Mysteries of the box office: the case of Elio

Summer vacation blogging means low-hanging fruit. A Pixar film should do. The problem is, while I enjoyed Elio, there isn't an awful lot to discuss about it. Oddball kids united in friendship and shenanigans in colourful space settings are nice to see, but it's hardly new. The only unexpected part of this film was the focus on struggling parents or parent figures. Otherwise, Elio in its comfortable predictability is less easy to blog about than Turning Red or The Good Dinosaur, though I liked it better than both those films.

So let's return to the old angle of the box office. Since I last broached the subject, it has continued to puzzle me. I don't want to pan a film I haven't seen, but wasn't the success of Minecraft: The Movie somewhat surprising? I haven't seen a single good review of it. On the other hand, Thunderbolts*, appreciated by critics and by those who saw it (including me), did not draw the crowds. I know there's a gap between what critics and audiences like, but I'm not talking about snooty film buffs who abhor everything that isn't Bergman or Citizen Kane here. Popular YouTubers (well, most of them) enjoyed Thunderbolts*, but did it help the movie? did it heck.

And now, Elio, a good solid Pixar flick, has bombed despite good ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, while the lacklustre Moana 2 met box-office approval. It's hard to see a pattern here. Yes, there seems to be a fondness for "known IP", but Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was based on "known IP", and that was no help. (I've mentioned that it's good, right?) All whining aside, though, the disappointing audience figures for Elio at least provides a mystery to be pondered in a blog post. Why didn't people go to watch it?

To start with myself, I very nearly didn't go to watch it either. What put me off was that the story, judging by the trailers, didn't seem that engaging. True, there was an early trailer way back in 2023 (I think), which was worse, as the film then seemed to focus on a tiresome "Earth on Trial" plot (has anyone but Star Trek: Next Generation made that cliché work?). This story, I'm happy to say, has been scrapped completely, but maybe a few potential cinemagoers were scared off early. The later trailers, by contrast, looked nice enough, but had "good streaming content" written all over them. They didn't sell Elio as something you necessarily had to watch in cinemas.

In all fairness, maybe it's not, the magnificent visuals notwithstanding. I went to see it because 1) my summer vacation has started 2) I'm a mousehead who wants to keep Disney animation and Pixar in business 3) films aren't released for streaming as early as they once were, as Disney especially has become disenchanted with streaming services as a stable source of income and 4) it looked like a fun time. As it happens, Elio exceeded my expectations, though the story wasn't the film's greatest strength. It felt oddly paced at times, with the title character's orphan status being a particularly forced plot point which didn't elicit the pathos the film makers were perhaps hoping for. But I am glad I went and didn't wait around for months for the Disney + release.

What I appreciated most was the overwhelmed parent angle. As Elio's parents are both killed off (without explanation) before the story starts, he's living with his father's sister Olga, who has no family of her own and has to give up her ambition to become an astronaut in favour of her safe, earth-bound job in order to care for him. Elio picks up on how his presence has upended his aunt's life and draws the conclusion that he's unwanted. Aunt Olga's struggles to connect to Elio are paralleled, not very subtly, with those of the alien war lord Grigon, who doesn't understand his peaceful son Glordon at all, but who still loves him. The scenes where Elio and Glordon respectively finally realise how much they mean to their parent/parent figure pulled at my heartstrings far more than Elio's dead mum and dad.          

Maybe here's another clue as to why the film hasn't done better. There's plenty of fun for kids, and something to chew on for adults, but there isn't much for the inbetween audiences. I'm not sure I would necessarily recommend Elio to teenagers and twentysomethings, at least not as something they needed to see at the cinema. For this middle-aged aunt, though, it did the trick.

Predictions for season three of The Gilded Age (with very little to go on)

Right. I said I would do The Gilded Age predictions, didn't I? With season three coming next week, it's high time. 

The season trailer didn't exactly wow me, but I must confess there are some clues in it regarding what's to come (unlike in the trailer for the upcoming Downton movie, which is just an elegant nothing – not that I'm bitter). The trick will be to avoid all-to-obvious predictions. I mean, of course Larrian (I'm guessing that's what the Larry + Marian ship is called) will get well under way, and of course there will be friction between Aunt Agnes and Aunt Ada, who has the money now. That much is given. But what else could possibly happen?

