söndag 12 december 2010

"Downton Abbey" and the problem with Mary

My parents got hold of "Downton Abbey" when they were last in London (BBC take note: the ITV people had the series out on DVD about a day after it had stopped being aired), and as anticipated I enjoy it hugely. We've seen three episodes so far, and it gets better and better. Not that it was bad to begin with: it is gorgeously shot, well acted and sets up an intriguing drama right from the start. Even so, a little too much time was spent at first pondering the question whether the Earl of Grantham would "smash the entail" of his estate Downton Abbey. Like Mr Bennet in "Pride and Prejudice", the earl has only daughters, but as the eldest daughter was engaged to the male heir, that was all right - until the heir in question goes down with the Titanic. Now, I would have been more interested if I understood what breaking the entail, well, entailed. Can you smash an entail? If yes, how do you go about it? Why didn't Mr Bennet do it - what is the downside? The earl ends up not breaking the entail because he worries that it would harm the estate - but how could it do that, exactly? This is not explained, so the earl's decision looks idiotic rather than upright. But this is a minor quibble, as is the fact that the other plot line in episode one - where a possible suitor for Mary is revealed to have other interests entirely - bears a great resemblance to one of the lesser-known black-and-white episodes of "Upstairs Downstairs".

The series owes quite a heavy debt to "Upstairs Downstairs", and is very much in the tradition of the sumptuous costume drama. It is not "fresh" or "innovative", and that is exactly why it's so enjoyable. I don't care that we have seen hunting scenes, bullying cooks, loyal-to-the-death butlers, unpleasant blackmailers (good job on that one, earl - care to come by Middlemarch one day in a costume-drama crossover?), American heiresses and haughty matriarchs before. I'm happy to see more of them. It's also good to make the acquaintance of a Decent Toff for a change. As I've already hinted in this blog, I'm not exactly the President of the Scarlet Pimpernel Society for Preserving Our Beloved Nobility, but even I think the treatment the nobs have been getting in crime dramas such as "Midsomer Murders", "Morse" and "Lewis" - where they are continually portrayed as depraved and heavy-handedly snooty - is a bit unfair.

The characterisation could be more subtle - unlike, say, "Upstairs Downstairs", the characters are often clearly labelled as Good or Bad - but it doesn't really matter. In fact, the one character that really annoys me is supposed to be one of the Complex ones. Of the earl's three daugthers, the youngest, Sybil, is sweet-natured, and the middle one, Edith, is sour and envious. And then there's the eldest, Mary. I think I know what we're supposed to feel about her: that she is not as upper-class-bitchy as she seems, and that she only puts up a front to hide an inner vulnerability. She is redeemable, a bit like Bella Wilfer in "our Mutual Friend", and we're supposed to warm to her after initially having disliked her. Well, it doesn't work for me. I'm still on the initial dislike stage. There's little to suggest that this chilly beauty really has that much inner depth, and I certainly don't think she deserves to end up with the earl's new likeable, middle-class heir Matthew, which seems to be the way is the story is heading. They're already sparring in time-honoured, romance-starts-with-a-fight fashion. It would be nice if Matthew decided to go for sweet Sybil instead. Anyway, why aren't the earl and the countess making more of an effort in placing all three girls instead of just hawking Mary to all and sundry? Embittered Edith could make a comfortable match with some rich and patient fellow (a love match would probably go sour in a month, so a marriage of convenience seems to be the best thing you could hope for in her case), and Sybil is just as pretty as her eldest sister and good deal pleasanter to have around. Mrs Bennet would certainly not have made the mistake of putting all potential suitor eggs in one basket.

söndag 28 november 2010

Do we need yet another take on "A Christmas Carol"?

As established in the previous blog entry, The Doctor and Dickens make a great duo. So why am I not 100% excited by the news that the Doctor Who Christmas Special will contain references to "A Christmas Carol"? Well, to be perfectly honest, I'm a little tired of "A Christmas Carol".

The two most famous and most read works by Dickens are probably "Oliver Twist" and "A Christmas Carol". I know it could be great deal worse. These are good stories. It would have been terrible if Dickens would have been chiefly famous for, say, "Martin Chuzzlewit". Still, "Twist" and "Carol" leave people with the impression that Dickens was first and foremost a Great Revealer of Social Ills, who wrote about poor folk, preferably orphans. Dickens did rail against (real and perceived) social ills, but this is only one aspect of his writing, and in my view not the best or the most interesting one. His books aren't rag-fests at all: they mostly have middle-class settings and middle-class main characters, who are more psychologically complex than people realise. We hear a lot about Dickensian "grotesques", but it is not the quirks that make a Dickens character interesting, but the personality that lies beneath. This is the author who said the last word on bitterness and what it does to you, but what is he known as? Someone who wrote about ragged, implausibly good children, who may or may not die.

What I like about "A Christmas Carol" is the fact that Scrooge's redemption is the most important thing in it. The ghosts don't haunt him for the sake of Bob Cratchit, or of Tiny Tim, or of any deserving poor who will benefit from his change of heart and sudden generosity. They haunt him for his own sake, to save his soul. The idea of redeeming someone by showing him glimpses of his past, present and future is pure genius, which is probably why the story has such potency and why there are so many versions of it about. There is also a hint of the old Dickensian "bitterness is bad for you" theme: Scrooge must learn not only to defeat his greed, but also his cynicism and misanthropy. Nevertheless, those who see "Carol" as a straightforward morality tale about how how we must be nice to the needy, especially at Christmas, are not that far wrong. Dickens's Christmas books generally are more sugary, more moralistic and more psychologically simplistic than his novels, and "Carol" suffers from this too. For one thing, Scrooge cracks far too easily: the first Christmas spirit already has him blubbing. And how did Mr Fezziwig's jolly apprentice become so cold and hard-hearted? We never get a satisfactory explanation. I read a short story sequel to "Carol" (included in the anthology "Death by Dickens") by Lillian Stewart Carl, where it is revealed that Mr Fezziwig's firm failed. Now that would explain a lot, wouldn't it? But it isn't in the original story. Dickens can do bitterness in his sleep, but like many authors he is less convincing on greed: it doesn't seem to be a very inspiring vice.

But the main problem with "A Christmas Carol" is something it can't help: it has become over-familiar. We have had countless straightforward film and TV adaptions, musical adaptations, stage adaptations, a version set in modern times, a Disney version, a muppet version, a Blackadder version were the central character goes from good to bad instead of the other way around (not that funny actually), a romcom version, and a flood of other popular culture references. I have read comics where both Peg-Leg Pete and The Big Bad Wolf get the Scrooge treatment, though with indifferent success. The only other story that gets rehashed almost as often at Christmas time is "It's a Wonderful Life", which also, to give it its due, has a great premise. (It would be fun, once in a while, if a bad character got the you-have-never-been-born-treatment instead of the ghosts. In many instances, life would not turn out better for the good characters if their nemesis did not exist: quite the reverse.)

In a word, we could need a little rest from "A Christmas Carol". Why not give "The Haunted Man", another Christmas book by Dickens, a try? It is bleak at times, but it all turns out well in the end. I'm not sure I buy the argument - that the bad things that happen to us make us better people and are a crucial part of the web of life - but it is forcefully argued all the same. I'd give "The Chimes" a miss, though.

söndag 14 november 2010

Who's the geek? I am!

Yes, I know, I know. I'm overdue for a blog entry on books, instead of on TV. But that would give the impression that I've spent a lot of my free time lately reading. I haven't. Instead, I've been watching the new "Doctor Who" series, as unable as ever to save a few episodes up, knowing it will be a long stretch before any new ones come along. The box set arrived Wednesday, and I've already bolted down all 13 episodes.

Just what is it that makes this series so addictive? An interesting central character helps. Mind you, it's not that I'm a blind devotee of the Doctor. It's hard not to like this amiable alien, but he is contradictory to say the least. One minute, he is acting like the bodyguard of the human race and grimly blasting our enemies to kingdom come; the next he's acting as a kind of Alien Rights ambassador and appears to be deeply chocked over our lack of fellow-feeling towards other species. At one time, he's full of admiration for human endeavour and inventiveness; at another, he's doing the tiresome Superior Species Turn well-known from other sci-fi shows and seems to despise us. In one episode he shows a definite streak of cruelty, and that's fine, because after all he is an alien; only a few episodes further along the way, he does the annoying hippie-dippy no-guns-no-salutes-act. Come again? I bet The Family of Blood ("We wanted to live forever... So the Doctor made sure that we did") would welcome a nice, clean bullet through the heart just about now. However, this complexity is no bad thing. It keeps you on your toes, trying to figure out who the Doctor really is.

The new one, Matt Smith, isn't at all bad. He does the nutty professor part of the character very well and looks the part. He can't do the rattling-off-brilliant-ideas-at-the-top-of-his-head-at-lightning-speed part as well as David Tennant, but on the plus side, much of the swollen-headedness which became a problem with the Tenth Doctor is gone. By the time of the fourth series, the Doctor had become something of an insufferable know-it-all, always moral and always right and the hippie-dippy element lamentably strong. Also, Russell T Davies (the head script-writer during Tennant's time, and very good he was too) piled on the Messianic references a bit thick. The Doctor is a very nice Time Lord, but he's not the Messiah. The Eleventh Doctor seems more aware of his limitations in comparison. It doesn't stop David Tennant from being a great Doctor and a hard act to follow, but I think my favourite (and I've only watched the new series, so I only have three Docs to choose from) is Christopher Eccleston. He did the "Boo hoo I'm all alone and the last of my species" scenes with much more conviction than his successors: his was a plausibly sad and angry Doctor who was not too peace-and-lovey to charge up at one time to the (as he thought) last Dalek in the Universe and point at it with a GREAT BIG GUN.

So, complex central character, good. The sidekicks aren't bad either, and the script is continually intelligent and witty. Plus, of course, there's time travel. The Doctor meets Madame de Pompadour! And Shakespeare! And Dickens! There's also a sense of up-beatness to the series, even if some of the scenarios from the future aren't that rosy, and we know everything will go to pot three hundred billion years from now. Three hundred billion years is a long time, after all. This up-beatness and the warmth between the main characters are what's missing from the misery-laden "Torchwood", which I couldn't get through the first series of, even though it's a Doctor Who spin-off. As far as "Torchwood" is concerned, life's a bitch and then you die and then after-life's a bitch. ("There's something out there in the dark and it's moving" - because "it all goes black" wasn't depressing enough, apparently.) In "Doctor Who", by contrast, there's always a sense of hope.

