch. That something would lead Lee to his death, but what happened to the ring? It must still be around, somewhere.

That said, the book is also extremely short. I deliberately paced myself in order to read it over a number of days and properly absorb some of the thoughts that were present, but you can literally read the entirety of it in under two minutes. Obviously I don’t regret picking it up, but it’s an odd little book and its purpose is difficult to discern. There needed to be more of it, and I definitely don’t think it should have been published before the release of the final book in the prequel trilogy.

If you love His Dark Materials, then this will barely whet your appetite – yet anything by Pullman is a must-read and it’s not like it requires any sort of time commitment.

The Spook’s Curse by Joseph Delaney

The most terrifying series of books for children continues. Tom Ward is apprenticed to the local Spook, the individual called upon whenever the County needs help with witches, boggarts or other nasties that go bump-in-the-night. (Yes, they’re early eighteenth-century Ghostbusters). Tom is proving himself an apt pupil, but on hearing that the Spook’s estranged brother has just died, master and apprentice head to a township called Priestown for the funeral.

It’s a dangerous place to go as it’s not only the seat of power for a man known as the Quisitor (an abbreviation of Grand Inquisitor) who treats Spooks like he would any other accused witch, but is also built over catacombs that provide the prison and hiding place for a creature known as the Bane – an old god that has since lost most of its power, but still has enough to whisper insidious things in the minds of those living above-ground.

The Spook has faced off against the Bane in his youth, and came out worse off. Now he plans to try again, despite Tom’s scepticism that age probably hasn’t made him significantly stronger. But with the Quisitor on their tail and the Bane growing in power, the Spook is at a decided disadvantage – and that’s before Alice turns up. (Alice being the most interesting character in the series, who has kindled a friendship with Tom and has the potential to become either a very good or very evil witch. Either way, she’s powerful and beginning to realize it).

As with the last book, the story practically rockets by, with something suspenseful and/or terrifying happening on nearly every page (and certainly in every chapter). Not content with simply conjuring up terrifying monsters that literally “press” people to death – and Tom comes across the grisly remains of these victims throughout the book – Delaney also inserts some existential terror, with the Bane taunting Tom with the fear of nothingness and oblivion that comes after death.

There’s also time to shed some interesting light on the past histories of both the Spook and Tom’s mysterious mother (who clearly knows more about the forces of darkness than she’s ever let on) and the striking question of whether good can come of evil. When Alice makes a deal with the Bane to save Tom and other innocent people, is she doing the right or the wrong thing? Do the ends ever truly justify the means?

Dang it, I’m hooked. Still stunned that children read this stuff (there’s a baby that gets pressed to death!!) but hooked.

The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

It’s been over fifteen years since its release, but I’ve finally seen Tumblr’s favourite source of memes.

And it’s... fine. I enjoyed it well enough, Meryl Streep’s performance is iconic, there’s a lot of glitz and glamour on display – but dear Lord, this film has no idea what point it’s trying to make. I think the moral of the story is that you shouldn’t compromise your values to get ahead in life, or that expensive things don’t make up for a lack of ethics, but it’s all very garbled in a number of ways.

Andy is hired as an assistant to Miranda Priestly, the powerful editor of Runway magazine and a not-particularly-well-disguised Expy of Anna Wintour. With no particular interest in the fashion industry, Andy’s plan is to stick things out for a year and then start applying for openings in journalism, having been told that to have Runaway on her resume is guaranteed to land her any job on offer.

Unfortunately, her lack of investment and her narcissistic boss’s unfeasible demands make Andy’s life a living hell... and by the time she’s got a handle on the job requirements, her friends and family have grown increasingly annoyed at her overzealous commitment to work.

Eventually Andy realizes that her moral compass has been compromised; that no one should be treated in the dehumanizing way Miranda treats her employees, and that she’s losing the most important things in her life... and so quits. Happy ending? Well, yeah – but like I said, it’s difficult to fathom what the film is trying to get across.

The problem is that the film spells out something very clearly in the opening act: that this is a temporary position that Andy will endure for one single year before quitting. She takes the position for a singular reason: to get herself the credentials she needs to pursue her real passion in life.

And... she’s right. Despite quitting a bit earlier than a year, Andy applies for a job at a publication house she actually wants to work at and gets the position based on Miranda’s explicit recommendation. So all that handwringing about whether or not she was selling herself out was for naught.

Another scene has her get a telling-off from art director Nigel, who points out that she’s sabotaging herself for not at least feigning an interest in fashion after Andy complains about working her butt off and not getting any credit for it. But that’s not really what Andy is upset about in the moment, as it comes directly after a scene in which she’s just been harangued by Miranda for not achieving the literal impossible (securing a flight during a hurricane while she was out to dinner with her visiting father).

I mean, make up your mind, movie! Is Nigel right that she’s just a whiner and should get over being mistreated because every girl would kill for her job? Or is it, in fact, a complete overstep for a boss to expect their underlings to run impossible errands outside of work hours and verbally abuse them afterwards?