Gladys will marry the Duke – but not divorce yet The marriage is a pretty safe bet; we see glimpses of a marriage in the trailer, and there's no way Larry and Marian will get that far in just one season. So it has to be Gladys, and unless her dad finally takes a stand against his wife and objects at the last minute, this means she's stuck with the Duke of Buckingham. Gladys's situation being based on that of Consuelo Vanderbilt, who eventually divorced the Duke of Marlborough, one could assume that Gladys is the woman whose divorce is talked about in hushed tones in the trailer. Generally, though, plot lines in The Gilded Age don't move that fast. Surely, her marriage has to be milked for juicy drama before it is discarded.

Who is divorcing, then? Blessed if I know. Mrs Fane, whose main function in the series seems to be to introduce Marian to a wider society than she'd encounter if Aunt Agnes had her way, is bringing the news. Could she be the one?

Agnes and Bertha will both try to stop Larrian (maybe even together) Fellowes has reportedly realised that it would be a good idea to bring his queen bees together in one scene. From the quote I heard, though, it didn't sound as if they'd be actually interacting much, but one can always hope. As I've said before, these characters are something of a disappointment to me – Agnes doesn't really hit the Dowager Countess spot she's supposed to, and Bertha is pretty much unbearable at this point. Some reluctant plotting over a common cause would do them a world of good drama-wise.

That Agnes will be opposed to the Larry-Marian romance is self-evident. Bertha's view is harder to guess, as she's keen to be allied to "old money" (or lack of money), and the Van Rhijns are the US counterpart to nobility. However, they're also (with the exception of Ada) skint. Bertha may well want something better for Larry, and she's been known to meddle in his love life before.

Peggy's new love interest's parents (probably the dad) will make trouble Peggy's shown looking blissful with a new man, a Dr Kirkland, who seems very respectable. But it can't all be peaches and cream, surely? Is there some significance to the fact that we already know who will be playing Kirkland's father? My guess is that Kirkland Sr., and/or possibly his wife, will object to Peggy for some reason, most likely her troubled past. 

Peggy may also have to face more virulent forms of racism than she has before in New York (not from the Kirklands, though, who are also black affluent middle-class). Any other showrunner would have included a swiwel-eyed racist bogey-man in Peggy's storyline by now, and I admire Fellowes for resisting the low-hanging fruit. But c'mon, nearly encountering a Southern lynch mob can't be it. Peggy needs dragons to slay.

The butler alliance will be sealed by events (I hope) Mercifully, butlers Bannister and Church buried the hatchet in the previous season. Now, they need a storyline which will bring them together, and unlike Agnes and Bertha's potential alliance their partnership should be for a good cause. Maybe they will join forces to help Jack the footman? I thought I spotted him looking well-dressed and giddy in the trailer. Most likely, someone will try to rip him off in order to get their hands on his invention, and he will need trusty servant back-up. 

Not that I've worked out why Church would get involved, but hey. I want the butlers to get on so badly I almost ship them.

Oscar will try to make money Oscar will feel keenly that he's let his mother down, and he'll try to make up for it in some way, possibly by trying to get back some of the money he lost. I'd rather have a romance plot involving Oscar, to be honest, or another marriage-as-window-dressing scheme. Let's face it, though: he'll never meet anyone better than John Adams, the most understanding ex-boyfriend ever.

New New Doctor Who season two: the parting of the ways?

Nowadays, I sometimes watch an old Doctor Who episode not just because I feel like it, but to remind me that Doctor Who actually was good during the first Davies era and the Steven Moffat era. I wasn't imagining it, and so back in December 2022, when I was so excited about the return of Russell T Davies (aka RTD), I had no way of knowing how hard his second stint as showrunner would crash and burn.

True, I was apprehensive about his politics, though not apprehensive enough as it turns out. The problem with Davies's second run – the "RTD 2" run – is that not only is the political commentary dialled up to eleven and clumsier than ever (and it wasn't exactly subtle in the olden days), but the things he did well are less in evidence, if at all. 

