Reading/Watching Log #108

This month ended up being foreign-language month, which in many ways came as a balm. Sometimes it’s important to remember that America, despite how it sees itself, is not in fact the centre of the world. There are other democracies, other struggles, other lives. In fact, it comes as a coincidence that a short story I read this month contained the line: “Americans, you never think anything interesting could possibly be happening anywhere else in the world, do you?”

And it’s true – not the part about Americans necessarily thinking that, but that interesting things are happening all over the world.

Lo and behold, it’s now December!

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Isaac Theatre Royal)

The last time I watched this production was in 2015, nearly ten years ago. 2015! Remember then? In hindsight, it feels like the final year of normalcy before the Dark Years began – and which for some reason, still aren’t over. Tickets to this ballet were actually a very belated birthday present from a friend, and it made for a very lovely pre-Christmas treat.

How Shakespeare’s play is adapted for the ballet is very intelligently done; keeping the essentials (the squabble over the changeling boy, the love potion gone awry, Bottom with his donkey’s head) and cutting out the excess (the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta, the play-within-a-play).

Oberon and Titania happen upon a little boy lost in the woods, dressed in a purple onesie and clutching a donkey soft toy. Both of them lay claim to him, and place him under a sleeping spell until the argument is resolved. Oberon sends Puck out to find a special flower containing pollen that will make anyone whose eyes it’s sprinkled into fall in love with the next living creature that they see: and he has a plan to humiliate Titania with it.

This is the cue for a bunch of naturalists (though the programme called them “rustics”) to appear, complete with safari hats and butterfly nets, to explore the inner depths of the forest. Among them is Helena, besotted with Demetrius, who is interested in Hermia, who only has eyes for Lysander. Taking pity on them, Puck decides to use the flower to pair up the couples… only to get it terribly wrong.

The set was as beautiful and elaborate as I remembered it, with a large staircase that seems to rise into the fly tower (all the better for fairies to come floating down it) and plenty of secret compartments and cubby holes (where Bottom’s transformation takes place). It was also very reminiscent of the animation in Disney's Fantasia – that black light effect in which bright, almost neon, colours are contrasted against a dark backdrop. The whole production had a beautiful colour palette: pale yellows and deep purples mostly, especially among the fairies, which gave everything a magical, luminescent glow.

There were lots of funny bits, which were all the more impressive given they had to be conveyed without words: Puck marching down the stairs and swinging his arms, all proud of himself, before realizing he’d totally messed up recipients of the love potion, or the chaotic chase through the forest, in which Oberon watches with disbelief as every other dancer in the production careens from one side of the stage to the other in quick succession. 

It also wasn’t afraid to throw out a few jokes for the adults: after Helena and Demetrius emerge from their tent, the latter zips up his fly. It even gets a little kinky at times: a lovesick Titania rides around on Bottom’s back and starts whipping him.

I’m profoundly grateful I was able to see a ballet before the year ended. I try and average one per year, as I always feel so happy and rejuvenated after watching something that has only one reason to exist: to demonstrate beauty and grace and the technical skill of dance. Being able to watch it for the second time was an especial treat – on some level I knew what was coming and could look forward to it, but I’d also seen it so long ago that everything still felt fresh and new.

Plus, the Isaac Theatre Royal is the perfect venue for this show, as the mural on the rooftop depicts scenes from Shakespeare’s play, including Bottom with his donkey’s head.

Claudia and the Genius of Elm Street by Anne M. Martin

This is one of the Problem Child instalments in the series, like The Secret of Susan or The Walking Disaster or The Trouble with Twins, in which our assortment of babysitters (especially the one the book is named after) try to deal with the difficult behaviour of a child. It usually ends with one of our eleven-or-thirteen-year-old protagonists schooling a pair of clueless parents on how to raise their own children, which somehow leads to the enrichment of all, instead of a loss of clientele. 

This time around, it’s Rosie Wilder, a gifted child whose stage parents make her attend a variety of afterschool activities such as singing, tap-dancing, playing the violin/piano and acting. In fact, after landing the regular babysitting job with the Wilders, Claudia recognizes her as the child-star of a local commercial.

The problem is this book can’t settle on what it actually wants to be about. Rosie is initially rude and condescending to Claudia and the other babysitters, which sets up a story about how a know-it-all needs an attitude readjustment. Then Claudia ends up feeling frustrated and resentful of such a young child having a much higher I.Q. than she does, which suggests a storyline about how Claudia has to get over her own insecurities.

Later the babysitters realize Rosie is being bullied by her classmates, which makes sense for a gifted child (who often have trouble making friends with their peers) but opens up a brand-new storyline about the plight of overachievers. Then there’s the stage-parent angle of the whole thing, in which the Wilders are clearly putting too much pressure on Rosie to succeed, even though she wants to pursue her own interest in art simply for the fun of it.

None of these potential plotlines are explored or resolved in any satisfying manner – in fact, it's never made clear why Rosie is acting out in the first place. Is it because she’s gifted? Because she’s under too much pressure? Because she’s being ostracized by her classmates? And if that’s the case, why is she only bratty to her babysitters and not her tutors and parents? We never really get an understanding of what’s going on in her head.

So it’s about a variety of different topics, but also none of them, and the whole thing is resolved fairly unconvincingly with a conversation about how Rosie wants to be a normal kid. Sorry, but I’ve read and watched my fair share of books/documentaries about monstrous stage-parents that force their children into show-biz. They don’t just give up after a single earnest discussion about what their child really wants.

On a minor note, I’m amused that this story largely took place on “Elm Street,” as it was first introduced in Stacey and the Mystery of Stoneybrook as a shout-out to A Nightmare on Elm Street… I’m not sure if the ghost-writer of this book realized that, or was just trying to tap into some continuity, but it certainly throws up some interesting allusions.

And at one point we’re also told that “it was a perfect spring day, warm and breezy,” which is interesting considering two books ago the cover art depicted an autumn day, with fallen leaves all over Mallory’s lawn.

Beware, Dawn! by Anne M. Martin

This must have been another favourite of mine, as my copy is very dog-eared and appears to have had something spilled on it at one point. Chocolate milk, maybe?

As it happens, I’ve been reading these books in publishing order, but got these two and Snowbound! around the wrong way. It’s a shame, as Beware, Dawn! would have been a good read for October, though I misremembered it taking place at Halloween (which would have made it the fourth celebration of this holiday in this series). Instead, it features a Friday the Thirteenth.

This is the second book in the Mystery spin-offs, and a significant improvement on Stacey and the Missing Ring by dint of it actually being scary. That said, it’s also extremely derivative of other books in the series, from the anonymous notes (Mary Anne’s Bad Luck Mystery, Kristy’s Secret Admirer), to the hang-up phone calls (Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls), to the girls competing against each other in an inane competition (Little Miss Stoneybrook... and Dawn, Kristy and the Baby Parade) to using the secret passage at Dawn’s house to terrorize/catch/trick someone (The Ghost at Dawn’s House, Dawn’s Wicked Stepsister).

