måndag 27 juni 2011

Stolen Thunder

I didn’t expect to approve of the sequel of “Upstairs Downstairs” much, but surprisingly, it wasn’t bad at all. I say surprisingly because the reception of the show when it was aired seems to have been lukewarm – the reviews weren’t very complimentary, and there never was a series made after the “Christmas specials”. It turns out, though, that this drama had potential.

Of course, it wasn’t perfect, and it took a while before you became involved with the characters, but the same thing could be said for the original series. The first episode of the original “Upstairs Downstairs”, “On Trial”, was in fact pretty hard on the characters, especially the downstairs ones: Mrs Bridges and Mr Hudson were at their autocratic worst, and even Rose was spiteful and envious towards the new maid Sarah. Lady Marjorie didn’t come out of it all that well either: in fact, we never learn what Sarah’s real name is. Sarah is a name Lady Marjorie dreams up because she finds the (admittedly fake) French name the new maid goes under too fanciful for a servant. The problem with the sequel, on the other hand, was less that the initial characterisation had to be softened and nuanced than that the new arrivals seemed a little drab compared to the original crew. There was a definite turning-point, though, when the always excellent Eileen Atkins sailed in as the eccentric Lady Holland. Downstairs, the butler Pritchard – mindful of downstairs etiquette in spite of having worked his whole life on cruisers and much more sweet-natured than Hudson – was a welcome addition.

So why were the Christmas special episodes the last we saw of the new “Upstairs Downstairs”? The Thirties setting is a bit uncongenial for this kind of domestic drama, as its harsh political realities can have a tendency to invade the story too much. As it happens, I think “Upstairs Downstairs” handled the balance between the personal and the political pretty well. The storyline involving Jewish refugee Rachel, who becomes a maid at Eaton Place, is a tad Winds-of-War-ish, but it was pretty plucky to include a chauffeur who was a convinced Fascist – not because he was some poison-drooling, two-headed monster but because he was suckered into it by Mosley’s flowery rhetoric (not that different in substance from the kind of guff that would appeal to the Cosy Red Chauffeur in “Downton Abbey”). The depiction of von Ribbentrop, not as a shambolic “Pimpernel Smith” kind of Nazi but as a plausible, urbane ladykiller, also gave one a sense of the dangers that the civilised world was really up against.

What really killed “Upstairs Downstairs” make two is quite simply the existence of “Downton Abbey”. The “Abbey” has the advantage of more upstairs characters, and though the second season will probably have its fair share of what’s-it-all-in-aid-of-scenes in the trenches of WWI, it can stear well clear of the earnest predictability of the typical WWII drama. However, quality-wise, “Downton Abbey” is not that superior to “Upstairs Downstairs”. It’s just that the town ain’t big enough for two dramas with such a similar set-up (in spite of being set at different times and in the country and London respectively), and “Downton Abbey” got there first.

lördag 18 juni 2011

Past the point of no return

The problem with giving a book a good try before shelving it is you might come so far you don’t feel there’s any point in giving it up, even though you’re not convinced by it. I’ve reached this stage with "Labyrinth", which I will keep on reading until the end, grumbling all the way. It’s a bit unfair that the novel should put me in such a grumpy mood. It’s got some things going for it, like the pace, the plotting and… well, that’s it, really. It is action-packed, which means reading it is not great a hardship. But I find no joy in the characterisation, the descriptive passages (to be fair, few authors have the knack of making those gripping) or the language.

A common complaint when it comes to characters in novels is that they are depicted in black and white, but I’ve realised there are different ways of doing black-and-white-characterisation. An author who doesn’t bother with nuances can never hope to be the new Dostoyevsky, but all-good characters can still be engaging, and all-bad characters can still be fun. In "Labyrinth", though, the goodies are colourless – the medieval version of the heroine, Alaïs, is especially annoying – and the baddies are not so much stock characters as a set of traits generally associated with a particular stock character: they fill their function in the plot, but with little relish. The Bitch – both in the medieval and the modern part of the tale – has a little more going for her, as this is a stock character which it is hard to ruin completely. But just look at the Outwardly Civilised Brute. He has a record of sexual assault and domestic violence which has been hushed up as he’s from an influential family; his interrogation methods are unsophisticated to say the least; and in his office he has a photograph of himself shaking hands with Jean-Marie Le Pen, the erstwhile leader of the Front National. Oh, and he gives generous donations to the Jesuits. Boo. Hiss.