Where are the grounded characters and everyday situations that you believed in? I barely feel I know the new companions Ruby Sunday and Belinda Chandra at all. Ruby's adoptive mother Carla and grandmother Cherry had some promise, but they weren't given enough screen time to develop (and it was a shame that Carla ended up betraying Ruby in two aborted time lines over two seasons). All the UNIT staff seemed to be given about one or two character traits each. You can't blame the Who Culture youtubers for nicknaming Colonel Ibrahim "Colonel Sexy", because what else is he? I'm starting to wonder whether I like Kate Stewart simply because Jemma Redgrave is such a great actress, as I still don't quite know what the character is about after all these years. And what is Rose Noble (who ought to be in school) doing at the UNIT headquarters at all? Not even Davies himself seems to know. 

As for Belinda's family, I kept thinking there was a plot twist coming where it would turn out she actually didn't have any parents, in spite of her talking about them all the time, because we didn't get to meet them. Belinda's mother eventually makes a brief appearance, but her father is kept off-screen. What's with all the missing fathers? Davies, who once opened up Doctor Who to romantic girl-meets-Doctor storylines, seems to have acquired a new distaste for heterosexual mating and its manifestations.

While we're on the subject of characterisation, what happened to the characters being interestingly flawed even when they happen to tick some minority box? Ruth Madeley was allowed to play a complex character in Years and Years – the cheeky little sister whose judgment wasn't always sound (she voted for the dangerous populist Vivienne Rook). Her Shirley Bingham, on the other hand, is little more than a token disabled character, seemingly flawless.

What happened to bringing back characters from Classic Who in a meaningful and thrilling manner, instead of hauling them in and then completely wasting their potential? Who can forget the Dalek-Cyberman face-off ("this is not war, this is pest control"), the Master's return and the confrontation between the Doctor and Davros in RTD's first era? And now what do we get? Not one but two excellent actresses taking on the Rani, but given precious little to work with. The Rani is dispatched unceremoniously and without any real effort on the Doctor's part about midway through the final episode. Still, she is lucky compared to the other Classic Who villain Omega, resurrected as a soulless CGI monster then got rid of within minutes. I haven't even seen any Omega adventures, and I still felt offended. And what happened to the Doctor's granddaughter Susan, of whom we saw the merest glimpse but who then didn't appear in the finale at all? 

To get to the point, season two of the RTD 2 era had so many flaws they even became apparent to viewers who have no problem with the politics, which is still very much in evidence, as it was in season one. What particularly cheesed me off about the commentary this time around was that its particular target was white young men with a taste for gaming or social media – in other words, we got a look at what Davies imagines New New Who's angriest critics are like. 

Both Belinda's controlling ex-boyfriend Alan and the duplicitous podcaster Conrad were poorly understood caricatures. I should have enjoyed the episode "Wish World" as it contained a fake reality, a trope I'm usually a sucker for. But the moral arrogance behind the depiction of Conrad's Wish World as everything the seemingly progressive Davies despises was hard to watch. Of course a monster such as Conrad must be in favour of women staying in the home, against homosexuality and ignorant even of the existence of the disabled and "dispossessed". Unlike, one imagines, Davies, who is all for rainbows and puppies and world peace.

To be fair, the finale did take a step back when it came to the Conrad hate (I seem to be the only one who appreciated that Ruby showed him mercy instead of tearing into him). But that is about all that can be said for it. Ncuti Gatwa regenerating into Billie Piper (who played companion Rose Tyler in RTD's first era) was a tired stunt that had even me groaning, and I have a high tolerance for fan service. But to tell the truth, I was fed up long before then. I'm not sure what to do about Doctor Who in the future. I can't seriously be prepared to stop watching it, can I?

What do you mean, "don't take Eurovision too seriously"?

The Ascension Day holiday, usually a good time for blogging, will be a little busier than usual this year, so I'd better get my Eurovision post out of the way this week instead. The first question that suggests itself is: Am I upset that Sweden didn't win? Answer: Nope. Not even the littlest bit.

Now, don't get me wrong. The Finnish trio KAJ who represented Sweden this year are charming boys. Their number, which poked gentle fun at Swedish conceptions of Finns, has done wonders for relations between Sweden and Finland, and is very easy to hum. But it is a jokey song, designed to appeal to those who prefer Eurovision to be as wacky as possible. And I'm not one of them.

My daily newspaper was fond of proclaiming that it was about time Sweden sent something a little more light-hearted to the contest. According to Swedish journalists, Sweden had started to become unpopular by sending high-quality, earnest pop songs to Eurovision year after year, as if we cared about winning way too much. We needed to learn how to chill a bit more and not take the whole thing so seriously.

