Reading/Watching Log #87

Lots of books this month, but only one movie, which surprised me. It’s probably because my weekend viewing has been taken up with my determination to finish several shows that I started a while ago but have yet to finish (Crash Landing on You, The Umbrella Academy, The Crown) and I’ve got at least thirty books out from the library that I’m eager to get through.

As ever, I finished two more Babysitters Club books, as well as two more picture books illustrated by Joe Todd-Stanton, two children’s books by A.M. Howell, two characters called Claudia, and three YA graphic novels. I also got back to Joseph Delaney’s Spook series, and (totally coincidentally) rewatched the very first series of the BBC’s Spooks from 2002. The third season of Sailor Moon is in the bag, and the one movie I did watch was so epic that it was pretty much the equivalent of five movies.

The Comet by Joe Todd-Stanton

I was on a bit of a roll with Todd-Stanton last month, so am following it up with more of his work. The Comet is his most recent offering, and it’s a beautiful piece. An unnamed little girl lives with her father in an idyllic rural lifestyle in which they watch the sunrise in the morning and fall asleep to the sounds of the ocean waves at night.

However, her father’s job requires them to move into the city, and we’re shown the upheaval through her perspective: the huge backseat of the car, the way the empty apartment room stretches around her. It’s a difficult transition, but one night she looks out the window to see a comet fall to earth, and from it grow a beautiful glowing tree.

She’s out the window and across the rooftops to investigate, though we eventually discover that her foray is actually a mural that she’s been painting across the walls of the apartment. Her father is momentarily cross, but then the two work together to make their new space work for them. The story and artwork remind me a little of Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen or Lorena Álvarez’s Nightlights, in regards to that luminescent, dream-like space that a child can create for themselves.

And it has plenty of Todd-Stanton’s favourite techniques, like a two-page spread of a scene in which there are several variations of a character moving across it, so that we can see their progress from one side of the page to the other, and a large cross-section of a building that allows us to peek into the private lives of those living within. Gorgeous stuff.

Bear by Ben Queen and Joe Todd-Stanton

This was a collaboration with writer Ben Queen (who wrote the screenplays for Cars 2 and 3) that is more of a graphic novel than a picture book. Bear is a guide dog for his human Patrick, whose life starts to crumble when he suddenly loses his own vision. Now he’s lost his entire purpose in life, and is desperate to get it back – even if it means trusting some sneaky raccoons.

An unfortunate series of events sees him stranded in the woods and chased by a couple of (real) bears, requiring Bear to come to grips with his blindness and utilize his other senses in order to return home to Patrick. This journey is beautifully rendered by Todd-Stanton, who captures what the world might look like if you only have scent and instinct to go by: one striking image has Bear on the verge of a precipice, only for him to continue forward and a winding path with sheer sides appear beneath him.

Because he thinks of himself as a “bear”, then real bears appear in his imagination as very large dogs, while a bat looks like a beautiful glowing bird. There’s also a gorgeous moment when he meets up with another dog he knew as a puppy, and even though that dog is now fully-grown, in his mind’s eye he still exists as a puppy. One long panel depicts the two running down the street together, first from the perspective of Bear’s imagination (in which the backdrop is dark and little Jake is a puppy) which then transitions to the “real” street filled with light, in which Jake appears as he truly is: a fully grown police-dog.

This is really just scratching the surface of what Queen and Todd-Stanton manage to do with this idea, as the whole book is filled with clever imagery. As Queen says in his afterword, they tried to capture the fact that it’s not your eyes that “see”, but rather your brain – the eyes just send chemical and electrical responses to your mind, which is what actually makes the images. As Bear discovers, even when his eyes stop working, his brain is still throwing up images of the world around him.

It's fascinating stuff, and another great showcase for Joe Todd-Stanton’s work.

The Dire Days of Willowweep Manor by Shaenon K. Garrity and Christopher Baldwin

This is a genuinely funny graphic novel about a high-school student named Haley who loves Gothic Romance novels to the exclusion of all else. As such, she’s more thrilled than afraid when – after trying to save a man from a torrential river – she ends up washed ashore near a strange old mansion called Willowweep Manor.

It’s filled with every Gothic Romance trope under the sun: the surly older brother, the mysterious housekeeper, the castle ghost, a malevolent monk... She’s confused as hell as to where she is and what she’s meant to be doing, but also delighted to be here (especially since the youngest of the three brothers is pretty cute).

There is a science-fiction explanation to the proceedings, which is that the entire place is a pocket universe, one designed as a buffer between our galaxy and another filled with a toxic, life-destroying substance known as the Bile (as the pamphlet says: “this has been a message from all creation itself. We run things. You’re welcome.”)

