I had two weeks off this month and tried to stuff as many books and films and shows into it as I could (though I still managed to take plenty of long walks as well). And finally, not only has daylight savings started, but it’s warm enough to get sunburned! I’m so ready for summer down in this part of the world.
Due to my colleague’s constant encouragement (to put it nicely) I dragged myself through two seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale, as well as two more Babysitters Club books, the end of The Flash’s sixth season, and the last lot of period dramas that I set out for myself last month.
And books – plenty of books, three of which (by complete coincidence) feature a young woman on the cover looking over her right shoulder. Must be a favourite composition of cover artists.
It’s difficult to believe we’re nearing the end of another year; in some ways it still feels like we’re coming out of the Covid fugue, but here’s to a long and hot summer...
Kirsty and the Snobs by Anne M. Martin
The third Kirsty-centric book, and the beginning of the third cycle in the series. That said, this cycle will be considerably longer going forward, as both Mallory and Jessi are introduced in the next few books, which means we’ll be alternating between seven girls henceforth (Stacey leaves, but almost immediately returns, so that barely counts).
The title of this one is a little misleading, as the emotional heft of the story is taken up with the Thomas family having to bid farewell to their beloved collie Louie, who is now too old and sick to justify prolonging his life. The feud that erupts between Kristy and her neighbour-across-the-road Shannon Kilbourne is almost minor in comparison to the family tragedy that befalls them.
The two plots do conjoin though, as Shannon and Kristy eventually reconcile over their shared love for their pets, with a friendship formed over the former giving the latter’s family a new puppy in the wake of Louie’s death. And with that, the club gets its second alternate officer (joining Logan Bruno) who will be contacted for babysitting jobs if none of the other girls are available.
The book also introduces the Delaney family, made up of siblings Amanda and Max, who become semi-regular clients, at least for a while (I think they move away eventually) as well as Hannie and Linny Papadakis, who feature more in the Little Sister series (being close friends with Karen). Also, Shannon apparently has two younger sisters called Tiffany and Marie, who I honestly had totally forgotten about. I don’t think they figure much into any future stories.
There’s a fun subplot about Stacey “taming” the snobs by using a form of reverse psychology on them (the kids refuse to clean their room, so she proceeds to make it even messier) but for the most part this is very much the story of the grief involved in saying goodbye to a beloved family pet.
Claudia and the New Girl by Anne M. Martin
Once again, a Claudia-centric book centers more on family/friendship issues than babysitting. Her third outing sees her befriend a new girl at school called Ashley Wyeth, who is a bit of a weirdo, but one that takes an interest in Claudia’s artwork. Flattered by her attention, especially since Ashley is such a gifted artist herself, Claudia ends up missing several club meetings and ignoring her old group of friends. This simply cannot be tolerated.
This is not the first stupid fight the Babysitters Club has had, and nor will it be the last, but it is the one in which the vaguely sinister cult-like vibe of the club rears its ugly head. I can see what Martin is trying to achieve: that Ashley isn’t really a good friend because she values Claudia’s artwork over Claudia herself, a realization that forces Claudia to prioritize her own interests and responsibilities.
But it’s understandable that Claudia would be excited over having a new friend who shares her passion for art, and she’s not as unthoughtful regarding her club duties as the back of the book says she is (she usually manages to call her friends to tell them she won’t be attending a meeting).
Trying to sell the Babysitters Club as the “true friends” in comparison to Ashley doesn’t work either, as their response to Claudia spending time with another girl is truly psychotic. While they’re still using Claudia’s bedroom to conduct meetings, they help themselves to her junk food, hide her belongings, short-sheet her bed and leave nasty notes under her pillow. I don’t need to tell you that this is an insane overreaction to Claudia’s perceived “sin” of having interests outside the club, and yet it’s Claudia who has to duly apologise to the other girls by the end of the book.
The Babysitters Club: the best friends you’ll ever have... who will destroy you if you ever try to leave.
The Dawn of Yangchen by F.C. Yee
F.C. Yee has already penned two Avatar: The Last Airbender tie-ins (the two Kyoshi novels) and with The Dawn of Yangchen, continues the trend of skipping the male Avatars (Roku, Kuruk) in order to focus on the female ones.
Going in, I was aware that Avatar Yangchen shares the spotlight with a wholly original character called Kavik, a young waterbender immigrant from the Northern Tribe. In this interview with Yee, he points out that it was very difficult to write about an Avatar that was so gifted and fully realized from such a young age, and so needed a deuteragonist in order to provide some kind of conflict and character development. I’ve seen a few commentators that were angry Yangchen has to “share” her book (and honestly, I’m not sure why Kavik couldn’t have just been a female character) but the chapters are fairly well divided between them, and the gamble of having an OC play such a large part pays off considering Kavik is pretty interesting.
Kavik’s deal is trying to balance his Water Tribe upbringing – familial loyalty and so on – with the disappearance of his older brother Kalyaan, who got caught up in some shady dealings and has not been seen by his parents or brother for some time. The rest of his family is trapped in the city of Bin-Er, a place where Water Tribe immigrants have flooded in the attempt to find better lives, only to find themselves trapped in back-breaking, low-paying work.
Another issue rising from Yangchen being so wise and talented, is that Yee struggled in finding her a foe in which to face (it’s the old Superman Conundrum – if you have god-like abilities, then who poses any kind of threat?) The author settles on the popular enemy of the moment: Capitalism. Yangchen and Kavik live in a world of merchants and brokers, shangs and criminals-for-hire, all of whom are awash in corruption and exploitation.
Yee provides historical context to this state of the world. In Yangchen’s childhood, the Platinum Affair took place: a diplomatic blunder that led to three of the four nations pursuing isolationist polices and restricting international trade. Essentially, a civil war within the Earth Kingdom led to the Fire Nation and Water Tribes discreetly supplying the rebellious general with platinum ingots, assuming that he – and not the twenty-year-old Earth King – would emerge victorious. However, the young King won the field of battle, and on realizing that Fire and Water heads of states had been secretly supporting his enemy, he closed his nation’s ports, cut off diplomatic communication, and expelled foreign ambassadors.
