måndag 22 december 2014

2014 – TV and book highlights

No, December is not a great blogging month, but when all else fails, you can usually rustle up an end-of year list of some sort. My wishes for the new year are more or less the same as in 2012, with the exception of the vain wish that Dan Stevens would stay put in Downton – that ship has sailed long ago. What then, in blog-related areas, has happened during the last year?

Author discovery of the year: Sally Beauman. Yes, this is middlebrow romance we’re talking about, but middlebrow romance with quality. After quite liking Rebecca’s Tale (though it was, as one would expect, too pro-Rebecca) I decided to give Destiny a go and was hooked. Since then I’ve worked my way through Beauman’s back catalogue, and am now looking forward to investing in her newest novel The Visitors, once it’s out in paperback. Let’s hope it has more in common with Destiny and Dark Angel than the over-gloomy Landscape of Love – and I would be grateful if no fictional children were harmed during the making of it.

Villain of the year:There’s still a dearth of new villains on the book front, but TV dramas seem finally to have twigged the importance of villains. Both Mr Selfridge and The Paradise topped up their cast list with new villains, and then there’s Morse’s hot envious colleague in Endeavour (hm – wonder where they got that idea from). But my prize goes to a villain from 2011 whom I haven’t caught up with until now – the delectable, devious politician Troels Höxenhaven in Borgen. Mr Lang – sorry Thackeray – in Mr Selfridge gets an honourable mention. This doesn’t mean I’m over Thomas, though.

Villainess of the year:No contest – it has to be Missy in Doctor Who. The series was in great form this year - more, please!

Costume drama of the year, not counting Downton:I have to take Downton out of the running, or it would win every year until it ends (my guess is series six will be the last, but I’m happy to be proved wrong as long as the characters are not stuck in a Bramwell-like limbo). Adaptations of classics seem to have gone quite out of fashion, regrettably. I’ve begun rewatching Little Dorrit recently, and was once again struck down with melancholy over the axing – many years ago – of the planned Andrew Davies adaptation of Dombey and Son. Nevertheless, the current trend of scripted-for TV costume dramas has its advantages. For one thing, they have a longer life-span, and you don’t know what will happen next. The Paradise has run its course, which is a shame considering what an improvement the second series was on the first, but Mr Selfridge will be with us again next year. And in spite of the trying Selfridge himself and the cool shop-girl Agnes who lacks Denise’s charm, Mr Selfridge continues to trounce The Paradise.

High-brow read of the year: Well, strictly speaking there may be only one high-brow read to choose from. I really must buckle down to some more Ambitious Book Projects next year. Anyway, The Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst was a good read. It’s strange to think that largely thanks to a whole crop of not-really-into-chicks baddies, I not only cheerfully wade through guy-on-guy scenes which would have me reaching for my smelling salts ten years ago but positively ask for them – “come on, surely it’s time to give him one?” I’m telling you, villains build bridges.

Totally trashy beach read which you would never admit having read to your friends of the year: I had a surprisingly good time reading a 50-pence copy of Judith Krantz’s Lovers, and I suspect that it’s not her best novel by a long chalk. The characters don’t stay with you, but some of them talk a great deal of common sense. Krantz knows how to spin a yarn, and she’s no fool.

Apology of the year: OK, sorry about having sneered at Zola’s part in the Dreyfus case. He was right, and he was not simply in it to brandish his anti-establishment credentials. Read all about it in An Officer And A Spy by Robert Harris. This doesn’t mean I like Zola – on the whole, the pro-Dreyfusians including Harris’s hero Picquart could have been a more likeable lot. But they were indisputably fighting the good fight.

Comebacks of the year: Jeeves and Wooster made a successful and welcome return in Sebastian Faulks's homage to P.G. Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Wedding Bells. And then there's Bridget Jones's last hurrah, Mad About The Boy. Forget the sneering reviews: if you enjoyed thirtysomething Bridget's diaries, chances are you'll snigger over and sympathise with her fiftysomething self as well.  

torsdag 4 december 2014

Splendid sci-fi Scots

Fiddling while Rome burned comes to mind. In the middle of a national political crisis, I've spent my time watching Doctor Who series 8, three episodes per evening. Luckily, the DVD arrived just as I had run out of Downton episodes. Last night, when I'd finished watching the finale, I somewhat half-heartedly checked the news online and found out an extra election had been called. Well, what do you know.

I doubt a new election will bring much joy, but the new Doctor, Peter Capaldi, certainly did. I recently cheered on his Richelieu in The Musketeers: this time around, my feelings are more friendly approval than swooning villain-fangirliness. Which only goes to show how convincing Capaldi is as a) a hero b) an alien. Like Clara, his companion, you sense that cuddles are not on the menu, and their relationship developed interestingly in a quite new direction. Clara's boyfriend Danny, when he thinks he's cracked the whole mystery, exclaims:"You're an alien! And he's your space dad!" He's not as far wrong as all that.

For a comparatively new Who fan like me - I've watched and loved the whole new series from Christopher Eccleston onwards, but I still only have the slightest acquaintance with the old one - a Doctor-companion relationship without any hint of flirting makes a refreshing change. For the old hands, this is the rule rather than the exception, but the first companion I saw was Rose, whom the Doctor actually fell in love with. Then came Martha (one of my personal favourites among the companions), who fell in love with him. Then, it's true, came Donna ("I just need a mate" "Well, you're not mating with me, sunshine") - a very chaste friendship, but the Doc and she were still mistaken for a couple more than once. Then came Amy, who loved her boyfriend deeply, but still occasionally fancied the Doctor in his new Matt Smith guise. And then, finally, there was Clara, who did not seem completely averse to Doctor Smith's boyish charms either.

You see what I mean? Enough of the flirtatious Tardis bantering already. When her and the Doctor's relationship shifted, Clara had the chance to become something more than Amy make two. As usual, there is tension between the Doctor and the companion's boyfriend - who is an ex-soldier to boot, and a good counterweight to the Doctor's occasional hippie-ishness - but this time, the Doctor's disapproval is more that of a stern father-in-law than of a potential love rival. This doesn't mean he has to go entirely without flirting, however: to his own discomfort, he is thoroughly flirted with by the head villain, or rather villainess, of this series. She's called Missy, short for - on second thoughts, I'm not telling.

Missy, played with great relish by Michelle Gomez, is a treat. That she, like Capaldi, is Scottish adds an extra dimension to their scenes together - there's a bond here which the Doctor may deplore but never quite get rid of, and the accent highlights it. Also, I must admit that it was tremendous fun to watch a baddie with the safety catch entirely off. That's not how I usually like my villains, I know. Normally, I want them to have limits, rules and psychologically credible motives. Missy doesn't need any of that. She kan kill off a likeable bit-part player on a whim, and you're still up for more. I don't know if it's the fact that she's female (i.e. role model as opposed to villain object of pining affection), or if it's the whole alien thing. Anyhow, I hope we'll see more of her: I don't know how they'll explain it, but in Doctor Who, there's always a way.

The whole series eight was entirely satisfactory, without a single dud episode, though of course it was impossible to like them all equally. The connecting story arc, with mysterious glimpses of what looked like an afterlife, was more or less resolved in the finale, which was a mercy: in the Matt Smith era, we got story arcs spanning over several series, and very confusing it was too. Yes, the explanation of the afterlife scenario was a tad overcomplicated and not without plot holes, but I can live with that. Bring on the Christmas special (er, Santa Claus? OK, fine) and series nine. And let's hope the Doctor won't have to regenerate for a wee while yet.          

måndag 17 november 2014

Very good, Faulks

I was in a grumpy mood for most of last week, but one thing never failed to cheer me: Jeeves and the Wedding Bells, Sebastian Faulks's authorised sequel to P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster tales (novels and short stories). Wisely, Faulks doesn't even try to match Wodehouse's linguistic fireworks: there are plenty of good jokes, but not one in every sentence which you can expect from Wodehouse. But the tone is just right, and what's more, Faulks has a marvellous hand with the main characters, Bertie Wooster especially.

It may not seem much of a compliment to say that an author manages to capture Wodehouse's characters. Deep characterisation is not something for which he is famous. But in Bertie Wooster he managed to create a truly loveable character, and in the canny Jeeves an intriguing one. Faulks realises this and does honour to the duo. His bit-part players - with the exception of Bertie's love interest, the splendid Georgiana Meadowes (nice name!) - are no more fleshed out than they are in Wodehouse's books, but it doesn't matter: it's what we're used to.

It may be strange for a villain-lover to be fond of Bertie Wooster, but I confess I am. He may be the ultimate anti-villain, especially if like me you're into earnestly striving bourgeois baddies. He's unfailingly naïve, a bit of an ass, and has never done a hand's turn in his life. But he's sweet with it, and Faulks quite rightly highlights his best points: his kindness and generosity towards others. Few of the scrapes Bertie's got into over the years have benefited himself, except so far that they've ultimately helped him get dis-engaged to a bevy of unsuitable females: instead, he's time and again called upon to take considerable risks and potentially make a fool of himself in order to help his countless pals with their love problems. Faulks's plot follows the Wodehouse template successfully in this instance as in many others. In fact, Bertie may actually stand to lose by his school friend Woody and his intended coming together, yet this thought never even occurs to him, much less deters him from giving Woody a (somewhat ham-fisted) helping hand. I don't know if I'm alone in this or if other villain-lovers recognise the same phenomenon, but I find it easier to like one-hundred-per-cent good eggs like Bertie than characters who are a bit iffy yet still pride themselves on being morally superior to the resident villain. Maybe it's because good eggs are so unthreatening, and Bertie is furthermore helped by the fact that out-and-out villains are thin on the ground in Wodehouseland.