It's a point of view, I guess, but it's not mine. There's no denying Eurovision tends to be full of "out there" moments, and there are probably lots of fans who lean into the crazy and think that that's what it's all about. But for me, the Eurovision Song Contest is primarily just that – a song contest. You don't have to win it, certainly (though it's preferable to make the final, and not finish last among the finalists). But you should aim to send a good, solid song to represent your country. Jokes should be left to the host country's self-deprecating intermission number.

I mean, can you see the Norwegians sending skiers who clown about in the snow to the Ski World Championships, just to make everyone feel better because Norway usually tends to win? No, me neither, worse luck.

Basel did a stellar job of hosting this year, with hosts that actually had a matey chemistry and good timing in their delivery of a not-too-cringey script. As for the songs, here are some of the memorable moments:

Positive national stereotype of the year: Spain Maybe not the strongest on rewatch, but I had a weakness for the Flamenco (or something)-dancing Spanish diva, who ended her number reclining in a swoony pose in the capable arms of a brave background dancer (imagine if he'd dropped her). Spectacle, glamour, and pretty nice to listen to.

Aww-inducing act of the year: Italy "I don't have the face of a tough guy" – no, that you don't, sweetheart. These last years, Italy has shown a certain amount of street cred, and this year's entry, though not as rocky as, say, Måneskin, continued the trend. Lucio's clown makeup did make me feel as if a character from an old Swedish children's programme was having an existential crisis (to Swedish readers I need only say: banana), but the overall effect was that of a cute troubadour acquitting himself with credit.

Shameless filth of the year: Finland and Malta You're in trouble when a Finnish blonde riding an enormous microphone up to the sky while yelling "Ich komme" ("I come", in German for some reason, I mean ta very much but even so) isn't even the most tasteless thing Eurovision has to offer. Instead, that prize goes to Malta. Can you blame the EBU for demanding that the word "kant" (Maltese for "song", apparently) be removed from the song title? The number still leaves little to the imagination, with the singer entering through an open, heavily-lipsticked mouth, widely-spread female legs waving in the background, and dancers cavorting in the foreground. By the end, the singer is seated on a bouncing ball. I'd say it's pretty clear it's not song she's serving. But what are the gently rocking leopards doing there?

Nice singers, shame about the song of the year: United Kingdom It may seem I'm always picking on the poor old UK, but honestly, limeys, it's just because I love you and want you to do better. This time, we had three female pros from musical theatre. That's a good start – but what were they singing? Every time you thought the song was about to go somewhere, it inexplicably slowed down in a stop-go-stop-go manner. Not sophisticated, just weird.

Earworm of the year: Luxemburg Oh dear, are we still doing the "I'm not a puppet" cliché? Still, it has to be said, the refrain sticks in your brain very effectively.

I'm still avoiding those elephants, as you can see. Sorry about that.

The guilty pleasure of Riverdale

Imagine, if you can, a TV series called Duckburg, where the characters are not quite as you remember them from Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse comics. To start with, naturally, they're all human. Flintheart Glomgold is married to Magica de Spell, and the murder of their son Gladstone Gander forms the main mystery to be resolved during the show's first season. Mickey Mouse has made clear to Minnie in the very first episode that he's only interested in her as a friend. That's just as well, as Minnie starts a sweet romance with an unusually broody Goofy, who has plans of becoming a writer but is somewhat too mixed up in a biker gang. Mickey, for his part, is dating the daughter of Peg-Leg Pete – who incidentally has hit the gym big time.

This, you would agree, would be taking a great deal of liberties with the source material. But heck, I'd watch it.

Without actually having read the American comic Archie (except stray pages that the cunning algorithm has started to show in my Facebook feed), I'd say this is a pretty fair analogy to the difference between Archie and the TV series Riverdale. The comic, from what I have been told and can make out from said Facebook snippets, is a light-hearted affair where girl-next-door Betty and rich girl Veronica vie for the attention of the red-headed titular character. In the TV series, on the other hand, the young protagonists' lives and loves are endlessly complicated by dark and twisted mysteries, and the outwardly idyllic small town is full of buried corpses (literally). It's borderland insane – but I am hooked.