The Fire Nation and Water Tribes followed suit, but of course – what about all that money to be made from international trade? In order to keep the economy flowing and the coffer full, it was agreed that a few cities would be open to handle controlled amount of trade under the control of noble and merchant families. It was a recipe for rank corruption and terrible working conditions.
It's a solid backstory, and one that even feeds into the history of isolation and mistrust between the nations in Avatar: The Last Airbender. What Yangchen is essentially fighting is a relatively small but powerful group of people who have gotten very rich, very quickly, and are taking advantage of their workers. How can the Avatar fight such a thing? She tries appealing to their sense of fairness and justice, which hardly works with those that believe they’re entitled to their own wealth and privilege.
As such, Yangchen’s battle is not one that’s easily won with raw power, but rather espionage on a number of levels. The MacGuffin, such as it is, is raw information, and she relies on a network of spies and countermeasures to get the better of her enemies, attempting to prevent violence and skulduggery before it even happens. To quote from the interview: “Yangchen knows something bad is going to happen, but her challenge isn’t a fight or a negotiation; it’s sneaking around trying to find out what the threat even is.” It reads like a spy thriller, and that’s an interesting angle to take, especially when Yangchen (much like Aang) has to decide how much of her pacifist ideals she has to compromise in order to ensure peace.
A lot of the story is told from the point-of-view of Kavik, a runner and thief for hire, who is caught stealing from the Avatar’s abode and promptly hired by her to spy on his employees. She’s after something called the “Unanimity”, a truly hideous word that I can barely look at, let alone pronounce, but which is clearly something the big players find very valuable. (When the secret is revealed, it turns out to be something from the original show, and not something I found particularly compelling there either, but I suppose it works in the context of the story).
The Dawn of Yangchen suffers from less “prequel-it is” than the Kyoshi books, which were at pains to do that prequel-thing when everything about the character gets explained (“this is where the Kubuki face paint comes from, and this is where the fans come from”, etc). Yangchen only appeared very briefly in the show, which means Yee had more space to build her character himself, making it more enjoyable as a story.
He’s also good at littering the text with cultural milieu, which makes the setting much richer and builds on the details of the show, such as Yangchen whipping out proverbs of her predecessor: “you have lost the melon; hang onto the sesame” as leverage, or a Water Tribe man being recognized due to his gait: “he still had the Northern gait of walking softly so as not to break through ice crusts or overturn gravel, which meant he was new to the city.”
It’s always easier to see bending than to read about it, but because of the nature of the plot, there’s not a whole lot of it here, which works to its advantage (I recall the Kyoshi books being bogged down with battles that I couldn’t really follow). So in all, I’d call Yangchen’s story a distinct improvement.
The ending makes it clear that a sequel is on its way, so it’s likely we’ll get a duology as with the two Kyoshi novels. It’s actually really nice to spend some time with another airbender, as there obviously weren’t many of them in the show itself, and seeing the Air Nomads before the genocide is beautifully poignant. At this point in time, they’re the only people who can roam the world freely, and that makes them honoured guests wherever they go.
Bravely by Maggie Stiefvater
This story isn’t bad exactly, but it did have the disadvantage of being read immediately after The Dawn of Yangchen. When it comes to franchise tie-in novels that focus on a female protagonist and deepen the world in which they live with various gods, spirits, underhanded dealings and supernatural bargains, then Yangchen wins by quite a large margin over Merida.
The setup for Bravely, a story set a couple of years after the events of Brave, is both its strength and itsweakness. On paper, the idea is pretty sound: Merida finds herself making a dangerous deal with two gods: the Cailleach and Feradach, the deities of renewal and destruction, respectively. Her home of DunBroch has been marked for the inevitable cycle of destruction in order to maintain a natural balance.
But how exactly has DunBroch become worthy of imminent destruction? Well, its people and the castle have fallen into lethargy. Like, once Elinor planned for a trip, only for Merida to discover that she never actually planned to go. Elsewhere, a door has fallen in, and they’re using a chest to block it. Oh, the horrors. It’s not exactly on the same level of the corruption in Gotham City that made the League of Shadows want to destroy it in Batman Begins.
Seriously though, that’s such an inelegant and strained premise to work with, and you can feel Stiefvater struggling to establish any kind of stakes. A warlord and his warriors are soon introduced as a less existential threat, who demands that DunBroch start making alliances with its neighbouring settlements by fostering out their sons – something that is partially solved by Merida offering to make diplomatic journeys to various other realms in the kingdom instead. The warlord accepts as a solution, because as everyone knows, ruthless warlords are often swayed by the words of teenage girls who aren’t even giving them what they actually want.
So the year kicks off and Merida is left with the challenge of forcing her family and kingdom to change for the better. Part of the problem is solved when Fergus (I kid you not) does renovations on the castle. Along the way she visits various other places and goes through the usual journey of self-discovery, learning that Feradach is not the horrible monster she initially assumes he is.
Because this is a YA book, Stiefvater absolutely cannot resist forming a romantic attachment between Merida and Feradach, the latter of whom falls in love with Merida and fulfils the standard Noble Suffering I Understand Love Now I Just Want My Beloved To Be Happy trifecta, in which he gives up a promise of a future with her in order to save her family and make her happy.
But the premise is very unwieldly, as well as only tangentially related to Brave itself. One can’t help but consider the possibility that Stiefvater had this idea well before being commissioned for this specific novel, and simply grafted it to the characters of Brave, and certain scenes just grate on the imagination. There’s one in which Merida chases Feradach through the countryside, at night, in bare feet, during the dead of winter, and deliberately manoeuvres him where she wants him to go. I’m sorry, but how on earth is one person chasing one other person in a straight line able to “drive” them anywhere? I just cannot visualize that.