Later Miranda gives Andy a Not So Different speech when she points out she’s done the same thing to her co-assistant Emily as Miranda has just done to Nigel (essentially thrown them under the bus to advance their own careers) even though the circumstances are clearly very different. Andy didn’t take Emily’s place at Paris Fashion Week because Emily got hit by a car. There’s no way of knowing what decision Andy would have made if Emily hadn’t been physically taken out of the running.

Even the centrepiece of the movie, the big Reason You Suck speech, in which Miranda gives Andy a dressing-down in front of everyone for wearing a blue sweater, doesn’t make much sense to me. Yes, Andy should have been more professional while conversations she didn’t understand about fashion were going on around her (or at least respect that other people care about such things). But at the end of the day, I’m with her. Clothes aren’t that important, that dress was hideous, and those two belts were identical.

I was also interested in gauging the characters who make up Andy’s friend circle, as fandom had prepared me for them being absolutely awful. The antipathy to her boyfriend Nate in particular is fascinating, since (as the screenwriter pointed out in a recent interview) he very much embodies the archetype of the “nagging wife” in that he’s constantly complaining that Andy is never around and pouting that she puts her work before him. It’s interesting not only to see this role get gender-flipped but to witness audiences (for once!) demonstrating the same level of scorn towards him that they usually do towards female characters.

Bu the truth is, none of these characters are that bad, simply because none of them are well-rounded enough for a viewer to pass any sort of meaningful judgement on them. They exist simply as a Greek Chorus to inform Andy that her behaviour is slipping – which is of course, the reason why they’re so unpopular. No one likes to be reminded of their own flaws.

But of course, that’s another problem in the film. All it would have taken to avoid this drama was for Andy to have a clear and mature conversation with her inner circle in which to explain where she stood and what was to be expected from her: that for one (1) year, she was going to prioritize her job in order to secure her dream career. Which, I’ll remind you, is what actually happened.

All that aside, it’s a fun movie. It put Emily Blunt on the map, gave Meryl Streep one her most iconic roles, and spawned a thousand memes. Glad I finally saw it.

Downton Abbey: A New Era (2022)

The sixth season finale of Downton Abbey was a satisfying send-off to the show. The first Downton Abbey movie was a satisfying send-off to the show. And now, the second feature-length film A New Era is, again, a satisfying send-off to the show. Will Julian Fellowes go for a hat-trick, or is he finally done?

This very much feels like a final victory lap for the long-running period drama, and like the previous movie, it’s best to treat it like an extended episode. It ticks off all the boxes you’d expect from a holiday special or a season finale: tying up the last of the romantic loose ends, heart-warming scenes between characters with the most important relationships, a brand-new subplot for those that have just tuned in and have no idea what the heck is going on, and a swansong for each of the show’s central cast.

As ever, some stuff established in the previous episode (or movie) is quietly ignored: Richard/Barrow has been scuttled, that poor editor with a romantic interest in Branson is long-gone (the film opens on his wedding to Lucy) and Matthew Goode has been completely jettisoned (the last movie at least gave him a cameo, here he’s entirely off-screen). Even Carson’s palsy and Bates’s limp have miraculously disappeared. However, Fellowes thankfully did remember that Mary was pregnant at the end of the series, and has since given birth to a little girl called Caroline – though we only get a passing glimpse of her.

But the diagnosis Old Lady Grantham received in the previous film comes to its inevitable conclusion – yes, it’s time for Violet to shed her mortal coil and bid farewell, which more than anything makes this film feel like the franchise’s full-stop.

(That said, I’m a trilogy-minded person and can see room for at least one more feature-film. Fellowes would either have to jump ahead to the fourth generation’s experiences in WWII, or go back in time and do the prequel of how Robert and Cora met).

Despite all the comings-and-goings over the years, Fellowes still has a massive cast to juggle, and he does his best by separating them into two subplots: in order to afford repairs for the leaking attic roof, Mary acquiesces to the presence of a film crew on the grounds of Downton, much to the horror and/or delight of the staff. Hugh Dancy, Dominic West and Laura Haddock join the cast as the director (also providing a romantic temptation for Mary) the lead actor (ditto for Barrow) and the lead actress (who struggles with her Cockney accent once it’s decreed that the film should be reshot as a talkie).

Meanwhile, Violet comes into possession of a villa in the south of France, having been bequeathed it by a man she knew briefly in her youth. Though everyone has their suspicions about what happened between them so many years ago, Violet isn’t talking, not even when half the family go to check out their latest acquisition.

Because it’s written more like an extended episode than a self-contained film, there’s not a lot to say about it that isn’t just a checklist of what works and what doesn’t. The editing flits between the two plots at such a rapid pace it’s almost disorienting, and the French sojourn feels rather pointless in the end (and was probably just an excuse to get half the cast to a new locale). Fellowes once again plays the “character is given a fatal illness, only for it to be pernicious anemia” card (first it was Lord Merton, now it’s Cora) and it’s not even the last time in the film he plagiarizes himself: Violet’s possible fling with a Frenchman is obviously a repeat of her near-elopement with the Russian Prince Kuragin.

Edith is going back to journalism which is nice (not that we ever got a chance to see her actually work in this capacity when she was the magazine’s editor) and Barrow finally throws in the towel and heads off to America, thank God. More than any other character he was the one most damaged by his inability to leave a place that he’d clearly grown out of, but he deserves the chance to finally escape and enjoy the New World.