Naturally, Haley arrives just as the ongoing damage to the pocket universe cranks up a notch, requiring her and the inhabitants to scramble for a fix before her world is invaded.

The resolution to the problem wasn’t as clever as I’d hoped it would be (I mean, in a story like this, Haley is surely going to find a way to weaponize Gothic tropes against her opponent, right? Well, no) as the setting ends up being a fun backdrop and nothing more. But it is a clever idea, and an extremely funny one as well. Garrity and Baldwin no doubt have a mutual love of Gothic Romance, and the story has some laugh-out-loud moments: like when the surly lord thanks the ghost he can’t see, who is standing on the opposite side of the space he’s addressing, or when Haley is forced to run for her life but can’t help but be chuffed that she’s doing so in a real secret passage.

The artwork is a bit cartoony, and I think the humour would have been twice as funny had the story been rendered in a more realistic style, but I can’t fault the facial expressions or body language of the characters, and it does stand as a loving tribute to the Gothic genre and its inherent ridiculousness.

Evermore: A Post-Apocalyptic Fairy Tale by Isobelle Carmody and Daniel Reed

Now for something completely different, though that subtitle gives away the tone and aesthetic of this particular graphic novel. Rose is the daughter of a tyrannical king in the dystopian kingdom of Evermore, where great swathes of the population were put to sleep in cryogenic chambers to avoid a plague that ravished the land. Now awoken, they still have to contend with those living outside the walls that never slept and still carry the disease.

Like most princesses, Rose’s greatest wish is to go exploring beyond the walls of the kingdom, but due to her mother’s untimely death (slain by a dragon) she’s forbidden from ever leaving the fortress where she’s been raised. Her only window to the outside world is her maid Pilar, whose strange tales contain hidden messages regarding the truth of Rose’s lineage and upbringing.

The story is non-linear, with several flashbacks and flashforwards that are a little confusing to keep track of, and though it’s technically a graphic novel, a lot of the story is told in pages normal text instead of dialogue boxes (it’s obvious it was originally conceived as a short story). But the artwork is gorgeous, capturing the grimdark nature of a dystopia with the ornate delicacy of a fairy tale; the two genres don’t seem complimentary, but the illustrations meld them beautifully.

Though I’m not hugely familiar with Isobelle Carmody, I have been slowly making my way through the Obernewtyn Chronicles over the past few years, and a lot of her favourite tropes are featured here as well. Her distinctive style is all over this book, mostly in the way the story sidesteps some of the developments you’d expect, while still drawing on many of the oldest archetypes there are. It’s an intriguing work, and I ended up reading through twice just to get my head around it.

Grimoire Noir by Vera Greentea and Yana Bogatch

Of the three graphic novels I read this month, this was definitely the best. Like Evermore, it blends genres – in this case, urban fantasy with noir. It works beautifully, especially with the gorgeous artwork.

The story takes place in a remote community called Blackwell, where people seldom leave considering it’s a safe haven for witches (here defined as young women with preternatural gifts). The gist is that anyone in possession of magic is welcome to settle there, with the proviso that they can never leave. This poses something of a problem for any witch born within the confines of Blackwell, as they can never see or experience the world, as well as for any non-magical person living there, since witches practically have free rein over the place.

But this information is gradually parsed out over the course of the story, and like any rewarding puzzle-box plot, the internal logistics of this imaginary setup not only provide motivation for the characters, but the basis of several crucial plot-points as well. The actual story begins with the disappearance of a little girl and the determination of her older brother Bucky Orsen (completely with fedora and trenchcoat) to find her. He’s convinced she’s been taken by one of the covens operating in the town, though as the investigation unfolds, all sorts of possibilities open up.

As mentioned, I will always admire a good puzzle-box plot, especially one based on fantastical elements. In this case, components as seemingly random as the magical boundary that surrounds Blackwell, the fact that Bucky’s mother causes extensive flooding when she cries, a ghost at the bottom of a well, and Bucky’s estranged relationship with his former best-friend all tie together eventually – and the fact they’re so seemingly unrelated at first is what makes the eventual revelation so gratifying. Like Evermore, I read this one twice just to fully appreciate its cleverness.

The artwork is gorgeous too: the beautiful, moody backdrops, the dynamism of the characters, the greyscale colouring (which occasionally allows for a bright hair ribbon or a striking pair of blue eyes). There are some images found here that I just wanted to let soak into my retinas: Bucky kayaking through his mother’s tears to a half-flooded mansion, the cross-section of a well depicting how a foetus-like ghost is seeping into the world around her, the horrifying spectre of a crazed boy who carries his soul in a bottle...