There are some good bits strewn throughout: the triplets (unnamed, mute and interchangeable in the film) finally get some names and characterization, and there’s a nice look at Elinor’s hidden past that throws her mentality in Brave into a brand-new context. Turns out she wasn’t pressuring Merida into marriage from a place of privilege, but from knowing what abject want and desperation look like. There should have been more material like that.
Maybe I’m being too hard on it, as like I said, it simply pales in comparison to The Dawn of Yangchen. But it’s one of several book tie-ins being churned through the Disney content machine (and some of them are really bizarre – did you know there’s a novel about one of the mice from Cinderella?) so it’s not like your expectations should be that high in the first place.
Enola Holmes and the Elegant Escapade by Nancy Springer
Originally a six-book series, this is the second of the next phase of Enola Holmes books, the author having been rejuvenated by the success of the Netflix film and (I suspect) also by current events. For example, at one point an older woman says of a younger one with a terrible husband and eight children that: “one of us should have slipped her a diaphragm.”
This book also marks the returns of Lady Cecily Alistair, something I was greatly looking forward to. She’s the left-handed lady of the next film/second book (though I can tell from the trailer they’re already changing things drastically) and a great character in her own right. She’s appeared in two prior books and she and Enola are always attempting to be friends but missing each other due to circumstances.
Here, Cecily thinks of Enola as a fairy god-sister, while Enola thinks of her as her best friend (“somehow she was my best friend even though I had only met her twice”) despite only interacting a couple of times, and usually in odd circumstances.
Unfortunately, the sisterhood that both girls are so desperate to form remains out of reach. There’s actually not much of a mystery here either: Enola goes to talk to Cecily, Cecily takes the opportunity to escape, and then she goes missing while under the control of her left-handed persona. (Her whole deal is that due to the trauma she sustained during her upbringing, she has a split personality, and the dominance of either persona depends on whether she’s using her left hand or her right). It’s less of a mystery and more of an adventure with some fun action sequences: Enola shooting arrows at Cecily’s window, Enola donning a variety of disguises, Enola getting stuck in a laundry chute, Enola teaming up with Sherlock...
Springer has done her research, what with mention of the Woman’s Property Act of 1882 (allowing married women to have lands and bank accounts) and also some nods to the original Sherlock books, such as his beaky nose and his hatred of blackmail – even if the good guys are doing it. But it wasn’t a great story, and the girls are still separated by the end. Let them starting living together already!
Daughter of the Deep by Rick Riordan
The latest offering from Rick Riordan takes place outside the Percy Jackson extended universe (which as far as I know, now includes the Egyptian and the Norse gods as well as the Greek ones) and is a quasi-sequel to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Ana Dakkar is a young student at Harding-Pencroft Academy, a school for sea exploration and marine research (yes, there are four distinct houses, and yes, there is a Harry Potter joke about it).
But disaster strikes when underwater missiles destroy the school while Ana and her freshman class are leaving for a field trip. Afraid more attacks might be imminent, their teacher ushers them to a sea-going vessel in order to hide them, before slipping into a coma.
Without giving too much away, the assailants of the Harding-Pencroft students are those of their rival school, the Land Institute. Grieving the loss of her brother Dev, Ana rallies together with her friends to outrun the bad guys, discover what they’re after, and learn a few secrets about her own family heritage. As you can probably tell from the cover, it involves a submarine and a giant octopus.
It’s not a bad book, but not quite as gripping as I would have hoped. Perhaps underwater adventures aren’t really my thing (honestly, I’d probably have a panic attack if I was ever asked to step on board a submarine) and I imagine that familiarity with Jules Verne’s famous novel would elevate the enjoyment of this story – I haven’t read it, so a lot of the references and in-jokes were a bit lost on me.
It's told in Riordan’s chatty, first-person narrative voice, and Ana makes for a suitably untested-but-spunky protagonist who must rise to the occasion and assume the mantle of leadership. She’s backed up by a diverse cast of supporting characters, and there’s at least one twist towards the end that I didn’t see coming. If nothing else, it’s gotten me more interested in reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Blithe Spirit (1945)
It was down to a Tumblr GIF-set that I tracked this one down, having been intrigued by the way the ghostly character of Elvira was depicted. Filmed in 1945, there were obviously plenty of limitations on what special effects could achieve, but a clever combination of makeup and lighting means that Elvira is an otherworldly spectre of floaty translucence; someone who genuinely looks like you could pass straight through her. State-of-the-art computer effects over seven decades later look less convincing than Kay Hammond as a ghost.
Based on the play by Noel Coward, Rex Harrison plays Charles Condomine, a writer who invites eccentric medium Madame Arcati (Margaret Rutherford) to his home to perform a séance, planning to secretly conduct research for his latest book. He and his wife Ruth (Constance Cummings) are both sceptics, but things take a turn for the extraordinary when Charles starts to hear the voice of his first wife Elvira. As the evening draws to a close, she appears to him – but only him, much to the consternation of his wife.
Hijinks naturally ensue, though it ends up being a much darker comedy than I first suspected. Despite a seemingly happy marriage between Charles and Ruth at the start of the film, things between them implode pretty quickly, with Charles eventually describing himself as having been “hag-ridden” all his life. The wives are both rather shrewish figures, and apparently the play originally ends with Charles leaving the pair of them for more temperate climes (no spoilers, but that’s not how the film ends, apparently much to the consternation of Noel Coward).
There is some surprisingly risqué dialogue throughout the film, from Charles wondering aloud why one of their parlourmaids had run off to get married (Ruth: “that was become more obvious by the day”) and later telling his wife: “If you're trying to compile an inventory of my sex life, I feel it only fair to warn you that you've omitted several episodes. I shall consult my diary and give you a complete list after lunch.”
I didn’t enjoy it that much, though the performances by Margaret Rutherford as the blustery Madame Arcati and Kay Hammond as the languorous, devilish Elvira, make it worth at least one watch. Both actresses played these parts on the stage, and you can see how easily they slip into the roles – thank goodness for film, which has preserved their talent for posterity.