Matthew and Sybil are mentioned lovingly, Andrew and Daisy got married off-screen, and Mary takes her place as the head of the household. There’s not a lot of focus on the children, which is a bit odd if Fellowes plans for them to take up the mantle at some point (though from what little we see of them, it doesn’t seem as if the casting agent booked particularly good child actors). Anna and Bates are... there, I guess. (It’s bizarre to recall that Bates was practically the show’s protagonist when it first started – or at least the audience’s entry point).

There are also important scenes between nearly all the show’s central dynamics: Robert/Cora, Mary/Carson, Branson/Violet, Mrs Patmore/Daisy, Isabel/Violet, and of course Mary/Violet. Even Mary and Edith now seem to be on good terms, and I have to admit tearing up a little when they comfort each other at Violet’s deathbed. (No Mary/Branson though, and I’m still gobsmacked this franchise has never once given a scene to Isabel and her only grandchild).

There are some funny dynamics too – whoever imagined a scene in which Baxter, Bates and Carson relax together in the south of France?

But I’m always touched when projects like this make room for the minor characters: Rosamund returns after a long absence, as do mainstays Doctor Clarkson and Mr Mason – even Isabel’s husband Lord Merton is hanging in there, and Imelda Staunton gets a couple of cute scenes despite being completely superfluous to any and all plots. There’s even room for a footman called Albert, who I had absolutely no memory of whatsoever, but who has apparently been around since season five and gets his moment when Laura Haddock plants one on him.

(There are some notable absences though – no sign of Violet’s butler/Denker’s rival Spratt, and for obvious reasons Lily James as Rose doesn’t return. I suppose it’s fair to say she’s been the breakout star of the show in its entirety. As mentioned, that goes ditto for Matthew Goode as Henry, though it’s a shame Fellowes didn’t think to wrap up that minor subplot by having him send Mary a telegram, informing her that he’s coming home early and looking forward to seeing her. Weren’t he and Branson meant to be going into business together? Ah well, Downton Abbey has always been a snapshot of life, and in life people come and people go).

But in wrapping up the romantic loose ends, Mr Mason and Mrs Patmore finally come to an understanding, and everything comes up roses for Molesley! He’s been an understated part of the show since its inception, and now he gets both the girl and a pay increase after proving himself a shrewd hand at screenwriting. He was really the only cast member left to finish up his arc, and he finally nailed it here.

A New Era could just have easily been called The End of an Era, since that’s very much been the thesis statement of the show in its entirety, right from the very beginning when news broke regarding the sinking of the Titanic and all that it symbolized. In this sense, the film does manage to wind its way back to its thematic origins, and there are some nice parallels here and there. Just like Violet in her youth, Mary resists a romantic fling with yet another besotted beau (one that explicitly reminds her of Matthew) and there’s some subversive fun to be had when the servants are roped in as extras for the film, requiring them to dress up and sit around the dining room table they’ve served at for so long.

I suspect a lot of this had to do with Fellowes wanting to give the understairs cast a bit of fun after all those years in dowdy lower-class costumes, but it feels pointed that the very final scene of the film is of the household celebrating the arrival of a new baby: that of their ex-chauffeur and the illegitimate daughter of a distant cousin, with the servants coming up from downstairs to join in the festivities.  

Fellowes practically worships the past, and there’s always some criticism to be had of his rose-tinted glasses, but this ending feels like a concession at last. A scene like this would have never taken place at the beginning of the show, but now the class divisions have been lowered, and common humanity is shared. It’s cheesy as hell, but it works beautifully. That era ended, and a better one took its place.

Mr Malcolm’s List (2022)

This movie is entirely charming and inoffensive, and because of that, there’s not a lot to say about it. Originally presented to audiences as a short film/extended trailer (which you can watch here) it introduces Mr Malcolm, a wealthy gentleman who is tired of being pursued for his material wealth and so has very exacting standards when it comes to vetting any potential wife. He has written a literal checklist of required virtues, and any lady who does not meet his requirements is duly dropped.

One of these spurned women is Julia Thistlewaithe, who is mortified when her discarded status is mocked in the local newspaper. Quickly she comes up with a plan to get her own back: call in her childhood friend Selina Dalton and have her embody all the qualities on Mr Malcolm’s list, thereby making him fall in love with her before the women confront him with a list of their own, full of requirements that he has been unable to meet.

So yes, as far as schemes go, it’s a little shaky. We’re apparently meant to think Selina is plain, which given that Freida Pinto is one of the most beautiful women in existence, is frankly ludicrous. In watching the short, I thought Julia’s plot predicated on the fact she had a jaw-droppingly stunning BFF hidden away in a country home and brings her out as a secret weapon, but instead she devotes hours to training “namby-pamby” Selina in the art of dance, conversation and beguilement. But it’s Freida Pinto. All she has to do is show up.

Obviously the biggest difference between the short film and the complete movie is the switching out of Gemma Chan for Zawe Ashton as Julia Thistlewaite. It would have been interesting to see how Chan would have handled the role – you can tell just by her few scenes that she would have played the character as much colder and reserved, which (given the character’s centrality) might well have changed the entire tone. Ashton was probably the better choice all things considered, with better comedic timing and a dash of silliness; crucial considering we’re ultimately meant to like Julia and forgive her transgressions.

