lördag 30 december 2017

New Year’s resolution: to read more (or better) books

“Ooh, look, she’s reading a book, isn’t that nice”, a mother cooed to her toddler on the bus the other month, when same toddler was intrepid enough to take an interest in my reading self. It was a heartening comment as it shows how books (real ones made of paper) are still generally considered to be A Good Thing. At the same time, I felt a bit of a fraud. 2017 has not been a great reading year for me. Increasingly, I have been so little engaged in the book I’ve had on the go that I’ve preferred spending spare moments trawling the net or partaking of mood-lifting villain clips on Youtube.

Mind you, I haven’t completely neglected the reading part of life this year. I started on some of my impulse buys from this and previous years and managed to finish at least some of them. Tainted by Brooke Morgan (an impulse buy from the Strand, no less) proved to be well and evocatively written, though the genre – domestic chiller – isn’t really my cup of tea. With the irresistibly named If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio it was the other way around. I found the prose style a little precious, but the genre and setting was exactly the kind of thing I enjoy: the novel followed a group of drama students at a prestigious, seemingly idyllic College for the Creative Arts in Illinois. I’ve been stage struck since childhood and I love stories taking place in a theatre/drama school setting; it didn’t hurt that the College specialised in teaching its drama students nothing but Shakespeare. (It’s a little unlikely, though: surely, a successful drama education needs a bit of range?) The novel owes a heavy debt to The Secret History as we see a group of talented but not necessarily wise group of young students grapple with collective guilt. Fortunately, though, they don’t let the guilt get in the way of a lot of Shakespearean acting scenes.

Another impulse buy was the promising-looking family saga Roses by Leila Meacham – however, I’m ashamed to say I gave up on this one. My shame stems from the fact that it was written in a very enjoyable, page-turning style, so quality-wise there was no excuse not to finish it. The problem was I just couldn’t get behind the story, which seemed to follow the old pattern of “tough female neglects what really matters (family, love of her life) in favour of something that matters less in the great scheme of things (her family’s plantation)”. If you have no problem with this storyline and would like to try a doorstopper that’s unusually well-written, this could well be worth a look. For my part, I just thought the heroine’s family and love interest were tiresome and felt full sympathy with her for prioritising the plantation.       

Truth be told, there have been few novels this year that I’ve felt like losing myself in. This is irksome. I want to be the lady on the bus who reads a nice, old-fashioned book; being bookish is part of my identity. Steps will have to be taken in 2018: the question is, which ones?

At the end of the year, I always feel full of ambition regarding the cultural consumption of the year ahead: there’s so much to explore and whole new worlds to be discovered. Once the new year gets started, though, my ambitions tend to shrink very fast. I have a theory that this could be connected to sleep, and the lack of it: it’s always easier to set yourself life-expanding goals after a good lie-in. Also, once you get started, it’s discouraging if you happen to read more than one book in a row by authors you’ve not tried yet and find them disappointing. Much as I’d like to make new discoveries, perhaps I should be more open this year to re-reading classics from favourite 19th-century authors and reading more Ambitious Book Projects by the few high-prestige authors I’ve already tried and liked. It may not be the most innovative way to go, but it could be a way to get properly into the reading habit again.

There’s no denying that my Once Upon A Time obsession has got in the way of reading a bit, more than Downton Abbey ever did. Downton at least had the saving grace from a book point of view of making me interested in family sagas (admittedly, my search for the perfect family saga was not a great success). So maybe 2018 will be the year when I discover fantasy?       

torsdag 7 december 2017

Class: A curate's egg of a Doctor Who spin-off

Doctor Who spin-offs are a bit of mixed bunch. For my own part, I gave up on Torchwood about half-way in the first series, as I didn't care for its grim tone or outlook (I'm a fan of Captain Jack whenever he's in real Doctor Who, though). The Sarah Jane Adventures was a great series, however, and a pleasant surprise. The only thing I found strange about it was the level of scariness. Judging by the age of Sarah Jane's sidekicks, this series was supposed to be suitable for kids slightly younger than Doctor Who's target audience, yet several of the adventures were actually more frightening than the average episode of the parent show. True, nothing beats the Doctor Who double episode"The Impossible Planet" in terms of scariness, but I do think The Sarah Jane Adventures managed to trump "The Silence in the Library" when it comes to nightmare scenarios which tap specifically into childhood fears. Heck, it even has a nightmare-themed episode, which certainly frightened me. For the nerdy adult Doctor Who fan, though, The Sarah Jane Adventures was a delight.