It's an engrossing, hypnotic read, which is filled with its own history and lore. Even the red herrings suggest depth and intrigue, far beyond what the page-count can afford to give them. Hopefully there’s a sequel in the making, though if not, Grimoire Noir is rich enough to stand on its own.

Claudia and the Bad Joke by Anne M. Martin

It’s official: Claudia is this series’ Butt Monkey. I thought it was Mallory, but so far something genuinely terrible has happened to Claudia in every single one of her books. The easiest time she’s had was when she was being harassed by a phantom phone called who wanted to date Kristy, but since then she’s dealt with a sisterly feud, her grandmother’s stroke, and the club viciously ostracizing her when she makes a new friend. As an added bonus, her best friend has moved back to New York, and now a psychotic new babysitting charge breaks her leg.

In the series’ most unlikely setup yet, the children of Stoneybrook have gone a little practical joke mad after watching an old slapstick film festival at the local library. At the same time, Club gets a new babysitting charge called Betsy Sobak who is apparently a practical jokes master, to the point where her mother can’t get any of her usual babysitters in the neighbourhood because they refuse to sit for her.

Claudia gets the job, but one of Betsy’s pranks go wrong when she tricks Claudia into taking one of two swings that isn’t connected properly to the railing, which flings Claudia onto the cement driveway and breaks her leg. She’s horrified to the point of paranoia, wondering if she should babysit anymore. What if she’d broken her arm and been unable to engage in her artwork?

It’s barely even worth feeling suspense over whether or not she’ll quit the Club, as of course she doesn’t, but how the babysitters deal with the Betsy situation is even more bizarre. Do the babysitters do the sensible thing and simply blackball the Sobaks? No, they continue to take jobs at the house and engage Betsy in ever-more elaborate practical joke wars, because apparently breaking a girl’s leg isn’t sufficient reason for this little psychopath to knock it off already.

Everyone is also weirdly nonchalant about the fact Claudia has suffered a serious injury (including Betsy’s mother, who has the gall to keep calling on the babysitters’ services) though at least Claud puts her foot down at the end and makes it clear that she will never be babysitting for Betsy again.

Well, I’m sure things will get better for her in her next title, Claudia and the Sad Goodbye.

Kristy and the Walking Disaster by Anne M. Martin

So I was wrong last month when I said Martin had finished introducing new kids into the series; this book introduces Jake Kuhn and his little sisters, and if memory serves he’s the titular missing child in Kristy and the Missing Child (one of the titles in the Mystery series).

I have to admit, baseball doesn’t interest me in the slightest – in fact, we can expand that to include sport in general. I don’t think I’ve ever watched a sport in my life. So the fact that Kristy decides to start a baseball team with the neighbourhood kids who are too young, klutzy or unsuitable for Little League (which I gather is the official version of baseball for kids in America) isn’t something I care about. But it’s nice of her to go to the effort.

The organizational efforts of putting together a team are easily done, and soon she’s got a full deck of baseball players from the Pike, Barrett, Brewer, Rodowsky, Kuhn and Braddock families. None of the kids are very good, but the story follows the usual sport trajectory of everyone doing their best and never giving up, especially Jackie Rodowsky, the “walking disaster” of the title. That’s the babysitters’ nickname for the poor kid, who (if you believe the babysitters) can’t complete basic tasks without setting things on fire.

This is also the book that introduces Bart Taylor, Kristy’s maybe-love interest. He’s the coach of Bart’s Bashers, who become the mortal foes of Kristy’s Krushers. They’re rather awful kids to start with, but it’s implied the Krushers win them over with their tenacity and determination. That aspect is a bit weak, as I don’t think we ever learn any of their names, though the Krushers walk away from the game with their pride intact.

The Garden of Lost Secrets by A.M. Howell

This was the first of A.M. Howell’s published novels (I read Mystery of the Night Watchers last month) and it reminded me a little of The Secret Garden. During WWI, Clara is sent to live with her aunt and uncle while her father convalesces from gas poisoning, knowing that her older brother is also at the front. In the gardener’s cottage of a country estate, Clara tries to adjust to her new surroundings, though she misses her family and struggles with the unfriendliness of her aunt.

Howell draws upon the fad for pineapples that was so prolific at the time, given their rarity not only due to the war but from the difficulties in cultivating them in English soil. Clara becomes intrigued by the fruits growing in the estate hothouses, and there meets a young boy called Will who ends up as the prime suspect in a series of thefts. Naturally it’s up to Clara to clear his name and find the real culprit.