So why, considering that the quality does go downhill after a neat first season, and the plot lines get ever more derailed, did I spend the better part of a day (I had and have a cold, so there was an excuse) bingeing the last episodes of season four of Riverdale instead of, say, finally watching The Conclave? My reasons are highly subjective:

It's Once Upon A Time methadone: Small-town intrigue? Check. Cosy diner where everyone goes? Check. Twisted goings-on behind an idyllic front? Check. Powerful mayors and sheriffs who wear an actual star on their police uniform? Check. Lots and lots of relationship drama? Check. Riverdale gives me enough "heightened reality" – or rather total lack of reality – vibes to remind me of my all-time favourite series. 

True, there's no Rumple/Mr Gold for my heart to ache over, but that can be restful. And the villains on offer are entertaining, in their fashion. In the first season, the Blossom family, with their 19th-century Gothic Aesthetic, are an absolute delight, but their importance diminishes as the series goes on. The exception is red-headed bombshell Cheryl, who moves from bitch to wild-card to generally well-disposed towards the heroes. She's always fun with her withering put-downs and quirks, but what can I say? I had hoped that the Blossom family drama would have turned out somewhat differently.

What of Peg-Leg Pete then – or rather Hiram Lodge, father of the enterprising Veronica Lodge? I mean, he's handsome – conventionally so, but they can't all be silver foxes. However, much as my superego appreciates that the series doesn't go the clichéd route of turning a "normal" businessman into a villainous mastermind, and instead opts for making Hiram a straight-out gangster, my id is a bit disappointed. As tired as the Evil Capitalist trope is, it usually leads to more toothsome villains (in my personal opinion) than the Tough Mobster trope. Hiram's fun, with his wide-eyed "what did I do?" reaction to well-founded accusations, but he's a bit too macho for me.

I can catch up on the soap-watching experience: I was too young for the classic soaps such as Dallas and Dynasty, and though there were soaps aimed at teenagers around when I myself was one, I wasn't patient enough back then to try them. Any series with more than 100 episodes I wrote off immediately. 

Now, though, I see the appeal of series where you're not going to run out of episodes in a hurry. There's a particular appeal in watching the script writers come up with increasingly far-fetched drama just to keep the story going. Yes, it will lead to arcs you don't care for very much and want wrapped up as soon as possible, but if the writers do their job properly there will be enough plates spinning to keep you interested even through the rough patches. And there's always the hope that they'll hit gold and suddenly introduce a storyline almost as good as in that first season you fondly remember.

The protagonists are really likeable: At the centre of the series are four friends (who are supposed to be high-schoolers but naturally are played by actors in their twenties). They eventually pair up into two couples: Archie and Veronica on the one hand, Betty and Jughead (real name: Forsythe Pendleton III, and no, he's not "old money") on the other. Of course there are plenty of bust-ups, but essentially they stand by each other through thick and thin and are a bunch easy to root for. 

Betty is the stand-out – a good girl with a dark side, who generally manages to keep "Dark Betty" under control and do the right thing, while being well able to counter any bitchy attack with full force. Jughead has his own scruffy charm, and Veronica is an entertaining powerhouse, always dragging the somewhat aimless Archie in her wake with gentle force. 

Archie himself is, in some ways, the weak link, saddled as he is with a certain righteous blandness. His character is also one of the main victims of the soap format: every half-season or so, he's seriously into something new, something he's convinced will be the mainstay of his future: music, boxing, helping disadvantaged youths, you name it. You just want him to pick a lane and stop making hair-raising mistakes. On the other hand, having a hero character in need of support from his more colourful friends isn't such a bad idea. And let's face it: the hero was never going to be the main attraction for me.

Sorry, ladies, Heathcliff is still the worst

I've done it: after far too many years, decades even, I've reread Wuthering Heights, and I found it a surprisingly riveting read. Although my memory served me right when it came to the characters – many of them are awful, and even the more likeable ones have irritating traits it's sometimes hard to forgive – the book proved to be such a ripping yarn I didn't mind it as much as I did in my teens. As they say, there's a lot to unpack here, so I'll limit myself. My defence of Nelly Dean will have to keep, as will my slightly Harry-Potterish theory that Joseph the near-unintelligible servant is some sort of house gnome.