So last year, when a new spin-off series was announced which was to take place in Coal Hill Academy (the school where Clara used to work, and before that two companions of the very first Doctor), I was optimistic. It seemed to be closer to Sarah Jane than Torchwood in its premise; also, unlike most people, I really enjoyed the Doctor Who episode where the Doctor goes undercover - very unconvincingly - as Coal Hill's caretaker in order to neutralise an admittedly lame alien threat. A school environment is mostly fun in a fictional context, and Class also promised to use the "cracks in time and space" gambit which my geeky self usually enjoys. Admittedly, even before watching it, you could see  a problem with the setup in the story: the series starts off with a guest appearance from the Doctor where he entrusts a bunch of teenagers to police the aforementioned cracks in time and space centering on Coal Hill. I know the Doctor is hardly Mr Responsible, but come on: these are teens! Why on earth would he put that amount of responsibility on their shoulders?

Regardless: I was prepared to buy into the whole teenagers-as-savers-of-the-world concept if the series turned out to be as good as Sarah Jane. Sadly, though, I was badly disappointed in the first episode. The kid protagonists were a bunch of stereotypes: the friendless good girl; the cool guy and football player i.e. jerk; the chippy prodigy; and the neat-looking uncool boy who turns out to be gay - and an alien prince. There was also something forced about the show's multicultural agenda. Doctor Who has as diverse a cast as they come, but it takes care to provide worthwhile, non-stereotypic parts all round; the characters' personalities aren't defined by their skin colour or sexuality for that matter. In Class, it felt as if the show was trying too hard to get the right-on mixture right and cared more for outer attributes than character content. Ram, The football-playing cool kid, is from a Sikh family; Tanya, the fourteen-year-old girl bright enough to take classes with the seventeen-year-olds, is black; and Charlie (his cover name), the gay extraterrestial, hooks up with a Polish boy. It felt a bit like one of those jokes with people of different nationalities: "There was an Englishman, a Scotsman and an Irishman..." Tanya's chippy comments didn't improve matters. I know she's supposed to be a fourteen-year-old - albeit a bright one - but her two sneering references to "white people" in the space of one episode didn't exactly endear the character to me (and yes, one was in connection with Downton, but try to believe me when I say that this wasn't my main problem with it).

The Doctor, for his part, acted most un-Doctor-like, and not just because he left a handful of school children with a dangerous mission. What's more, he condoned the fact that the sarky Physics teacher Miss Quill, also an alien and a sworn enemy of Charlie's people, was kept as a slave to/protector of the young prince. She is hindered from causing any harm to him or to anyone by a worm-like creature operated into her head who would do damage to her brain if she tried anything. I don't care how belligerent the Quills as an alien race are, that's just barbaric - also, the fact that Miss Quill can't use a gun kind of makes it harder for her to help the kids fight alien threats.

The series did pick up, though, and the protagonists became fleshed out and less stereotypical. This has happened so much lately (see also Game of Thrones) that I just have to wonder: why start out with a stereotype at all? I know a character in a TV drama generally needs time to become interestingly layered. Nevertheless, why use something so unpromising as, say, a football-playing school bully as a starting point? If the characters can't be complex from the word go, can they at least be a little different?

Nonetheless, the characters shaped up, and by the end I could vaguely see the point of all of them. Good girl April was my favourite among the kids, especially as it turned out she had a dark side. But the highlight of the series was Katherine Kelly's acid Miss Quill, well deserving of the starting credits' "and" spot (if an actor's name comes last in the starting credits and is prefaced by "and", it basically means "if this person leaves the show we may as well cancel it"). There were some neat sci-fi ideas - for instance the "metaphysical engine" which could take you into different species' ideas of the afterlife and creation myths. The finale proved to be a mess, however: overly grim (come on, two parents of protagonists slaughtered just like that?) and too reliant on the prospect of a second series. As it turned out, Class was cancelled, and the story left up in the air.

I can understand why the powers that be didn't continue with this series. It was hard to see who the target audience was: would the kind of cool teens the show seemed to be hoping to attract tune into a Doctor Who spin-off in the first place, and if they did, how would they react to random alien killing of fond parents? From a nerdy adult perspective, I resented attempts to get down with the kids and a certain finger-wagging tendency. It wasn't as dour as Torchwood, though, and I enjoyed some of it - but it's not a patch on The Sarah Jane Adventures, not to mention Doctor Who.
        

torsdag 23 november 2017

Shape up, Littlefinger - or, on second thoughts, don't

My attempt to catch up with the Game of Thrones phenomenon is trundling along. I'm now half-way through season two, and I admit it's an improvement on season one, not least script-wise. It's sharper overall, and Tyrion's lines are funnier, so Peter Dinklage gets more to work with. Also, as this is the season where the actual "game of thrones" starts in earnest - a number of would-be kings are fighting each other for the throne, or more properly speaking two thrones - the stakes are higher. The characters are fleshed out and on the whole well-acted, not least because the series is full of British thesps for some reason (not all of them have very rewarding parts, though).