It’s not really much of a mystery all things considered, and Howell is more interested in painting a small portrait of the First World War, as experienced by a young girl grappling with grief and fear. She’s done her research when it comes to the time period, and the back of the book tells me the setting is based on Ickworth Estate in Suffolk. Judging by her previous book, real-life buildings and history are what inspires her, so there’s always a real sense of grounding at work in her books.

The House of One Hundred Clocks by A.M. Howell

The third of the four A.M. Howell books I have on loan from the library establishes her authorial M.O.: she finds a historical location she’s interested in and winds a period mystery around it. It’s obviously a formula that works, and I have to say that I’m extremely envious of each book’s cover art. It feels like it’s extremely rare to have four standalone novels that match each other in terms of design, font and cover art, but here you can tell all these books are written by the same person due to how their presentation matches.  

In any case, this takes place in Cambridge, 1905. Helena’s father has accepted a job with one of the wealthiest men in England, and the family of two plus their blue-fronted Amazon parrot called Orbit arrive at their new residence, at odds with each other since the death of their wife/mother. This is not helped by the bizarre requirements of the job Helena’s father has taken: to ensure that all the clocks in Mr Westcott’s house never stop – because if even one does, then all of the family’s possessions will be forfeit.

Naturally this is only scratching the surface of the mystery. According to the author’s afterword, the place was inspired by Moyse’s Hall Museum in Bury St Edmunds, and it makes for an interesting venue for a mystery: as the title says, a house of one hundred clocks, all of them incessantly ticking.

This was probably my favourite of all Howell’s stories: they’re not mind-blowing by any means, but they’ve got spunky heroines and an eye for period detail, so what more could you ask for in a children’s mystery?

Haunted by various authors

A collection of eleven spooky stories by the likes of Derek Landy, Berlie Doherty, Robin Jarvis, Philip Reeve, Susan Cooper and Joseph Delaney (to mention the ones I’m most familiar with). Many of them follow the rules of ghost stories laid out by M.L. James: a protagonist goes to an unfamiliar place, ends up doing or taking something that amounts to a transgression, and deals with the consequences of a preternatural presence in their life.

I was a little surprised by how many of them had happy endings – at least in the sense that the ghost is understood and given closure, though a couple end on a more sombre note (the author of the Spook books certainly deals out a grim fate for his protagonist, and I wonder if we’ll ever see him in the series proper). There is a dog that visits a girl’s nightmares, a twist on the nature of a computer virus, and a retelling of the old “pick up a hitchhiker and later discover that he died a few years ago” urban legend, complete with the umbrella that goes missing and reappears on the guy’s grave (though this time the ghost in question is the guide of a ghost walk and not a hitchhiker).

But the highlights are Susan Cooper’s “The Caretakers”, who tells a solid ghost story from the perspective of the sister of an autistic-coded boy whose moods awaken a similarly-minded spirit (though I equate Cooper so deeply with the sixties setting of The Dark is Rising sequence that it was rather jarring to see her mention cellphones and texting) and Philip Reeve’s “The Ghost Wood”, whose writing I love and who contributes an unusual ghost story in the sense that the ghost in question is a forest and a wild dog.

It's a nice little collection, each story different but of a similar vibe: that of the ancient past reaching out to seize the young protagonists.

The Spook’s Battle by Joseph Delaney

I was introduced to these books by a young customer at the library, and have been slowly but surely making my way through them – though I’m frequently stunned by how terrifying they are. There’s blood and gore, death and violence, suspense and horror... honestly, I’m not sure I could have handled them as a child.

I’d been informed that this was the book in which events really start to kick off, and I can’t argue with that. Tom Ward is the apprentice to the Spook, the man responsible for protecting innocent people from boggarts, ghouls, witches and demons (basically the Witcher for younger readers) and has recently decided to tackle the settlement of Pendle, where three of the biggest witch clans are slowly accumulating power. There’s a rumour that these covens – that have always been rivals with each other – are forming alliances for some diabolic purpose, and Tom’s master is afraid it means they’ll try to call up the devil himself.

Along for the ride is Alice, a young girl raised by witches and born into the clans, who nevertheless has allied herself with Tom and appears fiercely loyal to him. She’s by far the series’ most interesting character, and though I’m pretty confident she’ll stay on the side of the angels, she’s certainly not above using dubious tactics to get what she wants.

Before heading off for Pendle, Tom is sent back to his family’s farm to fetch three trunks that his mother (a mysterious, powerful woman in her own right) left him, only to find that the place has been burned to the ground, and his brother, sister-in-law and niece missing. Clearly something dreadful has occurred, and the trunks themselves are missing. Though he has no idea what they contain, retrieving them becomes part of the mission as our heroes begin their journey to Pendle.