At least the culprit isn’t Cokie this time around. Plus, the A and B-plots end up being relevant to each other, which hasn’t really been the case for a long time.

Dawn is babysitting when her charges inform her that the neighbourhood kids have put together a Sitter of the Month competition, so that they can vote for who their favourite Babysitters Club member is. Right off the bat, I have so many questions. Who on earth came up with this? And to what end? We hear that Mrs Newton is involved in the elections, but why? What’s her motivation in getting involved? And if it’s Sitter of the Month, then presumably they’re going to be doing this regularly – in which case, why do the girls get so worked up over it all? And why, after this book, do we never hear about it again?

(The resolution to this subplot is appalling cheesy: apparently the results were a seven-way tie. I definitely call bullshit on that, and am going to assume that the kids realized they were being little shits and let the girls off the hook with a white lie).

Naturally, these thirteen-year-olds cannot handle any sort of competition with each other without getting ragingly competitive, so when strange things start to happen during their babysitting jobs – phone calls with no one on the line, creepy notes being left at the front door – they decide to keep it to themselves. None of them want to be considered a babysitter who isn’t always in control of any given situation. (This actually leads to some pretty bad babysitting, as all of them assume that the threatening notes are for them, and not the people who actually live in the house to which they’ve been delivered. I mean, technically they’re right in this assumption, but aren’t they putting children in potential danger by not disclosing this information to the parents?)

Eventually things escalate to such an extent that they compare notes, and while Dawn is babysitting Jamie Newton, he lets it slip that Mel Tucker “is meant to come by.” She interrogates him further and realizes that Mel has been the mysterious Mr X, using the competition as an excuse to get information from the neighbourhood kids as to who would be sitting for what families on what nights without arousing suspicion, having told the kids that he’s doing secret babysitting checks.

His motive? Revenge for the girls having gotten him into trouble with his parents after bullying the Hobart kids.

(But imagine for a moment if the entire Mr X ordeal had been an elaborate training exercise to test how well the babysitters cope under threat, with all the children in on it. HAHAHA. That would have been hilarious).

The girls decide to have their revenge by tricking Mel into believing that Dawn will be babysitting her non-existent cousin at her house alone one night, knowing that he’ll probably use the secret passage (the existence of which seems to be common knowledge at this point) to try and scare her. Instead, they turn the tables on him, and trap him in the barn.

After he bursts into tears, they decide to go easy on him, though I’m in an unforgiving mood these days, and probably would have tied the little shit to the rafters by his ankles. Along with threatening letters that say things like: “I’m going to get you” and: “I’m watching you,” he also spreads baked beans over a porch, drops off a bouquet of headless flowers, and severs the head of a child’s doll (which is never actually found). I’m sorry, but this kid is severely messed-up. Also, consider the fact that he’d have to be frequently sneaking out of his house late at night in order to pull all these stunts.

In the grand tradition of Babysitters Club Mysteries, there is one single thing that remains unaccounted for, as Mel denies all knowledge of a dead mouse left on the doorstep. The girls chalk it down to a cat.

There’s also a red herring involving Kristy never experiencing any of the creepy Mr X phenomena, which leads Dawn to wonder if she’s the culprit. Come on! Kristy can be a pain in the ass, but she would never do anything like this to win a competition. It turns out that she was simply too far out of Mel’s neighbourhood for him to travel on foot, though there is a fun chapter in which she keeps waiting for something scary to happen, and it never does (Watson calls, but doesn’t start talking straight away; there’s a knock at the door, but Kristy doesn’t see Mr Papadakis as he’s bending down to tie his shoe).

In all, it’s a solid mystery that’s certainly a lot scarier than its predecessor, with a cover that’s surely one of the most iconic of the entire series. You could put that on an R.L. Stine book and no one would know the difference. There’s an effective slow-burn to the Mr X experiences, starting with Jenny Prezzioso answering the phone while Dawn is seeing to Andrea and being told that “Mr Nobody” was on the other end and intensifying from there.

Some other bits and pieces: there’s some Mallory/Ben shipping to be had in this book (they’re going on some hot library dates, and Ben calls her a “bonza Sheila”). In her recounting of how Kristy had her great idea for the Club, Dawn states: “you know, I’ve never found out whether Mrs Thomas found a sitter that afternoon.” On reflection, I can’t remember either!

At one point Dawn serves the Thomas/Brewer kids some crackers, and is told: “usually we get our own little bowl, then we count how many crackers we have and make sure we all have the same amount. Then we have a contest to see who can eat them the slowest.” This cracked me up, as it rang so very true to the eating habits of little kids. In another chapter, Jessi and Becca end up watching a movie called “Snake Boy Loose in San Francisco,” which is sadly not a real movie – if it was, I would have watched the hell out of it.

There are also two potential plot holes. At one point Mel terrorizes the Pike house, having sent them a note threatening their hamster. The kids manage to see it and freak out, during which Jordan says: “Let’s put [the hamster] in a shoebox. That way, when Mr X looks in his cage, he won’t be there.” Problem is, that particular note wasn’t signed Mr X, so how does Jordan know what to call him? (This led to my theory that all the kids were in on it).

That also leads to the question: how exactly is Mel pulling all this off? In the pre-cellphone days, we’re looking at a situation in which the babysitters are fielding prank phone calls and then immediately being called to the front door thanks to the doorbells ringing. So... how is Mel able to move around so quickly, from landlines to doors and back again? Is he operating out of other people’s houses? After dark?? That’s the real mystery of Beware, Dawn!

The Ghosts of Mercy Manor by Betty Ren Wright

When I saw this book at a second-hand book sale, I was immediately struck by the cover art. I was sure I’d seen it before. After reading the first chapter, I was certain – the setup of a young girl at her great-aunt’s funeral, whose death has left her orphaned and alone except for her much older brother who isn’t interested in having her move in with him thanks to his new wife – was something I’d repurposed as a kid, using it as a jumping-off point for my own writing. I think I even stole the girl’s name: Gwen. 

That said, I couldn’t recall anything else about it, and it definitely wasn’t a book I’d owned as a child. Must have been a library book that left its mark on me.

In any case, Gwen is facing the above-described scenario. She desperately wants to move to Phoenix with her older brother, but can tell his newly-wed wife isn’t keen on the idea. Nevertheless, she’s still devastated when her brother introduces her to a woman called Dena, who offers her a home with her husband, son and daughter. It’s as simple as that! I guess there was no such thing as due diligence for foster-care back in the nineties.