Another aspect I like about "Doctor Who", and what I believe got me hooked in the first place, is the "what's wrong with this picture?" element. An adventure starts out, and everything seems fine. Then, increasingly, strange things start to happen, and the Doctor and his companion du jour have to try to figure out which peril they are facing this time. It's a kind of crime story element, similar to when a witness says "Of course... that was strange" and goes on to reveal a detail you can't at first make sense of. That's a reason why I like "introducing a companion" episodes, which start out as a day in the life of a typically gutsy girl and then get weirder and weirder, or "dystopian society" episodes, where humans trudge on and seem to live ordinary lives - adaptable as we are - in a setting which gets more sinister by the minute.

All right, enough geeky gushing, and believe me, you haven't heard half of it - as for instance why it doesn't much matter that a lot of the aliens are quite naff (the Slitheen were a real low point). Let me just finish with this memorable exchange from the Dickens episode "The Unquiet Dead".

DICKENS: My books... Will they last?
DOCTOR: Oh yes.
DICKENS: How long?
DOCTOR (beaming): Forever.

Aaah. One can't not love an alien like that.

söndag 7 november 2010

The "From Lark Rise to Candleford" drinking game

Yay, finally - Amazon is sending me my "Doctor Who" box set ten days early! Am I looking forward to it: the preachiness of "Fame", the clevery camouflaged right-on-ness of "The West Wing" and the sheer length of "North and South" (US civil war version) are beginning to pall. As to English series, there is very little going on at the moment. But Swedish TV is sending "From Lark Rise to Candleford", and I suppose one has to be grateful to be able to watch any costume drama at all.

"Lark Rise" is not really a favourite series of mine, but it has its charm. This is a series which lives on its cosiness. Inserting any "darkness" to speak of would be fatal. It's what you see on a dark Monday night when you're feeling exhausted and a little depressed and are not up for any intellectual challenges. Once in a while, the series throws in a plot line which is not entirely predictable and exceeds my expectations - which admittedly are not that high. A well-known trick is to suddenly flesh out the emotional life on one of its paper-thin characters. Nevertheless, very much remains the same in both Lark Rise and Candleford. I've heard of "drinking games" being constructed around series like "Friends", when you're supposed to take a drink every time a particular event takes place - when a character displays a certain mannerism, say, or uses a certain catch phrase. "Lark Rise" seems an ideal candidate for a game like that. Please take a drink every time:

1) Laura intones something ominous in the voice-over which starts and ends every episode, though no great momentous change is in fact forthcoming

2) Miss Lane dispenses good advice with a brave smile

3) Miss Lane puts someone in their place with a triumphant smile (not unlike the brave one)

4) Twister does something kooky

5) Thomas Brown says something supposedly pious but trite with somewhat fake fervour ("It is our CHRISTIAN DUTY to take out the trash" say - not that he's said that yet)

6) The Pratt sisters show up in matching over-the-top clothes

7) The Pratt sisters spread malicious gossip or complain about the service at the post office

8) Laura flirts with someone who is not her childhood sweetheart Alfie

9) Mrs Arless fritters away money with some jolly "seize the day" excuse

10) In the first season: Sir Timothy very inappropriately confides in Miss Lane about his marriage problems, or his wife stalks jealously out after having caught him being over-friendly to Miss Lane

11) In the second season: Mr Dowland is spooning around and not daring to confess his love to Miss Lane

12) Laura's proud artisan father is grumbling over some perceived slight or voicing opinions which make him sound like the most left-wing 19th century "liberal" you are likely to meet anywhere

I could go on. I suppose the familiarity adds to the cosiness factor of the series, but it also makes it suffer from the "status quo syndrome". In one episode, Miss Lane fell passionately in love with a radical school teacher, but when he was sacked and had to move away, she didn't move away with him. Why not? Lately, Laura's latest flame has left town, and she doesn't follow him. Again, why not?? At least Miss Lane is the proprietor of a post office which she has inherited by her father: Laura had nothing to keep her, except a decent-ish job - and the status quo rule. The series relies on Miss Lane and Laura staying where they are and continuing to do exactly what they are doing, which means their romance prospects are severy limited. You find the same kind of thing in other series: it's no surprise, for instance, that every single time one of the students in "Fame" goes to an audition which could mean his/her big break, he/she blows it. Well naturally: if they made it, they would have to leave the school - and the series. The series which suffered most from the status quo syndrome, as I remember, was "Doctor Bramwell": not only could she not find love until the series was over, not even her nurse was allowed to walk down the aisle. The only one who braved the Bramwell curse was the doctor's charming dad, who found a new wife: this change actually improved the series and got it out of a depressing "Doctor Bramwell has good intentions but messes up" phase. There's a lesson there somewhere: a bit of change now and then does no harm to a series. In the next episode of "Lark Rise", Mr Dowland apparently finally proposes to Miss Lane. This could be the start of a new era where Miss Lane and Mr Dowland take on the challenges of a shared life. Or not. I'm not holding my breath.

söndag 24 oktober 2010

The good, the bad and the downright bonkers

Promising news from the UK: it seems "Downton Abbey", the drama scripted by Julian Fellowes which apparently is a good old family saga in the "Upstairs Downstairs" style, is doing very well. Hmmm. So themes like family relationships, missing heirs and social tension set in a historical context are popular, are they? "Edgy" and "trendy" dramas not so hot anymore (if they ever were)? Feel silly about axing "Dombey and Son" yet, BBC?

Speaking of family sagas, I've now started watching "North and South" again - not Gaskell's this time, but the TV series made on the basis of John Jakes's American civil war potboilers "North and South" and "Love and War". The problem with the series is that each episode is so long - about 1 hour 30 minutes - and you don't always feel up to spending that much time in the company of the families Main and Hazard. But it is a nostalgic delight for me, because I saw it as a schoolgirl and analysed it at length with one of my best friends. It's nice to see that the things that annoyed us then still annoy me now. Subtle this series is not. The good characters are good, the bad ones are bad, and there's an end to it - no psychology or nuances needed. The whole series starts as it means to go on - we see two little girl playing one sunny day on the Main plantation. One little girl (dark-haired) robs a bird's nest. The other (blonde) urges her to give the bird its egg back. You've guessed it: they are The Good Sister and The Bad Sister of Orry Main, one of the series' heroes. It's a rotten job (in both cases), but someone has to do it. Good Sister grows up to be loyal, loving, kind to slaves etc., Bad Sister grows up to be sly, wanton, war-mongering, greedy and downright murderous. She also grins a lot.

With a setup as schematic as this, you can't really hope for any interesting villains, and so it proves. There are two things that can be said for the two head baddies Elkannah Bent and Justin La Motte: they've got great villain-y names, and they are not a pain to look at (though you tire of Bent's self-satisfied mug ere long). And that's it, really. As a girl, I used to try to feel some sympathy for Justin, mainly because he was saddled with Madeline, Orry's flame, as a wife. I had a strong dislike for Madeline back then, but I realise now that I was a bit too hard on her, and that her hubby is a lost cause villain-wise. Never mind giving your wife enough cause for adultery: Justin gives Madeline enough cause to throw a Roman orgy every other Saturday had she wished it, which of course she doesn't. He beats her. He rapes her. He cheats on her with a slave girl (who is probably none too willing, seeing he is no great friend of slaves). Later on, he kills her trusted woman servant/mother surrogate and drugs Madeline into becoming an obedient wife (actually, that part was rather fun). You really can't blame Madeline for hooking up with Orry - who is of course not only a lay but Her One True Love. Gosh, she is annoying, though. That breathiness. That sick-making goody-goody-ness. During the war, it isn't enough that she helps refugees (mainly black ones, to ensure their deserving status). She has to beggar herself doing so. Yuk.

There is one character who is even more annoying than Madeline, though, and that is Bent. Justin seems low-key and measured in comparison to this supremely irritating loony. You've got to hand it to John Jakes, though: if he wanted to create a villain whom nobody, not even the most hardened villain groupie, could like, he pulled it off. I and my friend were very scathing about Bent's over-the-topness even as schoolchildren, from the all-too-obvious name of his all-too-obviously vicious black horse at West Point to the scene where he runs into a burning building full of gunpowder bellowing "I'm gonna save my empire". Kinda stupid, wouldn't you say?

Enough criticism though: within its limits, "North and South" is great entertainment, and it does two things surprisingly well. One, it manages to give a balanced account about the North-South conflict. Not all abolitionists are wonderful people, for instance: Virgilia, the sister of the series' other hero George Hazard, is fanatically anti-South on account of the slave issue, and at one time joins John Brown, he whose body lies a'mouldering in the grave. Not a very nice character, it turns out. On the other hand, slavery is not in any way excused. Sadistic slave owners and ditto slave overseers are not the only problem either: as soon as Lincoln proclaims the abolition of slavery during the war, the ex-slaves of the oh-so-decent Main family leave, just like everywhere else. You don't say no to freedom, however nice your former owners may be. At the same time, we are given to understand that the war wasn't just about slavery: other issues were at stake, such as the wish of the southern states to be independent of the North. You get the distinct feeling that much more could have been done on both sides to promote unity and good will.

Two, the friendship between the two heroes Orry and George is really touching. I didn't care about this as a girl. Friendship was boring (in TV dramas, that is, though very important in one's own life): what I wanted from a drama was romance. There are romances aplenty in "North and South", but they are not as central to the plot as George's and Orry's friendship. When Orry and George part at one time and look dejectedly at each other, not knowing if they will ever meet again and if so if their friendship can be saved, it is as sad as a love scene: far sadder, in fact, than any of the crises between Orry and the swooning Madeline.

söndag 17 oktober 2010

Darcymania - still going strong

Phew. I started my new job Monday this week, and although it's good to have a reliable source of income again, working is - well, hard work. A lot of self-indulgence literature is needed to sweeten those half-hours of lunch. I have recently ordered a new batch of sequels to or reworkings of Jane Austen's novels - a kind of fanfiction in print, in other words. This has become a huge genre, and is a good source for light reads. One may wonder why Austen's work is especially popular in this context: other authors, such as the great Victorians, aren't nearly as much of a draw to sequel/prequel/story-from-another-point-of-view/story-reset-in-modern-times writers. But I'm not complaining: I like Austen, but not enough to feel protective of her or her characters, which makes me the ideal market for these kind of books.