The stakes are raised in this book, and we get a much more complex portrayal of the various factions at work: a sympathetic priest (most of the church are staunchly against Spooks), an honest witch, a fair-minded but short-sighted nobleman, and an assassin with a code of honour. Delaney has obviously had a great time adding shades of grey and understandable motivations to all this characters, and right from the first book I had faith that he would eventually add depth to his depiction of witches (prior to this, they’ve all been old school Biblical witches, though here it’s revealed that although many of them worship the devil, their powers aren’t given to them by him – a witch’s abilities are innate, and therefore not necessarily evil).

There are some slightly questionable creative choices at work here: for starters, it seems odd that Mistress Wurmalde is killed off-page given what a formidable opponent she was (of course, we never see a body so there’s every chance she’s still alive) and the Spook and his forces arrive at the hill far too late to prevent the ceremony that will call the devil back to earth. Wow, these guys are kind of bad at their job.

But Delaney is excellent at stringing out suspense, at crafting scenes of genuine horror (the scene in which Tom realizes why Wurmalde wears such voluminous skirts is masterful) and elegantly crafting plots based on logical cause/effect. It’s difficult to really articulate that last point, but it’s very much about creating obstacles that the protagonists overcome with all the intelligence and skill that’s at their disposal (okay, Tom does do one profoundly stupid thing early on, but that’s an outlier) in a way that feels rewarding to the reader.

Things don’t just happen, but rather everything is in response to characters making plans, acting upon them, occasionally failing, but always working with the tools they’ve got (whether that’s witch-fighting weapons or the knowledge that comes from studying the dark arts). It’s a very action-oriented series, and it’s quite impressive how much Delaney manages to pack into each book.

RRR (2022)

In case you were wondering, the three Rs stand for Rise, Roar and Revolt (at least in the English dub) though this film could have also fairly been called Up To Eleven: The Movie. There is no such thing as subtlety across the entire three-hour runtime; even sitting down to a nice meal or going for a stroll with a friend will either be fraught with danger or captured in slow-motion.

Based on two real-life Indian revolutionaries, Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem, the film presents itself as an alternate history in which the two of them become friends and join forces to defeat the British Raj. And like I said, there is no understating the levels of bombast this film is capable of. It includes tiger-wrestling, physics-defying agility, runaway trains which are also on fire, dance-offs, wild animals set loose on upscale dinner parties, and fight scenes which involve a single man arresting someone by fighting through an angry mob of protestors.

There’s also a downright gleeful depiction of the evils of colonial rule, in which the villainous Governor and his wife are full-blown moustache-twirling sadists, which serves to demonstrate just how reluctant Hollywood studios really are when it comes to portraying Western forces as the bad guys. To see the shoe on the other foot is quite eye-opening all things considered.

In about 1920, the cruel Governor Scott Buxton abducts a young Indian girl named Malli from her rural tribe. Why? Because his wife Catherine liked her singing voice and decides she wants the child as an “ornament.” (Also, Catherine is played by Alison Doody, a.k.a. Elsa from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade – holy shit!)

The kidnapping spurs the tribe’s guardian Bheem to mount a rescue mission to save the girl from Buxton’s mansion in Delhi, but having been alerted as to his presence, the British Raj inform members of the Indian Imperial Army that anyone who finds and captures Bheem will be given a promotion. This offer is taken up by Rama Raju, an Indian soldier who is constantly ignored in his repeated attempts to climb the ladder of Imperialist army ranks – seemingly for the sake of his own ambition, though there’s certainly more to this character than first meets the eye.

When Bheem and Raju meet in completely unrelated circumstances, they immediately become the best of friends, each one unaware as to the other’s true identity. It’s a bromance for the ages, in which the two save each other’s lives, save other people’s lives, help each other with their romantic pursuits, and go on bromantic horse/motorbike rides together.

A couple of subplots involve Bheem’s romantic interest in a young English woman called Jenny (who scolds a soldier for brutally whipping an Indian man in the same way you might tell a dog to go outside, which is how they telegraph the fact she’s a “good Brit”), Raju’s elaborate backstory told through some lengthy childhood flashbacks, and at least one Bollywood dance number. There is so much movie in this movie.

I don’t even mind that Raju’s way of helping Bheem get Jenny’s attention is to throw nails in front of her car so that her tires pop, which would be completely yikes were it not for the fact it’s done with so much earnestness and charm that you’re forced to just go with it (but seriously DO NOT do this in real life).