My greatest surprises when revisiting Wuthering Heights were firstly its sheer readability, and secondly how young most of the protagonists are. Much of the characters' over-excitability and bad decisions could at least partly be down to youthful folly. At the book's first crisis, when Heathcliff runs away after hearing Catherine reject him (but not staying around to hear her love declaration, such as it is) and she falls ill, she is only fifteen and he about a year older. When Heathcliff returns, he is barely out of his teens and Catherine nineteen at most. 

The other main characters are also youngsters. Edgar Linton's the same age as his rival, Isabella Linton is only eighteen when she develops her crush on Heathcliff, and even Hindley – who's eight years older than his sister Catherine – is only twenty-three when he loses his beloved wife, and dies before he's hit thirty. In the second part of the novel, there's a whole new set of teenagers and a twentysomething acting foolishly. Much of the high drama in the novel becomes more understandable in the context of teenage angst and self-absorption, though it certainly doesn't explain all of the odd behaviour. 

Even Lockwood, the novel's framing-device narrator (before he leaves the story to Nelly), is an example of callow youth. He's exiled himself to the moors after having rejected a girl he pined for when she showed signs of returning his interest: a typical young man's mistake. Stunted emotional growth and immaturity is something of a theme in the book.

But enough of that. The real question is: do I, villain-lover that I am, still dislike Heathcliff as much as I did when I was younger? The answer is: well, yeah!

To be fair, though, I can more easily see his interest to certain female readers than I could before. He does have some features that usually make for a good villain: he's intelligent, handsome and perfectly miserable. I was sorry for him in the later part of the book, when his loneliness becomes so acute that even Lockwood's company is a relief to him. Also, as I'm someone who enjoys her creature comforts, the scenes where Heathcliff can't bring himself to eat while haunted by Catherine, even when the food's right in front of him, hit me quite hard. So I guess I have to accord the man some leader of the pack appeal. But apart from that – ugh.

I guess how you respond to Heathcliff partly comes down to whether you think he has a case to start with, and I don't. I've always been Team Hindley. Now, don't get me wrong. I know Hindley's a pretty useless character, what with his drinking, knocking people about and gambling (mostly as a plot contrivance, but still). I'm less inclined to forgive Hindley for neglecting his son out of grief for his wife than when I was younger and more romantic, and he would have gone to pot even without Heathcliff's help. His downfall reminded me of Gerald Fairley's in A Woman of Substance, of all things ("That was my plan, but you did it yourself, really"). 

Nevertheless, Hindley was Mr Earnshaw's son, and Mr Earnshaw's money and land were rightfully his. There was zero reason for him to keep spoiling his father's pet, who lorded it over him while in favour, when Mr Earnshaw died. If Earnshaw wanted Heathcliff to be a gentleman so badly, he should have made provisions for him, and Heathcliff should have had the wits to keep the peace with his future master. Besides, I'm certain the little blighter broke that fiddle.

Even if Heathcliff had had a case, though, I must say his defenders are able to swallow a great deal. He's a bully and a sadist. His psychological torture of Isabella, young Cathy (his great love's daughter), his own son Linton and others inspires cruelty in them in turn. Isabella retaliates against Heathcliff; Cathy also lands some psychological blows on Heathcliff but also torments poor Hareton (Hindley's son); Linton is encouraged to torment Cathy and everyone is free to have a go at Linton, including Joseph. Though personally I found the psychological sadism the hardest to take, there's a lot of brute force applied as well.

And then, there's the tiresome speechifying on Heathcliff's part, mostly phrased as confidences to Nelly (a rare touching trait in both Heathcliff and the ghastly Catherine the elder is how they both keep confiding in Nelly long after she's lost any sympathy for them). Some of it is self-congratulatory moustache-twirling; some of it teeth-gnashing fee-fi-fo-fum-ing (I'll think you'll find there's no country anywhere where you're allowed to perform vivisection on your son and future daughter-in-law, mate); some of it simply disturbing rambling (those plans respecting Heathcliff's corpse and Catherine's – yikes). In many ways, though he becomes more Machiavellian as he grows older, Heathcliff stays a vengeful and obsessive teenager emotionally until the end, or close to the end at any rate. As Pepe le Pew would say, "Eet ees de leetle boy in him".