(Though amusingly, both her mother and cousin are played by Asian actresses, so obviously the entire thing was cast before Chan had to exit. And one of them is TOSH FROM TORCHWOOD! I don’t think I’ve seen her since that show, so this was a bit of a shock).

Ashton has the challenging task of playing a stock Austen character (the somewhat floopy relative/friend) and making her human; ensuring that all her quirks and foibles are coming from a real person rather than a caricature. And this is almost never the case in Austen adaptations, in which way too many actresses play the likes of Mrs Elton, Mrs Bennett, Miss Bates, Lady Bertram, Lucy Steele, etc, far too broadly. But Ashton ends up being the drawcard of the whole project, with the rest of the cast orbiting gently around her vivacious, persuasive, calculating personality.  

Filmed in Ireland, it’s all very beautiful to look at, though you can foresee every single narrative beat: the scheme that instantly goes wrong, the growing attraction between the stand-offish lord and the wide-eyed ingenue, the misunderstanding that parts the lovers, the beta couple coming together as a result of the leads...

When it came to its release, it’s a shame that all the oxygen in the room was taken up with outrage over Persuasion, as this is the better film by far and manages a lot of what Persuasion was going for with far less obnoxiousness: a diverse cast, a gentle romance, a dash of winking at the audience, a bright colour palette – so if you wanted a story that’s closer to a Jane Austen adaptation than the actual Jane Austen adaptation of this year, try Mr Malcolm’s List.

Persuasion (2022)

Yes, the morbid curiosity proved too much for me, and despite the absolute thrashing this movie got at the hands of critics and fandom alike, I watched it. I actually went in with my contrarian streak piqued, telling myself: “surely it can’t be that bad,” but turns out – yeah, it was.

The trouble actually started years ago when the casting announcement was made, in which everyone was thrilled for approximately twenty seconds at the thought of Henry Golding as Wentworth before realizing he was actually going to play Mr Elliot. I’m not sure the film ever recovered from that mass disappointment.

Persuasion turns out to be a bizarre melding of other projects: it has the fourth-wall breaking of Fleabag, the deliberate anachronisms of Dickinson, and the heightened dollhouse aesthetic of 2020’s Emma, while simultaneously remaining completely ignorant as to why these quirks and creative decisions worked in their prior settings, and how they’re entirely unsuited to an adaptation of Persuasion.

(As has been mentioned elsewhere, this treatment might have worked for Northanger Abbey, on account of that being Austen’s least popular novel and a satire of Gothic fiction, but that clearly didn’t occur to anyone involved in this treatment of her most sombre and mature novel).

But if nothing else, it’s interesting to read various reviews and pinpoint just what aspects of the film different people find most insulting. For some, it’s the personality transplant of Anne Elliot from an introverted shrinking violet to a spritely, witty, effervescent Elizabeth Bennett clone, which plays havoc on the actual content of the story.

Others took umbridge at the obvious piggy-backing off the success of Fleabag, pointing out that Phoebe Waller-Bridgers’ asides to the audience were a masterclass in micro-expressions, while Dakota Johnson’s face has only one thing to say, and that’s: “hah-hah, look at these stupid schmucks I’m surrounded by”, which is also completely at odds with Anne Elliot’s character and renders her unpleasantly smug and obnoxious.

The anachronisms aren’t remotely clever or entertaining (“we’re worse than exes, we’re friends”, “if you’re a five in London, you’re a ten in bath”) and of course, that revolting blend of whimsy and irreverence, which leads to downright agonizing moments such as Anne casually announcing to the room that she had a dream about an octopus sucking on her face. Yeah, that actually happens in the movie.

And I even saw a post that pointed out the uncomfortable racism in Anne’s sister despising her husband, children and in-laws, all of whom are played by Black or mixed-race actors.

But for me, the film’s biggest sin is the complete omission of Mrs Smith, a character who is crucial to the resolving of the book’s plot. Granted, it has been many years since I read Austen’s novel, but I still have the impression that Anne Elliot’s steadfast determination to remain friends with Mrs Smith – an impoverished widow that her family ridicules and tries to prevent Anne from visiting – pays off when it turns out that Mrs Smith holds the key to revealing Mr Elliot’s true nature.

Anne’s loyalty to her friend is a deliberate contrast to the “inconstancy” she demonstrated in being persuaded to give up Wentworth AND is furthermore a vindication of the kindness Anne bestows on people who otherwise don’t deserve it – only in this case, her virtue rewards her by saving her from making a terrible mistake.

At least, that’s how I remember it. I’m clearly due for a reread.

But it really is impressive just how profoundly they misunderstood this text. Mr Wentworth for example, is a closed book throughout the novel: we are as distraught as Anne is at his complete inscrutability, knowing that she broke his heart and that he cannot forgive her for her indecisiveness. (It’s difficult to imagine this Anne – who paints jam on her face and shouts things out windows – not doing exactly as she pleases, which means the actual crux of the entire plot makes no sense).