What of Jeeves, then? Strange to relate, there was a time when servants - male ones especially - vaguely unsettled me, and the character of Jeeves did little then to ease my middle-class nervousness. I have always been a little suspicious of his good intentions towards the young master. Bertie may fondly imagine that Jeeves is full of "the feudal spirit", but the gentleman's gentleman takes few risks himself in his convoluted plans: it is Bertie who has to do the dirty work, and in the end, it is Jeeves who gets his own way, in small things - like deciding Bertie's wardrobe - as in larger, like going to the Riviera instead of spending the Christmas season at home. Jeeves may have helped his master out of countless unfortunate engagements, but in doing so he has also done himself a good turn. Bertie's fiancées tend to have one thing in common: they do not like Jeeves, and should Bertie marry one of them, Jeeves would soon have to find employment elsewhere. So, is the brainy Jeeves really concerned about Bertie's happiness, or is he just looking after number one?

Of course, one would like to think the former, and Faulks's Jeeves proves himself to be benign. This time, he actually approves of the girl Bertie has fallen for, and does his darnedest to bring them together rather than to force them apart. This is not to say that Jeeves neglects getting something out of the whole affair for himself, nor that he is above putting the young master in a spot or two - for his own good, naturally.

In sum, Jeeves and the Wedding Bells is a lovely, sunny read, and just the ticket for surviving dreary November days. It's also one of the best sequels I've read so far. Great stuff, Faulks.                    

tisdag 4 november 2014

In two minds about Gregory

I'm currently suffering from something of a Philippa Gregory overdose. In a pathetic attempt to read a little more fiction in the Swedish language, I'm reading Gregory's The Boleyn Inheritance - in Swedish. At the same time, I'm trying to finish watching the TV series The White Queen, but it's proving rather a hard slog.

My first impression of the series, when viewing one of the episodes live in England more than a year ago, proves to have been more or less correct. The characters talk politics all the time, so it's a mercy that the politics are as interesting as they are. I do enjoy seeing Anne Neville portrayed as a plucky girl with more than a little of her father's ambition and ruthlessness, rather than as a meek wife wringing her hands and wondering what exactly her darling hubby's up to (true, Shakespeare's Anne was hardly meek, but then she was more or less a made-up character). But the serious tone of the series - I think the German word for it is bierernst - without any light relief, or much human interest as we only see the characters as politicians, makes it hard to watch much of it in one go. I usually follow a White Queen episode with a jaunty Doctor Who episode, to cheer me up. It puts some perspective on comic elements in TV drama: I'm not too keen on the more quirky storylines in for instance Downton (like Molesley getting into a jam or Mrs Patmore doing battle with modern kitchen devices), but maybe they are necessary to get the whole mood of the series right. You can't have meaty love stories all the time. I suppose.

Deborah Ross, The Spectator's film critic, nicknamed the Duke of Norfolk in The Other Boleyn Girl "the Duke of Exposition". It's an expression that often comes to my mind when watching The White Queen, and it's a useful label for a character that carries more than his or her fair share of plot exposition. In The Boleyn Inheritance, we meet the original himself.

Norfolk expositions quite a lot in The Boleyn Inheritance as well, but above all, he's the villain of the piece. If the film The Other Boleyn Girl is anything to go by, he plays roughly the same part in this novel as in the earlier Boleyn book: first he plots to bring a girl on the throne, and then, when she gets into trouble, he not only abandons her but actively contributes to putting her head on the block. But we only meet the political plotter, not the man. I've no idea what makes him tick, and my villain-loving heart remains unmoved. Of the characters in The Boleyn Inheritance, only the three progatonists are really fleshed out as characters: Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Lady Rochford a.k.a. Jane Boleyn, widow (as she keeps reminding us) of not-so-devoted husband George Boleyn and sister-in-law of Anne Boleyn.

I like the unexpected angles in Gregory's tales: she often has some fresh theory about historical events we think we know everything about. What if, for instance, Catherine of Aragon wasn't a virgin after all when she married Henry VIII, but had actually consummated her marriage to his brother (Gregory spins a story out of this in The Constant Princess)? What if Margaret Beaufort conspired with her unreliable husband and Buckingham to have the princes in the Tower killed and then put the blame on Richard (I love this theory)? What if one of the princes was actually a fake prince? Gregory is the very opposite of those dry, killjoy  historians who want to destroy every juicy historical scandal and expose it as a "myth": because she is a fiction writer, she can afford to believe whatever makes for the best story. Even historical pieces of gossip considered outlandish by most will be seized upon and used by her, which sometimes seems a bit unfair (come on, Elizabeth Woodville actually a witch?).

With The Boleyn Inheritance, Gregory seems on fairly stable ground when portraying Anne of Cleves not as the "Flanders Mare" of legend but as a brave, intelligent and, yes, pretty young woman who is punished for reacting most unromantically when Henry visits her disguised. Catherine Howard is predictably silly, though more sympathetically portrayed than in many a Tudor yarn, and Jane Boleyn predictably bitchy. Of the three, Catherine Howard is the most fun to read about: her reflections, typical of an airheaded teenage girl, often serve as the light relief that is missing in The White Queen. But as she loses the King's favour, there is little in the way of fun and games for her either. The novel is too long, and some themes - Jane Boleyn's obsessing about her dead husband and sister-in-law, for instance - are hammered home a trifle. But it's a painless way of getting to know a little more about two of Henry VIII's less famous wives. A reader who feels up for some Tudor gossip, but not of the high-literary Hilary Mantel kind, could do worse. Just don't expect to care passionately about the various Dukes of Exposition.

tisdag 28 oktober 2014

The Fortune Hunter and the cattiness-inducing Sisi

A while back, I read and enjoyed Daisy Goodwin's second historical novel, The Fortune Hunter. In many ways it reminded me of her first one, My Last Duchess. It's deftly plotted, taking the reader from one attractive set piece to the next. It has most of the ingredients I look for in an historical novel with a dash of romance - balls, hunts, country-house parties, misbehaving royals and, as a bonus, Austrian-Hungarian officers making out. On the down-side, as in My Last Duchess, I didn't care a great deal for the characters, with the exception of the charming American photographer Caspar Hewes who's always good fun when he appears ("Lady D said you wanted to be alone, so of course I came at once").

The novel centres around a love triangle between Charlotte Baird, an heiress passionately interested in photography, Bay Middleton, a rake passionately interested in hunting and the Empress Elisabeth of Austria, a royal beauty passionately interested in herself. Bay's romance with Charlotte is budding nicely, despite her family's objections: but then he is appointed the hunting pilot of Empress Elisabeth, and unwisely starts an affair with her. Will Charlotte forgive him? Will they get together again? Do we want them to?

It says a lot about Daisy Goodwin's talents as a yarn-spinner that I kept turning the pages while not being particularly fond of either the sneering Charlotte or Bay. With time, as her love deepens, I did begin to feel for Charlotte, but Bay remains a bone-headed fellow with his obsession with horses, hunting and races. You feel that no woman, empress or not, can really compete with his filly. He shows a polite interest in photography for Charlotte's sake, but knows little about it, and she for her part never hunts as her mother was killed in a hunting accident. Even if Bay supposedly isn't after Charlotte's money - the book's title is partly ironic - you wonder if they make such a good couple as all that. As for Empress Elisabeth, nicknamed Sisi, she is vain, attention-seeking and hard to like.

In Georgette Heyer's whodunnit Envious Casca (great title - shame it sort of gives away the plot twist), one character gets on all the other characters' nerves by relating anecdotes from a book on the Empress Elisabeth of Austria. I didn't really understand that storyline - say what you like about Sisi, she's good copy. There are worse topics of conversation than her life. Having said that, the Empress seems to have been the kind of woman who invariably brings out the cat in me. I'm not sure why. She might have been a bit of a moaner, but she had things to moan about: the Austrian court was strict, her mother-in-law Archduchess Sophie was formidable, and the poor girl was only fifteen when she married Emperor Franz Josef, who was smitten with her but also a bit of a dry stick. Nevertheless, my pity keeps itself well within bounds. I have some trouble believing that she'd actually take a lover, because I've somehow come by the opinion that a woman can sometimes be a tiresome, neurotic narcissist (like the Empress), and sometimes a wanton slut, but she is rarely both. I may be completely wrong, though, and my failure to see women of the self-regarding Sisi type as sensual beings may be part and parcel of my general cattiness.

Perhaps it's the "golden cage" aspect of Empress Elisabeth's complaints that makes me unsympathetic. We all have cages to contend with in our lives of one sort or another, and they're rarely golden. Being an Empress is a job like any other, containing elements that are not enjoyable - but I bet there are worse ones. As Elisabeth's sister, the deposed Queen of Naples, says in The Fortune Hunter: "There are worse things in life, Sisi, than being stared at."   

onsdag 15 oktober 2014

Downton worries

The fifth series of Downton Abbey has now had its Swedish premiere (last Saturday). While I'm of course buoyed up no end - this is one of the year's highlights for me - I'm not quite as euphoric as after the first episode of series four last year. I'm nervous about series five. Something tells me it will be a nerve-racking affair. Be careful what you wish for, if what you wish for is a worthwhile storyline for your favourite Downton character, because that usually also means trauma.

Sometimes I wonder if life would be easier if I wasn't a villain-lover, and instead fancied heroes like most people. But when it comes to Downton, such a course wouldn't make me safe from anxious moments either. Matthew died. Mr Bates is suspected of murder again, and may actually have done it this time (though I still don't think he did). Branson has taken up with a bolshie school teacher who gets up people's noses - honestly, where's his judgment gone since Sybil died? Let's face it: until the last episode has peacefully concluded, we will have reason enough to worry about most of the characters' chances of a happy ending.