If Heathcliff is your cup of tea, then fine, but admit this much at any rate: he's not a hero, or a tragic hero, or an anti-hero. He's a villain. And I guess some like their villains rough.

A very English (somewhat chilly) mini-series

Finally, I've followed the strong recommendations of friends and critics and watched the mini-series A Very English Scandal from 2018, which, as luck would have it, was still available on Swedish streaming. The title's not a lie: it's certainly very English indeed. Given this and my anglophile tendencies, one would maybe have expected me to warm to it more, but perhaps it's just not meant to be the kind of story you warm to. In any case, I did enjoy it.

The odds are stacked in the show's favour. It stars Hugh Grant, Ben Whishaw, Alex Jennings and a great supporting cast; it's directed by Stephen Frears; it's based on a book by John Preston (if it's the same John Preston I'm thinking of, I used to like his reviews in The Sunday Telegraph a lot); and, last but not least, it's written by Russell T Davies, back when he was still good. All right, maybe that's unfair, but I'm still bitter about what he's serving up in Doctor Who these days. In the best scenes in Scandal, you wonder how it can be the same man who wrote this and drivel like the "male-presenting Time Lord" speech in "The Star Beast" or the clumsy eat-the-rich-kids satire in "Dot and Bubble".

The scandal in question is one I know nothing about, which can be both an advantage and a bit dangerous. It concerns Jeremy Thorpe, leader of the Liberal Party in England in the Sixties and Seventies, who was doing really well until people found out, one: that he had a male ex-lover and two: that he tried to have said male ex-lover killed.

At least, that was what Thorpe was accused of. From the point of view of the TV series, there's never any doubt that he was as guilty as a man can be. This is where the danger of not knowing anything comes in, because I buy it all, even while wondering how a seemingly canny politician could have been so stupid. Although the characterisation is far from black and white, you do briefly wonder about the ethical aspects of making a juicy TV drama of something that happened not so long ago (Jeremy Thorpe's son is probably still alive). But heck, it is a good story.

In spite of its sharp script and good pace, underscored by lively music from the excellent Murray Gold (more British talent), I wasn't completely blown away by the first episode. It was hard to care too much about an affair gone sour when the persons involved were Grant's callous Thorpe and Whishaw's neurotic Norman Josiffe, later Scott, who as soon as he was ditched reported Thorpe to the cops and wrote a 17-page-long letter to his (Thorpe's) mother. But the show got steadily better – or rather, more engaging, as it was always good. By the third episode, I was at the edge of my seat, and here it is a definite advantage not to know how it all turned out. The last sentence of the "what happened then" summaries at the end hits the at once droll and moving note it aims for.

If anyone is short-changed in this drama, it's Jeremy Thorpe. Not that Hugh Grant doesn't do an excellent job of playing him, but the man remains an enigma until the end. Grant can do both charm and the lurking darkness beneath to perfection, but what he's been less called for to do during his career is vulnerability or raw emotion, and this part is no exception. This version of Thorpe is no tragic hero, someone who could have done great things if he hadn't stumbled down a dark path following one misstep. He is a man with a sliver of ice in his heart acting in character. It's not a complete hatchet-job, which makes it all the more damaging. Thorpe clearly cared about his family, and every clip we see of a political speech (there's not that many, though) makes quite a lot of sense. Also, Norman's no saint, and you can understand why his ex feels sorely tried at times. Still, you're left thinking that England had a lucky escape.      

Davies keeps his own hobby-horses admirably at bay. There's the odd line that sounds more like him than the characters, as when Norman complains about "men like him" not being in the history books (but what do I know? That could be direct quote). It's also a bit remarkable that just about every male character seems to have at least tried on sleeping with men, and bisexuality isn't really considered as a plausible explanation to playing both sides, unless the fellow concerned would otherwise be labelled heterosexual. But we're spared ranting, and Davies even uses his own experiences (or what feels like his own experiences) to touching effect. Not that he was around the gay scene, or lack of it, at the same time as Jeremy Thorpe, but he can clearly relate to it's being a jungle out there.

I'm glad I got round to watching A Very English Scandal. Like one of its protagonists, it can be a bit chilly at times. However, if RTD hits his stride again and produces anything nearly as good in the upcoming season of Doctor Who, I will be a very happy bunny.