The Jesuit detail illustrates another problem I have with the book. I understand that the author wants us to side with the religious movement who called themselves Bon Chrétiens, and who are referred to in modern days as Cathars. But maybe she’s trying to hard – anyway, I in my contrary mood failed to warm to them. Yes, it seems harsh that they should be branded as "heretics", and yes, it’s nice that they embrace the notion that we will all be saved and go to Heaven eventually. But their beliefs as described in "Labyrinth" are so well attuned to modern sensibilities they set my teeth on edge. They are perfectly pally with Jews and Saracens, for instance, but openly scornful of Catholics. I’m not above a little papist-bashing myself sometimes, but don’t they deserve some credit for recognising the same Redeemer? Why shut them out of the cosy ecumenical fellowship? At one point, Alaïs sulks because she has to attend a service at – oh horror – a proper Cathedral, with a crucifix in it to which she takes exception. Can one blame the Pope for being a teensy bit peeved with these people?

Anyway, enough praise for our friends in Rome: I can see they blotted their copybook rather in medieval times with all their crusading. It might be consistent to persecute Cathars and Jews and Saracens, but it’s not particularly admirable. Let’s not forget, though, that the Catholics of the thirteenth century did not believe in universal salvation. It is easier to be tolerant when you are not convinced that those of a different religious persuasion are damning themselves in their own fashion.

onsdag 8 juni 2011

The good old days of historical drama

It's strange, when it comes to period dramas from the Seventies and Eighties, that dramas based on historical lives age better than literary adaptations. It's not that the dialogue flows more easily. It often sounds a little stilted - especially when an attempt has been made to capture the language of the age - and exposition-heavy. There are no pace-making cuts or original camera angles: like the literary adaptations of the time, the historical dramas have a certain whiff of filmed theatre. But as filmed theatre, it somehow works better. The exchanges may not be realistic by any standards, but someone has put some thought into them, and they have been conceived as a TV play from the start. When you have a wonderful novel as a source, it is perhaps easier to think that its words will do all the work for you. It doesn't work that way: I've become more and more aware that a good deal of work needs to be done for a great novel to become good TV. Novels and drama are different genres, and filming even the best actors parroting as many of the novel's words as you can cram in is not the way to do it justice.

Examples of surprisingly good older historical dramas are the excellent "Elizabeth R", which in my view knocks spots off the more recent Elizabethan biodramas I've seen (the one with Helen Mirren and the first Cate Blanchett film); a sweetly partisan TV series about Disraeli; "Edward VII" (which made me feel sorry for the Kaiser - I'm not sure that was intentional) and "Will Shakespeare", a series from as early as 1978 which I have recently watched.

"Will Shakespeare" is very much a case in point here. You could never guess the scriptwriter was John Mortimer of Rumpole fame. The only resemblance I could find with the Rumpole stories is a certain bitter-sweetness: like the crusty barrister, Shakespeare does not have a very easy life, and yet you are somehow not too depressed by his setbacks. Language-wise, though, this is cod-Shakespearean throughout, but thought-provoking enough to get away with it. It's nice to see Tim Curry in a serious part. No flashing of the famous wolfish grin here: poor Will didn't have much to smile about. Nicholas Clay as the dashing Earl of Southampton steals the show rather, though. It was quite hard to imagine him as the golden young man of Shakespeare's sonnets. Unlike poor Marlowe's potentially murderous squeeze in the first episode - continuing the poisonous-youth trend quite nicely - there was nothing even faintly androgynous about Southampton. Nature clearly meant him to be a man from the start.

I was going on to making a point about authors' lives rarely being as thrilling as their work, and dramas about them having to make the best of what they got in different ways. That is why a biodrama of Shakespeare must needs have a golden young man and Dark Lady in it, though there may not have been any such persons outside Shakespeare's imagination at all. I think I'll leave that argument for another day, though, and wrap up instead with another strange thing. How come, when recent literary adaptations are mostly - though not always - more sure-footed that the old ones, that recent historical drama is often so underwhelming? Think of "The Tudors", or (if it qualifies as historical at all, which is doubtful) "Desperate Romantics". Sorry, but a lot of bed-hopping does not a thrilling drama make. You have to invest something in the characterisation. As with Cromwell in "The Tudors", Ruskin in "Desperate Romantics" is saved by a sterling acting performance. Tom Hollander's Ruskin may not know much about what he likes, but he knows about Art - this is definitely the man you would hire to buy an art collection for you. More's the pity that actors playing interesting historical characters don't get more to work with: instead they have to make do with quite clumsy scripts, which will as likely as not shove their guy/woman aside contemptously because he/she won't bed-hop. Some things really were better in the old days.