It was extremely generous to young white Englishwomen (despite the fact they’re complicit in this whole colonization thing) and there are some moments when you realize it’s Indian political propaganda in the same way Top Gun is American air-force propaganda, but like I said, it’s just fascinating to see this level of film-making emerge from such a profoundly different place than the usual Hollywood fare. This is what the rest of the world feels like watching American-centric films!

Sailor Moon: Season 3 (1994)

I was excited to start season three of Sailor Moon since it was at this point that I had no further knowledge of what happened in the show. I don’t think New Zealand television ever got as far as the second half of season two, let alone the third. I had a vague inkling that it involved the end of the world and was definitely aware that it introduced the characters of Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune, but apart from that, I was going in blind.

The gist of season three (also called Sailor Moon S) is that two new Sailor Scouts are on the scene, though they’re not necessarily allies to our protagonists. Sailor Uranus (pronounced “yur-in-us” to avoid that stupid joke) and Sailor Neptune are committed to their mission to prevent the apocalypse by any means necessary. This occasionally puts them in direct conflict with the Scouts, though it’s more a matter of differing methods than overarching goals.

Because they’re idiots, Usagi and her friends fail to notice that the two new students in the district, Haruka Tenou and Michiru Kaioh, are identical to Sailors Uranus and Neptune (the latter has bright aquamarine hair but they still don’t get it) and instead become infatuated with Haruka, whom they believe is a young man. All this kicks off at around the same time a new enemy appears with a familiar M.O.: send monsters to attack certain individuals for their “pure heart crystals” in a bid to unlock a much greater power source.

It's a tired old formula by this stage, which is a shame since the potential for world-building in this show is incredible. I want to know where the Scouts actually come from, how they were imbued with these specific powers, and what their past lives were like, but instead we get round three of “Sailor Moon must save random individuals from monsters who are searching for a mystical MacGuffin.”

It only gets more confusing from there, as the bad guys are an organization known as the Death Busters, comprised of several witches and led by a mad scientist, who are not only looking for the Holy Grail, but also someone called the Messiah. Weirdly enough, neither one has anything to do with Arthurian legend or Christianity. This Messiah may or may not also be linked to a young girl called Hotaru Tomoe, who may or may not be Sailor Saturn, who also may or may not be someone referred to as Mistress Nine. I honestly had no idea what was going on half the time.

As ever, everyone gets an upgrade in powers and outfits, though at this stage what the girls shout just sound like random collections of words, like “Moon Spiral Heart Attack!” or “Pink Sugar Heart Attack!”

Oh, and Chibiusa is back from the future, truly the most irritating character in this entire show. Why do writers always think adding obnoxious child characters to their stories will be a net gain? As much as I enjoyed Haruka and Michiru, the incessant whining of Chibiusa (and her weird Electra Complex with Mamoru) is profoundly tedious. And judging by the cover art on the next two box-sets of DVDs, she’s here to stay.

Still, the inclusion of Haruka and Michiru went a long way. I was relieved to see that the latest English dub doesn’t do away with the obvious romantic overtures between them (the original nineties dub was at pains to depict them as cousins – totally cousins) and I’m looking forward to seeing them again next season. Again, the cover art of the next two box-sets assures me they’ll return, and it’s frankly amazing to contemplate that a two-girl relationship of this nature existed back in the nineties. Was it less of a taboo in Japan? I’ve honestly no idea, so excuse my ignorance.

As ever, each of the other Sailor Scouts get at least one character-centric episode to themselves, though the emotional crux of the seasonal arc rests on Chibiusa’s friendship with the aforementioned Hotaru Tomoe, a sheltered young girl with serious health issues. Unfortunately, the friendship itself isn’t explored in any great detail, and I couldn’t make heads or tails of the underlying plot. What exactly are the villains trying to do? How did Uranus and Neptune get roped into it? Who ended up being the Messiah in the end? I’m not sure Saturday morning cartoons should be this confusing.

Spooks: Season 1 (2002)

I’ve no idea what spurred me to watch this, though it’s been burning a hole in my hard-drive for a while now. There’s just something about BBC dramas from the early noughties that have suddenly piqued my interest (I’ve also got Hustle downloaded and ready to go) and I wonder if it’s to do with the fact I’m still down the rabbit hole of the BBC’s Robin Hood. I know cast members Richard Armitage and Lara Pulver will eventually turn up in this, so maybe that’s why I was caught up by the sudden urge to watch it.

It blows my mind that this is now over twenty years old, and that we were barely out of the nineties when it first aired. People download things onto CDs, use flip-top phones, and watch George Bush on rudimentary surveillance equipment. Also, I’d actually seen this first season years ago, long before this blog, and now realize that at the time I wasn’t cognizant of its cast. Like, that’s David Oyelowo! He’s super famous now! Likewise Matthew Macfadyen and Keeley Hawes have gone on to enjoy pretty respectable careers since this.