One thing you can't help noticing when looking for light reads inspired by Austen at, say, Amazon, is the predominance of Pride and Prejudice-themed books in general, and Mr Darcy-themed books in particular. "Loving Mr Darcy", "To Conquer Mr Darcy", "Seducing Mr Darcy", "Mr Darcy's Tempation", "Mr Darcy's Obsession", "Mr Darcy's Decision", "Mr Darcy's Diary"... These are only a few of the mass of titles containing the name of Pride and Prejudice's famous hero. Now, I'm a little ambivalent when it comes to this trend. On the one hand, I like to see other women - the authors of these books are mostly female - admitting to having a literary crush and indulging their fantasies. It makes me feel less of a freak for salivating over entirely fictional male characters. And as heroes go, Mr Darcy isn't that bad. He's intelligent, interestingly flawed and capable of improving under the benevolent influence of his love for Elizabeth: a very romantic and appealing idea. Of course, the Davies TV adaptation of "Pride and Prejudice" did a lot for Mr Darcy, not only because of the famous "wet shirt scene" (it is really very chaste - I don't quite see what the fuss is about), but because it depicted Mr Darcy's sulky behaviour as owing more to a feeling of unease at social gatherings than to family pride. Mr Darcy, one feels, would absolutely hate to attend a modern cocktail party, and that is undoubtedly an endearing characteristic.

However, I have some problems with Mr Darcy as well: family pride is a flaw I have difficulty in forgiving anyone, and he does have it in spades. When he is acting as if Meryton society is beneath him, it's because he really thinks it is. Elizabeth's "inferior connections" pain him, and by that he means the fact that her uncles are mere - gasp - merchants and solicitors. He is only nice to the Gardiners later in the book because he wants to curry favour with Elizabeth. Moreover, I don't think he ever did properly apologise for separating Bingley from Jane. All this is forgivable, certainly, and I still feel friendly towards Mr Darcy, not least because he broke the mould for how a hero had to behave. But if, like me, one does not positively fancy Mr Darcy, then Darcymania can become a bit wearing.

My own interest in Austen sequels is shallow enough - I'm fascinated by the matchmaking element. Perhaps there is a reason why "Emma" is my favourite Austen novel. When I read a "Pride and Prejudice" sequel, it is because I want to see how the love lives of Georgiana, Kitty, Mary and the other girls who were unattached at the end of "P&P" develop. Little dramas within the already settled marriages are welcome as well, as long as everything turns out all right. Just because a marriage is happy doesn't mean that the couple in question has to spend all its time billing and cooing. I'm equally interested in sequels to the other Austen novels. However, the prevailing Darcy obsession being what it is, much of the Austen sequel/reworking market is focused on how good Mr Darcy is in bed with Elizabeth, and on novels which retell "P&P" from his viewpoint. I can understand the existence of the first kind of Darcy novels: though I find Darcy/Elizabeth sex scenes extremely embarrassing myself, this is obviously a matter of taste, and I would probably feel very differently if I read an equally graphic scene featuring one of my favourite Dickens villains who had finally managed to score. But a retelling of "P&P" from Darcy's viewpoint? Is it really necessary? Doesn't Austen manage to cover his angle quite well in the original? A retelling from the point of view of one of Austen's bêtes noires - Mrs Bennet? Mr Collins? Lady Catherine? - would yield more surprising insights. Yet there seem to be dozens of variations on the Darcy's diary-theme.

But why whine when it could have been so much worse. There are heroes who would have deserved an enormous female fan club much less. Knightleymania - now that would really have been hard to understand.

torsdag 7 oktober 2010

Whatever happened to Mandy (and other series casualties)?

Things are moving professionally. I have been offered a new job, but they seem to be in no particular hurry for me to start. In the meantime, I have leisure to clean my flat, go for walks, buy things I've wanted for a long time such as a new keyboard for my computer (which turns out to be just as rubbish as the old one - surely it can't be my typing that's at fault?), read and watch more Disney Channel than is strictly good for me.

This would have been a perfect time to discover a new exciting TV series, preferably available on a DVD box, which I could watch and blog about at some length. But there is little new stuff out there to my taste. While waiting for the new Doctor Who box set (15 November?? What is taking them so long? Are we foreign geeks condemned to be always six months behind English viewers?) I must settle for unearthing/re-watching old favourites such as "The West Wing" and "Fame".

Maybe this is as good a time as any to tackle a question which engages most of us TV-series viewers, namely How To Write A Character Out Of A Script. Or more specifically, how not to do it.

It took "Fame" some time, but half-way into season two we finally get a proper write-out of the sweet old drama teacher Crandall. He dies of a heart attack; Danny, whose favourite teacher he is, goes off the rails for a bit; the pupils do a celebration piece etc. etc. Excellent. This is how it should be done. But I was reminded of a line in the same episode: "Do I have to pass on before you can be reconciled to me?". The poor actor who played Crandall had actually died: when this happens, a series character can be pretty certain of getting a proper send-off. In other cases, though - when the actor playing a character has got another job, or left the series for another reason, or if the powers that be decide to get rid of a character because they feel he/she hasn't been a hit with the viewers - we often get no write-out at all. The series goes on without the character in question as if nothing has happened, and no-one even mentions him/her anymore. An example from "Fame" is the drama student Montgomery who was part of the Fame gang in the first season: in the second one, he is no longer there and none of his bosom pals even make a remark on the fact.

What TV series creators need to understand is that viewers don't care about what has happened backstage. They (the TV people) may not feel very charitable towards, say, an actor who has decided to abandon ship, but that doesn't mean that we viewers don't care about what happens to the character the actor plays. Even if the character him/herself is not a very popular one, the internal logic of the series demands that we are informed about what has happened when he/she is suddenly not around anymore. Take another example, Mandy in "The West Wing". Poor Mandy had a tough brief: I don't think she was allowed to be right about one single issue. She was the political consultant who had to point out how the administration's politics would "play in the media". In season two, she had suddenly disappeared. No warning and no comments made by the rest of the White House staff. It didn't damage the series: the political consultant figure was not really that necessary. But as a viewer you did ask yourself: where is Mandy? Just because she was underwritten, that doesn't mean that she didn't exist.

Here are the things I as a TV viewer would very much like TV series creators to consider when they want/have to ditch a character:

Do you really need to do it? In some cases, writing out a character from a series proves completely painless. It can also become a way to bring new people in and freshen up the plots. But in other cases, a series never quite recovers from a write-out of an important character. If the actor ups and leaves, there is little you can do, except in some cases replace him/her with another actor (the viewers will grumble at first, but we'll get used to it: we do see that there can be no Holmes without Watson and no Rumpole without Hilda, whoever plays the vital part). But if there is a question of a back-stage spat, do try to make things up before kicking ut the offending actor. When it comes to popularity, remember to give characters - especially new ones - time to develop. A rapid overturn of characters is a sure sign that a series is on its last legs. Also, it should be pretty obvious that not all characters are supposed to be particularly loveable. They may still have an important part to play plot-wise. Not everyone can be either cuddly or a charismatic villain (having said that, I'm glad they got rid of Caan in "Grey's Anatomy"- what a bitch!).

Explain what has happened It doesn't have to be an elaborate explanation. "How is Mandy doing working with Senator so-and-so?" "I miss Montgomery, he would have known what to do. I hope the LA Drama School knows what it's got in him." That kind of thing. Clumsy exposition, yes, but far better than to pretend nothing's happened. If you know beforehand that an actor is going to disappear by the end of the season, use the knowledge in order to script the character's exit properly.

Don't make the explanation too dependent on new factors which the viewers cannot know about For years, I thought I had missed a couple of episodes of "Upstairs Downstairs" when I learned that the daughter in the house, Elizabeth, was not only in the States but married to a bloke I'd never heard of. I certainly don't grudge Elizabeth a husband, but it would have been less confusing if she had only just met another man at the beginning of the series where she didn't star - the marriage could come later (still off-stage).

Show the character some respect An affectionate (or otherwise) mention of an absentee character now and then does no harm to the story. There was an amusing take on the fact that discarded characters are next to never mentioned in a Doctor Who episode, where the Doctor and his then companion Rose met up with one of his old assistants, Sarah Jane. "That's funny, because he never mentioned you", Rose comments waspishly. "Wait, let me think... no, never." It does seem a bit strange, doesn't it?

By all means introduce a new character, but make sure he/she is not a surrogate for the old one Makers of TV series are usually aware of this, but you sometimes come across a character whose only reason for existence is, say, that Molly needs a new boyfriend. But maybe Molly doesn't need a new boyfriend, at least not before he can have some other function as well and be well integrated in the plot. To create a new character who has precisely the same function as an old one is mostly a mistake.

Now I really have to change my keyboard back to the old one - this one keeps bailing out. I'm going to have to write it off.

fredag 1 oktober 2010

Yes, you can actually have too much "darkness"

I recently finished "Gentlemen and Players" by Joanne Harris - of "Chocolat" fame - and I'm rather puzzled as to why she is considered to be a "popular author" rather than one of the Booker Prize brigade. I can well understand her popularity: "G&P" is gripping. But it is also well-constructed, well-written and at times thought-provoking (is loyalty to an institution such as the renownded school St Oswald's a good or a bad thing?). The main characters are interesting, if not always likeable. I was especially impressed by the way the reader is manipulated into sympathising more and more with the Latin master Roy Straitley, who at first seems to be a pompous old buffer carrying on a somewhat mean-minded feud with the teachers in the German section. When the school is under serious threat, however, he stands up for his colleagues, including his old antagonist, the head of the German department. The description of the interloper who is trying to bring the school down is skilfully done: on the one hand, you shudder over the descriptions of a bleak childhood, while on the other hand, you realise that no end of childhood traumas can excuse the monstrous behaviour of this clever psychopath. I guessed one of the main twists of the plot, and still had a good time reading the book while feeling not a little clever myself. So why, to get to my point, do I get a feeling that members of the literary establishment look down their noses slightly at this author?