They barely interact at all in the novel, though here they’re almost immediately put back in each other’s orbit, making it obvious to all-and-sundry that Wentworth is still absolutely besotted with her. The moment in which Anne reads his confession should elicit a cathartic “oh thank God!” response, not a “well, duh!”

Likewise, I suppose Mrs Smith isn’t needed in this movie because Mr Elliot pretty much spells out his mercenary intentions to Anne the moment he arrives, and no one – including her – is taken in by his faux-charm for a moment. As much as I love Nikki Amuka-Bird (weird aside: I would kill to see her as Sherlock Holmes) one of Mrs Russell’s first scenes is her apologizing to Anne for convincing her to reject Wentworth, which completely removes the tension between Anne’s beloved and the only mother she’s ever had.

It’s pretty to look at I suppose (even though I’m sure they used the same beach where Broadchurch was filmed, which meant I was anticipating them tripping over a corpse at any moment) and I liked Anne’s pet rabbit, even though it was part-and-parcel of that insufferable “I’m a free spirit!” persona they’ve affixed to her, because God forbid a female character not be a modern, witty, feisty, unconforming girl-boss (along with her outburst on octopus-related dreams, she also wears her hair loose and goes swimming in her clothes in the ocean on a whim).

To think that we complained about her running through the streets of Bath in 2007!

Prey (2022)

I suppose technically this is a period piece, though obviously not a costume drama – but after hearing the hype and seeing the promotional photos, I knew I had to watch it ASAP.

I have absolutely no history whatsoever with the Predator franchise. I’ve never seen any of the movies and before Prey was released, I probably wouldn’t even have been able to tell you that Arnie Schwarzenegger was in the first one. The good thing about this film is that prior knowledge isn’t a requirement: it’s a self-contained and self-explanatory story that works perfectly well as a standalone.

Naru is a young Comanche girl who longs to prove herself in the hunt, but no one except her older brother Taabe is prepared to take her seriously. But after seeing a bizarre phenomenon in the sky (she has no reference point for it, though it’s obvious to the audience that she’s just seen an alien spacecraft) Naru is convinced that something dangerous has arrived...

Her brother and the other young men of the tribe are preoccupied with a wildcat, but halfway through the hunt Naru starts to notice other strange signs: massive footprints, a skinned snake, and the sounds of faraway battle in the trees. When no one heeds her warnings, she takes her dog Sarii and heads out to hunt the mysterious predator herself.

It’s a great movie, which introduces the characters, lays out the stakes, pays attention to its historical context, and then lets the plot unfold at just the right pace. All the set pieces move smoothly into each other, and all the payoffs are very carefully seeded: her skill with the tomahawk, the traps laid by the French voyageurs, her bond with Sarii, her discovery of a sinkhole, the danger of wet bowstrings, her knowledge of certain medicinal flowers...

These days, I try not to pay too much attention to the ludicrous culture wars that go on in the wider reaches of fandom, but every now and then you can’t help but take note of what’s going on. I suppose it’s inevitable that Naru would face cries of “Mary Sue”, which only solidifies the fact that whatever value that term had as a writing tool has by this point been rendered completely worthless. A Mary Sue would have started off as the respected chieftainess of the tribe (maybe with only a few jealous rivals who are quickly killed off when they fail to listen to her warnings) instead of someone who must repeatedly prove herself. A Mary Sue would have skipped the training montage that exists between a scene establishing that she can’t hit rabbits and the one in which she’s carrying plenty over her shoulder after practicing with her tomahawk. A Mary Sue would have immediately known how to kill the Predator and done so on the first try.

Heck, a Mary Sue probably would have been so beautiful and desirable that the Predator would have removed his mask, revealed that he’s actually super-hot, and renounced all his violent ways so he could devote the rest of his life to serving her.

Instead Naru has a very clear and obvious arc. She wants to be a hunter, because she knows she’s good (but not great) at it. She tries to prove herself and fails. She’s not taken remotely seriously by anyone but her brother, who eventually points out where her true talent lies: in the ability to observe, think strategically and make plans.

That the usual suspects were pre-emptively whinging about the fact a young girl would be able to take down the Predator with primitive weapons is beyond ironic, considering a. this is the entire point of the Predator franchise – that is, realizing brute strength and modern weapons are useless against it, and b. Naru doesn’t take down the Predator with primitive weapons; rather with her wits, invention, powers of observation, ability to turn his own technology against him, and her sheer determination to survive.

In fact, it is quite literally pointed out on more than one occasion that the mere fact she’s not perceived as a physical threat – by anyone in the film – is her greatest strength, and one that she repeatedly uses to her advantage.

And the most hilarious thing about how Naru’s story plays out is that she didn’t actually have to be a female character! Aside from one implicitly sexist comment (“we won’t be gone long enough to need a cook”) Naru could have just as easily been a scrappy too-small-to-be-taken-seriously wannabe or a young warrior with some kind of disability or injury, and the arc would have played out identically.

That said, the fact she knows healing and the temperature-lowering properties of one flower in particular is a fantastic touch, as you can easily infer that this is knowledge taught to her by her mother, and something only the women of the tribe would know about. Being a woman gives her a distinct advantage in this case.