Gosford Park (2001)
I have probably watched this film at least two dozen times and I still have trouble keeping track of all the characters. What is clearly the inspiration and precursor to Downton Abbey (the screenplay was by Julian Fellowes, and both star Maggie Smith as a snobbish aristocrat) starring half the cast of Harry Potter, Gosford Park is essentially Upstairs, Downstairs with a murder mystery. Come to think of it, that’s what Downton Abbey was missing: a murder mystery. Perhaps that can be the subject of a third film?
William McCordle and his wife Sylvia invite friends and family to their country estate for a weekend hunting party. Along for the ride is an American director doing research for his next film, and the bevy of servants that come with their employers – most notably Mary Maceachran, the lady’s maid of Constance Trentham, who is new to the position and still finding her way around her responsibilities.
As the guests mingle upstairs, there’s chaos below as the influx of servants jostle for space, and about thirty characters (I’m not exaggerating) are introduced in under ten minutes. To be honest, you don’t have to learn all their names or understand what their roles are: the purpose of the film is to capture a moving portrait of this particular time and place, throwing the viewer in headfirst without any exposition or explanation.
In that sense, it’s confusing but fascinating. You can be assured of detailed historical accuracy, Fellowes’s trademark witty dialogue, and dozens of gorgeous little vignettes in which the cream of Britain’s acting crop go head-to-head with one another in scenes that only last a couple of minutes – sometimes even seconds. And it all takes place across a single weekend. The best way to enjoy it is to think of it as a voyeuristic experience; that you’re watching these people through a keyhole. You may not know everything about them, but they’re clearly real people, living out complex interior lives.
And there are only about eight truly important characters when it comes to the murder-mystery, who are distinguished by being the more recognizable movie stars: keep your eyes on Clive Owen, Helen Mirren, Emily Watson and Michael Gambon.
Yet the film itself is only tangentially interested in the murder – none of the other character care about the victim, and it doesn’t get officially solved by law enforcement. Director Robert Altman is clearly more interested in exploring the parallel lives taking place on either side of the class divide, and the real joy of the piece is to be found in all the little moments strewn throughout: Constance complaining that she’s cold while Mary stands outside the car in the rain, Sylvia’s pointed refusal to return Mabel’s “lovely dress” compliment, the sneaky zoom-in on Denton’s “costume department” trousers, the comparison between Sylvia and Constance gossiping about the servants, just as Mary and Elsie gossiped about them, the palpable tension between Croft and Mrs Wilson... I could end up just listing the film’s scenes in their entirety.
It’s clear on a number of levels as to how this ended up being the genesis of Downton Abbey: an English country manor, the upstairs/downstairs tension, the presence of Maggie Smith (though it’s a testament to her talent that despite superficial similarities, Violet and Constance are clearly two very different people). Obviously Julian Fellowes wrote this and was inspired. But Gosford Park still stands on its own two feet, and every time I return to it I know I’ll spot some hitherto unnoticed detail.
The Cabin in the Woods (2011)
It’s weird when you’ve had a film on your “to be watched” list for ages, and when you finally sit down to watch it you realize it’s literally over a decade old. And I may not have even realized this were it not for the presence of Bradley Whitford, here looking ten years younger than he does in the seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale that I also caught up with this month.
I knew going in that it was a film best enjoyed if you knew next to nothing about it before watching, and somehow I’ve managed to remain spoiler-free for those past ten years. Five college friends are on their way to a cabin in the woods (hey, that’s the title!) for a weekend getaway, only to discover that it’s a rather ominous place that has a strange effect on their collective personalities. And then the zombies turn up...
What makes The Cabin in the Woods different right from the get-go is that no secret is made of the fact the friends are being watched by people in possession of seriously advanced technology. In some sort of underground bunker, an organized group of scientist-types are watching their every move on large monitors, and manipulating hidden elements of the isolated location that is the titular cabin. But to what end?
SPOILERS
The twist is that all the tropes and clichés of the horror movie that play out here are part of an intricate ritual designed to appease ancient gods that dwell beneath the surface of the earth. Similar blood sacrifices – with a few cultural tweaks – are performed all around the world in order to prevent the gods from rising (we get a few glimpses of these, and now I finally know the origins of that Asian schoolgirl “the evil has been defeated” meme) and this one requires the deaths of the Whore, the Athlete, the Scholar, the Fool and the Virgin, in that order.
In short, the film purports to explain the formula and archetypes of your average American slasher film. They’re all part of a preestablished ceremony; something to keep in mind next time you watch a generic horror – according to this, there are government agents manipulating events and watching it all go down just offscreen.
One particularly clever wrinkle is that the archetypes of the five chosen victims belie the surprising amount of depth each character actually gets, and how they’re forced into roles that only superficially fit them. Jules (the Whore) is a down-to-earth girl in a stable relationship who gets pumped full of pheromones to make her act more promiscuous than she really is, Curt (the Athlete, or Jock) is a smart guy whose intellect is similarly altered by drugs once he arrives at the cabin, Holden (the Scholar) is drop-dead gorgeous, Marty (the Fool) is the only one smart enough to catch on to what’s actually happening around them, and as Dana (the Virgin) incredulously points out after learning what archetypes they’re meant to embody, is not actually a virgin. The response? “We work with what we’ve got.”
Another great scene is when the group creeps into the basement to find it filled with bizarre artefacts, all of which seem laden with meaning and purpose. Though they don’t know it, “choosing” one of these artefacts will determine how they’re going to be killed – in this case, Dana reading aloud from a diary ensures that the pain-worshipping redneck zombies are their cause of death, and we’re left with little idea of what would have happened if (for example) Jules had placed that necklace around her neck, or Holden had let the music box play out to completion.
This “pick a path” mentality also accounts for some of the other relics in the cabin itself. The creepy painting, the two-way mirror and the stuffed wolf head don’t have much to do with the zombie narrative as it plays out, but presumably they would have figured into the story with more relevance had the characters triggered the werewolf or the vampire artefacts instead. It makes me wish for a spin-off in which another group triggers a different artefact, setting off a completely different narrative structure. On the whiteboard in the facility that lists all the potential ways of dying, there are (among other things) mermaids, witches, evil spirits, demons, and someone called “Nathan.” There’s so much wriggle-room for variations on the plot!