However, much remains the same. The script can still be ponderous, with enigmatic monologues that neither bring the story forward nor illuminate the characters to a great extent. The villains are still reassuringly, plot-functionally vile. Joffrey - now king - behaves predictably nastily in every single scene where he appears. Charles Dance in armour has shown up by now and looks a treat, but is no threat to my peace of mind so far. As Tywin, the head of the devious Lannister clan, he is introduced skinning an animal while talking about family honour, and then spends most of his time warlording. That's hardly shrewd villainy of the Tulkinghorn class - any thug can fight. In one episode I recently watched, Tywin did recognise at one glance that the disguised Arya Stark is actually a girl dressed as a boy. Now that's more like it. If, before long, he also twigs that she happens to be the lost sister of his enemy, he might still be going places villain-wise.

The one I should be rooting for most among the numerous GoT cast, though, is Lord Baelish, aka Littlefinger, who's not really that much more villainous than most of the rest of the characters. One pleasing feature of this series is that it doesn't put bravery and heroism above intelligence - Tyrion gets by on his wits, and he's easily one of the most likeable protagonists. Baelish, for his part, is a political survivor and schemer who'll ally himself with whoever lets him stay in power. Now, I truly love political schemers, but for the second time in a relatively short time period I find myself underwhelmed by a character who, on paper, looks tailor-made to be an object of my villain-loving affections. First, it was George the dishy banker in Poldark. Now it's Baelish, who somehow fails to gives me that "wow, he's like the Joseph Fouché of Westeros" feeling.

Maybe it's because I don't really get where they're going with this character, and it's not an enigma I find especially intriguing. Aiden Gillen certainly looks the part as Baelish - like Machiavelli, only handsomer - but I can't make out the way he underplays it. Now, I realise I'm spoiled at the moment in the villain-snarling department, but shouldn't a back-story monologue full of seething resentment be acted with a little bit of, well, seething resentment? Also, Baelish is saddled with one of those unrequited passions that have lasted a lifetime, where his loved one has never given him a word of encouragement. It's a ticklish motivation to carry off - if you've been stuck on one chick since boyhood without getting anywhere, even a villain-sympathetic audience like myself will sooner or later wish you could just get over it and find another girl - but Alan Rickman nailed it as Snape in the Harry Potter films. In contrast, Baelish's supposed devotion to Catelyn Stark never quite convinces. Honestly, you have to be able to do the Wounded Villain Heart Routine - if there were a Bachelor's programme in being a good villain, this would be second-semester stuff. Maybe my tastes are too unsubtle, but if Baelish is supposed to be a man who buries his bitterness beneath layers of bland courtesy I, for one, can only see the bland courtesy.

But that's fine. I confess that I still enjoy Game of Thrones partly because I don't care too much about the characters. Though more fully realised than in the first couple of episodes, they still retain a certain chess-piece quality, and I'm fully prepared for them to be taken off the board at any moment. Perhaps it's because I read reviews of the series beforehand; although, luckily, I don't remember who will die, I remember that a lot of the main characters are heading for the chop, and also that one character will eventually be castrated and kept as a slave. Most likely, it's some defence mechanism that keeps me from getting too attached to anyone that may be heading for a gruesome fate. So much for raising the drama stakes by throwing in random killings and maimings - but I'm not complaining, as long as my heart remains un-squeezed.

onsdag 8 november 2017

Sarah Waters to the rescue

Finally! For the first time in what seems like ages, I read a book I really liked and didn't either give up on or have to struggle to finish. (This is not counting the odd re-read of a Christie or similar.) Sarah Waters can usually be relied on to supply a well-written yarn - Fingersmith was a page turner, and The Paying Guests was also a good read, though I had problems with Affinity. Nevertheless, the odds were rather stacked against The Night Watch, as far as I was concerned. For one, it takes place during and immediately after World War Two and contains descriptions of London during the Blitz - not exactly the cosiest of settings. (I'm not too fond of World War stories at all, to be honest.) Second, the structure of the novel makes it rather melancholy, as I've already mentioned. It opens in 1947, where we first get to know the book's four protagonists: Kay, Helen, Viv and Duncan. They're not doing great, but then again they're not doing terribly, either. Then the story jumps back to 1944, and finally to 1941, in order to show us how these four characters ended up the way we find them at the beginning of the novel. This means that the characters are stuck with the ending they're given at the end of the 1947 section: nothing that comes afterwards will improve it.

I found I could take this better than I anticipated, though. The end of the 1947 section isn't that bleak; for two of the characters the light at the end of the tunnel is already hinted at. As for the other two, it's not too hard to imagine that life will go on for them as well, and that they will put past and present heartache behind them eventually. Perhaps partly because of the way the novel's narrative is laid out, it is easier than usual to take into consideration that the book's end point is not the end of these characters' lives. Not that we know anything more about their lives, since they're fictional, but you get my drift: somehow, in this context, the "open ending" works.