So I might as well worry about Thomas. The reviews I've read of episode one tend to find that the Lady Anstruther plot-line - where Jimmy gets entangled with his old employer who, contrary to my predictions, was all too ready to forgive him for having quitted his post with her - was one of the best things about the episode. I agree, it was juicy, but I'm concerned about the consequences. Will Jimmy really leave now? Is his fragile friendship with Thomas at an end, just as they had reached mutual first-name status? How will this affect Thomas's mood and, importantly, will it make him more inclined to commit the ghastly mistake of squealing on Bates (when he finds out about his suspicious trip to London and the rest, which is surely only a matter of time)? Quite apart from not really wanting Bates to swing - though, innocent or guilty, the silly man brought it on himself - I can foresee the dire effect squealing would have on Thomas. All sympathy with him would be at an end from the other Downton characters; from Downton viewers inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt until now; in fact, from everyone except myself. Oh, to be back in the times of the series three finale, when supporting Thomas was considered fine and dandy for a while.

Oh well, enough manservant-bellyaching. Luckily, there are some points about Downton - however outlandish one's sympathies - about which most viewers can agree. One of these is that poor Lady Edith is being given far too grisly a time. By now, if comments on the series are anything to go by, Fellowes - who seems to prefer icy Lady Mary to her sister - is in something of a minority. He has admitted in interviews to "punishing" Edith for her passiveness, but she isn't really passive. For someone supposedly more conventionally minded than her sisters, she has time and again dared to leave her comfort zone. She learned to drive during wartime, then figured out how she could be most helpful in the Downton convalescent home. She decided to write articles for magazines. She stuck to the man she loved, although he was married (to a madwoman, allegedly), and had an all-too-brief affair with him. She had his baby, and arranged for it to be brought up close to her in defiance of her aunt's advice. How much more actively taking charge of her life will she have to do before Fellowes takes pity on her? Let's hope, when the happy endings are handed out at Downton's conclusion (the end of series six, maybe?), that hers is an especially blissful one.      

tisdag 30 september 2014

The Killing - too noir for this Scandinavian

Bucked up by the success with Unit One, I finally got round to borrowing the acclaimed The Killing, series one, from my local DVD shop. I was convinced that I was hardened enough to try more Scandi noir. Except, oh dear. Grim though its cases often were, Unit One has done nothing to prepare me for the relentless gloom that is The Killing.

It's not, I think, the sheer beastliness of the committed crime, or the protracted suffering the luckless victim - a pretty, clever, sunny teenage girl - went through that proves that little bit too much for me, though it doesn't help. It's the wallowing in the grief of her family. These scenes are convincing and well played, but who wants to watch scenarios like these? For instance, we witness the girl's parents having to tell her small brothers of her death, and later the parents catch a glimpse of the horrible crime-scene pictures, which makes them start to realise just how many traumatic facts the police are keeping from them. The Killing seems to be a crime series made by people who hate the normal crime series-viewing public: we are being punished for our morbid interest in murders. Look, it seems to say, this is what murder is like in real life: it shatters lives.

Except, this isn't real life, is it? It's still fiction. It's a "thriller" made, one supposes, in order to entertain viewers. It's not an instruction video for grief counsellors. I fail to see why glum offerings like these are considered more worthwhile by fastidious critics than golden-agey whodunnits. Why is it more moral to revel in a nasty case like this than in a cleaner bump-on-the-head murder? It's hard not to feel that The Killing indulges bloodlust while simultaneously wagging a finger at it.

In Unit One, a kindly senior police officer has a conversation with a girl he's protecting, and she asks what murderers are like. He answers that in most cases, they're "just like you and me". Only, there is "something not quite right" which makes them cross the line and kill. (As it happens, in this particular case the murderer is a sadistic loon very far from the norm, but never mind.) I don't know if it's true, but as a working hypothesis it works well. I like a really juicy motive in a murder mystery, which makes me wonder if, in the same circumstances, I would be tempted. If the murderer is clearly a psycho, which must be the case in The Killing, then some of the interest of the murder case is lost. There can be no question of someone "just snapping".

That said, I want to know who did it now, so I'll probably watch this series until the end, even though I won't be giving series two and three a go. It's well made - the Danes are clearly good at this sort of stuff. Sarah Lund is a charismatic lead, and I'm mildly interested in what happens to her when her petulant Swedish boyfriend ditches her, which is surely only a question of time (Swedes are rarely good news in Danish series, it seems). Will sparks fly between her and her new Dirty Harryish colleague? Or maybe the smooth politician is, for once, a good guy who's in with a chance?

But there are limits to my interest. If Lund's fate is undecided at the end of the series, I'll not sit through another case as gruelling as this just to know what happens to her. Her sweaters really are nice, though.            

onsdag 17 september 2014

I fancy a villain, who's played by an actor, who also plays...

Unit One, then, aka Mordkommissionen, aka Rejseholdet. I'm not going to blog at length about this series, as I suspect that not many outside of Scandinavia have seen it, and as it's nearly fifteen years old, even those who know it might not remember it well. However, I see that it's available on English DVD and can highly recommend it. I'm not usually that wild about police procedurals, but this had me hooked - and not only because of the cute coppers. 

Unit One can serve as a starting point, though, for some thoughts on a state of mind I'm afflicted by all too often. I call it the "I danced with a man who danced with a girl" syndrome, after the song about the society girl who was in raptures because she'd danced with a man, who danced with a girl, who danced with the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VIII). Briefly, this syndrome entails warming to  - or even fancying - characters whom you might not otherwise have noticed, because they happen to be played by the same actor who has succesfully played your favourite character elsewhere. In my case, the favourite character in question is invariably a villain.

Taking the first step towards this odd sort of behaviour is common enough. Here another syndrome comes into play, the Lucky Luke audience syndrome, which I think I've mentioned before. In one Lucky Luke album, a group of players tours the Wild West with a lurid melodrama called The White Knight. The audiences in the small towns they visit always mix up fact and fiction, treating the hero of the play as a hero in real life while cold-shouldering the villain actor ("child-murderers don't get served here", one barman tells him). As it turns out, if I remember rightly, all the players are crooks. The point is, we all know the Lucky Luke audience approach is idiotic and unsophisticated but, however hard you try to tell yourself that a well-played character and his/her actor are completely separate persons, it's difficult to make the distinction completely. I mean, they look the same, they sound the same... I for one, having other tastes than Wild West audiences, always feel more warmly towards an actor after he's made a particularly good job of playing a villain. It can lead to some seriously silly behaviour - as when I watch an interview with an actor gushing "oooh, he's so nice", when my interest in him rests on him playing a character who's not nice. Strangely enough, I want villain actors to be perfect darlings off-stage, and am disappointed if the opposite is in any way hinted (that doesn't happen often: villain actors are for the most part character actors, who know how to behave). Daft as the LLA syndrome is, I think it's OK to indulge in it as long as the effects are benign. When you find that you don't like an able actor just because he/she's played a character you don't approve of, that's when you should rein in and give yourself a talking-to.

While the equating of a character with an actor is fairly widespread, I wonder how many people are crazy enough to take it a step further, like I do, and extend extra sympathy towards other characters played by the same actors who play my villain fancies. This behaviour was particularly marked during my Bulstrode phase, when most characters played by the late Peter Jeffrey (well, he was the definitive Bulstrode) could count on my support. Of course The Grand Turk would have deserved to win in The Adventures of Baron von Münchhausen. What was Emma Peel thinking of, honey-trapping Prendergast? She was asking for a good scare, the cow. As for the lecherous politician Eric in Yes, Minister - well, all I can say is, I understood "the shady lady from Argentina" perfectly.

In the case of Unit One, Thomas la Cour (I know), played by Lars Brygmann, and Allan Fischer, played by Mads Mikkelsen, are very likeable and attractive characters. I don't think I would have been half as interested in them, though, if the actors who play them wouldn't have gone on to play ace villains. Similarly, though Fischer is the funny one, I prefer the squirrel-eyed la Cour, simply because Brygmann played Höxenhaven, who trumps Mikkelsen's Bond villain in the baddie stakes. Yep, it's a bit weird. But translate the situation to heroes, and at least some people might recognise the syndrome. Is it inconceivable that you would watch a film simply because "Matthew" or "Mr Darcy" was in it - and then root for his character?          

måndag 8 september 2014

On a Beauman bender

I'm a bit impressed by my 2013 and 2012 selves. How did I manage to produce 3 blog posts in this, the cruellest month work-wise (or at least one of them)? September is survival month (as is October, for that matter), and that has its effect on TV and book consumption as well. I tend to stick with what I know I like, which means there's not much difference in my reading/TV watching pattern from one week to the next. And that in turn means fewer blogging themes.

This autumn has been extreme, though. TV-wise, I'm completely hooked on a Danish series from 2000 called Rejseholdet in its original language (no, me neither), Mordkommissionen (The Murder Squad) in Swedish and Unit One in English, and I watch little else. More of this at another time, I expect: suffice to say, for now, that it features both Lars "Höx" Brygmann and Mads Mikkelsen, playing - as it happens - perfectly decent coppers. Book-wise, I'm reading through the back catalogue of Sally Beauman. Well, when someone writes a trilogy, it makes sense to read all the books in a row, right?

I have to confess, though it really is her "early work", that I still like Destiny and Dark Angel best. Beauman is a master storyteller, and the epic family saga is the ideal showcase for her. The Language of Love is also a family saga, but it is shorter than the early novels and considerably more melancholy, as the focus of the story is a grim tragedy (far worse than the admittedly bloody end of Shawcross in Dark Angel: honestly, even I, villain-lover that I am, thought he had it coming). The ending, though not suicide-inducing, does not have the same uplift as Destiny's and Dark Angel's either. The Language of Love feels like an attempt by Beauman to move upmarket and show she can do more than just feelgood stuff (not that everything is peaches and cream in the early novels). I must admit I prefer cheaper markets.