Sometimes the CGI on the animals is a bit iffy, and the language is occasionally too modern (at one point Taabe says: “I’ve got this”) but I liked that the French characters remain un-subtitled – Naru doesn’t understand them, and so neither do we. That said, it’s a shame I couldn’t find the Comanche dub, as that would have elevated the film even further, and you probably wouldn’t have even needed subtitles to get the gist of what was going on.

The cinematography is beautiful, the dog is a very, very good girl, and the film’s best moments don’t involve the Predator at all: Naru gets trapped in a sinkhole and has only her tomahawk to get her out; later a French trapper offers to teach her how to use his pistol in exchange for medical attention, and for a heart-stopping second you’re not sure whether she should trust him.

Basically, it’s a great movie, and it’s a pity nobody got the chance to see it on the big screen.

Northanger Abbey (1987)

Ah, Northanger Abbey. Ask someone what their favourite Jane Austen novel is, and no one will ever say this one. In fact, given it’s a satire on the melodrama of Gothic fiction, I’ve no doubt that had it been published today, the fandom backlash would have been immediate and overwhelming, involving platitudes like: “just let people enjoy things!” and “stop policing our reading material!” and “this tries to shame teenage girls for liking things written for teenage girls!”

I was planning to watch the 2007 version of Northanger Abbey this month (now I’ve shunted it to September) when I saw this on the DVD shelf at the library. That felt like a sign of some kind, so I decided to watch in order to compare it with the later adaptation.

There’s not really a lot to be said about it though. The plot is faithfully adapted from the novel, with its most original innovation being the story occasionally slipping into Catherine’s lurid Gothic fantasies, populated by characters that look like the people she’s currently surrounded by. As I recall, this is something the 2007 version utilizes as well. Oh, and there’s also a little footman who leads her outside by the hand and randomly does some cartwheels for her on the lawn. Mmkay.

Everything looks/sounds very eighties: big hair, garish makeup, and shouty performances. Katharine Schlesinger does fine as Catherine, and (like Felicity Jones in 2007) is aware on some level that the charm of this character is that she’s a bit of a nitwit. I only recognized two faces: Colin Baker (the Sixth Doctor) and Robert Hardy (Cornelius Fudge) as Mr Tilney, both as young as I’ve ever seen them, and both doing decent jobs as a diametrically opposed father/son duo.

The Thorpes are way too broad and broadcast their true intentions right from the start – as in, they have scheming little conversations in quiet corners; but at the same time, never really pose much of a threat to Catherine’s happiness. They were never Austen’s best “villains” at the best of times, but are painted so clownishly here that they stick out like a sore thumb even amidst all the other somewhat overwrought performances.

It’s... fine. Stayed tuned for my thoughts on the 2007 take.

Sailor Moon: Season 1 (1992)

Is there anything better than a Magical Girl anime? I watched the first season of this show a few years ago (the nineties English dub) and followed it up with the original subtitled Japanese. Now, just to complete the experience, I took home the shiny new DVD set from the library that boasted the latest English dub from Viz Media, which has remastered the show without any of the original cuts and edits.

This means entire episodes have been reinstated, Angelized names have been restored to the original Japanese, genders have been switched back (the effeminate Zoisite was changed from male to female in the nineties dub in order to de-gay the obvious romantic overtures between himself and Malachite) and more faithful translations of the catchphrases have been restored.

(That said, this is something of a mixed blessing: I actually prefer: “Moon Prism POWER!” to “Moon Prism Power... Makeup!” or “Mars Fire – IGNITE!” to “Fire... Soul!” and so on. I mean, you can hear the improvement in cadence and rhythm just in the writing! Also, the constant repetition of Usagi calling herself “the pretty Guardian of the Moon” and that the villains are “unforgiveable!” gets profoundly tedious after a while).

Still, it felt like I was watching the quintessential take on this material, at least for an English-speaking audience. Even just hearing the names Usagi and Ami and Rei instead of Serena, Amy and Raye puts the story in its proper context, and it’s genuinely stirring at times. Those transformation sequences are gorgeous to behold, even if they make no real sense in the story itself (I mean, do the villains just stop and wait while these girls magically transform into sailor outfits? Do they take place in some sort of sped-up alternative pocket dimension? Can anybody in-universe actually see the transformations happening, or is it only for the benefit of the audience? We may never know).

Winx: Season 3 (2007)

Yup, still working my way through Italy’s answer to Sailor Moon. With the third season we’re well into the nuts and bolts of the show, and our six fairy protagonists begin their final year at Alfea learning about the next power upgrade they can aspire to. In what is the most egregious poach from Sailor Moon, every season has them unlocking a new power-set that’s triggered by their own potential – in this case, sacrificing themselves to save another. By doing so, they change into what’s known as their “Enchantix” form which – I kid you not – makes them look like they’re wearing fancy lingerie.

Meanwhile, the three witches Stormy, Darcy and Icy find themselves imprisoned in what’s known as the Omega Dimension (they’re attempted murderers, so I guess it’s fair, but they’re also teenage girls, so it’s a bit alarming) and end up freeing a fellow prisoner from stasis: a warlock called Valtor, who I swear to you, is the Goblin King Jareth as played by David Bowie.