I didn't mind the war setting, either. The descriptions are very atmospheric, and even I did not get fidgety as the reader follows Kay - a lesbian ambulance driver with a touching gentlemanly streak - on one of her rounds. Kay is the most likeable of the four protagonists, and the strongest of the storylines concerns the love triangle between her, the love of her life Helen, and her ex, the glamorous Julia. The siblings Duncan and Viv, with their questionable taste in men, are somewhat less interesting, but you are swept along with their stories anyway thanks to the high-quality prose. Nevertheless, I was always glad when the novel returned to Kay and Helen. I can't help thinking that men get rather a raw deal in Waters's novels: I've yet to encounter a truly attractive one. Julia may be a femme fatale, but you can see why Helen would fall for her, although it's a terrible idea. The objects of Viv's and Duncan's affections, on the other hand, remain unimpressive.

As for the backwards-in-time structure, it doesn't give you that wow-how-clever feeling you can get from a good Doctor Who episode involving time tricksiness, but it has its merits. You're more interested in what happens in 1941, at the start of the characters' stories, once you've got to know them. As a beginning of a novel, the 1941 section might have come across as a bit slow. The most interesting section of the novel is the middle one, set in 1944, and the preceding 1947 section serves a good springing-board to it.

After The Night Watch, I'm seriously considering giving up on Drood altogether, in spite of the Dickens connection. If you can find something you truly enjoy reading, why struggle on with a book just because you can't put your finger on why you don't like it much? For now, I'll put Drood on ice a little while longer: it's still a bit too early to dump it in the charity-shop bag.             

onsdag 25 oktober 2017

The Buccaneers - costume-drama yawnfest

Perhaps it is good to be reminded that everything period-related from the Nineties - which I fondly remember as The Golden Age of costume dramas - really wasn't that great. I've recently made my way through The Buccaneers, the 1995 TV adaptation of a novel by Edith Wharton, and my goodness it was tedious. When I saw this as a teen (I must have been at least 18) I had no problem getting through it, which means that as usual I've had qualms about whether this drama is actually that bad, or whether it's just me who've become "dumbed down" or dangerously dependent on villain kicks (no villains in this one - not even of the B-list variety à la poor George Warleggan). It was the same thing when I watched Parade's End, for instance. But this time around, I didn't have that many qualms, because the drama was so clichéd it couldn't possibly contain any high-brow wisdoms which my befuddled brain may have missed.

The story is easily told. Connie, an American-Mexican girl with a rich father, marries a penniless English peer. Shortly afterwards, her three equally situated friends come and visit her for an English season. They all end up married: only one of the marriages, between the least rich girl and a self-made Englishman as cheerfully vulgar as she is, turns out happy. (One likeable thing about this drama is that it shows some sympathy for the Sir Richard Carlisles of this world.) The luckless girls who hook up with English noblemen all regret it. Connie and her husband are estranged in no time, partly because her dad won't fork out a dowry. They both play around and he gets syphilis. Virginia St George marries Lord Seadowne, who continues to hold on to his long-term mistress and makes it pretty clear from the word go that he regards his wife as a cash cow. Things become strained when her father suffers a financial set-back, then look up slightly when said father regains his fortune. Virginia's younger sister Annabelle/Nan snags the first prize from society's point of view by marrying a duke, but their marriage proves to be the most miserable of all. And all the time she's in love with a poor, handsome young man from a once-great family, determined to make his own way in the world, who shares her love of poetry.

Yes, really. I suppose there's a bit of a Tolkien problem with this plot, inasmuch as you can't be accused of using clichés if you invented them. At the time when Wharton wrote her novel, it presumably felt new and fresh when someone cast a critical look on the heiresses-for-titles trade between the nouveaux riches in the US and the old British aristocracy. That we have seen so many versions of this tale since then - and most of them a bit more nuanced - is not Wharton's fault. Still, I wonder if the novel's characterisation can really be as black and white as in this adaptation.

Consider Nan's marriage. Her husband, the Duke, essentially behaves like a boy who never properly grew up. He doesn't consummate their marriage for ages, and when he finally does he becomes violent. He belittles her and shows no interest in his tenants' woes when she nobly points them out to him. He's still under his mother's thumb (not such a bad thing because she's pretty sensible on the whole). He's a closet homosexual (which doesn't really chime in with the whole "lost boy" theme, but there we go). He won't let his sister/poor relation marry someone who's beneath her, even when it's her last chance to get married at all. He has a heavily symbolic interest in clocks: see, he can understand these machines, but not the workings of a female heart.

In contrast, Nan's love Guy makes his own fortune doing engineering work, then comes home to Give The Oppressed A Voice by going into politics. He positively reeks sensitivity, and is played by the almost aggressively good-looking Greg Wise (Willoughby in the Sense and Sensibility film with Kate Winslet and Emma Thompson - in real life he ended up with Thompson, and good for him).