Gwen unexpectedly discovers that she likes living in the old country farmhouse, and is reminded that it’s only a matter of time before school restarts and she can be back with her friends. She gets on well with her new younger sister Tessie, and even starts to bond with older brother Jason, who is struggling with his dad’s disapproval of preferring theatre to sports. The surrounding countryside is idyllic, and she can decorate her own bedroom any way she wants.

The only fly in the ointment is that the house is haunted. A white-clad girl appears to Gwen in the night, seemingly trying to lead her somewhere. A paper rose keeps appearing on her desk that no one takes responsibility for. She has a vision of two men in a boat out on the river, throwing a large sack into the water.

Unfortunately, every time she tries to tell the family about what’s going on, she’s shut down – to the point where her placement in the home is threatened. Dena seems to know some of what’s going on, but flatly denies it. Jason and Tessie are a bit more receptive, but too skeptical and frightened respectively to do much about it. And unfortunately, the dad is a complete jerk, and not in a way that Wright seems to be fully cognizant of. He’s first introduced yelling at his son for not mowing the lawn, is perpetually bad-tempered, and remains deeply critical of Jason’s interest in the theatre (it probably wasn’t intentional, but you get a whiff of gay panic at work).

What’s worse, there’s never really any moment of comeuppance or even realization of his own bullying nature. The ghost story is resolved, and everyone else just sort of accepts that they’ll have to continue existing around their patriarch’s perpetual foul mood. In a subgenre that usually uses its ghostly elements to help a broken family mend itself, it’s a shame these ghosts couldn’t do anything to improve this dickhead.

Phantom Rider: Ghost Horse by Janni Lee Simmer

I never read these books as a kid, but I think I picked them up and flicked through them a couple of times, as the entire premise felt vaguely familiar to me. Or perhaps I was just thinking of Monica Dickens’s The Messenger series, which also involves a pre-teen girl discovering a magical horse that uses her as its envoy to right the wrongs of the past.

Callie has just moved to Arizona with her parents and older sister, and is definitely not happy about it. She doesn’t like the heat or the acrid environment, and she ends up stuck in a bedroom that’s still filled with junk from the last owner. As with most young girls in these situations, things gradually improve: she meets a girl her own age living next door, who talks her into joining her on a riding expedition. She comes to appreciate the desert lifestyle, and its unique flora and fauna.

Most of all, she’s entranced by the silvery horse that sporadically appears outside her bedroom window. Although it takes a little too long for her to realize she’s the only one that can see the creature, she’s soon practicing her riding and experiencing dreams of a young boy who also cares for the horse, despite his family’s disapproval.

Eventually, she’s called upon to solve the mystery of the boy’s disappearance, riding Star far into the desert in order to save the day. It would appear some time travel occurs at this point, though it all remains rather vague.

There’s a nice little thread about how Callie has to learn how to deal with the unfair nature of life (“a lot of things weren’t fair; she might as well save her complaining for things she could do something about”) though a cursory Google search tells me there were only three books in this particular series, which surprised me. A premise like this could have easily been stretched out to about a dozen or so instalments.

A diverting read for any preteen horse girl, though I infinitely prefer The Messenger series. Heck, I did a whole post on those books.

Mystery at Dark Wood by Carol Beach York

After reading Betty Ren Wright and Mary Downing Hahn last month, I found myself on a bit of a roll with Apple Paperbacks, that staple component of my childhood. Even the ones I never read as a kid have a nostalgic factor to them, as they all have a certain ambiance that’s common to every book (it’s probably based on the complete lack of technology available to the protagonists).

This one is older than most, having been published in 1972. Janie has arrived at her great-aunt’s house for her annual visit, only to find that Aunt Cissie is beside herself with terror. She’s been receiving threatening notes in the mail demanding that she leave the house, though she has no idea who could want such a thing from her.

Oh, except for the long-long adopted cousin that used to live in the house with her as a child, who left in a cloud of resentment and anger, who Cissie hasn’t seen in decades, and who gets mentioned in the very first chapter of the story, apropos of nothing. Gee, I bet she won’t be involved in the resolution of this mystery at all.

Janie doesn’t want to return to her parents (who may as well not exist at all given their complete lack of presence in this story) and so decides to solve the mystery herself, drawing up a list of the people who regularly visit the house and whether they have any motivation to hurt Cissie.

Much of this story is amusingly seventies, such as the fact Cissie has the two teenage boys from next door stay the night – because sure, if a serial killer is on the loose, two thirteen-year-olds are definitely going to be suitable protection. But it has a nice dark atmosphere to it – the house is both a sanctuary and a place full of shadows and gloom – and a semi-interesting portrayal of a young girl realizing that her guardian is in fact much more vulnerable and frightened than she is, requiring her to step up as a protector.

The Haunting of Aveline Jones, The Bewitching of Aveline Jones and The Vanishing of Aveline Jones by Phil Hickes

I couldn’t resist those covers or those titles. Because I read them one after the other in quick succession, I’ll review all three as a single volume. Aveline Jones (not to be confused with Coraline Jones, though I strongly suspect she was an inspiration) is a schoolgirl who loves ghost stories. She reads countless books on the subject, even when they give her nightmares.

In The Haunting, she’s taken to stay with her Aunt Lilian for a few days in the coastal township of Malmouth while her mother cares for an ailing relative. Between the cold weather and Aunt Lilian’s even colder personality, Aveline isn’t having a good time of it, though her discovery of an old second-hand bookshop, owned by an eccentric old man and his nephew, helps cheer her up, especially when she gets her hands on a stack of ghost stories.

But strangely enough, one of the stories has been blacked out in dark ink. On searching the box in which it was found, Aveline finds the diary of a girl her own age who disappeared in 1984, and who complained of strange occurrences in the weeks leading up to her disappearance – sightings of a malevolent woman that only she could see.

It’s an evocative take on the Lamashtu/Lamia/La Llorona myth, a subject I’m suddenly very interested in after having read Sarah Clegg’s Woman’s Lore last month, all part of the ongoing tradition of vengeful female spirits who lose their children and so go in search of others to snatch away. This time the tale has been transposed to a small English village during the chills of October.

For The Bewitching we move inland, to the country hamlet of Norton Wick, where Aveline and her mother have rented a cottage next to a circle of standing stones known as the Witch Stones. There she meets Hazel Brown, a fair-skinned, dark-haired girl with mismatched-coloured eyes, and the local vicar, a cheerful woman called Alice, toward whom Hazel seems to harbour a strange animosity.

Aveline befriends Hazel, but is a little taken aback at what we would describe as “love bombing,” with gifts and invitations and declarations of eternal friendship coming on a bit too thick and fast for Aveline’s comfort.