The Lovers and Liars trilogy from the 90s, by contrast, feels like a move downmarket compared to Beauman's two first novels. These books are a mixture of romance and thriller, and the genres do not gel a hundred per cent. The first novel, called Lovers and Liars (I wonder who thinks of Beauman's titles? They sound a bit publisher-fabricated) centres on a supposed sex scandal, which is a passably juicy theme, but novel two, Danger Zones, introduces plot-lines about drugs and a disturbed youth who absconds with impressionable adolescent girls - not that fun, in fact. Novel three, Sextet, starts promisingly, though, as it's set in the world of film.

The common denominator in these books, aside from the thrillerish tone, are the protagonists, journalist Genevieve "Gini" Hunter and photographer Pascal Lamartine. These ex-lovers meet up after fifteen years to work on a story in novel one. Does the old love linger? Wanna bet? A complication in the form of features editor Rowland McGuire, who is an almost ludicrous compilation of supposedly attractive male qualities, appears in novel two, where Gini's friend Lindsay also starts to play a larger part in proceedings. Sextet seems to focus more on Lindsay than on Gini so far, which is good news, as Lindsay is the more likeable character. A fashion editor, she is warm, rueful and not as full of her own importance as Gini, Pascal and occasionally Rowland. These three share a belief in journalism - and in Pascal's case, photography - as something that can make the world a better place. I'm not sure I don't find idealistic hacks more of a pain than the cynical just-looking-for-a-good-story ones. The idealists are almost as ready to print dirt about someone, only they will also moralise about their victims in a way the cynics don't. Granted, though, that once in a while an idealist can be made to stay his or her hand when a cynic would push ruthlessly on.

So far, I remain somewhat unconvinced by the trilogy's thriller element - yes, there are exciting scenes, but thriller plots aren't what Beauman does best. The solutions to the mysteries in Lovers and Liars felt a bit throwaway, when you thought you'd get a well-reasoned explanation of various intrigues. At the end, it almost became a conspiracy theory thriller. I prefer Beauman's epic tales - which doesn't mean I don't enjoy the Lovers and Liars trilogy very much. But next time I read a Beauman, I hope it's a family saga - and a not too sad one.

tisdag 26 augusti 2014

The continuing problems with Christie adaptations

I've previously mentioned that Agatha Christie's books are hard to film. I still hold to that, but at the same time I must admit to having seen enough good adaptations of Christie novels by now to know that it is doable. For years, I've avoided buying Poirot box sets (with David Suchet as the detective), because I've seen some of these films on TV and found them boring. I don't even think I managed to get through Murder in Mesopotamia. However, after stumbling across quite watchable adaptations of Five Little Pigs and The Hollow (the latter on a long plane journey), and as I was curious about how the last Poirot adventure Curtain would be handled, I resolved to give the series another try. I bought the last box set in the series which included Curtain, and was satisfied by the latest films. After that, I've carefully worked my way backwards, assuming that the really sleep-inducing adaptations are among the early Poirots. There are several good films here, but I haven't been convinced by all of them. Whether early or late, the Poirot series remains a mixed bag.

David Suchet is of course as good a Poirot as one could wish for - that the character seems a little shallow sometimes is hardly his fault. But these adaptations have to walk the same tightrope as the latest Miss Marple adaptations: if you stay too close to the books, a plot that works well in a novel can become staid and static on screen; if you depart too much from the book, Christie fans (like me) will ask in disgust why you didn't just pen an episode of Midsomer Murders instead of foisting your own plot and characters unto a Christie story.

I can take rather a lot of tinkering with Christie's plots nowadays as I've seen how inert some faithful adaptations are. So where to draw the line? If the inspiration is a short story or a series of short stories (As in the Marple mystery Greenshaw's Folly and the Poirot film The Labours of Hercules), I'm inclined to be very magnanimous and see the film as something inspired by rather than based on Christie's work. I didn't mind the added twist in The Big Four either, as it was so very Christie-like. The problem starts when there is a perfectly serviceable coherent plot in one of her novels, and the adapter chooses to completely ignore it in favour of some lurid tale of his/her own.

There are some big offenders of this kind in the Miss Marple series. I've mentioned The Secret of Chimney's before; apart from that, Murder is Easy and Why Didn't They Ask Evans are the most glaring examples. The three novels have one thing in common: they're not Miss Marple novels. The insertion of Miss Marple isn't the problem in any of these cases, though. In Murder is Easy, it is perfectly credible that a worried old lady on a train should talk to Miss Marple (rather than a young ex-copper), and there's fun to be hand in Evans when Frankie's dismay at Miss Marple's meddling in her an Bobby's detective game becomes all too clear. No, the problem with Murder is Easy and Why Didn't They Ask Evans is that the films veer spectacularly off course plot-wise.

Admittedly, Murder is Easy is a book which has aged badly. The solid-oak hero and his gold-digging love interest aren't a very attractive couple; I gave a bit of a gasp when it was hinted that Superintendent Battle was actually going to book the entertainingly affected antique dealer Ellsworthy (and not for the silly black masses, I bet); last but not least, I can't be the only one who finds the bare-faced snobbery in the treatment of self-made man Lord Whitfield objectionable. But for all that, the main storyline is neat. There was no reason at all to change it in favour of a melodramatic incest story. Moreover, many of the characters were unrecognisable and some weren't included at all. There was no Ellsworthy, and, even more serious, no Lord Whitfield, though some of his characteristics had been given to Major Horton. Talk about Hamlet without the Prince. As for Why Didn't They Ask Evans, the book's a charming caper, which could very well have been adapted as it was without muddying the waters with a new outlandish back-story for the villains. It's a strange piece: up until Frankie arrives at the Bassington-ffrenches' place, the adaptation is straight-forward enough, then everything changes. A shame, and a good cast wasted.         

My rule of thumb to Christie adapters would be: don't change the who, don't change the why and don't change the how. Otherwise, I can allow for quite a lot of jiggering with the plot and adding of characters. Sometimes, when I know a book well, a new twist can even be welcome. I accepted the many changes in the Poirot mystery Cards on The Table like a lamb, though I doubt Christie would have approved of some of them. On the other hand, I thought they went too far in Appointment With Death, where the murder motive is changed, the murderer is unrecognisable and where there is suddenly an accomplice as well, which ruins one of the novel's happy endings.

Much hinges on the quality of the scriptwriting, of course. Nick Dear, who wrote the screenplay to the Amanda Root adaptation of Persuasion and whose play Power I once saw in London and still bore my acquaintances by praising, is a safe bet where Poirot adaptations are concerned, as is Sherlock and Doctor Who veteran Mark "Mycroft" Gatiss. Otherwise, Christie adaptations remain a bit of a gamble. I'll probably be buying more Poirot, though: I can't help wondering how Hickory Dickory Dock turned out.

torsdag 14 augusti 2014

The return of Bridget

Weight: who's counting? Number of tight jeans: approx. 12, number of ultra-synthetic ice-cream lollies eaten so far: 0 (ha!), number of ice-cream lollies will have eaten before bed-time: 2 (bad), number of vaguely Höx-like cute men in Borgen series three: 1, number of vaguely Höx-like cute men with any interest in women whatsoever: 0 (huh).

Right. Must blog about newest Bridget Jones book Mad about The Boy as have not blogged for ages, also as owe duty to readers who have heard about it but been scared off by bad reviews. Must stress readability of book, preferably moving on to philosophical discussion about whether people really change or (like Bridget) stay exactly the same whether thirty-three or fifty-one. Hmmm. Maybe I'll just have one ice cream first.

Yes, Bridget's back, and she's instantly recognisable: same accident-proneness, same staccato diary style (which is v. catching). Many reviewers seemed to think that she was a little too recognisable. After all, the Bridget in Mad About the Boy is fifty-one years old. After so many years, two kids and a traumatising bereavement, shouldn't she have, well, matured a little?

I can see their point to some extent. The story-line where Bridget is writing a modern screenplay adaptation of Hedda Gabler called Wine Leaves in His Hair while not knowing how the play's spelled (she calls it Hedda Gabbler) nor that it was written by Ibsen (she thinks it was Chekhov) is pretty silly. If she knows the plot and the line about wine leaves, it stands to reason that she should know other basic facts - and besides, would her first step before writing a screenplay not be to google the play? Otherwise, though, I'm OK with Bridget's bumblingness. One, I really don't think people change that much: if you're bumbling at thirty-three, chances are you'll still be at it twenty years later, though you might be able to hide it better. Two, the starting point of the Bridget diaries is that they record what she actually does think and feel at a given time, rather than reflecting the more sophisticated version of herself that she would like others to see. Your immediate reaction to Twitter followers (or lack of them), dating problems or school mums who seem too good to be true may well be childish whatever your age. Only, these reactions are usually kept to yourself. Bridget's diaries are completely uncensored, and that's why she can come across as a bit of a dope. You identify with her, while at the same time feeling a bit superior ("well, I'm not quite as ditzy as that at any rate") which makes for a very pleasing reading experience.

I don't think Helen Fielding has lost her sparkle: I wolfed down the novel in just a few days. Once I even read it while breakfasting, instead of the morning papers, which normally never happens (books are simply not designed for breakfast). Fielding's light touch is as enjoyable as ever and yes, with time, this reader - like Bridget - got over the fact that Fielding has killed off Mark Darcy in order to involve Bridget in new dating scenarios. The set-up reminded me a little of the killing-off of Matthew in Downton: although that was due to the defection of Stevens, it has had the same effect on Lady Mary's love life as Mark Darcy's untimely demise (eventually) has on Bridget's. In both cases, killing the poor girls' Mr Right was the only way they'd ever be made to look at another man. I half expected Bridget to see the parallel and mope in consequence (she's a Matthew fan), but no, she seems to have lived through the Christmas special of 2012 unscathed.

There's a welcome return of characters from the other Bridget books, including Daniel Cleaver who, I'm pleased to report, was eventually reconciled to Mark. There are heart-warming references to events and exchanges in the Bridget Jones films: here's one author who's so fine with the film adaptations of her books that she's actually made them part of book Bridget's universe. All right, she had a hand with the screenplays, but even so - that's not an attitude you see every day.