Seriously, it’s actually rather mind-blogging to see all these familiar faces, only twenty years younger. Anthony Stewart Head! Kevin McNally! Hugh Laurie! Tim Pigott-Smith! Ralph Ineson! Nicholas Farrell! Christopher Fulford! Okay, you won’t know some of those names, but I guarantee you’ll know their (much younger) faces.

There’s something about spies and espionage that’s undeniably fascinating, though Spooks made the effort to keep its storylines as authentic as possible. In other words, it’s as far away from the gloss and sex appeal of 24 and Alias as you can possibly conceive, in which the agents of MI5 are not heroic supermodels but fallible human beings, and quite a lot of their work involves sitting in boardrooms, staring at computer screens, and running up against bureaucratic interference. I believe that writer/creator David Wolstencroft is on record as saying he wanted to depict MI5 agents as having “a shitty job” (though apparently not enough to prevent an uptick in people applying for jobs at Thames House).  

It’s a wonder then that the show is as interesting as it is, for the balancing act between realism and the need for excitement/suspense must have been difficult to pull off. The first season had only six episodes (and to be honest, I couldn’t bring myself to rewatch the second episode, which was full of ugly racists and a woman’s head being shoved into a deep fryer) revolving around a small team of experts working against threats to national security within the UK.

They are team leader Tom Quinn (Matthew MacFadyen) and his associates Danny Hunter and Zoe Reynolds (David Oyelowo and Keeley Hawes) who all answer to Harry Pearce (Peter Firth), Head of Counter-Terrorism Department. Across the course of the season, they deal with a pro-life extremist from America, racist politicians, Kurdish terrorists, anti-Bush anarchists, the scandalous memoirs of an ex MP and the IRA. Airing in the wake of 9/11, you can feel a heightened sense of tension at work in the scripts, which definitely elevates the project as a whole.

Despite its commitment to realism, there are a few glitches. The team manages to get highly specific information on a character (namely, her choice of coffee) before the house she’s in gets bugged. They let a man just walk away with a list of undercover agents with only his word to guarantee them he’s not going to do anything with it (turns out he left it behind, but they don’t know that when they let him walk). Someone on the team is running phantom agents and pocketing the bribe money, but when another agent finds out, they’re bribed to keep quiet – but why bother with hush money when you could just pretend the fake agent doesn’t show up? And of course, the big finale, in which the lives of Tom’s girlfriend and potential stepdaughter are put in danger because their high-security house doesn’t have an internal failsafe. I mean honestly, that’s just silly.

I’m only complaining because in every other respect the show is diligent in its depictions of dead drops, suspect trailing, undercover operations and intel gathering, in all their time-consuming tedium. Likewise, the show doesn’t shy away from the psychological toll that the job takes on its employees. The actors are good enough to project their characters’ personalities from behind cold and carefully constructed veneers: Tom’s warmth, Danny’s mischief, Zoe’s vulnerability, and an ongoing theme is that none of them are “real people” who can enjoy the simple pleasures of normalcy. I’m halfway through season two now, and a haunted air is already starting to settle upon them.

The one false note is Peter Firth’s Harry, who is sometimes given dialogue that’s absurdly overwrought, and which has a fifty-percent chance of being delivered in such a po-faced way that it becomes funny. When he solemnly tells Zoe: “we dance with the devil, but it’s always to his tune,” you’ll be forgiven for stifling a quiet giggle.

But there’s a reason this show became one of the BBC’s longest-running series. It’s completely compelling, and no matter what victories are achieved, there’s always some price to pay. I may just have to binge the whole thing.

Interview with the Vampire: Season 1 (2022)

Amidst the ten shows I watched the pilots of last year, Interview with the Vampire was the only one that came close to Andor in terms of quality. What do the two shows have in common? More than anything, a real sense of the story the writers want to tell. It sounds overly simple, but the lack of structure, theme or even basic coherence in some of those shows made me take a deep sigh of relief when I settled into a show that clearly knew what it was doing.

Or at least seems to. The story is far from over, and it will take a few years before we get the full picture and can tell for certain whether the setups will get their proper payoffs. For now at least, Interview with the Vampire can be described as a show which takes a pre-existing story and adds a few wrinkles of its own, creating a brand-new thesis for the novel. Namely, what does preternatural power look like when it’s in the hands of an oppressed minority? How does this effect the profound power imbalance between certain individuals and their maker? At what point do we rewrite our own narratives in order to cast ourselves (and other participants) as heroes, victims, protagonists or villains?