Having been written by Joss Whedon (and director Drew Goddard) there are plenty of clever asides and droll banter that are extremely Whedon-nesque in nature, but in light of his fall from grace, plenty of other scenes that feel rather gratuitous (it opens with Bradley Whitford’s character complaining that his wife has baby-proofed the whole house, which now can’t help but feel bizarrely specific).
Still, I was gobsmacked to realize that Chris Hemsworth was in this (I’ve no idea how I managed to avoid knowledge of that casting) and some familiar Buffy-verse faces pop up as well: namely Amy Acker and Tom Lenk. And hey, Anna Hutchinson! Always nice to see a kiwi in a Hollywood role.
Fun movie; glad I finally caught up with it; grateful that its surprises were unspoiled.
Love & Friendship (2016)
When this was originally released, I remember being completely baffled at the fact it was “based on the work by Jane Austen”. Hang on, didn’t she only write six novels? That’s correct, but Love & Friendship is based on a novella, which was never submitted for publication. One of her earliest known works, it was epistolary in nature and originally called Lady Susan – here it’s been inexplicitly retitled Love & Friendship after another of Austen’s early and unpublished works. As far as I can tell, the two pieces of writing have nothing in common beyond the fact they’re both written as a series of letters, and if there’s a rational explanation for the title change, I’ve yet to discover it.
It's an enjoyable enough movie, but you can tell that the screenwriter was at pains to stretch out the material to fill a feature-length film’s expected run-time. Characters are given lengthy introductions only to stick around for a single scene, and a lot of time is spent on lingering establishing shots.
The gist of the plot is that the widowed Lady Susan is on the hunt for a new husband: not only for herself, but her unmarried daughter Frederica. Their fortunes are dwindling, and though Susan clearly has no compunctions about relying on the hospitality of her relatives and in-laws, she’s eager to start reclimbing the social ladder (especially after a scandalous dalliance with the married Mr Manwaring).
The extended family is very much aware of Susan’s reputation as a determined flirt, and are equally determined to protect the heart of the young Reginald DeCourcy, who Susan nevertheless quickly manages to ensnare. Complicating matters is that Frederica has just been expelled from her boarding school, much to the frustration of her overbearing mother, who starts applying pressure on her daughter to marry the idiotic Sir James Martin.
Much like Becky Sharpe, we can’t help but enjoy Susan despite how awful she’d be in real life. Devious, egotistical, manipulative, pragmatic – and yet butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. The scene in which she calmly and woundedly breaks off her engagement with a much younger man because he doesn’t trust her (as he’s discovered definitive proof of her infidelity) must be seen to be believed. She’s shocked – shocked! – that he would read one of her letters, so perhaps they’re better off not being married after all.
Kate Beckinsale is a great actress who usually ends up in terrible projects, so it’s nice to see her in something that’s worthy of her talent. She pulls off the deviousness of Susan behind a gentile exterior to perfection, uttering lines such as: “what a mistake you made in marrying Mr Johnson: too old to be governed; too young to die” with perfect decorum. Also of note is Morfydd Clark as Frederica, currently making heads explode in her role as Galadriel in The Rings of Power, and good old Stephen Frye, who plays very much the same type of character here as he did in Gosford Park.
It’s a very light and breezy dark comedy, and I wish I’d known more about it before watching, as Susan is clearly a profoundly different type of anti-heroine than any of Austen’s other protagonists. As a vehicle for Kate Beckinsale’s oft-hidden talents, it does the trick, though you can tell some of the material has been stretched rather past its natural breaking point.
North and South (2004)
I actually finished this last month, but it was right at the cut-off point and I wanted more time to do it justice in the write-up. Based on the book by Elizabeth Gaskell, I’ve always been under the impression (based on internet talk) that it’s one of the rare adaptations that is better than its source material. As someone who hasn’t read the novel, I can’t really offer an informed opinion on that, but I do remember it making quite a splash back in 2004 – not as much as the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice, but it was certainly very popular at the time, and there’s no denying that it does tell a compelling, complex story.
It’s odd then that neither of the leads have become bigger stars since then. Obviously Richard Armitage is still a reasonably well-recognized B-lister, but it’s strange to me that he never had a Tom Hiddleston-level career. As for Daniela Denby-Ashe – what the heck happened to her? IMDB tells me that she’s been working steady all these years, but not in anything that I’ve ever heard of, which seems a shame after what feels like a Breakout Role in this.
In any case, she plays Margaret Hale, a young woman who moves with her parents from the idyllic country town of Helstone in Hampshire, to the grimy industrial city of Milton. Both she and her mother hate their new home, all the more so on learning that the move was brought about by a seemingly insignificant change in the Church of England’s doctrines, which resulted in their husband/father resigning his career as a clergyman rather than go against his own conscience.
Trying to acclimatize to her surroundings, Margaret manages to make friends with a girl her own age and her father, Bessy and Nicolas Higgins, who work at a factory owned by Mr Thornton, one of her father’s new pupils. Though standoffish, Thornton seems to take an immediate liking to Margaret, though the two are profoundly different people, and Margaret is so baffled by her new surroundings and its cultural variances that they can barely stand in the same room together without one offending the other. But you all know where this is going...
The thing I like about Denby-Ashe’s performance is its strangeness. Perhaps it’s a conscious decision, perhaps it’s the actress’s own idiosyncrasies (I’ve no idea – this is literally the only thing I’ve seen her in!) but Margaret doesn’t come across as the usual witty, spirited, opinionated heroine we usually find in these sorts of period dramas.
She’s often confused and uncertain, with a soft, raspy voice and a veneer of frailty that certainly doesn’t radiate any sort of inner strength. Those big eyes are practically trembling with emotion every time she’s on-screen, and her moments of agency and willpower are all the more surprising given her profound air of vulnerability. The actress isn’t afraid to be awkward, and not in the relatable “whoops, I made a quirky non sequitur” comedic way. At times, she’s just plain awkward.