What's not to like? Mad About the Boy is the perfect read if, like me, you're back at work after the holidays and need a pick-me-up in novel form. This is probably the last we see of Bridget, but I hope Fielding comes up with a new beguiling franchise soon. What happened to the (admittedly somewhat too perfect) Olivia Joules?

torsdag 31 juli 2014

High-brow reading that pays dividends

When post-holiday depression hits you even before the summer holiday is over, you know you’re in trouble. Let’s see if I can ward it off with some blogging on further summer reading (nothing much happens on the TV front in summer). I’ve managed one single Ambitious Book Project among all the self-indulgence reading this summer: The Stranger’s Child, by Alan Hollinghurst.

As I’ve argued before, summer is not an ideal time to take on something ambitious in the way of reading. In the case of The Stranger’s Child, though, it worked pretty well. I don’t think it would have been ideal to read it in half-hour-sized chunks during lunch hours, plus a page or two on the bus. Unhurried reading sprawled on the bed seemed the right way to consume it; granted, autumn showers outside would have been preferable to sweltering heat, but when do you have hours of uninterrupted reading time in the autumn? It’s an elegant and beautifully written novel, as well as enjoyable. But it is high-brow. Once more, as when I watched Parade’s End, I felt a bit like an uncultured lout. But at least this time, I was a lout who appreciated the high-brow product in question in my own caveman-like way.

Many of  the best classics work on two levels: one for the unsophisticated reader/audience who simply wants a straightforward story – for instance, when you’re a child and encounter the stories in question for the first time – and one for the reader who wants a little more. I first came across David Copperfield when my mother read an abridged version to me: I was eleven or twelve at the time. During this reading, I never doubted that Micawber was a good egg, and I was scared of Uriah. When I read the complete novel later, I realised the plot and characters were not as clear-cut as they appeared (I suspect, however, that Dickens would have approved more of my child-self’s judgement of the characters than my present one). Since becoming a grown-up, I thought I was well able to find hidden nuances in a novel and read it on a fairly sophisticated level. And so it was a little troubling when I found myself reading The Stranger’s Child very much as if I were a child myself, taking everything at face value.

On face value, the novel starts like a classic country-house novel. In 1913, George Sawle brings home his university friend and secret lover Cecil Valance, eldest son of a fairly newly-created aristocratic family, for a summer visit. Cecil writes poetry and George’s sixteen-year old sister, Daphne, is set on falling in love with him. Naturally she knows nothing of his affair with her brother. The two first parts of the novel are set thirteen years apart, but they both concern the interactions between the Sawle and Valance families. When the novel skips forward forty-one years to 1967, and concentrates on two young men who only tangentially have anything to do with the Sawles and Valances, I for one felt a little disorientated at first. The story moves back to these families eventually, though, only now they are seen from an outsider perspective. Later, in 1980, one of the young men – Paul Bryant – attempts to write a biography of Cecil, but he finds it uphill work to get anything out of the surviving witnesses, including Daphne. The only one forthcoming is the indiscreet George.

Favourable reviews of The Stranger’s Child, cited at the front of the book, concentrate on such matters as the passing of time and the nature of memory. These abstract themes, you feel, are meant to be more important than the plot/character part of the story; many of the most dramatic events happen off-stage. So when I say that I felt for Paul in his tribulations as (admittedly nosy) biographer – social awkwardness is a trait that immediately elicits sympathy if you’ve ever felt socially awkward yourself – and that, as a consequence, I lost much of the sisterly sympathy I’d previously stored up for Daphne, I’m at the same time aware of somehow missing the point. This is not the kind of novel where you should really spend much time debating whether you like a certain character or not. That said, the novel works for us plot/character nuts too, and the author himself seems disposed to think kindly and tolerantly of his characters, which for me is a big plus. For instance, Paul – in spite of not being such an innocent abroad as he seems – does rather better than expected, and a story of a secondary character’s unrequited love that petered out in the book’s first part is touchingly wound up in the last part.

In other words, if you’d like to read something in the Booker Prize league but not be weighed down by language experiments or dismal content, this is a good bet. But be prepared, if you find yourself discussing it afterwards, that observations like “isn’t that Dudley a perfect pain” could cause a few raised eyebrows.

fredag 18 juli 2014

Middle-class (female) morality

Alfred Doolittle, Eliza’s feckless father, is very scathing about “middle-class morality” in Pygmalion (and in My Fair Lady, which actually is better). I don’t have any problems with it myself: as moralities go, the middle-class one is pretty reasonable, though eulogies on the rewards of hard work aren’t always easy to relate to. However, after having spent a great deal of time reading popular fiction set in an affluent and predominately female environment, I’m starting to feel a little Doolittleish. What gets my goat is when middle-class women blithely dismiss aspects of life that contribute to making their own lives – and that of a great deal of other people – comfortable. There’s a hint of Mrs Merdle, the financier’s wife in Little Dorrit who wishes we could all live like savages, about it.

Lately, I’ve read Jenny Colgan’s Meet Me at the Cupcake Café and Gill Hornby’s The Hive, and I’m now in the middle of Lovers by Judith Krantz (in my defence, these are my summer holidays, and I bought it at a book stand during a week in London for 50 pence). They are three wildly different novels by three wildly different authors, but they have some things in common. They’re within the realms of popular fiction, and from a female viewpoint. Cupcake Café and The Hive both focus on a female-dominated group of people. Here, you find again the old opinions on what is good and bad in this world which I recognise from a hundred and one gentle romantic films.

Creativity is good. Consequently, cooking and baking are good things, because there you actually make something. Farming is also a good thing, in its down-to-earth naturalness. Children are quite simply the best thing ever. Bad things are: City types and City jobs; impersonal environments that lack that special warm, lived-in, quirky woman’s touch; too much focus on your career (and to be fair, this is frowned upon in men and women alike).  

Cases in point: the heroine in Cupcafe Café, Izzy, is made redundant from her admin job in the City where she spent an inordinate amount of time updating her Facebook status, and uses the opportunity to start the eponymous café. The bastard on-off boyfriend whom her friends are trying to convince her to get rid of is a City type – a property developer, no less. Izzy’s employee, Pearl, has an adorable toddler whom she tries to bring up more or less single-handedly and over whom all of the book’s women swoon. A children’s party at the café where the little mites learn to bake is one of the set pieces. The novel also contains some hand-wringing over beastly “gentrification” of neighbourhoods (honestly, don’t get me started on that one). Izzy’s new love interest is a banker – wow, innovation! – but he is an adviser for a local branch, always tousled and disorganised because he’s bringing up his little brother after their parents died in a car accident. So that’s all right then.

In The Hive, one of the characters you are supposed to like, Georgina aka Georgie, gives up a high-flying career as a lawyer to marry a farmer and start a large family. She’s as happy as Larry, and is always relieved to find herself pregnant yet again: like Rachel, another sort-of-goodie, she despises “me-time”. Georgie once had an au-pair, but her immaculate housework split up the family unit; now, the children muck in (whopee – because as a kid, you simply love chores, don’t you?), and everything is chaotic but lovely. Oh, and of course Georgie still gets plenty of sex from her manly farmer husband. When Rachel looks after Georgie’s good-natured, quietly sleeping toddler for one afternoon, she muses on “what a positive thing it was to have a little one around the place; how they imprinted their wholesome routine upon the days of everyone around them […] Where did it come from, this idea that it was small children who killed your fun and tied you down?” Hold on – that must be satire, right?

I feel I’m being a bit unfair, because I enjoyed both The Hive and Cupcake Café very much. And I realise that the world must be peopled, and that it’s only fair to depict bringing up children as something else than a hard slog once in a while – there are contented housewives out there, why deny it? But it does get a bit cloying if you’re not into all that earth-mother stuff.

However, there are upsides to middle-class female morality. This is where Lovers comes in (where there is, incidentally, a City-type villain, a bitch whose bitchiness stems from her mother’s neglect, and a benevolent matriarch who “over-engages” in her twins’ upbringing although she has a full-time nanny). A good old-fashioned bonkbuster, published in the 1990s, the good characters in it nevertheless adhere to a moral code. No goodie ever uses sex as a weapon for personal gain or in order to do someone down. As one character says, defending her polygamous past: “I never slept with a man I didn’t genuinely like. I never slept with a man to get anything out of it but pleasure. I never deceived them.” And after you’ve found your great love, it goes without saying that there’s no more sleeping around. This sense of fair play is a great source of relief in a novel like this, because then  you know that the characters you should root for – in spite of being miles more attractive than most people, including yourself – will not abuse their power and do something you’d find hard to forgive them.

I recently read an article lambasting the “good girl” ethos which I found curiously unconvincing. I don’t mind good girls, really. If only they could stop chirping about their sprogs all the time, enjoy the perks of modern urban life without guilt – and maybe give that City guy a break.

onsdag 2 juli 2014

English high society and French spies

Sally Beauman once again proved a hard act to follow, but at least two novels have kept me well entertained since I regretfully finished Dark Angel. First out was The New Countess, the third and final part of Fay Weldon's "Love and Inheritance" trilogy. My expectations from when I started the the first book, Habits of the House, have been pretty much fulfilled: the three books are a light-hearted, witty, gossipy read set in Edwardian high society, with occasional trips downstairs to the servants' hall. But it lacks the heart-warming quality of the best Upstairs Downstairs episodes: the tone is reminiscent of the more satirical episodes of that series. James's friend Bunny's appalling country-house circle of friends come to mind. True, the Earl of Dilberne and his family shape up a bit after getting off to a bad start in Habits of The House, where they begin the book by snubbing their long-suffering (and powerful) financial advisor. But they don't engage your sympathy the way, say, Richard Bellamy, Hazel or Georgina do in Upstairs Downstairs.