I may be imagining it, of course: but it is a starting point as good as any for an uninformed theory (as most theories are). I think the answer lies in the label "of 'Chocolat' fame". I remember reading a few reviews of "Chocolat" when it came out, and they were generally very favourable. It was probably the film that harmed Harris's reputation. I did see the film, and for me the problem with it was not its feel-goodiness, but the relentless trumpeting of hedonism which made even a lover of creature comforts like myself feel we ought to give the poor ascetics a break. Film critics, though, objected more to the feel-good factor. It was observed that the book was more "dark" than the film. Nevertheless, whenever I read a review of a Harris book now, I can be pretty sure that there is a variation on the theme "this book is more dark than 'Chocolat'" in it somewhere. Yet you get the impression that the reviewer doesn't think the new book is quite "dark" enough. Throughout, "dark" equals "good": the "darker" a book or a film is, the better.

Now, I'm not against a spot of darkness in fiction. After all, that is where villains come in: their job is to generate conflict and make lives difficult for heroes and heroines. A book without its fair share of strife would risk becoming boring. I have myself used the expression "dark erotic drama" about "Dombey and Son" and meant it in a positive way: happy couplings in modern Regency Romances are simply not as interesting as a spot of Dickensian power play (though that might have something to do with who the author is). Having said all that, darkness is only one ingredient available to an author. Like any ingredient, you can add too much of it, and there are some situations where it should not be used at all.

On the subject of too much darkness, it eludes me why unhappy endings are considered much more chic than happy ones. Unhappy endings are not more credible or more true to life than happy ones. The series of catastrophes at the end of "Madame Bovary" is about as realistic as if Charles had won the lottery. A classical tragedy which makes you sob your heart out has its beauty, but as for the smug "ha ha sucks to you unsophisticated readers who wanted this story to end well" unhappy endings constructed by would-be cynical authors (actually, you're not a real cynic unless you have a poor view of your own moral worth along with everyone else's, which authors rarely do), they leave me completely cold. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, there is no such thing as a sophisticated or unsophisticated ending. Endings are either well written or badly written. That is all.

On the subject of darkness where it's really not needed: why does every film in every conceivable genre have to have a "dark" aspect nowadays? I'm not a Batman fan, but if I were I believe I would rather watch him driving the Batmobile and kicking eccentric baddie ass than contemplating his tortured comic-book soul. Every new "Harry Potter" film is described as more "dark" than the previous one: why is this a good thing? These are films about a kid wizard! People don't watch them in order to get a "King Lear" experience. The supposed "darkness" of the HP films is mostly moonshine anyway, but all the same, you wonder what's next. A "dark" Winnie the Pooh film?

Ironically, "Gentlemen and Players" is pretty dark in places, so those who like that sort of thing won't be disappointed. But more importantly, it's simply a good read.

onsdag 22 september 2010

Well-reasoned TV drama - a solace in hard times

There are advantages with unpaid leave. For instance, in between job applications, there is nothing to stop me from taking TV breaks during the day which distract me from my cold, crackpot parties with scarily focused party leaders in the Swedish Parliament and other annoyances.

I finished watching "North and South" (again, the Gaskell version) last week, and unless the book is radically different from the adaptation, I remain puzzled about Gaskell's "Christian Socialist" label. That would be "Socialist" as in "not Socialist at all but quite able to see both sides of an industrial quarrel and with no wish to dispose of factory owners either violently or by unspeficied peaceful methods". Well, not that I'm complaining: a lucid, balanced look at 19th century Industrial England was just what I would have wished, but did not get, from Dickens in "Hard Times". In "North and South" (the adaptation at least), the social conflict is so well handled that the romantic part of the story is less captivating by contrast. Of course you want the beleaguered mill owner Thornton (the exceptionally handsome Richard Armitage - but why doesn't he shave?) and the ex-vicar's daughter in straitened circumstances Margaret Hale to lay their differences aside and realise that they love each other. But the obstacles in their path are, as so often in romances, largely self-imposed. You know they will kiss and make up, and when it happens you could be forgiven for thinking "what took you so long?". When Thornton reaches an agreement with the union leader Nicholas Higgins - who shares his faults: they are both proud, stubborn and contemptuous of weakness - you feel, on the other hand, that they have achieved something important, and that real issues have been resolved.

I'm not going to switch allegiances, however: Dickens is still the master storyteller. He may not be much good when it comes to insightful comments on the Condition of England, but his characters have that extra oomph which few other 19th century authors ever come close to - even when he's not trying very hard. Gaskell's characters are a bit colourless by comparison, and a problem from my point of view is that she just doesn't "do" villains. Milton (Yes, I get it, Mill-town, plus Margaret thinks she has lost a paradise when moving from the South - but still, as a town-name it is just as unconvincing as Coketown) could have done with the odd Bitzer or Slackbridge. And as for the hero's stern mother Mrs Thornton, Mrs Sparsit in "Hard Times" out-gorgons her effortlessly.

My main cold-curing TV at the moment is not a costume drama at all: I'm re-watching "The West Wing" for the umpteenth time. It's great entertainment, at the same time as it makes you feel intelligent for being able to follow the political arguments and get the jokes. Some questions raised are more pertinent than others right now: there's one episode called "Five votes down". Guys, I know exactly how you feel.

onsdag 15 september 2010

Where have all the costume dramas gone? The blinkered head of BBC drama took them every one

I still haven't got over it. It was almost a year ago that I found out, in an article about Andrew Davies, that the BBC had axed his upcoming adaptation of "Dombey and Son". I had so much been looking forward to this adaptation: no-one does them better than Andrew Davies, wo had already adapted "Bleak House" and "Little Dorrit" so splendidly. Finally, I would be able to show my family and friends what my ongoing Carker-obsession was about. I couldn't expect them to read the novel, which, truth to tell, is uneven. I couldn't expect them to watch the existing "Dombey and Son" TV adaptation from 1983. It's wonderfully cast: Julian Glover was surely born to play Dombey, and as for Paul Darrow as Carker - yum. Nevertheless, the adaptation creaks horribly, somehow managing to retain boring stuff like Mrs Chick's soliloquies (very well acted, but what of it? They're still boring!) while disposing of the whole subplot involving Carker's siblings, his discarded mistress and the latter's creepy mother completely. I'm glad I have it, but it really is for hard-line Dickens fans only. Whereas only imagine what Davies could have done with such material! One of the many wonderful things about his "Bleak House" and "Little Dorrit" adaptations is that they are both pacy and contain so much of the original plot lines. He would have made something eminently watchable of a plot involving dysfunctional families and dark erotic drama. Maybe he could even have found a way to deal with The Awful Plot Twist.

We may not be entirely bereft, of course. There are rumours that Davies has been told to do an adaptation of "David Copperfield" instead. But we already have a perfectly good BBC adaptation of "David Copperfield" which has not aged perceptibly. In fact, there are quite a number of "David Copperfield" adaptations out there, so there is no pressing need to make a new one. I'll still watch it when it comes of course - IF it comes - but I would have liked a "Dombey and Son" adaptation better.

So why am I whining about this now, one year afterwards? Simply because I've read a summary of the dramas that will be aired on English TV this autumn, and it looks less than promising. Yes, there are some costume dramas, but they are predominantly set in the 20th century and based on novels by authors such as D.H. Lawrence. Of the great Victorian novels with their thrilling, epic plots there is no sign. All this, of course, is entirely in line with the BBC drama head's ambition to "broaden" BBC's outlook, if by broaden you mean abandoning the 19th century entirely, since regrettably the BBC has now run out of Austen books to adapt to death. The BBC seems to have some sort of trendy aversion to "bonnet drama", but it's not the bonnets that make Victorian novels exciting: it's the characters and the plot. I doubt they will be able to find something equally meaty period drama-wise elsewhere. Meanwhile, ITV is putting on a lavish series set in the Edwardian era and scripted by the reliable Julian Fellowes. That should be fun. Not quite Dickens, but at least it's not D.H. Lawrence.

More on cossie dramas another time: I have to get ready for a yoga class. My first and, I suspect, my last.

onsdag 8 september 2010

Things royal and industrial

My punishment for rubbishing "Hard Times" seems to be that I'm now possessed with the spirit of Slackbridge. That I should quarrel with my employer, who suddenly considers "telemarketing" - that's cold-calling to you or me - part of my job description when I was hired as an administrator, and that I should join the union in consequence, may not be that strange. But that I should watch the first episode of the TV adaptation of Gaskell's "North and South" and think "Cut wages to below the level of five years ago? Nah, that's not right, you go on strike lads" - now that really scares me.

I may be too early to tell, but I must admit that so far Gaskell's treatment of the industrial North is more nuanced that Dickens's and fairer that I expected from a "Christian Socialist" (I'm a Christian myself, but I don't care for the combination with "Socialist" at all - in fact I find it insulting, as if people with other political views were automatically bad Christians). The reasoning we get from both sides of the factory owner-worker quarrel is far more sensible than anything Bounderby or Stephen Blackpool came up with, which I agree is not saying much. It is refreshing that the tender-hearted heroine from the South is not always right: in fact she is sometimes blatantly naïve ("and all this for cotton no-one wants to buy!"). But didn't we have the whole "factory owner scarred by years of hardship" plot in Charlotte Brontë's "Shirley"? It irritates me that there has to an "excuse" for the fact that he is not dancing around kissing babies. Maybe what made factory owners of the nineteenth century somewhat edgy was not their own early experiences, but the annoyingness of bleeding-heart authors who swooped in, complained about their town, idealised their workforce and then "wanted some answers" about why things had to be the way they were.

I wonder what kind of early experiences could possibly have counted as an excuse for Henry VIII's style of leadership. Mind you, he's more kindly portrayed in "Wolf Hall" than one might expect, maybe in order to make us see why a sensible man like Wolsey would call him "the sweetest prince in Christendom". I've now read the whole novel and yes, it is good until the very end, though Wolsey is sorely missed after his demise by both Cromwell and the reader. It does suffer a bit from Tudor-novelitis, that is, too many "atmospheric" descriptions. I really don't care what the weather was like or how the trees or the water looked on this-and-this day. Give me another scene with überbitch Anne and her likewise bitchy ladies-in-waiting instead. I confess I thought Cromwell's interest in Jane Seymour, still an obscure (non-bitchy) attendant on Anne and nothing more, somewhat unlikely, but it does provide a cliffhanger. At the end of the novel, Cromwell is planning a visit to the Seymours' place Wolf Hall. We know butter-wouldn't-melt-Jane ended up with the king and not with "Master Secretary". So what happened there? I'll definitely be buying Mantel's next Cromwell book so I can find out.

måndag 30 augusti 2010

Wonderful Wolsey

I think I may have discovered something - a piece of good advice if you're thinking of writing a novel where you mean to defend a much-maligned historical or fictional character. Don't tell it from his or her point of view: tell it from the point of view of someone close to him or her.