The problem with this one is that Aveline is extremely slow on the uptake as to what’s actually going on with Hazel, leaving the reader rather frustrated that she’s not grasping the obviousness of Hazel’s true nature (the Dracula Problem strikes again). But like its predecessor, it evokes a vivid time and place: dark forests, standing stones, overgrown gardens, old churchyards, and plenty of witch lore.

In Aveline’s third adventure, we turn to the fey folk, learning about a hitherto-unmentioned uncle who went missing when Aveline was very young, and whose house is now finally being put up for sale. Aveline is determined to solve the mystery of his disappearance, and after finding the key to Uncle Rowan’s study (containing some old tapes and strange artefacts) is led to an old barrow on the moors...

This story has more of a dark fairy tale vibe to it – I was reminded of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Coraline, and the Utterly Dark trilogy, though on the whole the three books very much vibe with Katherine Arden’s Small Spaces quartet: the creepiness, the atmosphere, the very real sense of danger. Ooh, and Catherine Fisher’s Clockwork Crow trilogy. I love it when books that focus on a similar subject form unofficial “sets.”

One aspect I appreciated was that none of the antagonists featured in these books are strictly “defeated,” rather, they’re all still roaming free by the end of each story, and the best Aveline can said to have done is escape them. It adds to the unsettling atmosphere that each story invokes, knowing that all these assorted ghosts, witches and fey creatures are still out there.

There are some wonderful descriptions at work (“their feet squelched on the sodden leaves; autumn’s soggy leftovers”) and Aveline is suitably brave and loyal (though for a believer in the supernatural, a little slow on the uptake sometimes). I also liked Keith Robinson’s illustrations – you can’t tell in any great detail, but in the background of the cover art are things like pumpkin-headed scarecrows and masked fey and other creepy details.

Altogether, it’s a neat little trilogy of stories that draw upon real folklore (like witch bottles and protective iron) and contain some striking imagery (a fey hall that’s covered in missing person posters). Although the stories are concise, they do leave you with a sense of unease, as though Aveline has only scratched the surface of supernatural worlds, and just barely gotten away with her life. Like I said, her adversaries remain at large: Hazel and Alice are still locked in witchy rivalry; the fey are still under their hollow hill, and the spirit of Cora Poole isn’t defeated, just tricked into temporary retreat.

Likewise, Aveline may have rescued her uncle from the fey, but plenty of other victims remain unaccounted for. The implications are unsettling and elevate what could have been disposable stories for the spooky season into ones that’ll linger much longer in the memory.

The Bee’s Kiss by Barbara Cleverly

Ages ago I decided I was going to read all of Barbara Cleverly’s Joe Sandilands mysteries from start to finish. My reading logs tell me I finished the fourth book, The Palace Tiger, back in October of 2021. Whoops.

Still, better later than never, and this month I read the next two consecutive instalments in the series, starting with The Bee’s Kiss. Now back in London, Joe is called to the Ritz to investigate the murder of a venerated dame, bludgeoned to death in her hotel suite. Though it seems to be a robbery gone wrong, the attack was so violent that Joe can’t help but feel it was entirely personal.

But why would someone kill a woman who was largely considered a war hero? Dame Beatrice Jagow-Joliffe was one of the founders of the WRENs, the woman’s branch of the Royal Navy, comprised of skilled young women whose intelligence-gathering helped win the war.

This time around he’s joined by a young police officer, the vivacious Tilly Westhorpe, who was actually at the Ritz when the murder took place (the internet tells me the first woman police officer was appointed in 1915; this is set in 1926) as well as Det Stg Bill Armitage, who was on security detail at the time (regarding a renowned cat burglar who is naturally the number-one suspect in the case).

This particular mystery is a little more meandering than previous books in the series, involving lengthy interviews and discussions with red herring characters that clearly had nothing to do with the murder. The solution is reasonably satisfying, at least in regards to the motive for the killing, though the circumstances in which it happens – and the levels of contrivance at work – are a little hard to swallow. 

There’s obviously also been a shift in setting from colonial India to London, which may come as a bit jarring to some readers, since there was little indication at the end of the previous book that Joe would be returning to England, and India during this particular point of history has been an intrinsic part of the books up until this point.

But Cleverly is always good at capturing her distinct settings, with casual allusions to various fashions, brand-names, events, and other minutia of the 1920s – even a passing mention to the birth of the future Queen Elizabeth II. These vivid glimpses into the past are half the fun of her books.

Tug of War by Barbara Cleverly

The next book in the series takes quite a different tack, in which Joe Sandilands investigates not a murder, but someone who is inconveniently still alive. In the wake of the first World War, Joe is called upon to look into the claims that various people have made upon a catatonic soldier who was found without any identification. There’s only one clue as to who he truly is: recurring nightmares in which he cries out in English – which is unusual considering he’s been discovered in France.

Arriving in order to ascertain the man’s nationality, Joe ends up meeting the four claimants: a large farming family, a grieving mother, a devoted lover, and a beautiful young widow who kept her husband’s vineyards afloat during the war years. All of them seem sincere and can provide compelling evidence that the man is “theirs,” but Joe is also aware that a generous pension for injured war veterans would be strong motivation for anyone to initiate a long con of this nature.

The strongest contender is the war widow, though her son as some alarming information to share. He’s absolutely sure that the man in question is not his father – because as a child he was witness to his mother shooting him and concealing his body in the wine cellar (yes, Cleverly slips a murder in eventually!) Unsure what to do with this information, Joe begins to delve into the history and wartime efforts of the vineyard, to see if this supposed murder has anything to do with John Doe.

Along for the ride is young Dorcas, introduced in the previous book, and to whom Joe is now an honorary uncle. Although he was meant to be vacationing across the south of France (before getting roped into investigating the case of the unidentified soldier) he’s also agreed to escort Dorcas to her father, and she ends up embroiled in the mystery. As a character, she’s a bit too precocious for my liking, but she proves herself useful and uncovers more than one important clue.

If there’s any flaw with this one, it’s that John Doe is ascribed too many different personalities by too many different characters – which may be true to the complexities of life, but the man was either a gentle, misunderstood victim, or a complete monster. Being left without a clear understanding of who exactly he was means that it’s difficult to be invested in his ultimate fate – which for my money, is rather undeserved.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

So much ink has been split on the subject of Gone Girl that I doubt I can add much of value, especially in a brief journal entry such as this. As with most things of its nature, I’m just as interested in the effect it’s had on modern pop-culture as in the story itself, and though I’m 90% of the opinion that this is just a book and doesn’t (or shouldn’t) have any effect on the real world, that final 10% still feels a little queasy about Amy’s multitude of false rape accusations and the real-life case of Denise Huskins, whose disappearance the police dismissed as a “Gone Girl” situation. It wasn’t.