A comparison with Downton Abbey doesn't present itself in the same way because its brief is somewhat different: the good-natured Fellowes wants to give each and every one of his regular characters a fair shake, and has never claimed for one moment to be of a satirical frame of mind. Upstairs Downstairs is closer to the "Love and Inheritance" trilogy in tone, but it digs deeper, and the characters remain more central to the story than any point made about the occasional rumness of master-servant relationships. In fact, Hazel Bellamy's touching speech about there being two families living at Eaton Place actually trumps Downton when it comes to all-in-this-together optimism. Picture any Crawley, even the Earl of Grantham at his most blue-eyed, likening their servants to a family! It would be a very dysfunctional family indeed.

Getting back to "Love and Inheritance", the closest we get to a likeable upstairs character is the heiress Minnie O'Brien (!) who ends up marrying the Earl's son Arthur. She is, for the most part, sweet-natured. As for the Dilbernes (or Hedleighs, to use their family name) themselves, they're not mean, exactly, just very selfish. They, and Minnie for that matter, seem to change their minds about each other a lot just to facilitate some witty phrase. One moment Countess Isobel likes her daughter-in-law and sees why she's upset with Arthur; a little later she doesn't understand why Minnie is making a fuss and is wondering of Arthur wouldn't be better off without her. These alterations of mood happen quite often, and some characters - Anthony Robin "Redbreast" springs to mind - change their leopard's spots completely. As for the downstairs characters, they remain little more than amusing sketches. So, not quite Upstairs Downstairs in book form, then, but the three novels (the middle one, Long Live the King, is the weakest in my view as it introduces the Earl's rather dull niece Adela) are still satisfyingly fun and frothy.

Robert Harris's historical spy thriller about the Dreyfus affair, An Officer and A Spy, is a different book altogether - but there again, I didn't feel passionately for the protagonist. In fact, I quite disliked Georges Picquart at first, and I'm not even sure I like him now after I've finished the book. It doesn't matter, though, as there is no disputing the rightness of his cause. I'm ashamed to say I had no idea the Dreyfus affair was this bad: suspicious as I am of miner-hugging French writers, the assumption had crossed my mind that it was all little more than a blunder, and that Zola used it as a stick to beat the establishment with. Not so. Dreyfus was victim first of a scandalous framing, then of an equally scandalous cover-up of the framing. Zola wasn't merely being a revolutionary show-off when he defended him: he was right, and he took a personal risk doing so. However, it is Picquart, who discovers the evidence of Dreyfus's innocence quite by chance while going after the real spy, and then refuses to let things rest in order to save the French military's face - and is made to suffer for it - who is the real hero of the tale.

But likeable? I dunno. Any character who starts out by describing David's painting of Napoleon crossing the Alps as an "atrocious piece of Imperial kitsch" has uphill work when it comes to gaining my sympathy. Moreover, Picquart stems from Alsace (as I suppose I must call it), but his family elected to remain French in 1870 and so were turfed out. He is hostile to Germans as a consequence, and he's not wild about Jews either, whose patriotism he suspects. His prejudices are of his time and not overdone by Harris. Mostly, historical prejudices are either caricatured (in "bad" characters) or non-existent (in "good" characters) in historical fiction, and I like the fact that this author tells it like it is. Nevertheless, Picquart's icy disdainfulness is trying. Frankly, he's a bit of a prig, and his snooping on the German military attaché Schwartzkoppen's (admittedly fascinating) love life did little to endear him to me.

Still, Picquart has his good points, quite apart from his honesty. Above all, Harris endows him with the characteristics necessary for a good narrator: a keen sense of observation and occasional flashes of humour. A straight man in more ways than one, he nevertheless dutifully takes notice of the personal attractions of male characters he meets, for the benefit of us men-fancying readers. A surprising number of his friends and foes are handsome; Schwartzkoppen sounds a real peach, which would explain his, er, universal appeal.

Above all, the story is a cracking read, and a good example of how historical research should be used in a novel: not in clunky look-how-well-read-I-am pieces of exposition, but as a means of enlivening the narrative with colourful detail. Neither Picquart, nor the unfortunate Dreyfus - whose lack of charisma is part of his tragedy - would make the ideal dinner guest. But they are, or rather were, honourable men, and this book is a fine tribute to them.                      

onsdag 18 juni 2014

The Höxenhaven effect

As I've briefly mentioned before, I've been catching up - belatedly - with one of those hit Scandinavian TV series which have found an audience outside Scandinavia: the Danish political drama Borgen (sometimes translated as The Fortress - the title refers to Christiansborg, where the Danish government works). I've been holding back from testing the said Scandinavian TV series, especially the crime ones, as I've suspected them of being too gloomy for my taste. The reason I hesitated over Borgen was its theme: it depicts a female prime minister facing the challenges of her office. Well, we've seen all that before, haven't we? When a strong male political figure - or, for that matter, business leader - takes centre stage, TV dramas and films focus on the politics or business respectively, whereas when it's a woman, there must needs be scene after scene showing how her tough job takes its toll on her family life. I'm pretty sick of it. How many times do we see, for instance, a male fictional President of the USA being told by his wife and kids that he is "never at home"? Not that often: they know what to expect from the leader of the free world. Why should it be so different for a woman?

Borgen does enter more into its protagonists' personal lives than for instance The West Wing, a series which it resembles in some ways, but it's not as predictable as I feared. Birgitte Nyborg (Sidse Babett Knudsen), the main character of the series, starts out as the head of a slightly left-of-centre party which is respectable but nowhere near as big as the main parties to left and right. She's not quite a nobody, but close enough. Then a series of events conspire to discredit the leaders of the two largest parties, and it falls to Birgitte - whose frank, honest image has won the voters' hearts - to form Denmark's new government, with herself at its head. The wheeling and dealing of the first episodes is almost the best part of the two series I've watched so far (there is a third which I haven't got hold of yet), but the rest is thrilling too. Though you may not always agree with Birgitte Nyborg's policies (well, I didn't, anyway), she is such a strong character, likeable even in her failings, and with a statesmanlike capacity for listening and, if need be, changing her mind, that you root for her all the way - or nearly. Like Josiah Bartlet in The West Wing, Birgitte Nyborg is the kind of politician you dream of leading your country: true to her ideals, but tough-minded and no fool.

Yes, there are family issues, but they mostly concern Birgitte's relationship with her husband Philip. There are child-related storylines, true, but the children are for the most part stoic and seem to understand the demands of premiership better than Philip does. He's supportive at first but becomes increasingly fed up, especially when his own working life is affected. Even though he has a case, and it's not solely the question of the old "you're never at home" gripe, the viewer's sympathies remain firmly with Birgitte. For pity's sake, she's the prime minister. Her man should just accept it and shape up (and maybe shave off that woeful-looking beard).

What I didn't quite expect from a Scandinavian series were any villain sightings to speak of. Here, I have been unfairly prejudiced against the (almost) local produce. For lo and behold: I think Borgen may contain the Villain of the Year.

Let's be clear: I do not refer to the head villain of the series, Michael Laugesen, who gets an outing in almost every episode. Alas, he is consistently appalling, though played with skin-crawling perfection by Peter Mygind. Laugesen starts as the leader of the Labour Party (all party names in Borgen are made up: in Denmark, the Labour Party equivalent is really called the Social Democrats), and then goes on to become the chief editor of a tabloid. Here we get the unreconstructed macho, the career politician who fancies himself and the sleazy tabloid editor combined in one character, and it's not a pretty sight. Is this portrayal fair on any of these categories? Not really, but I was too busy wanting to smash Laugesen's head against a wall to care.

No, the villain gem is to be found among the bit-players - and it often is the bit-players who shine in this series. Step forward, devious leading Labour politician Troels Höxenhaven (Lars Brygmann), nicknamed "Höx". I was so caught up in willing Birgitte to power at the start of the series that the charms of Höx only dawned on me gradually. At first, I just had time to think "hm, the scrawny one's a bit of all right" and to feel a pleasant thrill when Höx swooped down on Laugesen's shoulders in a hypocritical gesture of friendship and support (having, as it comes clear afterwards, just delivered him up to the wolves). But by the time he (as Minister of Justice) jokingly quoted Richard Nixon when threatened with a bugging scandal, I was pretty much smitten, and when Laugesen published a book claiming - among other tittle-tattle - that Höx had homosexual leanings, I thought I knew exactly how that rumour started: "Did you know that odd Swedish woman fancies him rotten? He must be gay."

OK, so it turns out to be not entirely untrue. Big deal. Höx is at least married, which practically makes him John Wayne compared to the other fictional crushes I've had over the past two years or so. Now I come to think of it, not many of my straight villain crushes would - in some strange, parallel fictional universe - give me the time of day either. It's hard, a villain-lover's lot.

The main problem with Höx is that he doesn't stay the course. He's only in seven of the twenty episodes which constitute series one and two, and he won't be in series three at all. Moreover, his greatest moments of triumph (including the effect on the voters mentioned in the title: no, it's not just me!) occur when we, the audience, know that the seeds of his Castlereagh-like downfall have already been sown. Nevertheless: the way he secretly smirks after having just assured Birgitte that he's really sorry about the way his party leader's been behaving; the way he effortlessly manipulates the media; the way he trips up anyone standing between him and power, even giving Birgitte a run for her money; they can't take that away from me.

onsdag 4 juni 2014

The Musketeers - good, honest post-gym entertainment

On Mondays, I miss The Musketeers, which was finally aired in Sweden recently by one of our commercial channels (TV 4, Sweden's answer to ITV). Mondays is when I go to a gym session which - though on the "basic" level - is quite exhausting enough, thank you. The first working day of the week, followed by exercise: after that, all I want to do after wolfing down some supper is watch something on TV which is a) not too taxing on the brain b) not too demanding emotionally c) no more than an hour long, preferably less (it's depressing to have to go straight to bed after you've watched TV) and, of course, finally d) good fun. Currently I'm watching the Danish series Borgen, which is both brainy and engaging. But precisely for these reasons, it's not ideal post-gym viewing. Now, The Musketeers, on the other hand, fulfilled all the criterias above with ease.