Richard Armitage as Mr Thornton is on firmer ground with a more familiar romantic-lead archetype, and I’m sure he’s the drawcard for a lot of (female) viewers. Though he infuses Thornton with depth, it’s a fairly standard semi-Byronic Alpha Male lead: tall, commanding, powerful, socially uncomfortable, and emotionally compromised by his love interest.
The whole point is to watch this arrogant and self-assured man gradually come undone by a naïve ingenue, but in this I give Denby-Ashe credit for refusing to be an easy audience stand-in. When she rejects Thornton’s proposal, it’s not a righteous finger-snapping scene like the one in which Elizabeth Bennett reads Darcy for filth, but rather plays out as something that’s distressing and embarrassing for her.
The rest of the cast is solid: Anna Maxwell Martin and Rupert Evans are two familiar faces that look astonishingly young here, while Brendan Coyle... does not. There’s also Tim Pigott-Smith (who is probably a very nice man but truly has one of the most punchable faces on television) and Lesley Manville as Margaret’s parents, putting in solid work as two somewhat unlikeable characters, who are still clearly loved by their daughter. I also enjoyed Brian Protheroe as Margaret’s godfather, a reassuring and supportive presence – at least until the bizarre scene in which he confides to her that he always hoped they’d get married someday. Dude, what the hell?
But the show’s real MVP is Sinéad Cusack as Mrs Thornton. I imagine it’s reasonably easy to play a grim old battle-axe, but Cusack delves further into the character and gives old Mrs Thornton a sense of deeply-buried humanity. Sure, it’s a little alarming that her Pet the Dog moment is giving an employee permission to take a sick child home from work as long as said child is replaced by another within the hour if she wants to keep her job, but in lieu of a heart, she at least has a conscience. (Still, I definitely don’t envy Margaret THAT as a mother-in-law).
It’s hard to know how much has been drawn from the book, but the politics of the show are both fascinating and infuriating, what with the wealthy mill-owners pitted against the impoverished workers who are trying to form a union. When it comes to the book, I can only assume it’s Fair for Its Day considering the fact it even bothers to explore the plight of the working class in the first place, but the show is at pains to pull a “good people on both sides” depiction of the conflict, even though it’s impossible for modern audiences not to be on the side of those performing back-breaking labour for the waistcoat-wearing, cigar-smoking fat cats they work for. All they want is higher wages and better working conditions, the horror!
Naturally, Thornton is portrayed as the good egg amidst the corrupt upper-classes, but some of the attempts to make him seem noble are rather eye-rolling: at one point Higgins describes him as the only merchant “worth fighting with”, while Bessy informs Margaret she got her cough at someone else’s mill before her father transferred her to Thornton’s which (apparently) has safer working conditions. Which is laughable considering this is the interior of Thornton Mill:
Girl, this place killed you. That cotton you’re inhaling ain’t magically healthier because it’s in Thornton’s mill.
(There’s also a whole other subplot about how Margaret’s brother is on the run from the law due to his participation in a mutiny at sea, but it never figures into the story that much and if you were expecting it to end with his name being cleared, you’ll be disappointed to find the whole thing is left unresolved).
Then there’s the somewhat controversial choice to introduce Thornton by having him beat the shit out of one of his workers for smoking a cigarette. The show then goes out of its way to justify what he did by having other characters point out that smoking could have caused the entire place to go up in flames. This is true... except they really don’t hold back on the viciousness of the beating or how terrifying Thornton is when he does it. (And I know for a fact that this is not in the book).
Naturally it’s up to Margaret to learn to look past the horrific violence and see the man underneath... though to be frank, I suspect that having Thornton introduced this way was meant by the writer/director to make him more appealing to the audience, not less, by demonstrating his strength and aggression. It’s a weird choice is all I’m saying, and there’s certainly plenty of Guy of Gisborne in Mr Thornton...
But if all this sounds like a litany of complaints, rest assured that I really like North and South, and will get around to reading the book one of these days. I hadn’t seen it in years, and was surprised by how much I was looking forward to watching an episode each evening. The casting is on-point, the production values are high, the score is absolutely stunning (seriously, just listen to this) and – despite my obvious bias against the greedy capitalists – I do appreciate that the screenplay doesn’t shy away from the complexities and nuances of the political/social system the characters live in (one of the more interesting Thornton moments is when he’s mocked by his peers for installing a ventilation system in his mill – though he points out it’s not for altruistic reasons, but because it’ll keep his workers healthy, and therefore able to work longer hours).
As far as I know, it’s the only adaptation of Gaskell’s book that’s ever been attempted, and is so good that there seems very little reason for anyone to have a second crack at it.
Northanger Abbey (2007)
Like I said last month after watching the 1987 version of this, it’s amusing to think that if Northanger Abbey were published today, fandom would absolutely hate it for making fun of a young girl’s enjoyment of Gothic novels and the histrionic effect they have on her imagination. There would be endless discourse and think-pieces about the didactic message of not letting one’s fancies run away from you and the mortification Catherine goes through for not being able to tell truth from fiction. Is this not the very crux of the shipper/anti-shipper debate that has been consuming fandom for the last five or so years?
Regardless, it’s a rather inconvenient truth to a lot of modern readers that Jane Austen was a woman of her time, and that she had opinions of that time when it came to marriage and conduct (no, she did not want girls to marry “for love”, she wanted them to make careful and informed choices about who they married).
Though the last of her novels to be published, it was written first (or at least concurrently) and so Northanger Abbey is generally considered the least of Austen’s works. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it, but I doubt anyone would disagree with me when I say Emma and Pride and Prejudice are her most popular novels, followed by Sense and Sensibility, then Persuasion and Mansfield Park, and finally Northanger Abbey. There’s simply not a lot to it, which is why it hasn’t been adapted all that often.