On some level Amy could be described as a woman’s Id; the part of ourselves that has the power, privilege, cunning, gall, patience and wherewithal to stage an elaborate revenge scheme on a disappointing and unfaithful husband, first by framing him for murder, and later by taking him back on her terms.

Of course, we don’t really want to be Amy either. She’s a narcissistic psychopath, and I’m very confident that the inside of such people’s heads are extremely nasty places to be. She’s hardly a beacon of feminism either, as she holds women in as much contempt as men (giving us that iconic Cool Girl monologue).

But in that dark little corner of our brains, a teeny-tiny part of ourselves enjoys every second of her deranged rampage. It’s just fiction, after all.

My one regret is that I knew about the twist well before I settled down to see the film or read the book, and whenever that happens, you’re always left wondering whether or not you would have gleaned the truth of the situation if you’d gone in unsullied. Amy has got to be one of the seminal examples of an Unreliable Narrator (all the more impressive since she’s such a recent literary creation) and it’s fascinating to read her diary entries in the first half of the book and try to discern what’s true and what’s a complete fabrication.

I have to admit that I was far more interested in Amy’s relationship with her parents, two children’s book authors that have essentially mined their daughter’s entire childhood for inspirational material, than the one she has with Nick – even though it’s hardly the focus of the story. A story about a young woman trying and failing to live up to the “Amazing Amy” of her parents’ imaginations and growing increasingly resentful over it, even though she owes the fictional character her lifetime of financial security, would have been far more intriguing material for a story than standard toxicity between a married couple – but hey, that’s just not what the book was about.

As Flynn herself as said, this isn’t just a thriller or a psychological drama, it’s an exploration of how people pretend to be what they’re not – to each other and to themselves – and the mental cost that demands. In this case, it’s taken to the extreme, but there’s something to be said for shining a light on the veneers we put in place to please, manipulate or hide from other people.

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

This was technically Flynn’s second novel, though I suspect it was written first. That’s often the way: your first novel isn’t good enough to be published, your second is, and if it’s a hit then the publishers want a new manuscript as soon as possible. So you brush off your first one...

I have nothing but instincts to back up this claim, but Dark Places definitely feels less polished than Sharp Objects.

Libby Day is a jobless thirty-something year old who has been living on the donations poured into a trust fund by concerned members of the public after her entire family (mother and two sisters) were murdered when she was just a child. Her testimony put away her last remaining family member and the other sole survivor of the massacre – her brother Ben, found guilty on all three charges of murder. Because she’s now an adult, and therefore less sympathetic and appealing as a charity case, the money has finally run out.

With few options and no desire to support herself, Libby decides to take advantage of a sordid “murder fan club” that believes the wrong man got put away for the crime. They’ll pay her to track down other potential suspects, to recant her testimony, and to provide them with “souvenirs” of the murder. As with Gone Girl and the fascinating angle of Amy’s parents exploiting her childhood for financial gain, I was far more interested in the two-sided manipulation of Libby and the weird fan club than I was in the actual solving of the murders.

There’s one chapter that’s set in the home of an older woman who clearly has something of a crush on Ben, along with her group of all-female associates that have spent years advocating for him. Libby’s mingled fascination and contempt for them was my own. I finished the chapter and immediately read it again.

The book is divided into two types of alternating chapters; those narrated by Libby as she starts to investigate the case, and those from the third-person perspective of various other people in the family (specifically Ben and Patty) in the hours leading up to the murders. It’s an interesting way of structuring the story, though it does mean that Flynn tips her hand a little too soon as to who was really responsible for the murders that night.

SPOILERS

The resolution to the whole thing is rather preposterous, asking us to believe the insane coincidence that two separate murders, committed by two different people with completely different motivations, took place in the same house on the same night.

I haven’t seen the movie of this one, but I watched the trailer out of interest, and – wow. That has got to be some of the worst casting I’ve ever seen in my life. Stunningly tall and beautiful Amazonian Charlize Theron as Libby? Are you kidding me?? Especially after the perfection of Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl? This was obviously greenlit to piggy-back off the success of its predecessor, and I guess there’s a reason why it’s being readapted for television – it wasn’t anywhere near as good.

The Sorcerer and the White Snake (2011)

Having read Sarah Clegg’s super-interesting Woman’s Lore last month, I watched this film in some amazement. A snake woman who falls in love with a mortal man? An ascetic monk who is determined to divide the lovers on principle? Isn’t this the myth of Lamia, Lycius and Apollonius? Was this some kind of Chinese retelling of the story?

Nope, turns out that this is based on a Chinese legend which dates back thousands of years, and is considered one of China’s four great folktales. It just goes to show that all of our stories, if you go back far enough, almost certainly flow from the same source.

That said, I can’t say I’m an adherent of the monomyth theory, since different people over the world and across history add their own beliefs and cultural mores to these archetypal tales, but it was still rather mind-blogging to see a story I’d been reading so much about play out almost beat-for-beat in a completely different setting.

In Ancient China, two female snake demons (who are sisters, not lesbians, despite what the Tumblr gif-sets suggest) watch a physican picking herbs on a nearby mountain. One scares him into the lake for a prank, and the other dives into the water to save his life – becoming infatuated in the process.

Meanwhile, a monk and his assistant carry on their work of expelling demons wherever they go, following various clues into the city where the physician lives. It’s here that the snake demon introduces herself to her love, and the two marry in secret – though the tenacious monk is determined to defeat the “evil” spirit.

There is some tonal mismatch throughout the film: broad comedy when the white snake introduces her husband-to-be to the in-laws, who are a range of animals temporarily disguised as human beings, and then abject tragedy when the lovers are parted amidst much Sturm und Drang (literally, there are storms and tidal waves and earthquakes).

The most familiar face is Jet Li as Abbott Fahai, though given that this was filmed back in 2011, the special effects leave a lot to be desired. Obvious blue screen and some downright awful visuals for the snake demons have dated badly (though they probably weren’t that good in the first place) but naturally the martial arts are beautifully choreographed. Like I said, Jet Li.

I’m glad I watched, if not just because it flowed on so serendipitously from the subject matter of Woman’s Lore (lamias, snake women, harpies) though it very much feels like a B-movie… despite clearly aspiring for something a bit loftier.

Crimson Peak (2015)

This was the chosen film for our Halloween Movie Night, a tradition that’s been going on for five years now, at a place where I no longer work. And we had our largest number of attendees yet: four!

Nearly ten years old at this point, Crimson Peak is said to have suffered at the box office because it was promoted badly, as a horror film instead of what it truly was: a Gothic Romance. (That said, it earned back its budget, and was by no means a flop). In the film itself, there’s even a quote that lampshades this, in which the protagonist describes one of her stories: “it’s not a ghost story, there’s just a ghost in it. They’re a metaphor.”