Sooo, hidebound, complex-ridden childish Duke vs poetry-spouting Greg Wise? Hmm, I wonder whom we are supposed to root for here? What's remarkable is that even when the dice are as loaded as this, Nan still ends up sounding irritating as the Dowager Duchess is trying to piece together some sort of compromise while she can only go on about what she "wants" and "doesn't want". And surely the estate's steward is the right person to talk to if you have concerns about the tenants' drainage?

I have some sort of dim recollection of the novel being an unfinished one, which would explain why the TV drama ends more daringly than other repressed-high-society yarns from the same period. Guy and Nan run away publicly, and he makes a speech in Parliament about abolishing the House of Lords (!). Even if these flourishes weren't in the original, though, there's still enough to make you wonder how this could be an adaptation from a book by a prestigious, high-brow author.

Let's take the Duke's clocks as an example. My first reactions to the introduction of this theme were, predictably, "What's wrong with liking clocks?" and "I, for my part, think that hobbies which require dexterity should be encouraged in a man". Villain-fancying flippancy aside, though, there is a contrast between how the clock hobby ploy is used in Downton and The Buccaneers which isn't to the latter's advantage. The Duke's hobby is considered an oddity, while Thomas's interest in clocks in Downton is a humanising trait and something Fellowes takes the time to make understandable. Thomas being the son of a clock-maker (with whom he doesn't get on, as is later unsurprisingly revealed) and having grown up with clocks explains why he should view them as "living things" and, maybe, one of the few consolations in an otherwise frosty home environment. No grand back-story speech is needed: the information is lightly sketched in, but effective. It's not the only instance when I feel that Fellowes rather trumps The Buccaneers when it comes to characterisation - and considering that we are talking about an enjoyable middlebrow costume drama vs an adaptation of an Edith Wharton novel, he's not really supposed to do that.           

torsdag 19 oktober 2017

Baffling bestsellerdom

So there we are: another book I've not been able to finish. Finding Drood heavy going, I was looking for a comfort-blanket read to balance it out with and ended up testing an impulse-bought Nora Roberts novel, The Next Always. I've seen two TV adaptations of Nora Roberts books and only remember them very dimly, but I do remember liking them. One I think centred around the classic plot of three daughters and an inheritance, the other was a reincarnation story where it turned out that the hero in the contemporary romance was a reincarnation of the girl in the historical one: a sweet and funny twist. So while I was expecting a fair amount of clichés (and I'm not very sensitive when it comes to clichés in English, which is why I shamelessly use expressions like "a fair amount"), I did not expect to be bored.

Before long, I was stumped. What was going on here? I didn't really think that Roberts would turn out to be "the world's greatest storyteller" as the cover boasted, but I did assume that there would be a story of some kind. But no, not a sight of one. The novel concerns three brothers Montgomery who are renovating an atmospheric old hotel in a small American town. One of the brothers, Beckett, has his eye on Clare, a woman he's loved since they were both teenagers and who has now moved back into town, a widow with three boys. He finds her attractive. She finds him attractive. Eventually, they both twig that they're in with a chance with each other and hook up. There's zero dramatic tension: Beckett's family and Clare's friends are cheering them on from the sidelines. They belong to the same set, they're both unattached, and naturally Beckett is great with the three delightful boys. Instead of introducing any hurdles for the main romantic couple to jump over, the novel is full of pointless conversation concerning the hotel renovation. It's not even all "interior design porn" describing the various rooms, though that part of it is bad enough: we also have to read the brothers' discussions on problems with the building work and suppliers. Elsewhere they're bickering about whose turn it is to buy the pizza and beer. We follow Clare through an excruciatingly detailed account of an evening home with the boys: for pity's sake, I as a reader don't have to be there when she helps one of her sons to pee! At first I thought: "Oh well, I wanted a comfort blanket, and it doesn't get much more comfort-blankety than this". But after more than a hundred pages of meandering plotlessness I'd had enough and gave up. A Nora Roberts novel should not be the kind of book you feel you have to finish out of a sense of duty.

So what kind of genre is this anyway, and what is its appeal? I suppose it falls into the category of "quotidian cosiness". After a long row of grand epics, I myself can long for a narrative where the protagonists can consider stopping their emoting for a moment and making themselves some tea and toast. Seeing characters of a whodunnit or a contemporary romance in an everyday setting, making observations on situations that you recognise from your own life, can be very relaxing and satisfying. But there has to be more to a story than that. You can't just have tea-making scenes, or their equivalents. Roberts captures the tone of easy, everyday dialogue fairly well, but if you want to listen in on these kinds of conversations, you might as well eavesdrop on fellow visitors at a café. Here, there is no drama, and nothing at stake.