I'm reading "Wolf Hall" and yes, it is seriously good. I knew Hilary Mantel could spin a yarn because I read "A Place Of Greater Safety" a great many years ago (although I must admit, French Revolution fanatic that I was, that I skipped some of the back-story and zoomed in around 1789). At first I was incensed because the author off-handedly slated my favourite revolutionary: "Max was surprised that any girl would be attracted by Fouché, with his frail, stick-like limbs and almost lashless eyes." Ironically, this is probably exactly what Maximilien Robespierre (though Max seems an unlikely nickname for him, like a flamboyant theatre agent or sci-fi baddie) did think. Still, I mean to say, what. Mantel didn't have to sound as if she agreed with him. This aberration of taste put me in a bad mood, and yet I grudgingly had to admit that "A Place Of Greater Safety" was a good read. If you're interested in the French Revolution, go ahead and read it, but bear in mind that the characterisation can be quite cynical. Camille and Lucile Desmoulins, the revolution's golden couple, as manipulative monsters? Babette Duplay a nymphomaniac? Surely not. Robespierre, whether or not he is a Max, is spot on, though.

Anyway, back to "Wolf Hall" and the art of saving someone's reputation at one remove. The novel is narrated from Thomas Cromwell's point of view, but it's not he (so far) who comes out of it best. Mantel's Cromwell is admirably able, but he's more bulldog than wolf. Sometimes he can be funny - as when he's sparring with Anne Boleyn - but a great deal of the time he's quite dour. I rather miss the popular image of Cromwell the villain - but then I would. Cromwell's master Cardinal Wolsey, on the other hand, is delightful. When seeing Wolsey's portrait in The National Portrait Gallery, I have asked myself how they could have the face to engage Sam Neill to play this man. Now I understand. Ah, the charm, the wit, and somewhere beneath it all, underlying kindness too! When it comes to Wolsey, Mantel has won me over completely. Let's see if she can do the same for her hero in time - there's more than half the book to go.

Elsewhere, there is not the same cynicism as in "A Place Of Greater Safety". The characterisation seems mellower. Of course, the sainted More is depicted as thoroughly nasty beneath his surface geniality. But then he was, wasn't he?

lördag 21 augusti 2010

Aye, 'tis a muddle all right

Well now that's done and I'm glad it's over. I've finally read "Hard Times", which means I can lay claim to having read all of Dickens's novels, all his Christmas books and a fair share of his short fiction. The reason I waited so long with "Hard Times" was that I was warned against it, and suspected myself that, judging by the subject matter, I wouldn't like it. And I didn't, but now at least I can rubbish it knowing what I'm talking about.

Although I love Dickens and would rather read something mediocre by his standards than most modern authors' best efforts, I'm the first to admit that he isn't perfect. This is part of the fun: liking and disliking different part of Dickens's works can lead to very lively discussions among Dickens fans. For my part, I don't think that social satire, for which he is so lauded by high-minded intellectuals, is really his forte. What makes it bearable is how he uses human drama to illustrate diverse social ills. It is the fates of Rick and Ada and poor miss Flite (and Gridley if you feel more charitable towards him than I do) which make the description of Chancery interesting in "Bleak House", although Dickens does not have a single constructive idea as to how civil law cases should be handled instead. The Circumlocution Office is a pretty lame satire of a government department, but the Barnacles are instantly recognisable as types (as an administrator, I recognise and have occasionally myself used Barnacle strategies - pompous condescension, blustering defensiveness and friendly unhelpfulness - against hostile clients/customers). As to how a department should be run, Dickens has no more clue than William Dorrit would have. He is the Concerned Citizen who, if he didn't write books about his concerns, would write letters to the Times about them. He may shine a light on a particular problem, but that's all he does: for solutions you have to go elsewhere.

I was rather interested to see what a socially concerned, non-socialist observer like Dickens would make of industrial relations, but "Hard Times" leaves me little wiser. What is it he wants? Less smoke? Safer working conditions? More green spaces in the town? A less aggressive tone from factory owners when faced with complaints from their workers or from government officials? Something like that, I suppose, and it sounds fair enough, but it hardly adds up to a Grand Vision. You can't shake the feeling, either, that his observations are those of an outsider, an appalled Londoner on a flying visit who finds industrial towns aesthetically unappealing in their smokiness and sameness, although this may not be the main concern of the people who actually live there.

All right, but I didn't expect brilliant social satire, nor would I (if the truth be told) be that interested in reading a brilliant social satire on industrial England. The problem with "Hard Times" is that Dickens's imprecise rants are not balanced by the human interest you normally find in his novels. I hardly know which character is the more underdeveloped: the dastardly factory owner Bounderby (yes, that's his name!) or the honest, noble and extremely tiresome power-loom weaver Stephen Blackpool. Bounderby is incapable of one kind word or deed, but what's worse, he doesn't have the consolation usually accorded to Evil Capitalist characters, namely that of being brainy. In fact, he's quite impossibly daft: when there's a theft in his bank, he ignores a glaringly obvious suspect; he does not realise when an elegant London gentleman makes a play for his wife under his very nose; his housekeeper runs rings round him. The famous "gold spoon" tirade is woefully unfunny and does not improve on repetition. One of the strongest scenes in the book is when Bounderby's mum proudly defends herself against the charge of being a bad mother, not knowing that it is her "darling boy" who has slandered her in the first place. But the drama and the strength of the writing cannot make up for the fact that the whole situation is improbable in the extreme, for who in his right mind would denounce a loving parent just for the sake of being able to tell a hard-luck story? It is not only heartless, it is also stupid, when an enemy (and Bounderby does not lack enemies) can check up on his background at any time.

I do think though, on reflection, that Stephen is an even worse failure as a character, and a fine illustration of the both gushing and patronising tone Dickens uses when describing the factory workforce. I found myself positively warming to the wicked union representative Slackbridge (Marxists take note: Dickens is not in favour of unions, nor of silver-tongued middle-class socialist agitators) because he is so unlike the dense-seeming noble savages in workman's clothing whom he is haranguing and "leading astray". In particular, he is refreshingly mean to Stephen, who speaks like a not very bright ten-year-old with a speech impediment. If I were a power-loom weaver, I'm not sure I would be thrilled to be represented in a book by this surly, soppy dunce, however good and honest. The obviously well-educated (and yes, I admit I enjoyed that satirical detail) Slackbridge has one advantage over Dickens when it comes to being the workers' friend: he doesn't talk down to his audience.

The other theme of the novel - the attack on soulless education and philosophies that deny the power of feeling and imagination - works a little better, but again it is let down by weak characterisation, at least by Dickensian standards. The fact-obsessed Gradgrind who finally sees the error of his ways is the closest Dickens comes in this book to a well-rounded character, but he is not very engaging, and his supposedly damaged children even less so. Louisa is plain dull - even a cardboard cut-out like Bounderby deserves a better wife than this walking misery - and surely no education in the world would have made a good man of the ungracious Tom. Louisa's would-be seducer Harthouse is a tired Steerforth clone, of the kind we see a little too often in Dickens's novels. His seduction methods are not without interest, but there is not a lot of spark between him and the dismal Louisa. Sissy Jupe makes Pollyanna look like a troubled and brooding soul. My favourite character is Bitzer the teacher's pet turned social climber. I can't deny, though, that he is a minor character without much inner life to speak of: a promising boy ground down in the hard school of Dickens's didacticism. (Trust me, Manchester liberalism does not prescribe putting your mum in the workhouse.) He wins the title of best villain in the book more or less on walkover.

torsdag 12 augusti 2010

Regency romance pitfalls

Lately I have been doing more Amazon-surfing than is strictly good for me. Always on the look-out for more self-indulgence reads, I have been criss-crossing the site following up "if you like Georgette Heyer you'll love..." tips. It's strange, this preference I have for regency romances. I suppose it's chiefly because 1) they are rom-coms 2) they are historical 3) they are not too historical. More specifically, they are virtually free from references to maggotty food, faulty sewage and rotting teeth, plus you are spared all those look-how-learned-I-am earthy descriptions of street-life you are likely to get in books set, say, in the 16th or 17th century, not to mention the Middle Ages. And perchance the language is not too stilted. If there were Victorian romances, I'd rather go for them, but as it is, what interests modern authors about Victorian times is apparently "Victorian London's dark underbelly". Unless Fagin happens to be around, though, I couldn't care less about Victorian London's dark underbelly. Which means Regency romances will have to do.

The down-side is there are a number of things that can crop up in a typical Regency romance which really get my goat, namely:

Predictability You would think authors would learn some things from the masters. When I first read "Pride and Prejudice", long before Colin Firth's wet shirt, I had no idea Elizabeth would end up with Darcy and was pleasantly surprised. Not because I liked Darcy overmuch, but because I hadn't expected it. Innocent girl that I was, I hadn't come across the love-starting-as-antagonism-plot before. Now I have, of course. Many, many times. But it was still fresh in Austen's day.

Perhaps this is part of the trouble, that it is hard coming up with plot developments that haven't already been done and that seasoned romance-readers recognise. Apart from the one above, there is the good-dependable-man-proves-better-catch-than-exciting-cad-plot (Austen invented that one, too); the suddenly-realising-you-love-your-best-friend-plot (Austen again, Dickens used it as well: in his case, refreshingly, the chump who saw the light was a man); the couple-who-pretend-to-be-together/are-forced-together-fall-in-love-for-real-plot... You can get good mileage out of these old war horses: especially the last one is hard not to make enjoyable. But the main difficulty is that there is bound to be one Hero, and one Heroine, and once you know who they are the suspense is limited. You know they'll end up together. You know if there are any significant others, they'll be ditched, and if there are any misunderstandings, they'll be straightened out. Is it really that hard to make the pairing off just that little bit more unpredictable? After all, there was a horrible moment (the masters again) where you were actually afraid Jane Eyre would settle for St John, not least because he was cunning enough to seem to take the moral high ground. And who would have guessed Dorothea and Lydgate in "Middlemarch" wouldn't even get close to ending up together?