That’s not strictly true: these ghosts have pertinent things to say and to show our heroine, so on the whole Crimson Peak is rather a muddle of genres. Mia Wasikowska is in a tragic romance (with the occasional foray into a ghost story), Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain are in a full-blown Gothic horror, and Charlie Hunnam is in a Sherlock Holmes mystery. He even has the detective’s books in his office.

So it’s a mashup of different things, and they don’t always flow together well. Guillermo del Toro also includes some gory scenes that are way too detailed and prolonged. Dude, we did not need to see that guy’s head get smashed up to such an extent, or that knife go through Hiddleston’s cheek and into his eyeball.

But it’s an original story, despite its heavy borrowing from Gothic literature (if you didn’t guess that the incest siblings were incest siblings, then I can only assume you’ve never read a Gothic novel in your life) and you don’t see much of that these days. And of course, since it’s a del Toro movie, it’s gorgeously, sumptuously, elaborately filmed. Who cares that the Sharpe estate is so dilapidated that snow is literally falling through the ceiling? I’d live there in a heartbeat.

It’s been years since I last watched it (here’s my original review) and this time around there was some Retroactive Recognition at work. I had recalled that Burn Gorman from Torchwood played the hired heavy, but this time around found poor slighted Eunice to be frustratingly familiar. Where had I seen her before? It took a trip to IMDB to realize... she’s Detmer from Star Trek Discovery! Not only that, but the little maid at the Cushing residence was Miss Stacy from Anne with an E!

The Girl From the Other Side (2022)

This was an odd one; a strange, almost experimental film that’s more about invoking images and feelings than necessarily telling a story. In a post-apocalyptic world, a horned, upright and rather dapper creature finds a little girl sleeping on the grass. She’s been abandoned, and so the creature takes her in, though is always very careful not to touch her directly.

As time passes, the two of them form a cozy domestic life for themselves, but the creature is aware that she’s not among her own people. We learn virtually nothing about the state of the world, only that creatures like our protagonist are known as “Outsiders” and that ordinary-looking people are terrified of a destructive curse that leads to soldiers patrolling the forests and burning down certain trees.

It’s deliberately kept ambiguous, though I suspect that like Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä, the manga upon which this is based delves into far more detail than the movie allows (people who have only seen Nausicaä as a film are often unaware that the manga is huge, spanning over twenty-seven volumes that ran for nearly ten years).

There are other thought-provoking abstractions throughout the relatively-short runtime, such as the fact our protagonist was once a human being with a family of his own (and has somehow managed to retain his humanity for longer than the other creatures of his ilk) or that even stranger entities are tracking the little girl, wanting to take her to their “mother” at the bottom of a lake.

It’s an odd little film, and like I said, not one that provides many answers as to the state of this post-apocalyptic world or the people that inhabit it. For that reason, it almost feels like a promo reel for the manga, which will presumably shed more light on the situation. But I don’t regret watching it: the animation is beautiful, and the scenario draws you in.

Interestingly, the film’s subtitle is Siúil a Rúin, named for the Irish folksong which is then performed over the closing credits. I’m not entirely sure how it relates to the story featured here (the song is about a young woman whose lover has gone to war) but the tune itself very much captures the tone of the film: dreamy, strange and melancholy.

Wicked Little Letters (2023)

I’ve been meaning to watch this one for a while, though was surprised to realize it’s based on true events. In Littlehampton in the 1920s, several poison pen letters were sent to various members of the community, the blame for which fell on the head of Rose Gooding, who was arrested and detained in Portsmouth. On being set free, the letters resumed, though the real culprit was Edith Swan, as discovered by Gladys Moss, the first female police officer of Sussex. Edith was eventually caught and sentenced to twelve months in prison.

Such are the events that play out in this film, though Edith here is granted a level of sympathy and context for her actions (she has an emotionally abusive father) and Rose given a much happier ending. Real life was not so kind to her – she was shunned by the community even after her exoneration, and eventually moved away.

Olivia Coleman is as fabulous as ever – I’m sure she could play the world’s most loathsome woman (Bathory? Thatcher? Hanson?) and still make us feel something for her, while Jessie Buckley is the take-no-shit Rose, which was a good role for her since I predominately equate her as the trembling, fragile, abjectly vulnerable Marya Bolkonskaya in War and Peace. Acting! Anjana Vasan is Gladys Moss, inevitably struggling against the chauvinism of her co-workers, but eventually dropping the “woman police officer” part of her oft-mentioned job description to just “police officer.”

Throw in a solid supporting cast and an attractive setting, and you’ve got a pleasantly diverting dark comedy. And on a minor note, my Wikipedia-based research reveals that the contents of Edith Swan’s letters as depicted in the film were very accurate to real-life: “You and your fucking whore neybor can throw as many jeers as you like but God will punish you, you foxy ass piss country whores.”

What a strange person.

The Virgin Queen (2005)

My Tudor watch continues, and now we’ve reached Elizabeth’s reign. Her whole reign in fact, as this four-part miniseries covers the “greatest hits” of the last Tudor monarch’s life, from the precariousness of her position whilst her sister Queen Mary was on the throne, to her waning years in which preparations were made to pass the crown to James I.

Dramatized is her imprisonment in the Tower of London, her ongoing love affair with Robert Dudley, her ascension and coronation after Mary’s death, her bout of smallpox, her courtships with Philip II of Spain and the Archduke Charles of Austria, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, her famous speech to the troops at Tilbury, and Robert Devereux's attempted coup – along with more personal intrigues and depictions of day-to-day life at Elizabethan court.

There are some mildly controversial choices made, such as a depiction of Amy Robsart committing suicide, the fact that evidence against Mary Queen of Scots was fabricated by Francis Walsingham, and that Robert Devereux is made out to be the biological son of Robert Dudley, conceived before his marriage to Lettice Knollys. I’ll let others argue the implications of all that.

It’s... fine. A perfectly respectable biopic of Queen Elizabeth’s life, which has no doubt been the go-to show for British history teachers for the last two decades. And everyone is in this thing. I mean, everyone. Tom Hardy, Sienna Guillory, Ian Hart, Dexter Fletcher, Tara Fitzgerald, Kevin McKidd, good old Stanley Townsend, Emilia Fox, Ben Daniels, Ralph Ineson, Euen Bremmer, Robert Pugh, Jason Watkins and Vincent Franklin (which is funny because those two played the gay wedding planners in Confetti) and probably a dozen more I’ve forgotten.

Basically, any character actor you’ve ever recognized from BBC television is here. Of special note is Anne-Marie Duff, who is naturally a powerhouse as Elizabeth, convincingly depicting her across her entire lifetime, Joanne Whalley as Mary I (which is amusing since she also played the character in Wolf Hall, which would have been her second time in the role, though I watched it long before this) and Hans Matheson as Robert Devereux. Whatever happened to that guy? It felt like he was on the verge of his big Hollywood break and then he just disappeared.