There is a lot going on here, but it’s all carefully structured, avoids easy answers to the meaty questions it raises, avoids clichéd scenarios/reactions, and gives its talented cast powerful, challenging dialogue. It also weaves in a few new plot-elements to keep the long-time fans of the book on their toes (I’m thinking specifically of Antoinette, the twist regarding Armand, and the dual framing device with Daniel Molloy) and makes the whole thing surprisingly funny.

It sounds so easy, and yet the scarcity of shows that manage it means it’s worth celebrating when it happens. There have been some complaints about the changes and liberties this show has taken with the original novel, but as far as I’m concerned, the 1994 film was about as good a direct adaptation that we’re going to get, and the chance to play around with the material is the very reason we should have visual adaptations of books in the first place.

Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson, who is a complete revelation) is reimagined as an affluent Black man in 1910s New Orleans, whose fortune is derived from a number of brothels. Straddling the line between his racial identity and the echelons of white business that surrounds him – not to mention his homosexuality – is further compromised by the arrival of  Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid, who understands exactly what Lestat is meant to be: an intoxicating nightmare of a dramatic theatre kid).

As you well know, Lestat is a vampire and it’s only a matter of time before he shares “the dark gift” with Louis, which bestows upon him the familiar vampiric prerequisites: preternatural strength, aversion to sunlight, immortality, and the need for blood. Grappling with his newfound power as well as the new dynamics of his relationship with Lestat, Louis attempts to come to terms with his identity, much of which is defined by the parental role he assumes for Claudia (Bailey Bass), a young girl who he insists Lestat save from certain death following a house fire.

As she’s only a teenager, Claudia feels trapped in her youth and immortality, and the uneasy power dynamics between the three grow ever more fraught, and then abusive.

Naturally the framing device of the show in its entirety is the titular “interview,” in which Louis shares his life story with journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian), who flies to Dubai to get the full account. An interesting wrinkle to the proceedings is that this is not the first time an interview has taken place between these two men. Louis approached Molloy in the latter’s youth, only for the two to part on bad terms (we don’t have the details yet, only a few disturbing sounds on the original cassette recording).

This throws up a range of questions about the veracity of memory and the passage of time, as well as Molloy’s own impending mortality and the intricacies of putting together a manuscript from old records and personal accounts. How much of the narrative can you really control?

The caveat is that we don’t yet know how all of this is going to pan out. The framing device ends with the reveal that Louis’s personal assistant is actually the vampire Armand, while Louis’s narrative stops with himself and Claudia setting out on their European tour. For all that the show plays with themes regarding identity, race, the passage of time, power dynamics, memory, the price of immortality and how we shape our own histories, we’ve yet to see any substantial payoff. It all sounds intelligent and is gorgeous to look at, but the real test of whether this adaptation has something of genuine weight to impart remains to be seen.

If not, we can at least admire the performances and aesthetics. New Orleans at the turn of the century is bursting with life and colour and opportunity, and the effects they use on the speed and strength possessed by the vampires is impeccable (they do for vampires what Andor did for tie-fighters: made them scary again).

Nothing in Jacob Anderson’s back catalogue prepared me for how incredibly good he’d be in this (I totally rescind my sorrow that he wasn’t cast as Blade in the MCU – they don’t deserve him). There is a clear difference between Louis the closeted gay human, the fledging vampire learning the ropes, and the vampiric elder who has amassed wealth and power in Dubai. Even the brief glimpse of version we see in Molloy’s youth manages to have a distinct feel about him.

Sam Reid also makes the perfect Lestat – effortlessly charming and intoxicating, but also violent and mercurial; an absolute drama queen who can juggle dark humour with genuine horror. I give a slow clap to both of them.

As for Claudia... look, I can understand the practical reasons why they aged Claudia into a young teen (the actress can work longer hours, won’t go through any drastic growth spurts, can handle some of the more mature aspects of the story) but depicting her as a young teenager runs the risk of turning the story into a YA drama as opposed to a Gothic Horror. Bailey Bass is terrific as Claudia (like Jacob Anderson, we can see how she ages through her bearing and body language) but being a fourteen-year-old forever doesn’t quite strike the same tone as being trapped as an eternal child. I mean, all they have to do is turn another teenager into a vampire, and the problem is pretty much solved.

I’m eager to see where all this is going, and I dearly hope that the writers have a clear picture of where they’re going with this new spin on the characters and the storyline. That The Mayfair Witches hasn’t been as positively received is a bit of a worry, but for now at least I’m going to keep the faith.