It made me wonder whether it's possible for an author to like his or her characters too much. Normally, I prefer writers who have a real affection for their characters. Roberts obviously likes the three Montgomery brothers, and their mother, and Clare, and her three boys, and her best friend. The problem is, she seems to think the readers will like them so much too that they will be happy just to hang out with them, even when not much is happening. And maybe there are a lot of readers who feel that way about the characters in The Next Always, but I wasn't one of them. The Montgomery brothers are the tousled-haired, dog-owning kind of heroes who are good at carpenting, their enthusiastically interfering mother has a sixth sense for what is best for them and the hotel, Clare's sons are charmingly boisterous, everyone gets how great small-town life is (at least everyone nice), and it's all apple-cheeked and homespun and dull.

In my despair, I've started reading The Night Watch by Sarah Waters instead, although with its gentle melancholy it's not what one could describe as a comfort blanket. It's beautifully written and precisely observed, and the characters are just likeable enough to be interested in, but not (so far) so likeable you'll end up heartbroken if things go wrong for them. I think I will actually be able to finish this one. When I will summon enough strength to get through Drood, though, is anyone's guess.      

torsdag 5 oktober 2017

Once Upon a Time season 7 wish list

Well, you were warned. Tomorrow, lucky US viewers will be able to tune into the season 7 premiere of Once Upon a Time, so I had better get my pre-season blog post out there before anyone is in a position to say "nope, that's not going to happen... and not that either". When we Swedes get to see this season of Once is anyone's guess. However, I'm hopeful that it won't be that long, and that either the obscure channel which usually sends the newest Once episodes (and which I only discovered when they were half-way into season 6, hence the long DVD wait) or Netflix will take pity on me.

I was excited about this season even before I'd seen the last one. The set-up promises to resemble the one for season 1, which I still think is the best. In season one, hard-bitten Emma Swan was visited by Henry, the boy she gave away for adoption at birth, whose mission was to take her to his home town Storybrooke and make her believe that its inhabitants were in fact fairy-tale characters living under a curse that only she could break. In this season, an adult Henry is visited by a daughter he doesn't remember, who in her turn has to convince him that fairy tales are real and that he and the most of the other inhabitants in the part of Seattle where he's living - Hyperion Heights - are victims of a new curse. Among the cursed Hyperion Heights residents are the three characters who've made it over from the original six seasons: Henry's adoptive mother Regina aka The Evil Queen from Snow White, his stepfather Captain Hook, and last but not least his grandfather Rumplestiltskin. However, the curse has given them new identities, and they don't remember who they really are, nor do they remember Henry (presumably - although with Rumple, you never know).

I really liked the original premise where the series protagonist has to be made to believe in a completely bonkers concept which then happens to turn out to be true, so I'm glad that this plot element is back, as well as the contrast between flashbacks in a fairy-tale realm and life "in the real world" where there's no magic. Once magic entered Storybrooke (not that I think it was a bad move to bring it - of course not) plot-lines tended more and more to hinge on convenient magical objects which could bring about all kinds of wonderful things but which for unknown reasons had never been used before, nor were they used again when the plot no longer required them. This time around, the characters will have to rely on their wits to stay out of trouble - luckily, some characters have more wits than others.

So what are my wishes - which, as they're not magic, I hope won't misfire - for Once Upon a Time season 7? (I wont even try to predict anything with this notoriously unpredictable show.)

More characters from real fairy tales We will see new versions of some fairy tales already covered by Once in this season - like Cinderella, as Cinders is Henry's love interest and her wicked stepmother Lady Tremaine is the new villain (yay - I always thought she'd make a great Once baddie!). Fair enough: as there are countless versions of the Cinderella story, I can see how there can be more than one Cinderella in the Once universe, though how there can be more than one Alice in Wonderland beats me. I do hope, however, that the show will take the opportunity to introduce characters from fairy tales we haven't seen yet. There are so many great fairy tales out there crying out for a Once spin: Frau Holle, The Six Swans, The Wishing Table... Heck, they haven't even done Puss in Boots yet.

What I hope we won't see too much of are fictional characters who have nothing to do with fairy tales. I don't mind the odd Kafkaesque bureaucrat here or Cuckoo's Nest-inspired nurse there, and Doctor Whale in Storybrooke was such a hoot that I can forgive him for turning out to be a Victor Frankenstein whom Mary Shelley would surely not have recognised. But season six went overboard with a slew of non-fairy-tale-related characters like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the Count of Monte Christo and Captain Nemo. If they had been included because the writers were great fans of the original novels I'd have understood it better, but the characters seemed to be based on vague, popular-culture conceptions of what they're supposed to be like rather than their actual book counterparts. I know enough of the Count of Monte Christo to be able to spot that the Once version neither had the same back-story nor the same personality as the original. In which case, why include him? I'm not one to object to random Rumplestiltskin scenes, but I'd rather see him get his claws into, say, King Thrushbeard than Dr Jekyll or Edmond Dantes.