Andrew Davies tries his hand at the process with this 2007 offering, and there are some intriguing little insights here and there: my favourite would have to be the cut scenes of Catherine indulging in some rather sordid fantasies involving dungeons and chains, which are deliberately contrasted with various lewd comments made toward her in the real world – which naturally aren’t to her liking at all. It’s a subtle little commentary on how women’s fantasies are appealing mainly (or solely) because they are controlled by women.
Of course, Davies being Davies, he also makes explicit the fact that Isabella and Tilney’s older brother sleep together, with her waking up the next morning and tentatively assuming they’re now engaged, an assumption he quickly relieves her of. Again, it’s a deliberate contrast between reality and expectations, but also needlessly cruel to Isabella, whose punishment definitely oversteps her transgression. As Catherine discovers, fantasies don’t translate well to the real world.
It has a surprisingly stacked cast, though I suppose back in 2007 nobody knew where these actors would end up. Felicity Jones! Carey Mulligan! JJ Field! Liam Cunningham! And that was Geraldine James (Marilla Cuthbert in Anne with an E) as Jane Austen’s narrative voice. Also featured is Catherine Walker as Eleanor Tilney, one of those actresses who pops up in everything (A Dark Song, Cursed, Versailles) though you don’t realize it until you start rewatching her back-catalogue. If you need a cool and regal English beauty (even though she’s Irish) then give her a call; she’s always very good.
Felicity Jones is a bit of a hit-and-miss actress for me: sometimes she’s excellent and other times she’s inexplicably bland. But I enjoyed her here, for she clearly understood (as Katharine Schlesinger did in 1987) that the entire point of Catherine Morland is that she’s something of a nitwit. I love that about her. And on reflection, I actually think Catherine/Tilney might be one of my favourite Austen couples, simply because they’re relatively drama-free (notwithstanding the “is your father a murderer?” misunderstanding). They just like the look of each other, and chase that feeling.
The Handmaid’s Tale: Season 2 – 3 (2018 – 2019)
Oh God, what was I thinking?? For the love of Pete, do not under any circumstances binge-watch this show. I know why I did it: my co-worker was excited about the release of season five and encouraged me to catch up, which is ironic since I was the one who got her onto it in the first place. And I really did try to power through all of the three seasons that’ve been released since the show’s inception, but there’s only so much abject misery you can stomach.
Based on Margaret Atwood’s seminal dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale tells the story of Offred (that is, Of Fred) who is one of the titular handmaidens living in the fascist regime that emerged in the wake of falling birth-rates across America. Now in what’s known as the Republic of Gilead, fertile women are passed around the homes of the Commanders to be raped during their ovulation in a “religious ceremony” with the men’s wives in attendance. To say it’s unspeakably horrific and depressing is putting it mildly.
The first season ended at the same point the book did: in which Offred/June is hustled in a van with no idea where she’s going or who has custody of her. Due to a brief epilogue, the reader can infer she was rescued by the underground movement known as May Day, but the show goes a different route, postulating that she and all the other handmaids who refused to participate in the stoning of one of their number are sent to a stadium to endure a mass execution... only it’s just a fake-out designed to put them all back in line.
Much like Game of Thrones, it’s almost immediately obvious that the show begins to suffer once it no longer has book material to adapt. These two seasons are full of interminable wheel-spinning, which does nothing except to loosen the razor-tight tension that was maintained over the first. Where once you were terrified that an unspeakable fate would befall June if she even blinked incorrectly, we’re now left feeling pretty nonchalant when she’s openly discussing rebellion and treason out in the open. The other handmaids will be executed or dismembered, but nothing bad will ever happen to June. The tension gets sucked away and all that’s left is misery porn: sad, nasty, miserable people living sad, nasty, miserable lives.
It's best “enjoyed” if you think of it as a series of vignettes depicting life in a fascist regime: frightening, claustrophobic and horribly mundane, because the moment you start to look at the bigger picture, everything falls apart. Seriously, the lack of continuity or emotional consistency is painful to behold. In one episode Emily and Janine are dragged back from the colonies due to a severe shortage of handmaids, but a few episodes later there’s a wide-shot of literally thousands of them. Aunt Lydia is appalled at the sight of women with their mouths sewn shut, even though she’s been merrily popping out eyes and cutting off limbs since the show’s inception.
Serena gets beaten by her husband when she writes in the privacy of her own house, then is shocked – shocked! – when she gets her finger cut off as punishment for reading aloud in front of a council of men. Having been given a week’s advance notice before an escape happens, June and the handmaids have the foresight to collect soap so they can oil the hinges of a creaky gate, but – incredibly! – don’t plan their route to the airfield on a map until the night the operation is meant to take place.
In one episode Serena holds June down while her husband rapes her in order to induce labour and in the next June tenderly holds her hand after said finger gets lopped off (I could buy it if June was deliberately playing at sympathy in order to achieve her own ends, but apparently we’re meant to honestly believe she pities the accomplice to her violent rape). In another, we learn that Moira was once a surrogate mother to a British couple, and that she had a girlfriend who was murdered during the overthrow of the American government – two facts that have never been mentioned before, and have yet to be mentioned since.
Every now and then there is a fantastic bit of world-building (my favourite would have to be when Fred and Serena go on a diplomatic mission to Canada, and – knowing that women are forbidden to read in Gilead – Serena is presented with a pictogram of her itinerary. It’s awesome) but just as much makes absolutely no sense (why on earth would the Swiss agree to be impartial mediators between America and Gilead? What could they possibly have to gain from that?)
And it’s a shame in a way, since there’s only so much you can do with the “looking-through-the-keyhole” tension of life in Gilead, in which the viewer’s perspective is limited to June and we know no more or less than she does. That worked for the first season, but subsequent seasons were an opportunity to open up the world and examine the lives of other characters. How are other governments responding to Gilead? How does May Day operate? What happens to those that escape Gilead? This is all rich and exciting material to explore, but instead we get an uneven blend of June’s internal struggles and brief glimpses of what’s going on outside the totalitarian regime. And honestly, how Gilead supports its infrastructure and what external measures are being used to curb its power is what’s of most interest to me as a viewer.