He wants world domination, but also has a connection to Bloom, having been involved in the destruction of her home planet when she was just a baby, and the deaths of her parents Oritel and Marion.

But ARE they dead? That’s the mystery driving the arc of season three, which is also peppered with subplots for the other girls: Stella’s father is planning to remarry, Musa has relationship troubles with Riven, Tecna seemingly dies while closing a magical portal, Layla rejects the arranged marriage her parents have sprung on her, and Flora... is also present. There’s some stuff with the boyfriends too, though they all remain pleasantly secondary to the story-arcs of the girls.

The animation is still awful, and I recently found out that (like Sailor Moon) these episodes were heavily abridged for the English dub, which may account for the frenetic, almost incoherent, editing. Great, am I going to have to track down the original Italian episodes just to get the full picture of what this show is like? I have to admit, I still struggle to see how this managed to last eight seasons when objectively better shows get prematurely cancelled, but at the same time, I have to admit that I’m pressing on with it...

The Woman in White (2018)    

Based on Wilkie Collins’ sensationalist Victorian novel, this was another show buried deep in the recesses of my external hard-drive that I had completely forgotten about downloading. That was my mistake, as this hit the spot when it comes to eerie Gothic psychological thrillers. There are some clichés along the way, but – as I kept reminding myself – that’s because Collins invented most of them.

A young man called Walter Hartright is hired as a teacher to Frederick Fairlie’s nieces in Cumberland, though before he departs, he goes for a night-time walk and crosses paths with a frightened young woman in white who seems to be running from something. The encounter is over too soon for him to provide any sort of real assistance, and soon enough he’s settling into Limmeridge House and the role of tutor to half-sisters Marian and Laura.

The former is brash and brave and confident; the latter is pale and quiet and beautiful... and bears a striking physical resemblance to the girl he failed to help, something he discloses to Marian. She wonders if the girl was Anne Catherick, a playmate of her youth who has not been seen in some years.

The show nails its aesthetic: mist-strewn countryside, twisted cobbled streets, gloomy old mansions; you’re given the chance to luxuriate in these Gothic surroundings, and every frame looks beautiful. Jessie Buckley’s Marian easily overtakes Ben Hardy’s Walter as the show’s real protagonist, and though the limitations of the original novel means that she’s diminished again by its conclusion (in fact, the ending in its entirety is oddly anti-climactic) she makes for a great heroine, fighting against the odds for the sake of her sister.

Unfortunately, I felt Olivia Vinell was a bit miscast as Laura: she’s not a bad actress, but the character should have been waifish and meek – instead Vinell is clearly a very tall and robust person, and that prevented me from ever feeling truly afraid for her. Art Malik is the show’s MVP, bringing depth to very limited screen-time as the scrivener in the framing device, in which he’s interviewing various people involved in Laura’s disappearance. It’s not a showy performance or even a particularly large role, but he infuses it with a sense of history and heartbreak that is only briefly alluded to in the story itself.

Dougray Scott is also here, putting in some decent work as a terrifying yet also pitiful villain, and Charles Dance sort-of playing against type: on the one hand, he’s still a bad guy, on the other, it’s not as an uber-masculine patriarch, but as a weak-willed and whiny hypochondriac uncle.

As someone who only had a limited awareness of Collins’ original plot, and knowing that the novel codified many of the tropes of the lurid Victorian thriller genre, I was pretty captivated from start to finish, and there were definitely some twists that caught me off-guard. Nicely done, and I wish I’d gotten to it sooner.

Leonardo: Season 1 (2021)

I’m not sure what to make of this. I’ll watch anything set in Renaissance Italy that contains the usual line-up of familiar historical names and faces (Medicis, Borgias and Sforzas) but this straddles a line between straightforward biography for Leonardo di Vinci and completely fabricated murder-mystery plot that doesn’t work particularly well. Either go with the first, in which case you could slot this in neatly with The Borgias and Medici period pieces, or go nuts with the second, and let it take its place alongside the lunacy of Da Vinci’s Demons.

Leonardo’s career is explored through the framing device of a police investigation, in which Freddie Highmore (I know he’s been working regularly over the years, but I haven’t seen him since he was a kid and now he just looks like he’s playing dress-up with a fake beard) is questioning Leonardo in his jail cell over the murder of Caterina de Cremona, his long-time companion. (What does a made-up biography of any great man need? A dead woman, of course!)

Over the course of the eight episodes, we flash back to Leonardo’s youth and his rising star, marking off milestones such as his apprenticeship under Andrea del Verrocchio, his commission to paint Ginevra de’ Benci, the patronage of Ludovico Sforza, his rivalry with Michaelangelo, the creation of The Last Supper, his employment with Cesare Borgia, and the inspiration for the Mona Lisa.

You can see the historical inaccuracies a mile away, but there’s some good stuff here, and it contains certain facts about his life that I was unaware of (you can laugh if you want, but I don’t think I fully realized that The Last Supper was a mural – not a painting – before this show). There’s not much to complain about when it comes to the events that hew close to Leonardo’s actual life, and (unlike Da Vinci’s Demons) they don’t shy away from his homosexuality (though they’re not hugely explicit about it either).