A little less Disney ABC studios, where Once Upon a Time is aired, is owned by Disney, which means the series can include plenty of references to the classic animated Disney films. Which is fine - I'm a huge Disney fan - but it can become a bit much. I'm not sure including characters from Frozen and Brave in season four and five respectively was a good idea, for instance: Elsa and Anna are charming in their own film, but they fared rather worse when confronted with the regular Once crew who had three full seasons of character development under their belt. As for Merida, she seemed perpetually out of temper.

It will be interesting to see what Once makes of Tiana from The Princess and the Frog, who will appear in the new season. I actually have no idea what fairy tale The Princess and the Frog is supposed to be based on: not the brothers Grimm's The Frog King, at any rate. In this tale, the princess not only does not kiss the frog, she hurls him to the wall - and that's when the curse lifts. (Which in its turn makes the story ideal for a Once take - who could have cast an impish curse like that...?) I like Disney's Tiana a lot, but I'm wondering how they will preserve her endearing workaholic doggedness in a new, non-New Orleans context. Having said that, since we are going to have Tiana, I certainly hope Dr Facilier turns up too.

Good use made of the Storybrooke squad The original heroine Emma may have left, but as long as Rumple and Regina are still on board, Once Upon a Time lives on to fight another day. For Regina, I would dearly like to see a lasting love interest this season. Yes, I get it: she's a strong, independent woman who doesn't need a man to get her happy ending, etc. It was still a little sad that she was pretty much the only one - OK, she and her luckless villain-fancying sister Zelena - not paired up at the end of season six (not that I thought the death of Regina's bland love interest Robin Hood in season five was much of a loss). Regina could also use a little stronger storylines than she's had past seasons. For much of season six, her bad alter ego the Evil Queen - set loose by Dr Jekyll's serum - got to have more funny lines and meaty scenes than her "weak tea" better half Regina. The Queen even fitted in a sizzling affair with Rumplestiltskin/Gold (Belle was AWOL as per usual and threatening to keep his kid from him, so yeah, he was allowed). The resolution to the split personality plot line was a bit of a muddle: suddenly there were two Reginas, with equal parts of light and darkness in them, when the most satisfying conclusion would surely have been to merge the two halves together again. Never mind: maybe confrontations with Lady Tremaine will bring out the old sass and fighting spirit in Regina. As she said herself at one time: "I get antsy when I don't know who to hate".

I've not been a great admirer of Captain Hook (aka Killian Jones - no, I don't know why he's not called James either) so far, on account of his tedious feud with Rumple/Gold, aka "the Crocodile". It feels wrong, though, that there is a version of Captain Hook I don't care for. Also, I can see that the character has potential: he has some funny lines and moments ("My daughter has just lost everything""Well, aren't you mum of the year"), he and Emma are sweet together - though the series wallowed a little too much in their romance for my personal liking - and he sometimes does well out of plot-lines which don't include crocodile-hunting, such as the touching back-story involving his revered older brother Liam. My wish for this season, then, is that Hook and Rumple will finally bury the hatchet in earnest, and Hook will be given something better to do with his time. Judging by one trailer, the two enemies will end up as colleagues in their cursed Hyperion Heights lives. Hook, now a cop, shakes hands with Rumple who purrs "We'll do great work together". They're bound to fall out sooner or later, I guess, but any scene where an oblivious Hook gushes puppyishly over his wonderful new boss would be most welcome.

As for Rumple, I'll take anything I'm given - I'm sure his new cursed persona will be as brilliant as his other incarnations, though I will miss Mr Gold and his natty suits. And surely Lady Tremaine will be the lucky woman who gets dark-sorcerer neck-kissed this season? Come on, she's handsome, she's determined, she's temperamental, she knows her way around a curse - it's bound to happen. It's not that I don't hope that domestic bliss with tiresome Belle still waits further down the line for Rumple when he's de-cursed, but for my money, she can wait a good while yet.

lördag 30 september 2017

Famous authors as characters (and narrators)

I haven’t had much luck in my reading of late, but after 50 pages of Drood by Dan Simmons I’m cautiously optimistic. Perhaps it’s partly due to my low expectations which were easy to exceed. For a long time, I passed Simmons’s novel by on my book-buying sprees, as the reviews had given me to understand that it  1) had horror-story elements  (and I don’t like horror stories) 2) was sneering about Dickens. In the end, though, immersing myself in yet another Dickens-themed tale proved too tempting, and besides the novel is acclaimed and can be seen as an Ambitious Book Project. After a lot of trying out of potentially soufflé-light reads which failed to give the proper comfort-blanket feel, maybe an ABP is exactly what I need.

I wasn’t wrong in my prejudices – Drood does have horror-story elements (though I’ve been able to stomach them so far) and it is sneering about Dickens. The sneeriness is largely a consequence of its narrator, though, who – supposedly – is Wilkie Collins, Dickens’s friend and protegé. Collins in this version is deeply envious of his older and more successful friend, and this colours everything he says about Dickens as a man and as a writer.