Finally, I think I could sketch Elizabeth Moss’s face in my sleep at this stage: she’s completely fearless as an actress, but there are only so many times you can get a close-up of her face and only so many expressions she can manage to capture the ever-increasing levels of trauma she’s going through. I know she’s the protagonist, and we do get some insights into the likes of Aunt Lydia and Moira, but it’s definitely time to branch out and get some other characters in here.
While you’re watching an episode, it’s absolutely compelling. One cannot deny the immediate, visceral horror of this show, which is all the more chilling after the overturning of Wade vs Rode. But if you’ve been wondering to yourself why this show seemed to disappear from the cultural discussion after its electrifying debut, it’s because... well, it’s not really that good anymore.
The Flash: Season 6 (2019 – 2020)
I didn’t actually watch the entirety of The Flash’s sixth season this month, as I watched the first half (or the pre-Crisis) episodes back in the October of last year before tackling the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover. Now I’m just finishing things off – which was somewhat difficult as I had very little memory of what happened nearly a year ago. I was beginning to think I’d imagined the presence of Mohinder from Heroes in the first half of the season, but he turns up later so I can only assume the team incarcerated him at some point.
Covid-19 played havoc with the filming schedule of this season, and unlike the Supergirl writers, who truncated their seasonal plot and managed to complete the arc, The Flash writers go with a cliff-hanging finish and a “to be continued.” There’s also a lot of juggling the cast, with most of the team spread into various subplots and plenty of actors skipping a few episodes (Cisco goes to Atlantis; Joe has to be put into witness protection, Caitlin sits in her apartment with pillows over her stomach due to the fact Danielle Panabaker was pregnant at the time).
It feels a bit like the writers have bitten off more than they can chew, what with a squad of light-based assassins, the latest iteration of Harrison Wells seeing ghosts of his alt-world doppelgangers, Ralph continuing his investigation into the disappearance of Sue Deardon (apparently they’re a fairly major couple in the comics) and Iris investigating the dodgy dealings of a corrupt CEO.
The main thread is that Iris ends up getting trapped in a mirror dimension while a double takes her place; the result of a nefarious scheme by a scientist who has also been trapped behind the glass for several years. It gives Candice Patton a chance to flex some of her acting skills in playing an Iris who is a little off, but not so much that red flags are immediately raised, though I was disappointed that her original storyline got cut short. I was actually really excited about her journalistic investigation, along with her mini-squad of Kamilla and Allegra (Cisco’s photographer girlfriend and a runaway meta) but it dies on the vine pretty quickly.
I still have no idea what the deal is with the dual personality of Frost/Caitlin (though to be fair, I don’t think anyone does, including the writers and the actress) but we get a couple of guest appearances from Diggle and Wally, and – heavens above! – baby Jenna! They didn’t forget her existence after all, even though she was more erased than Sara Diggle for a pretty long stretch of episodes.
Gaslit (2022)
I watched this over the course of several weeks with my mother, and it was rather fascinating to compare it not only to The Handmaid’s Tale but also current events (I’m thinking specifically of the treatment of Liz Cheney at the hands of her constituents after she spoke out against Trump). I can’t help but be fascinated by the baffling belief that so many hard right-wing women cling to: that they’re respected and cherished by their menfolk. As long as they’re compliant and supportive and feminine, they’ll at least enjoy the appearance of respect, but the moment they step out of line, it’s all over.
Such was the case with Martha Mitchell, who even before testifying on what she knew about Watergate, had the not-particularly-flattering nickname of “the mouth of the south.” When she stepped forward with the truth about what she knew about her husband’s dodgy dealings and how much President Nixon knew about what was going on, she was eviscerated.
I’ll admit to not knowing much about the Watergate scandal, and – like so many slices of American history – the truth is stranger than fiction. To get a truncated look at the entire scandal, here’s the Drunk History episode. Gaslit purports to tell events from the perspective of Martha, wife of John Mitchell, the Attorney General under President Richard Nixon and the chairman of his presidential campaigns. The show does not quite live up to this promise, as it also focuses heavily on John Dean and Gordon Liddy (major participants in the illegal information-gathering operation) and even figures such as Frank Wills, the security guard who discovered the break-in.
But although Martha Mitchell is not as central as I would have liked, there’s a reason Julia Roberts is an A-lister. This woman simply knows how to act. She’s magnetic in this role, and not afraid to go to some pretty unglamourous places, whether it’s her enforced imprisonment at a Californian hotel, her mental breakdown afterwards, or her physical altercations with John.
The show in its entirety is beautifully put-together, with appropriate period details and the ability to parse through the complexity of the scandal and its ensuing investigation, with nobody coming across as particularly heroic, not even the easy candidates such as John Dean (a brownnoser who only flips sides after realizing he’s being set up as the fall guy) or Martha herself (who can be deeply cruel to other women, even those trying to help her).
But there’s a baffling portrayal of Moe Dean née Kane, a witty and intelligent air stewardess who is pursued by Dean despite her increasingly clear demands that she be left alone, culminating in her kicking him out of her house after he turns up uninvited with an appliance she didn’t ask for. In the very next episode he proposes to her during oral sex, which is immediately followed by their nuptials.
What. Just... what. This makes no sense, and in a show that has the disrespect afforded to women as a major theme, it’s even more bewildering.
It all comes to a bittersweet conclusion. The Watergate scandal is exposed and the perpetrators sentenced to prison, but when all is said and done they got little more than a slap on the wrist before making a shitload of money out of book, radio and television deals. The real heroes, such as Frank Wills and Martha Mitchell, were largely ignored or punished for taking action and speaking out against corruption, with latter dying soon after the truth is revealed.
Still, at the least the truth did come out, and (as weird as it sounds) that truth was agreed upon as factual by all involved parties. These days politicians have realized that lies and gaslighting and constructing their own realities will work just as well, if not better, in allowing the public to pick and chose what they want to believe. A statement like the floral arrangement at Martha’s funeral – “Martha was right” – is powerful in its simplicity, and in its mere ability to exist as objective truth.
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