And of course, Machiavelli turns up, retaining his record as the only historical figure to appear in all the aforementioned Italian Renaissance-themed shows. I also appreciated that most of the relationships between the women (what little we saw of them) were positive, and that Leonardo had a team of artists that assisted in his bigger pieces (none of these great geniuses worked alone).

It’s in the entirely fictional murder-mystery that the show fumbles. Caterina de Cremona is a made-up character, and though it’s refreshing that their relationship is a. the centrepiece of the story and b. completely platonic from start to finish, the question of who killed Caterina and why isn’t particularly compelling. SPOILER alert – obviously Leonardo isn’t going to be executed for her murder, and though I was pleasantly surprised that they de-fridge her (turns out she faked her own death) the reason for the whole charade and the solution behind her disappearance is pretty weak.

Aidan Turner is fine, though there’s not a lot of difference between his performance here and the one he gave in Poldark, and no one else in the cast really stands out. Matilda De Angelis isn’t bad, but nowhere near as effortlessly captivating as the actress who briefly plays the inspiration for the Mona Lisa, and it’s difficult to see why exactly she became Leonardo’s muse. They never seem particularly close, and their relationship is essentially one squabble and storming-off after another.

It’s hard to know whether to recommend it or not. It’s entertaining while it lasts and is certainly beautiful to look at, but doesn’t really do much to justify its own existence (I also have no idea why the DVD case advertised itself as “season one”. Having finished the last episode, it really feels like a one-and-done).          

Sanditon: Season 2 (2022)

The story of this story is a particularly strange one: based on the unfinished novel by Jane Austen, its first season ended on a cliff-hanger, with lovers Charlotte and Sidney torn asunder on the brink of their engagement due to the latter’s brother’s financial difficulties, forcing Sidney to propose to a wealthy heiress in order to save the family. No doubt writer Andrew Davies planned to reunite them in the second season... only for the show to get cancelled.

Then, unexpectedly, the show was uncancelled. But by that point, enough time had passed that at least half the cast had already moved onto other projects – so what we end up watching is a story that never would have existed were it not for that strange hiatus, one that now has to account for the sudden disappearance of pretty much every single male love interest.

Personally I was delighted that Sidney Parker wasn’t returning, having found him a deeply unpleasant character and a terrible match for the more timid, introverted Charlotte (played by Rose Williams, who didn’t help matters by looking like a literal twelve-year-old next to the thirty-something year-old Theo James). Mr Stringer (or as I referred to him, Hot Builder) was where it was at: intelligent, sensitive, polite, sweet-natured... so for a hot second I thrilled at the idea that James’s departure from the show would give this character the chance to swoop back into Charlotte’s life and win the day.

But alas, Leo Suter also declined to return, having booked a spot in Vikings: Valhalla. Also gone is Mark Stanley as Lord Babington (not dead, but perpetually off-screen) and Jyuddah Jaymes as Otis (I have to confess; I’ve completely forgotten what happened to this character). This leaves Esther with a somewhat dull storyline about desperately wanting a child (she starts taking all sorts of remedies without anyone pointing out the obvious fact that she’s going to need her husband around if she wants to get pregnant) and Georgiana in a subplot that involves her getting romanced by a possibly unscrupulous artist (on the one hand, I was caught unawares by his true intentions; on the other, I can’t say I really cared what he was up to).

Basically, all of the female characters find themselves in plots that I’m extremely certain Jane Austen would have never written: Charlotte is in Jane Eyre (governess to a surly, reclusive gentleman), her sister Alison is in Cyrano (wooed by a soldier who is secretly borrowing his romantic overtures from a friend), Georgiana is in Washington Square (okay, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch) and Esther is in... The Yellow Wallpaper? Seeing her as an obstacle to winning back his aunt’s fortune on behalf of his illegitimate son, her dastardly stepbrother/ex-lover Edward starts slipping her laudanum in order to make her seem unhinged.

Honestly, I think there should have been some effort to take these characters on journeys that were more Austen-esque in tone and content, but after Netflix’s Persuasion, who am I to complain?

I suppose it’s fascinating to ponder the what-might-have-been of a season two that had its entire cast still intact, for the death of Sidney Parker in Antigua (a development that opens the season) puts Charlotte on a brand-new narrative path: having sworn off marriage she becomes a governess to two wayward charges who have a detached father-figure. You can’t say this girl doesn’t have a type, for despite Mr Colbourne’s disdainful rudeness toward her, she soon finds herself falling for him.

A part of me wishes they’d kept Sidney alive, as a story in which he has to live (albeit off-screen) with his decision while Charlotte finds love again could have worked just as well, but there is something in watching Charlotte grieve for a man who was never truly hers, and gradually reawaken to life and hope again. And her story captures the shock and bereavement that a sudden death can cause, given that said death was (obviously) completely unplanned, and which will give all that time we spent with Sidney in season one a very different vibe on rewatches. In hindsight, I wonder if perhaps Davies wishes he’d just written the whole show as a one-and-done, which would have provided his initial cast with the endings he originally intended for them.

Thankfully season three has already been greenlit, so a more satisfying conclusion than the one the first season left us with awaits.