In any case, it’s fun to see so many familiar faces magically shed twenty years, and there’s a lot of nice period details throughout. Naturally, my favourite moment came right at the very end, when Robert Cecil notices that the recently deceased Elizabeth had added a clasp to her ring. Inside is a portrait, but not of Robert Dudley as one might suspect – it is of her mother, Anne Boleyn.

Moribito: Guardian of The Spirit (2009)

Many years ago I read the book upon which this anime is based, though I now remember very little beyond the concept of a Lone Wolf and Cub, and that the “cub” of the pairing carried within him a spirit egg that endangered his life. Now, all these years later, I’m watching the highly regarded animated adaptation.

The whole thing comes with a winning premise. Balsa is a highly-trained warrior woman who is about to turn thirty (which according to her, makes her middle-aged – oof!) She’s in the right place at the right time to witness an accident involving the royal carriage and a bridge crossing, during which the second prince of the realm plunges into the river. She saves his life, only to be summoned to the palace in secret to meet the boy’s mother.

There she learns that the accident was a deliberate attempt on the boy’s life, ordered by his own father, the Mikado. When Prince Chagum was born, various omens revealed that he carried a water-demon egg inside him, one that would eventually hatch and cause a terrible drought across the land. Given that Balsa makes her living as a hired bodyguard, young Prince Chagum’s mother asks that she take him far away from court and conceal him until the danger has passed.

The unlikely pair disappear into the wilderness, but of course they have to face their fair share of trailing assassins, environmental obstacles, the small matter of the demon-egg inside Chagum, and their own vastly different personalities. Just as naturally, they form a strong bond and begin to learn something of the world from each other.

It’s a one-and-done season of television, clocking in at twenty-six twenty-minute episodes, filled with great fight scenes and beautiful animation, as well as a gradually unwinding plot that takes a few detours (it wouldn’t be anime without a couple of filler episodes) before eventually reaching its satisfyingly bittersweet conclusion. I recall feeling the same way about the book, even though my memories of it are pretty vague at this point.

Eternal Love: Three Lives, Three Worlds, Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms (2017)

Whew, I finally got through this one! “Finally” because this was a whopping fifty-eight episodes long. It’s almost amusing that Western-produced shows have been whittled down to eight episodes, in seasons that get cancelled almost immediately – but in the East, a single season, which encompasses an entire story with a beginning, middle and end, can reach up to sixty-plus episodes.

And that’s fitting considering they’re dealing with subjects such as reincarnation, epic romance, the gods visiting earth to secretly live out mortal lives, the founding and continuation of dynasties, and villains that are locked away for centuries at a time. (Often the characters would talk about events that occurred “seventy thousand years ago,” which was bewildering until I realized that time in Heaven passed much slower than than in the mortal world). In its entirety, this story spans thousands and thousands of years, so a high episode-count makes sense.

It largely concerns the goddess Bai Qian and her ongoing love affair with the prince of heaven, Ye Hua, and the complications that arise when they end up meeting each other in various forms or while assuming secret identities. For instance, Bai Qian decides to undergo a trial in the mortal world in order to gain enough wisdom and power to keep a dangerous warlord sealed away in his prison, and it’s while she’s in the form of the mortal Su Su that Ye Hua falls in love with her.

When Bai Qian returns to her true form, she’s so heartbroken at what she experienced as Su Su that she takes a potion to forget her memories of her time on earth. As such, when the gods cross paths again, she does not recognize Ye Hua, and he cannot fathom why she looks so much like his lost love.

And that’s just one example. The “three lives” of the title refers to the three times these two characters meet in challenging circumstances, and are unable to find their way to an understanding between them. (Though to be frank, Ye Hua’s singular fixation on Bai Qian often feels like creepy obsession, and there’s more than a few scenes in which she’s visibly uncomfortable in his presence, whether he’s tricking her into bed with him or full-on pushing her against the wall to kiss her against her will. I didn’t find it hugely romantic).

There are also half-a-dozen subplots involving other characters, such as the machinations of Su Jin, who loves Ye Hua and is violently jealous of Su Su to the point of contriving misunderstandings between the couple, and Bai Fengjiu, Bai Qian’s niece, who falls in love with the Emperor of Heaven after he saves her life, and so follows him into the mortal world during one of his “love trials” in order to repay her debt to him.

And that’s just scratching the surface. Like I said, this is fifty-eight episodes long!

I ended up with subtitles that felt a little stilted, as I get the feeling this cast of regal gods and immortals were saying things with a little more profundity than: “are you for real?” and “you are the best to me,” and “I like you,” and (after a woman asks to be a consort) “you don’t understand, kid.” I suppose it’s a little funny when hardened warriors and godlike emperors are saying things like: “listen up,” and “that was totally wrong,” and “I know you’re bullshitting,” and “bye,” but it kind of took me out of the moment. I get the distinct feeling they weren’t being quite this colloquial in the original Chinese.

Then there was my personal favourite: “She’s been died for three hundred years.”

As to be expected in a show like this, there’s a lot of dramatic running in and out of rooms, and most of the female characters will have a single tear forever sliding down her cheek, but you have to embrace the melodrama of it all if you’re going to enjoy it. That includes the terrible special effects, which look like nineties-quality CGI, and some of the affected mannerisms of the women. I find in a lot of shows/films like this the actresses will talk in high, childish voices and deliberately walk with their arms slightly outraised as though they’re trying to keep their balance. Once you’ve noticed you can’t unsee it, and I’ve always found it annoyingly infantilizing.

But I actually ended up feeling a little sorry for Su Jin, the main antagonist. She’s a terrible person who can’t get it into her head that Ye Hua is Just Not Into Her, and yet the actress has such poise, and such an open, vulnerable face that my heart went out to her despite all her conniving. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a villainess played this way before: there are no evil smirks, no triumphant cackling – this is a woman who genuinely thinks she’s been wronged and is taking steps to fix it. Imagine one of those crazed fangirls who honestly believes that the celebrity object of their lust is being controlled and manipulated by an evil gold-digger. Su Jin is that fangirl, and that makes her story fairly compelling.

La Catedral del Mar (2018)

Yikes, what was I thinking? I suppose I had it in my head to watch things that weren’t so American-centric, and this historical drama set in Spain seemed to fit the bill.

This eight-part miniseries is based on a well-received book by Ildefonso Falcones, and though I can’t say for sure, I suspect he was at least a little inspired by Ken Follet’s The Pillars of the Earth. Though this is set in fourteenth-century Barcelona instead of twelfth-century England, the slow-but-steady construction of Santa Maria del Mar serves as the ongoing backdrop for an intergenerational family saga – just like The Pillars of the Earth. It could be a coincidence though.