I could guess by the English reviews that the series wouldn't be very faithful either to history or to Dumas, and I was right: it isn't. On the other hand, it's sometimes a little more ambitious than one would have expected. Some episodes, including the first one, were uncomplicated adventure yarns which could easily be viewed and appreciated by fans of, say, Merlin. Other episodes, though, aimed higher and were more grown-up. I preferred those containing high, political intrigue where both the heroic Treville and the devious Richelieu found themselves essentially on the same side, trying to preserve the interests of France. The Cardinal, however, was prepared to go much further and be much more ruthless in his pursuit of this aim. In the best moments of the series, the conflicts between the musketeers and the Cardinal were less good vs bad and more idealism vs cynicism. As a viewer, you generally thought Richelieu went too far, but you saw his point - and there lies the recipe (or one of them, at least) for succesful villainy.

The series made two wise decisions regarding Richelieu. One, they cast the always excellent Peter Capaldi as the Cardinal. Surely, he was born to play clever villains - and I say that who haven't even watched In the Thick of It. He will make a very intriguing Doctor (not a villain, but clever and with a dark side) in the next Doctor Who series. Two, the series depicted Richelieu not as someone who merely wants power for himself, but as someone who really cares for the future of France and of the monarchy. In the latest Three Musketeers film, by contrast, Richelieu was plotting to overthrow the king and take absolute power himself, which is ridiculous and completely unhistorical. What would be his title as supreme ruler? Lord Protector? President of the Free World? As a cardinal, he would naturally have no legitimate heirs, so how would the succession be managed? By voting - in 17th-century France? Unthinkable. No, Richelieu was always a loyal servant to the crown: even if he liked to boss His Majesty around, he had no intention of taking his place. By reflecting this, the series gives at least one nod to historical reality. The fictional Richelieu is still a far cry from the real Richelieu, of course, but you can put up with an extra bit of musketeers vs Red Guard silliness from a show that takes its villain seriously.

The musketeers themselves are likeable enough, and there is a star turn from Tamla Kari as a sweet, plucky Constance. But you're rarely completely cut up if something goes a little awry. It will work itself out later on, and anyway, the Cardinal - and an admirable, if strangely un-blonde, Milady in the shape of Maimie McCoy - are still worth ten Arthoses, Porthoses and Aramises. Some things never change.                     

tisdag 27 maj 2014

Beards and bestsellers

This spring has been tough blog-wise. Mini-flus, colds, headaches, broadband installations and, I suppose, the odd moment of general laziness have had a sad effect on the number of entries written. As a case in point, it is not until now that I find myself ready to broach the subject of this year's Eurovision Song Contest which ended weeks back.

This was a satisfying Eurovision year. Not only did Sweden reach an honourable third place, I liked the winning song too. In some ways, it illustrates why I'm so fond of the contest. Forget cool, edgy music and the latest fancy trends. Instead, the winning song was a resoundly old-fashioned power ballad - belted out beautifully by a bearded drag queen.

Yes, I admit it, I was bemused by the beard. Drag acts are not that uncommon in the Swedish qualifying heats for the competition: this year, we had a bouncy number where the guys' pins were definitely better-looking than mine (admittedly, not difficult). However, these cross-dressers tend to look as fetching and feminine as possible, which made me think that this was partly the point. A beard kind of spoils the womanly effect. Still, what do I know: doubtless my confusion is what the Dowager Countess would call "provincial". And the beard proved a useful diversion. If, say, the svelte Spanish lady singer would have competed with a Bond anthem-style ballad and won, the critics would have been up in arms the next day about the continuing uncoolness of Eurovision. As it was, there was benign talk of a "victory for tolerance". Even hostile reactions tended to center on the beard to such a degree that the little detail of the dress was quite overlooked. We got the absurd situation of protesters shaving off their beards - a symbol of manliness - in order to look less like a drag queen. The Austrian singer Conchita Wurst (stage name, naturally - I'm not sure Wurst was good idea) must be thinking: "Result!".

Moving on, in a not very smooth transition, from singing queens to femmes fatales. I've been scandalously unadventurous on the book front lately. Hardly had I finished Destiny than I ordered and started reading yet another of Sally Beauman's novels. I did try something else by another author at first - an Edwardian whodunnit awash with noblemen but disappointingly short of women for them to squabble over - but I kept longing to get back to well-written family-saga land. Consequently, I'm now well into Beauman's Dark Angel. I don't like it quite as much as Destiny, because I have predictable problems with the dark angel in question and above-mentioned femme fatale, Constance Shawcross. The family on which she preys is so essentially likeable - if flawed - that I just wish Constance would snap out of her bitterness concerning her truly disgusting father's demise (he may have been dispatched by one of the family members - but then again maybe not) and get on with life without causing too much unnecessary harm. On the other hand, that wouldn't make much of a novel, would it? Even as I wince while anticipating Constance's next move, I keep turning the pages. Without doubt, Beauman is this year's find.                  

torsdag 8 maj 2014

The daftness of lovers

Well, what do you know. There actually is such a thing as a well-written novel following a traditional blockbuster formula. I had almost given up hope. I love sumptuous rags-to-riches mini-series on TV in the A Woman of Substance mould, but when I give the book equivalents - or source material - for this kind of drama a try, the pedestrian prose is often a let-down. Glamour seems easier to convey on a TV screen than on paper. But Sally Beauman's Destiny ticks the right blockbuster boxes, is dripping with glamour, and works perfectly as a novel.

I'm still a little surprised that Beauman has written something that might be described as a romantic novel. She is the author of Rebecca's Tale, which is a book very much in the "a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle" vein. But in Destiny we have star-crossed lovers, no less, doing their best to keep the flame alive, even when things look hopeless for them and other people are being made miserable by their inability to leave their memories of their love behind.

As a matter of fact, there's a perfectly good reason why the book's hero - multimillionaire jeweller Edouard de Chavigny - and its heroine - Hélène Craig, an actress from a dirt-poor background with star quality - should not be together. (Yes, I did tell you, blockbuster!) Though they don't know it, they are a little too closely related for comfort. Not the full Oedipus, mind you, but still close enough to make a union legally and biologically risky. However, that is not the reason - so far - that they haven't made a match of it. Instead, their split hinges on the hard-to-understand behaviour of the heroine, who makes a run for it because she thinks she is pregnant by another man (a previous attachment, now dead). And then the hero, when he finds out where she's gone to, far from confronting her, watches her career from a morose distance. Oh, and the kid seems to be his after all (not that the prospective mum twigs this - honestly, can she count?). And Hélène easily confesses about her pregnancy to a man she doesn't love, instead of staying put and telling all to man she does love. Much heartbreak follows, far from all of it Hélène's and Edouard's. Come on, you people, get your act together!

If the course of true love never runs smooth, it is often, in the world of fiction, because of the stupidity of the lovers themselves. Perhaps I place too much reliance on telling the truth - full confessions may not always be a good plan: it didn't work for Tess of the d'Urbervilles - but surely, a lot of love stories would reach their conclusion a lot quicker if the love birds just talked to each other. But no - instead they grab any excuse to self-sacrifice and run away from love. It's as if they relished being star-crossed. In how many romantic films does not one protagonist misinterpret the loved one's friendly break-up embrace with a soon-to-be-ex as a Big Betrayal? They're up and away, sobbing, to the nearest airport, instead of just asking their love: "Why did you hug X?" and getting the satisfying response: "Because we were just breaking up, so I could be with you".

Of course, the main reason fictional lovers behave like this is that there would be precious little plot in many a love story if they didn't. But it is a contrivance, and maybe one of the reasons why young lovers are often among the least interesting characters, even in a book, film or TV series where they are nominally the protagonists. You want them to get together, of course you do. But as long-suffering best friends, bitchy wannabe or ex-girlfriends of the hero, unhappy second-best "good men" for whom the heroine nearly settles (not to mention the villains!) etc. behave a lot less foolishly than the lovers, after a while one is tempted to side with the side characters. Let's hear it for the world's Mercutios.

torsdag 1 maj 2014

Totally made-up costume-drama intrigues - featuring Mr Selfridge (and more villains)

There is a series of humorous books (I’ve not read them, just seen them about, plus I’ve heard the film version highly talked of) about pirates, where each adventure in a more or less strained manner involves some real  historical event or character in the pirates’ derring-do. So we get, for instance, The Pirates! – in an Adventure with Napoleon. I enjoyed the second series of Mr Selfridge even more than the first one, but when it comes to its approach to history it feels rather like those pirate adventures. One real historical personage is set down in a completely fictional context, and you wonder how the series makers have got away with it. Is there no-one left of the Selfridge family who might disapprove? And why didn’t the creators of the series plump for an entirely fictionalised version of events, with a fictional gambling, chorus-girl-chasing but canny store owner to go with the rest of the fictional character crew? The more influence the fictional brigade of characters get on the storylines about Mr Selfridge and his also presumably based-on-fact family, the odder the effect becomes.

Never mind. Its’ fun, and exemplary advertising for the Selfridges store in London. Though the standards the series sets can be daunting. I paid a the store a visit last time I was in London a few weeks ago, and encountered a certain amount of quiet contempt – not directed at me personally, but at fat-bottomed girls generally who dared to enter the lingerie department hoping to find anything remotely glamorous. I left thinking, quite illogically, “I bet Mr Thackeray would have handled that a great deal better”.