Rakes What is so attractive about rakes? I don't get it. I'm a villain-lover, all right, but that is because villains can be so intelligent, razor-sharp, wonderfully sarky, able to cut prosy heroes and heroines down-to-size and, well, clever. The villains I admire have attained their position by making an effort when thinking out all their dastardy plots. What does a rake do? He drinks, gambles and is insulting to women rather than flattering them, assuming that he is so irresistible they will fall for him anyway. Which they do, the silly cows, after some desultory "I hate you"s! Which leads me seamlessly to:

Aristos For pity's sake, they're everywhere! Earls, viscounts, dukes, the odd marquis... a Regency romance hero, it seems, positively must have a title. Blame class-consciousness (I'm rather stridently middle-class), blame the Scarlet Pimpernel books (Chauvelin's so cute!), or blame the fact than when I first made acquaintance with Napoleonic France it was by way of Stefan Zweig's "Joseph Fouché", which meant the aristocratic Talleyrand became an enemy for evermore. The fact remains that the more dandyish, the more languid, the more elegantly lazy and indifferent, the more Hessian-booted, tightly-trousered, artfully-cravatted and, as I have touched on before, quizzing-glass-carrying a Regency buck gets, the more I want to string him to the nearest lamp-post. Not that all the nobs are like that, but I would have appreciated the odd tradesman hero.

"Boney"-bashing One has to be realistic. Napoleon the first, Emperor of the French, was not Regency England's most popular man. Even today, the English resist such an obviously good thing as the Metric system because "The Corsican Bandit" implemented it in the rest of Europe (or so I've heard it said). In a typical Regency romance, the hero has fought in Spain and/or at Waterloo and is chummy with "The Duke". Or, ludicrously, he's a spy. And we are supposed to cheer these noodles on in their effort to put the Bourbons back in power?

Sex scenes I thought they were rather sweet at first, but now... Please, no more!

Having said all that, a fun frothy read is a fun frothy read. There are not so many about that you can afford to be picky. I have mentioned Julia Quinn before, and she is the wittiest of the Regency romp authors I've read this far, though not, I suspect, that well-read up on the period. Mary Balogh is another worthy contender for the Georgette Heyer crown if the one novel I've read by her so far is anything to go by - she is not as funny as Quinn, but she can create likeable characters and is probably more of a Regency buff than Quinn. Heyer still reigns supreme when it comes to plots and blissful lack of sex scenes (scenes that are unavoidable in Quinn and Balogh). Let's see, in time, what else I can dredge up from this genre filled with titles like "The Duke's Desire" and "Romping with a Rogue". All right, I made them up, but I wouldn't be surprised if they do exist.

fredag 30 juli 2010

That pill Florence

It's high time for a Dickens-related entry. I have taken my blog name from one of his characters after all, as well as my blog picture. Maybe I should feel a bit guilty about the latter part, as although I support Georgiana wholeheartedly, I cannot say the same for Florence Dombey. The reason I pinched a picture of her is that I imagine she and Georgiana look quite alike - the same dark, timid, corkscrew-haired, slightly droopy look. There are other similarities as well: they are both shy girls, dominated by a pompous father, who have a great deal of growing-up to do. However, there are differences as well, and in my opinion they are not in Florence's favour.

Dickens's heroines are often a lot more appealing than their reputation as tiresome goody-goodys suggest. Esther Summerson's insecurity, due to a loveless childhood, explains why she is so jubilantly grateful for every kind word and deed, and she is no ninny: her summing-up of characters like Skimpole and Mr Turveydrop can be quite caustic. Amy Dorrit may take her self-sacrifice on behalf of her father too far (giving up her lunch for him! No wonder her height gets stunted), but her love for Mr Clennam, hopeless as it seems for the most part of the book, is both warm and touching. Little Nell is hardly my favourite character in "The Old Curiosity Shop" - I think she only barely makes it to the top ten, after Kit's pony - but she is surprisingly plucky, and no, you do not feel any desire at to laugh when she cops it. Please read the book before you feel tempted to quote Wilde's quip. Hopeless Dora Spenlow knows she's hopeless, which is rather poignant, and Agnes Wickfield, though suffering from an excess of good judgement, does have strength of character. Remember, she tries more than once to correct David's slushy "good angel" picture of her, with indifferent success. Generally, Dickens's heroines have a great deal more spine than they are given credit for, which is needed as they more or less have to drag the hapless heroes to the altar. Dickens often spins out his plots for a few additional chapters by making the heroes convince themselves in some tortous way that they are unworthy of the heroine's affection and cannot possibly propose to her. What's a poor girl to do, except confess her love and risk the rejection her swain shies away from?

Having said all that, there are Dickens heroines who really are as wet as they seem, and Florence Dombey in "Dombey and Son" is one of them. She is usually criticised for not standing up to her father. What surprised me, on the other hand, is that she doesn't stand up for her father. She is supposed to be the perfect devoted daugther, yet everything she does - or does not do - only brings the already sorely tried Mr Dombey more grief, that is, until their final reconciliation, after which she can finally become his Amy Dorrit. That she should cling first to her mother, then to her little brother, in such a desperate way is not difficult to understand, although I understood Mr Dombey's feeling of being shut out, especially in the case of little Paul. The siblings hardly seem to spare him a thought when they are together. What is harder to grasp from the devoted daughter perspective is why Florence leeches on to Edith Granger, née Skewton, later mrs Dombey - or vile Edith, as I call her. Not once during the deeply unhappy marriage between Dombey and vile Edith does Florence try to use her influence with her stepmother to bring about a reconciliation. Instead, she makes things worse by indirectly accusing her father of sending Walter Gay to his death (as she thinks) and confessing, wobbly-lipped, that she is "not a favourite child". She does more to blacken her father in vile Edith's eyes than Carker. I'm sure this is not deliberate, but one could be forgiven for thinking that Florence in a passive-aggressive way makes sure that her dad will not get the love he needs from anyone else, as he does not want any love from her. After all, she is happy enough to take her stepmother to task once Mr Dombey has finally capitulated in her arms.

I think a way of understanding Florence is to remember how young she is - she is practically a child and shows no signs of wanting to enter the adult world. That would also explain her strong reaction when meeting James Carker: she "recoil[s] as if she had been stung". Now, Carker is Dickens's sexiest villain. To some, that might not be saying a lot - no more than if you commended a frog for being the sexiest in the swamp. But coming from me, this is high praise indeed. I will cut my gushing short this time: suffice to say that he is both incredibly brainy and handsome. But he is also, undoubtedly, a representative of the adult world, and his insinuating ways would probably seem disquieting to a girl who does not want to grow up.

Nevertheless, Florence will never be a favourite heroine of mine. In one of the Jeeves and Wooster novels, a character congratulates himself for having escaped an engagement to "that pill Florence" (not Miss Dombey, naturally). I'm afraid it is as "that pill Florence" that I will always regard Florence Dombey.

torsdag 15 juli 2010

Summer reading

I recently finished my latest Ambitious Book Project - Haruki Murakami's "Kafka on The Shore" - and now there will not be any more ABPs for some time to come. Not that I didn't enjoy the book. It had a lot going for it. There were several engaging characters, such as Nakata, the sweet old man who can talk to cats, Hoshino, the down-to-earth lorry driver who helps him, and Oshima, the friendly librarian who seems to have a bit of a crush on the troubled hero. It also has passages of understated humour where the characters accept surrealist situations as given. "I wouldn't want Mickey Mouse to be my pimp", Hoshino says at one point, in a context where this comment makes perfect sense. A lot of the philosophical musings are way too deep for me, and the hero "Kafka" Tamura is rather too serious for my taste, but it is a quietly gripping book with occasional references to Western culture which make one feel at home (though I may never view Johnnie Walker or Colonel Sanders in quite the same way again).

So why no more ABPs for a while? Because it is summer, and my vacation. Each year, I get irritated by the recommendations for summer reading in the newspapers' culture/review sections. Critics and authors invariably come up with the most intellectually demanding or downright tedious stuff they can find and feel no shame in foisting their unhelpful recommendations on readers who just want a good read for the beach.

Lets get this straight once and for all. When you sit in the sun with an overheated brain, your concentration is not likely not be on top form. What you long for is an easy read, a page-turner preferably, or something funny in the Wodehouse vein. This is not the time to get to grips with modernist poetry, or with Proust (yes, believe it or not, two Swedish critics recommended him: one the whole "In Search Of Lost Time", one only what I have been given to understand is the most boring volume in it).

Here are my recommendations for the beach/hammock/anywhere comfortable in the sun or out of it:

Just about anything by Agatha Christie: Although she's a best-seller, Christie is very much underrated as an author. I have reread many Christie novels more than once, even though I knew perfectly well who the murderer was. The first time you read a Christie, you want to know who did it. The second time you want to pick up all the clues you missed. The third, fourth time etc. you just enjoy the succint prose and the human drama. You may not always agree with Christie's psychological statements - she is a bit too cynical for me at times - but the characters are no stereotypes either. A problem with Christie is that she doesn't film very well, which makes people who have only seen a creaky adaptation believe she is boring, which she definitely is not. (There are other dangers with adaptations: the latest miss Marple films are reasonably pacy, but approximately every second mystery has nothing whatsoever to do with the book it is supposedly based on. "The Secret of Chimneys", for instance, was pure invention from start to finish, including the identity of the murderer.) If you truly have little time for whodunnits, try her adventure yarns like "The Secret Adversary", "Destination Unknown", "They Came To Baghdad", "The Man In The Brown Suit" and "Why Didn't They As Evans?". Avoid her very last books where her prose starts to wander a bit and get repetitive and you'll be fine.

The Jeeves and Wooster books by P.G. Wodehouse: Yes, the Blandings novels are good too, but I prefer the Jeeves/Wooster novels because of Bertie Wooster's endearing narrative (and because efficient secretaries aren't pillorised). Invest in an omnibus, but alternate with a crime story or two so you don't get overfed on Wodehouse. What ho!

And if you have to read something ambitious: a really good 19th-century yarn: I once read "Crime And Punishment" in the sun and enjoyed it immensely. Fun cop. Colourful characters. Villains a-plenty and high drama. Or just settle for one of Dickens's best, like "Great Expectations" or "David Copperfield".