Bernat Estanyol becomes a fugitive serf after he flees cruelty and enslavement at the hands of his master, taking his newborn son to Barcelona to seek shelter with his affluent sister (or at least, her affluent husband). His son Arnau grows up with dreams of becoming one of the stonemasons that carry rocks from the shore to the construction site of the Santa Maria del Mar (Saint Mary of the Sea), though fate has more in store for him.

Once he becomes an adult, Arnau takes over from Bernat as the protagonist, gradually working his way out of the feudal system in order to become a powerful merchant and landholder in his own right. The story covers a lot of historical ground: plagues, Jewish pogroms, the Inquisition, food riots, border skirmishes, court intrigue, as well as the more personal details of day-to-day life: the relationships between nobles and serfs, men and women, religion and communities. There are plenty of intriguing details, such as how people could profit from the trading of different currencies (essentially selling money) or how the titular cathedral was financed by the people themselves. A lot is packed into these eight episodes.

Unfortunately, the whole thing is an astoundingly perfect case study of the Madonna/Whore Complex. There’s very little in the way of nuance when it comes to any of its female characters, as they’re either fallen women or perfect angels. Or evil bitches, I suppose.

In fact, it’s almost hilariously literal at some points. Arnau’s father tells him that his mother Francesca is dead in order to spare him the shame of her circumstances (kidnapped from her home to be a wetnurse to her rapist), leading to Arnau adopting the Virgin Mary as his spiritual mother. As for his real mother? She disappears from the show for a while, and on her reappearance it transpires that she escaped captivity (no thanks to her husband, who left her there) only to become a prostitute. When mother and son cross paths again, she refuses to divulge her true identity to him, not wanting to ruin his life with her ignominy. He quite literally has a Madonna and a Whore for a mother.

Arnau ends up marrying a young woman that he never sleeps with because he’s carrying on an affair with a married woman called Aledis, who is initially quite sympathetic (she’s forced to marry a much older, abusive man against her wishes) but in her desperation, threatens to blackmail Arnau into running away with her by exposing their affair. Not wanting to be dishonoured or lose his place in the stonemason’s guild, he runs away to war, leaving both wife and lover to their fates.

Eventually the angelic wife dies of the plague, and the scheming harlot becomes (you guessed it) a prostitute. Years later, Arnau marries a young woman called Mar, and though I’m not adverse to age-gap romances, did they really have to introduce Mar as a child and have her call her future husband “father” for most of the runtime? (Not that it protects her innocence; she gets raped too, and Arnau gets strongarmed into forcing her to marry her rapist to protect her honour).

The violence against women is also pretty intense. All three female leads are raped. An elderly maidservant is graphically whipped to death. Another woman cheats on her husband and spends the rest of her life imprisoned in a large box. Right off the bat, the treatment of this theme is almost ludicrously over the top: within the first ten minutes of the first episode, Arnau’s poor mother has her wedding crashed by nobles, gets gang-raped, and is then forced to have sex with her husband immediately afterward so that if she falls pregnant, the men won’t be held responsible for the child’s welfare.

I mean, bloody hell. I thought Ken Follet was unhealthily fixated on rape; but this is something else entirely. At some point you have to wonder if the author is earnestly trying to demonstrate how terrible it was for women back in ye old days, or if he’s secretly enjoying inflicting this level of sexual violence upon fictional women. And unlike Le Bazar de la Charité (see below), in which somewhat hapless men ultimately get their shit together and step up for the sake of the women in their lives, this show is marked by just how miserably men fail the women who rely on them for protection.

And yet for all the unnecessarily dark material that this covers, I still found the whole thing pretty compelling, simply because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a story set in this period before (which was naturally the reason I wanted to watch it in the first place). I can’t exactly recommend, but I don’t regret watching either.

Le Bazar de la Charité (2019)

This was reminiscent of a Julian Fellowes drama in that it takes a historical tragedy (as Fellowes did with the Titanic at the start of Downton Abbey and the Battle of Waterloo in Belgravia) and uses it as a jumping off point for a drama.

This one revolves around three women: Adrienne, who is taking steps to escape her abusive husband and sees the fire as an opportunity to fake her own death, Alice, whose fiancé abandoned her to the flames to save his own skin, but whose wealth will save her family from destitution, and Rose, who is badly burnt and taken in by a woman whose own daughter perished, who needs a substitute in order to keep her debauching son-in-law’s hands off her grandson’s inheritance. 

The women are all connected (Alice is Adrienne’s niece and Rose is Alice’s maid) but largely keep to their own storylines, which naturally get more complicated as the episodes proceed. Adrienne wants to leave for London, but is unable to abandon her young daughter – but how does one communicate the danger of the situation to a little girl? Alice falls in love with the young anarchist who saved her from the flames, only for him to become the main suspect in the police investigation into what caused the fire. Rose realizes she is pregnant, something her captor wants to terminate since she and her “husband” have not had relations in some years, and a baby would give the game away.

As you can probably tell from that summary, it does tend to veer a little into melodrama, but the actresses are talented and the situations they find themselves in compelling. I had to force myself to pace it, as this could have very easily turned into an eight-episode binge.

There is a running theme at work throughout regarding how women are treated by the men around them, from Adrienne’s abusive husband and the “gentlemen” beating off women with their walking sticks as they panicked while trying to escape the fire, to those who ultimately find their better selves and act honourably for the sake of the women in their lives (Alice’s father, whose negligence is technically responsible for the fire starting, and her gormless fiancé, who eventually tries to do the right thing. I felt a bit sorry for the actor playing the latter; he was so obviously cast on account of his somewhat unfortunate looks, in comparison with the generically handsome, heroic anarchist). 

In doing some cursory research into the fire itself, which really was a horrible tragedy, I was stunned to learn that one of the deceased was Duchess Sophie Charlotte Augustine, who was once engaged to King Ludwig II. Yes, THAT Ludwig; the Mad King, the Swan King, the commissioner of Neuschwanstein Castle and Linderhof Palace, who eventually met his death in mysterious circumstances after having been declared insane, deposed, and soon afterwards found drowned in Lake Starnberg. He’s the subject of the computer game Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within, which I was fairly obsessed with as a teenager. Small world.

Ultimately, I was surprised that given the fraught subject matter, everything turned out surprisingly well. The truth comes out. The innocent are saved. The bad guys are, if not locked up, then at least deprived of their wealth, careers and reputations. Just imagine.

I am reminded, a little randomly, of Julie Walters as the fairy godmother in this pantomime and her concluding ditty: “so the bad ended badly, and the good pulled through. Not much like real life, but what can you do?”