Mr Thackeray – played by Cal Macaninch aka Mr Lang – is one of the new villains in the series, a classic Envious Colleague. As new head of the Women’s Fashion department, he resents at first Agnes, who has gone from shop girl to leading creative light but who struggles with her numerous new responsibilities, and then Henri who comes back to the store to help out in a senior, dangerously unspecified role. There’s not much depth to the character of Mr Thackeray, but I can readily sympathise with his irritation. I’ve never been able to warm to Agnes – sheer cattiness on my part, I expect – and in this series Henri is something of a trial as well with his constant sulkiness and Mysterious Past. They are a good choice of victims for a villain to vent his spleen on. The series writers (there are several, and good ones to, which is as well as from what I can see Andrew Davies takes very little part in proceedings nowadays) aren’t above giving him some plausible incentives for villainy, either, such as the good old “villain thinks the hero’s bad-mouthed him when in fact it’s someone else” scenario. I’ll be watching the development of Mr Lang – sorry Thackeray – with interest, but I predict some problems later on. His private life hasn’t been touched on yet, but will have to be at some point, and then the series writers will have to struggle to come up with something original in costume-drama terms. At least he is extremely unlikely to fall for Agnes.

Villain number two – yes, there are two villains here as well, just as in The Paradise! – is, entirely unpredictably, the husband of Lady Loxley who was so fortunately (for her) absent during the whole of series one. Far from being a poor Woosterish booby who’d been had by a clever chorus girl, as one would have thought, Lord Loxley turns out to be a decadent horror of a man. His wife has not been keeping her distance because she wanted time alone with her lovers – well, not entirely – but because she’s afraid of him. Pleasing dramatic consequences follow. Again, Lord Loxley is not the most subtle of villains, but as with The Paradise, you have a feeling that at least someone is trying. And the milky-white perfect complexion is a nice touch.

Mr Selfridge’s charisma remains a mystery to me, but other characters have developed nicely. For instance, there’s the touching friendship between accountant Mr Crabbe and head of Personnel Mr Grove, who’s made some bad romantic choices in the past and now has to live with them. Mr Grove’s ex-mistress Miss Mardle, who’s trying to learn to love again, is also a character one can care about. My favourite is Victor, not as interestingly social-climbing as in series one, but still sharper and more sardonic than the usual heroic love-interest fare (and yes, the manservant-like waiter costume helps). When Agnes or Henri – I forget which – refers to him as “a good man” my heart sank. This is what heroines call the admirer they feel guilty about not fancying. Surely, a catch like Victor deserves better. 

tisdag 15 april 2014

Country-house mysticism (huh?) and Upstairs Downstairs-inspired family saga (yay - I think)

Yes, I know, my blog posts on television have by far outnumbered the ones on books this year. But quite apart from the lengthy Downton debriefing, TV has been more satisfactory than my book choices in 2014, just like in 2013. My best reads so far have been rereads - the Thursday Next books by Jasper Fforde, for instance, about which I've already blogged in detail. I did manage to finish Affinity by Sarah Waters in the end, and it was worthwhile, but I'd still recommend newcomers to Waters to start with Fingersmith. Affinity took a much longer time to get going, and troublesome though the protagonists of Fingersmith could be, they were still more likeable - at least Sue was - than slippery Selina the medium and Margaret Prior, the main narrator of Affinity, who is frankly a bit of a moaner. What the two books have in common is a certain sharpness. Kindness is rare and, when it manifests itself, often exploited.

Maybe it was the contrast to the hard world of Waters that made me stick to Farundell by L.R. Fredericks until the end, although I was often impatient with it. At least the atmosphere was friendly, for the most part. Judging from the blurb text, you would have thought that here was the old Brideshead Revisited plot: lonely outsider falls in a big way for eccentric aristocratic family. In fact, Farundell is full of mystic references to out-of-body experiences, the Romans' worship of the Egyptian goddess Isis, and jungle tribes' initiation rites, not to mention a great deal of pseudo-deep babble about the nature of existence. Though it dutifully mentions "magic both black and white", the blurb doesn't really prepare the reader for all of this. What's more, the hero Paul can be trying and his love interest Sylvie even more so. It's the Estella syndrome - it's hard to warm to a girl whom the hero falls inexplicably, painfully in love with, as you're bound to wonder to a certain degree what the fuss is about. But the eccentric family, a few irritating quirks aside (such as a prejudice against Christianity which seems allied to their new-agey goings-on), are a sweet bunch, and you can see why Paul thinks of their sort-of country seat Farundell as a haven.

Last but not least, I've now just started reading Habits of the House, the first volume in a family saga trilogy called "Love and Inheritance" set in turn-of-the-century England and written by Fay Weldon. I know! It seems an unbeatable concept, especially when you bear in mind that Weldon, apart from being a celebrated writer, also wrote the screenplay for the first episode of the original Upstairs Downstairs, as well as for two or three more episodes. So it's not as if she's not tried her hand at this sort of thing before, and with considerable success. As my expectations were so high, it is maybe inevitable that I should be a little disappointed in the characters so far. Perhaps the territory has got a bit over-familiar even for me, because I feel myself ticking off the standard Edwardian costume drama/family saga characters in my head. Devoted upstairs couple from different social backgrounds - check. Handsome son who runs up debts and is a bit wild - check. Wilful, rebellious daughter who propagates women's rights - check. Disgruntled maid - check. Cheeky footman - check (and good-looking, of course - not that I mind that bit). And so on.        

I don't mind a certain stock character feel in this context, really - though I am heartily tired of rebellious suffragette daughters, it has to be said - but the question is whether you will care for this family and their staff in the end, as you certainly do in Upstairs Downstairs (and Downton, it goes without saying). Weldon's Upstairs Downstairs episodes were not the most heart-warming ones, though they were witty and well-written. Anyway, even if it turns out that Habits of the House doesn't exactly pull at the heart strings, it still promises to be good fun. And that is worth a lot.

söndag 30 mars 2014

The Paradise series two: here come the villains

Funny, I never thought I'd be sad to hear The Paradise would be discontinued. However, it picked itself up so considerably in its second series that it does seem a bit of a shame that the Beeb is axing it. Its viewer numbers apparently - and unfairly - dropped a little, from six to five million, but that's no disaster surely? Meanwhile Mr Selfridge on ITV did better and will be returning for a third series. I did read, though, that the average viewer numbers for series two were 6.4 million. That's not that much more than The Paradise. On average, I would have wished both series to have been rewarded with increasing viewer numbers, as they were both more ambitious second time around - and they'd both added some v for villain factor.

Finally, villains seem to be in again. After the cosy country-life drought (see Cranford), and the prestigious high-brow drama drought (see Parade's End), they're back. This return to traditional storytelling virtues - including classic plot ploys like the mischief-making villain - can only be applauded. Has the lesson finally been learned now? No more "anti-Downton" shows, please!

To start with The Paradise, the characters finally managed to get and hold on to a bit of depth this time around. Sadly, Patrick Malahide's Lord Glendenning has kicked the bucket, but in return his daughter Katherine's gone and married the sinister ex-soldier Tom Weston, after she was thrown over by Moray - an event she somehow seems to have managed to look like she threw him over. After a year, Moray, ousted from the store by Lord Glendenning, is recalled as manager by Katherine, who wants to find some way to get even. Weston isn't fooled by her "we just went separate ways" story and soon realises that her old love lingers (and gets in the way of her revenge plans). Not even an easy-going hubby would be pleased by this, and Weston is emphatically not an easy-going hubby. Meanwhile, Denise - whom no-one has even contemplated giving the boot - is working her way up the store ladder and is outshining her beau Moray at every turn, as the Westons are pleased to be able point out to him.

Weston is villain No. 1 - what you could call a villain pin-up. He's good-looking in a craggy sort of way, he has a fetching traumatic past, and Ben Daniels who plays him has earned the "and-slot" in the credits, reserved for actors whose characters stick out from the crowd that extra little bit. But there is also a villain No. 2: Moray wants to get back ownership over The Paradise, and so unwisely enters an alliance with another storekeeper, Mr Fenton. Fenton is a more traditional kind of villain: he has gold-rimmed spectacles and a slight stammer and sits in coaches a lot plotting away. We know he's bad news because he starts out trying to sabotage The Paradise, before hitting on an extremely elaborate plot by which Moray should make the Westons disappear simply by being a first-class pill. I'm not in any way denigrating villain pin-ups - they've done the villain-loving community a great service in later years by making baddie-fancying more of a mainstream pastime - but it is pleasant to encounter a good old-fashioned unglam plotter now and again, the kind of crook who in days gone by would have been played by Donald Pleasance. In this instance, Fenton is played by the always excellent Adrian Scarborough. He was the sweet butler in the new Upstairs Downstairs, but as Doctor Who fans already know, he can do bad guys just as well.

Now, of course it's not just because of the villains that The Paradise series two is an improvement on the last one. In fact, the most interesting characters besides the lovely Denise are Katherine and Clara, her erstwhile rivals (though Clara is now a chum). Sympathies and alliances extend across the good character-bad character border, which is always enriching for a drama. It's drearily predictable when all the good characters like each other and hate all the bad characters, and the bad characters hate them back and are either grumpily allied to fellow baddies or at each other's throats in order to show that they don't get on with anyone (and yes, I'm aware that this description fits just about every Dickens novel there is). Here, Weston sees Denise's potential; Moray feels sorry for the wretched Katherine (don't think that traumatic past makes her husband a soft-soap villain option: his marital warfare is borderline Gothic) and Clara, who has back-story scars of her own, feels a certain affinity to Weston, even if she stops short of wanting to sleep with him. As mentioned, Moray plots with Fenton, and Jonas, the one-armed intrigue-spinner who's sometimes a villain surrogate, sometimes a villain for real, plots confusedly with just about everyone. All in all, very enjoyable.

But, it has to be said, Mr Selfridge (which I see I'll have to save for a later post) is still better. And it's not as if I've actually fallen for Weston of Fenton. It's just nice when someone makes the effort to please the villain-loving part of the audience. Do try, try and try again, dear costume-drama makers. After all, Downton will finish one day, and then we will need replacement therapy more than ever - both on the story-telling and on the villain front.