Ah, well back to my Georgette Heyer: another good holiday read, though her heroes are supremely irritating. I would like to shove their quizzing-glasses and snuff-boxes down their conceited throats. If I come across a novel where the hero does not get on my nerves, I will recommend it unreservedly.

måndag 5 juli 2010

Avoiding effort

There is a lovely German word called "urlaubsreif". It means "ripe for vacation", and that is exactly what I am. I'm one week from my blissfully long Swedish vacation, and I feel like one of those policemen in detective stories who are a few days from retirement, but still have to take on a final big and nasty murder investigation. Business has been slack for a while, but now, typically, the wheels have started spinning again. I catch myself humming "At the End of The Day" from Les Mis. At least it's not "Look Down", or the entirely un-Les Mis-related "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place", so there's still some way to go before I start smashing the office furniture.

It's not just work, either. Everything feels exhausting, even TV. Should I blame the World Cup, which has got me used to watching TV without having to follow any plot whatsoever? Or the summer weather? Or is it just sheer laziness? Anyway, I can't even be bothered to watch a recorded "Tudors" episode, let alone Gaskell's "North and South" (or John Jakes's "North and South" for that matter - too long!).

"The Tudors" has itself to blame, in part. It's getting increasingly obvious that nothing in Henry's later life really matches the Boleyn story as far as juicy drama is concerned. Well, except perhaps the disastrous marriage to Catherine Howard, and that's ages away. Meanwhile, you're left to ponder such things as: does this series have a pro-Catholic bias? Consider the evidence. The characters are described roughly in the following manner:

Catherine of Aragon Loving, loyal, popular, suffering with dignity: all in all a pearl among women.

Anne Boleyn Slut. Didn't sleep with her brother, but that's really all that can be said for her.

Cardinal Wolsey Corrupt. Should not have tried to box through that divorce. But as he's played by Sam Neill, the audience sides with him anyway.

The sainted More (That's how we "Daughter of Time" readers think of him, in an ironic, non-complimentary way) Honest and upright. The king's one true friend who could not bring himself to compromise his religious beliefs. Aaah, you break my heart.

Thomas Cromwell Ruthless persecutor of innocent li'l old monks. Takes bribes too.

Bishop Cranmer A coward. Yes, that's the-hand-that-recanted-first-in-the-fire-Cranmer. Nowhere to be seen in series 3, by the way: a bit odd, surely?

Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk A tormented soul - he didn't want to kill all those women and children, honest. He only did it because mean old Cromwell and the king made him. This is the same character who behaved like a proper swine in series one, bedding Buckingham's daughter out of spite etc.

Mary Tudor Put-upon, innocent young girl, quite pretty, friendly with Elizabeth in spite of everything. Honestly, the series seems to ask, after all she's gone through, who can blame her for finally setting fire to a Protestant or two?

Jane Seymour Unfailingly sweet. OK, she married a man who had his previous wife put to death to make himself available. So what?

Robert Aske Noble, touching, unwilling to fight, entirely justified.

Cromwell's chum with the patch over one eye Well, the patch says it all really. Sleeps around. Threatens to smash lady Mary's skull in.

At this point I might hear some complaints along the lines of: "Oh, come on, you've already blogged about The Tudors. Couldn't you try something a little more intellectually challenging? An essay on Florence Dombey whose picture you've filched? Even more Ancient Rome?" Sorry, no. Can't be bothered.

måndag 28 juni 2010

Not so astounding, Holmes.

Yes, I'm afraid it really is that bad. I'm talking about the recently released film called "Sherlock Holmes". I have to put it that way rather than "the latest Sherlock Holmes film", because the film has nothing whatsoever to do with the famous detective.

I don't see myself as a purist when Holmes is concerned. I have seen, read and enjoyed all kinds of sequels, spoofs and "forgotten cases" featuring Holmes. And to be honest, much as I admire the detective's razor-sharp mind, he can be irritating at times. Both Watson and Lestrade have my sympathy for putting up with his arrogance. What's more, in this case, my expectations regarding the film's faithfulness to the original stories, or even to the spirit of the original stories, weren't high. There had been much talk about Holmes suddenly becoming a first-class pugilist and action hero. Well, well, I thought indulgently, Holmes is actually rather good at defending himself in the original stories. Anyway, even if Holmes is not very recognisable, a crime story in nineteenth-century England can never be an entire waste of time, can it?

This time, it is. It's like those trendy cynical films called things like "True Romance" who aren't romantic at all. The protagonist of "Sherlock Holmes", played by the otherwise charming Robert Downey Jr. who is nevertheless pretty insufferable here, is a disorganised, absent-minded, childish slob, who tries to sabotage his friend's engagement out of pique. Now, does that sound like Sherlock to you?

Which leads me to Watson, played somewhat surprisingly by a trim, handsome Jude Law. Personally, I don't think Conan Doyle ever intended Holmes and his loyal sidekick to be more than just good mates. But if the film had hinted at something more and depicted the two friends as an affectionate but bickering old couple I might have lived with it. The thing about Holmes is that he's asexual, so inventing female love interests for him - which has been done often enough - is just as wrong-headed as romanticising his relationship with Watson. Here, though, the two behave not like an old married couple but like a token gay couple in a rom-com. A squabble about a waistcoat is a case in point ("I thought we agreed it was too small for you"). That is just plain wrong - whatever they are, Holmes and Watson aren't honeymooners. By the way, there is a female love interest for Holmes, so it is perfectly possible to take or leave any homosexual subtext. She is Irene Adler, or she is called that, but like "Sherlock" she bears no noticeable resemblance to the character invented by Conan Doyle. This Irene is a femme fatale and gangster moll between whom and Holmes there is zero chemistry (at least that part is strictly true - Holmes only ever revered her for her mind). The only thing faintly Doyle-ian in the whole film was Eddie Marsan (a.k.a.Pancks to those of us who have seen the superb TV adaptation of "Little Dorrit") as Lestrade.

The biggest problem with the film, I believe, is that if you are going to invent freely on the basis of a legendary figure like Sherlock Holmes, you still need to have some references to the original before you take off in flights of fancy. I suspect this is why the "realistic" film about King Arthur with Clive Owen and Keira Knightley was not a hit, and why I would be surprised if the new "Robin Hood" film with Russell Crowe should turn out to be a box-office phenomenon. (Though I may be doing these films an injustice: the "this is the true, unvarnished story" spin they both used has put me off actually seeing them.) King Arthur needs his Round Table, Robin Hood needs his merry men and an archery competition or two, Sherlock Holmes needs his pipe, his violin (not just to pluck at) and his tidy, logical mind. Otherwise, why bother to tell a story supposedly about them at all? Do a film about a Briton fighting in the Roman army, or a rugged non-merry freedom-fighter, or an unshaved nineteenth-century detective who can kick ass, and call them something else.

söndag 20 juni 2010

Brutus says he was ambitious...

After having finished the high-prestige Swedish crime story - which proved not to be so very gloomy after all and included a touching description of male friendship - I'm back in ancient Rome. Harris's second novel "Lustrum" is even more highly acclaimed than the first one, but I must confess that in my view, it could have done with a bit more "the politicians at home" scenes. What I liked in "Imperium", apart from the West-Wing-in-togas-feel, was the intimate portait of some of the Famous Romans. The lumbering Pompey enthusing "didn't I tell you he was clever?" when Cicero came up with one of his brilliant ideas or the tough old bird Crassus genially pinching Tiro's cheek (Tiro is Cicero's secretary/slave and the books' narrator): these kind of scenes added a personal note to all the political schemes. They are still around in "Lustrum", but not as much as I would have liked. We never do get any real take on what Catilina was like as a person. I have gathered this much, though: if any Roman resembled the kind of villain I easily fall for, it was Caesar, not Catilina. Caesar is the sly one.

This idea gets some getting used to. Only now do I realise how favourable the portrait of Caesar in my old "Asterix" comics really was. Yes, he was an enemy of the intrepid Gauls and was time and again defeated by Asterix and his gang, but he had dignity and honour all the same. "Asterix" comics shouldn't really be allowed to influence one's judgement regarding a historical personage - they are, after all, cheerfully unhistorical, and only the Latin quotations have any basis in fact. But once you have seen the Asterix version of Caesar slumped in his chair, as baffled as the reader by a lecture on economics, and finally giving the one-word comment "Eh?", it's hard to imagine him as an unscrupulous wheeler-dealer with little regard for anything except his political ambition.

As I remember it, Shakespeare didn't help either. Granted, it's a long while since I saw the play (or read the Illustrated Classic - a very good cheat's guide to the Western Canon). But I chiefly recall three things about Shakespeare's Caesar: 1) He loved Brutus like a son (big mistake) 2) he preferred fat people to men with a "lean and hungry look" who thought too much 3) he couldn't swim as well as Cassius. Honestly, who would have thought he was a lean-and-hungry-looker himself?

It is possible, of course, that Harris is exaggerating Caesar's dastardliness a bit just to make a point. He is on Cicero's side after all. All the same, I do trust him more than I trust the "Asterix" comics when it comes to historical accuracy.

Now, time for a summary of the Swedish crown princess Victoria's wedding festivities on TV, and then a football match with the Ivory Coast, trained by our "Svennis". I told you I'm very Swedish in some ways.

måndag 14 juni 2010

I may not know much about football...

It was fun while it lasted, being a critical consumer. For weeks I have proudly used Chrome instead of Internet Explorer, praised its swiftness, and felt very grand for making the effort of testing another browser instead of passively trudging on with IE, just because it's Microsoft and what I'm used to. But now, after having wasted an hour of my life looking for a print preview function, I give up. If you want to do anything remotely fancy in Chrome (and surely print preview isn't that fancy?), you have to rely on a "Gallery" of additional functions programmed not by Google itself but by happy amateurs around the world. I'm sure it's very kind of them to share their add-ons with us, but sadly there's no guarantee (as, after trying to install two of them, I've now found out) that they actually work. So, back to lumbering old IE. At least it's got all the functions you need, as well as a great many you don't need. "Don't be evil" is all very well as a company motto, but "Be professional" would be even better.

Anyway, moving on to the subject of the moment: the Football World Cup.

Wonderful as world and European championships must be for real football fans, they (the fans) do have a lot to put up with as well. It is at times like these when people like me, who don't know the first thing about the game, insist on taking an interest. Instead of regional teams, which don't really capture the imagination of the football illiterate, we have ACTUAL COUNTRIES playing against each other. This is great fun. If our own country doesn't win, we football philistines can always root for other countries we like for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with actual footballing skills. I love French history and English literature and have a Western European bias altogether - with the result that no matter how many times they let me down, I will still have a soft spot for these countries' teams.

I am starting to change my mind about France, though. One thing a football philistine does not forgive easily is if a team plays "boring" football. We want to see the players rush back and forth on the field trying to score goals. We don't care about tactics or saving your strength until it's really needed. This is why I can never warm to the Italian team, even though I like Italy as a country. Once they score, they spend the rest of the time more or less standing in front of their own goal defending their position. It may be tactical brilliance, but it's boring, boring, boring. France suffers from a similar problem: their games have, in later years, become increasingly dull to watch. Now the England team may fail as often as not, but something still makes them watchable. Perhaps it's all those near-misses that keep you on your toes. Pity any sincere football fan, though, who has to watch World Cup games with me and listen to my comments. "If Lampard is such a great shot, why has he never scored a goal while I'm watching?" "Didn't Crouch use to be a red-head? I think red hair goes better to the lanky, lantern-jawed look somehow." Capello, as you see, needn't fear any competition from this quarter.

måndag 7 juni 2010

Lazy Monday afternoon

A bonus day off today because the Swedish National Day (6 June) was on a Sunday. The holiday commemorates the vaguely-more-democratic-than-the-last-one constitution of 1809 which has been ditched many times over since then, so it's hard to get too steamed up and patriotic. Although if I'm not mistaken, Gustav Vasa marched into Stockholm after having defeated the Danes on 6 June as well, which is a bit more like it. All right, Independence Day it ain't, but a holiday is always welcome, whatever the pretext.

The problem is, it's time for me to pick a new Ambitious Book Project, and I'm feeling far too lazy. It should cheer me that the last ABP turned out to be great fun - "Imperium" by Robert Harris, which I counted as ambitious because I haven't read anything by him previously and because the scene is set in ancient Rome rather than in, say, Victorian England. It is also a book about Cicero, which sounded faintly worthy. I remember a picture of Cicero we had in our Latin book in school, painted 1800 years or so after his death, I would say. In it he was attacking Catilina in the Senate. Cicero had a flowing white beard and looked upright and noble. Catilina looked like a bird of prey. You can imagine whom I rooted for.

It turns out, though, that Cicero was a shrewd politican and only vaguely more principled than his contemporaries. Yes, he tries to do the right thing, but only if it does not hinder his political ambitions. It makes it easier to cheer him on than if he had been the incorruptible paragon ready to defend the Republic at all costs I imagined. As for Catilina, he seems a bit too loony and violent to be a villain in my taste, but I'm not quite giving up on him yet - he did look very foxy in that picture. Let's see how he turns out in "Lustrum", book No. two in Harris's Cicero series (it does sound learned, doesn't it?).

After "Imperium", I indulged myself with a frothy Regency Romance by Julia Quinn ("How To Marry A Marquis"). Frothy entertainment is not so easy to write as one may think. I remember being thoroughly bored with one bestselling author's supposedly escapist novel, in spite of a good premise and a glamourous setting, and at another time I was bemused when a romantic bestseller turned out to be written like a children's book. But Quinn knows her stuff. She is not the new Austen, as someone quoted on the cover alleges, but she may well be the new Georgette Heyer, and that is not bad at all. In spite of the title, there is less snobbishness displayed here than normally in the genre. The hero is not a nonesuch of the first stare, fussed about the tying of his cravat, for which one is thankful. I do wish, though, that he had not been an ex-spy. I cannot imagine him, or any other Regency Romance hero, lasting ten minutes pitted against Fouché's finest.

But now I have wallowed in a bodice-ripper, including romantic but blush-inducing sex scenes, I really should read something meaty and mind-expanding. A gloomy crime story written in the Fifties by one of Sweden's leading authors seems the likeliest candidate right now. I just wish I felt more enthusiastic about it.

måndag 31 maj 2010

Handsome is what handsome does

All right, no more Eurovision this year, I promise. Not even to gloat over Germany's victory, nor to swoon over dimpled disturbing Daniel, nor to wonder how on earth the Swedes can yet again blame - not themselves, not Europe - but the Swedish competition's organiser for not winning (or even making the final). Although honestly. They had 32 songs to choose from, for Heaven's sake, and incidentally they were all better than the, er, Munch-inspired number from Ukraine... No, enough is enough. On to higher things. Like, oh I don't know, "The Tudors" maybe.

Can anyone explain to me why one keeps watching this series? Normally, there are two kinds of period drama inspired by real historical events: those who are faithful to historical facts, which can sometimes become a bit long-winded, or the pacy but historically unreliable ones, where even fairly urbane law-enforcers can suddenly be found snarling "He doesn't need his tongue, then tear it out" in dark torture cellars.

What is fascinating with "The Tudors" is that it is neither historically accurate nor particularly pacy. A bit of bed-hopping cannot disguise the fact that it takes ages over every plot thread. Remember than never-ending divorce procedure? And Anne Boleyn took a goodish hour-long episode to execute. At the same time, those in the know continually point out historical errors, like a mix-up over popes, or the fact that Henry VIII should have become the pig-eyed fatty we know from the portraits long ago, instead of hardly looking a day older or a pound heavier than when he was a golden young prince. The historical doubtfulness starts with the title. Why "The Tudors"? Because there had already been a series called "Henry VIII"? Because the series-makers hope to carry on with Henry's children's reigns eventually, though at this rate they won't be able to kill him off until approximately the year 2020? Whatever the reason, a series called "The Tudors" should in all honesty start with Henry VII. As a true supporter of Richard III (not that he was anything like Shakespeare's version, more's the pity) I heartily dislike Henry VII, but I would still have been interested to see a period drama about his reign. His marriage with Elizabeth of York must, all things considered, have been a pretty tense affair, and surely a great deal could be done with the rebellions instigated by more or less dubious pretenders claiming to be Yorkist princes. But no - instead we get yet another re-tread of the story about Henry VIII and his six wives.

And yet I keep watching. Why? Is it because of James Frain's unusually comely Thomas Cromwell and his troubles? At first contemptuous of Henry, whom he runs rings round intellectually, he is by now becoming seriously rattled - when Henry makes him a knight he glances nervously at the sword blade, as if he were afraid that the ceremony could become an execution any moment. A stupid king you can work with, or around, but a psychopathic king is a bit less comfortable. Frain's Cromwell is by far the most interesting character, and he has comic timing too. Consider this not too subtle exchange:
CROMWELL: We must continue to destroy the brothels and slaughterhouses.
HENCHMAN: Sir?
CROMWELL: The monasteries.
Not exactly razor-sharp, you will agree, but thanks to Frain's slight disbelieving pause before the last line and his irritable do-keep-up-tone it drew a giggle from me.

Another reason to keep watching, if like me one is not so very taken with the Tudors and their shaky claim on the throne, is the series' take on Henry VIII. Appropriately, it's a real hatchet-job. The man is a preening, violent, volatile menace to society. I have never seen a less likeable Henry VIII, and that is saying something. In fact, a fat suit would probably increase our sympathy for him, rather than the opposite. While Henry whores and slashes his way through his reign without noticeably changing, you start to feel reminded of "The Picture of Dorian Gray".

Still I must say that if you want to watch only one series about Henry VIII, you'd do better with the one honestly called "Henry VIII" starring Ray Winstone as a thuggish but not certifiable king, Helena Bonham Carter as Anne Boleyn and Danny Webb as yet another watchable Cromwell. It is pacier, better written and probably a great deal more reliable.

söndag 23 maj 2010

And the winner (with my luck) probably won't be...

I was thinking of raising the topic of audition shows - the almost acceptable face of reality TV - and trying to justify why I love watching them (only two have been aired on Swedish television so far). But that is too much like hard work. So I'll just settle for the easy option of posting a list of my favourite entries for the Eurovision Song Contest. Note that I've only heard the songs once, and they may sound completely different live, while some of the also-rans may pick up enormously (as happened last year with UK's "It's my time"). So here they are, in random order:

Moldavia: I originally gave this 3 out of 5 points, but what the heck, it's up-tempo and fun and the singers remind me slightly of the bad siblings in High School Musical. (Yep, I saw it - there's no limit to how silly your TV viewing can get when you're single and unrestrained.) Plus I like the hat. Bop to the top!

Albania: Another up-tempo number. The singer's boyfriend in the video looks like he's going to blow up a factory, but it doesn't really matter.

Iceland: This song sounds more like Ireland than Iceland, with the Valkyrie-like singer belting out a catchy pop tune (the only one of the songs I can still hum) very satisfactorily.

Armenia: I don't know what's happened to me. I normally like ballads a lot, but this year, both in the Swedish "Music Festival" competitions and now in Eurovision, I find the crop of ballads rather boring. This one I do like, though. Eurovision buffs usually appreciate "ethnic" numbers where the countries display "some of their national cultural heritage". Not me. I prefer this kind of number: smooth, professional, western-style pop.

Israel: Nice-looking boy with impressive voice sings soulful ballad in Hebrew. Yes, the concept is familiar. But no matter: it works. And as half of Asia is participating now, we can lay the old "yes but they're not really part of Europe, are they?" argument to rest.

Germany: No, I'm not so biased as you may think. I've barely liked one of Germany's entries to Eurovision so far. I'm not impressed by the Eurovision winner "Ein bisschen Frieden". (Admittedly, I've only heard about half the refrain of that song, but honestly: asking for "a little peace"? Isn't that as impossible as "a little war"?) But this time the singer is a pro, and charming with it, and the number is pleasing. The accented English is a little bewildering, but doesn't detract from the charm somehow.

Spain: Now here's where bias really comes in. The almost-completely-Swedish expert panel, with the exception of the excellent Finn, found this number "disturbing". And that's why it's a favourite for me. The sinister circus-master singer could be the evil genius in an "Avengers" episode - and he's got red curls too (well, all right, maybe it's a wig). If he had been made up as a clown, I agree it would have been too scary - as it is, from a villain-lover like myself, it has to be four out of five. Could be a complete disaster live, though.

Questions to ponder: am I the only one who thinks the singer for Switzerland is kinda cute (red hair again)? What do Romania's dancers (they may not make it to the live show) resemble most: C3PO or cybermen? And why, when they were doing so well with the Lloyd Webber song last year, have the UK back-slided again? When, apparently, none of their professional singers or pop groups deign to take part in Eurovision, it's no wonder the Brits aren't doing very well.