I find I can bear attacks on Charles Dickens’s character surprisingly well. Few people would contest that he behaved like a pig towards his long-suffering wife Catherine, for instance (though there are actually those who do). I have no problems in imagining Dickens as a difficult man; I admire him as a writer, not as a wonderful specimen of human kindness and philanthropy. Consequently, criticism of his writing is much harder to take, but in this context we needn’t credit the clearly biased narrator’s musings on the subject.

If anyone comes out of this set-up looking less good than he should it’s Wilkie Collins, and since I really like his books I think it’s a bit of a pity that he has to play the role of “Salieriesque rival” – as the blurb will have it – in Drood. I’d have preferred a fictional, envious sidekick to Dickens. Maybe the real Wilkie Collins’s position as young friend, colleague and reluctantly admitted almost-family member (Collins’s brother married Dickens’s daughter, a match Dickens didn’t care for), as well as an opium addict, is what makes him ideally placed to be the narrator of this book. I’ll take the liberty of seeing  Collins in Drood as fictional in substance, however, as I would like to think that the real Wilkie was a great deal less small-minded than he’s described as here.

One thing that makes it easier to imagine Drood Wilkie Collins and the real Wilkie Collins as separate people is that the narrative style in Drood doesn’t resemble Collins’s style at all. Again, this raises the question of why Collins is the narrator when he doesn’t even sound like Collins: on the other hand, we are spared cumbersome pastiche, which makes the novel a far more interesting read. I like Wilkie Collins’s style when he is the one using it, but I can imagine that it would not fare well in the hands of another author, especially as even the original can become a bit knotty at times when Collins insists on explaining every detail of his plot in order to make sure that there are no holes in it.

Another author whom you pastiche at your peril is Jane Austen. I’ve lost count of the times I wished that an Austen-themed novel – sequel, prequel, retelling, you name it – was not written in a supposedly Austenesque style. Austen managed to be pithy and amusing in spite of the regency feel of her prose. Modern authors, however, seem to use regency expressions in order to make the prose more genteel and circumspect than it need have been. This, in my view, is to misunderstand what makes Austen such a good writer – and it often makes for a boring read, too.

I’ve had mixed experiences with Stephanie Barron’s series of crime mysteries where Jane Austen is the narrator and sleuth. I remember enjoying Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor as a cosy manor-house mystery, and I liked the salaciously gossipy Jane and the Barque of Frailty (what it blithely presents as a known fact about Castlereagh even Wikipedia finds hard to credit). On the other hand, I can’t remember anything about Jane and the Wandering Eye except that I found it surprisingly heavy going, and recently I felt the same about Jane and the Man of the Cloth. In the latter case, I was also irritated by Jane’s crush on mercurial man of mystery Geoffrey Sidmouth, whom I found eminently resistible and notably underwritten, as if the mere idea of a moody squire with his own code of honour etc. should be enough to set hearts a-flutter. The books are written as pastiches on Austen’s style – it’s supposed to be extracts from her diary – and this simply weighs the narrative down, as do the faux-scholarly footnotes. Even if the real Jane Austen’s family does play a part, I was still left wondering why the heroine had to be Austen. There’s not much about her writing in the “diary extracts” (admittedly, what there is I enjoyed). The characters and plot of the book don’t connect to Austen’s novels in any interesting way. Surely, any plucky regency lass would have done just as well as protagonist, and would have been more likely to be susceptible to crushes than the level-headed Austen.

I’ll give this series a couple of more chances – after all, I’ve already purchased a few of the books in it. Man of the Cloth and Wandering Eye are early books, and maybe the mysteries pick up pace as the series moves along. But on the whole, I wonder if famous authors may have one thing in common with villains – they’re better off being depicted in novels at one remove, by someone close to them rather than supposedly in their own words.       

torsdag 21 september 2017

19th-century classics that would make good TV drama

Poldark series four. Victoria series two. The Crown season two. Adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, Les Misérables and Howard's End. No newly-scripted ensemble drama/family saga in the Downton mould in the offing that I've heard of - perhaps viewers like me, who failed to take The Halcyon to our hearts, are partly to blame, but even so. And no news of The Gilded Age, which Julian Fellowes is supposed to be scripting for American television. Hmmm.

As you may have gathered, I'm not all that excited about this "safety first" line-up of costume dramas, though I do enjoy watching Poldark, Victoria and The Crown. But instead of whining about the costume drama turnout as I usually do, I thought I'd be more constructive and actually give a few suggestions as to which novels would make good period telly. I'll not be broaching the Dombey and Son subject again, as I've already gone on about it here and here. And elsewhere.

Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens  I've never actually seen a TV adaptation of Barnaby Rudge, not even an old and dusty one. It must be ages since they did it. It's true, the novel has its faults, but they could easily be ironed out in an ace adaptation by, say, Andrew Davies (cut John Grueby, for one). There are many points in favour of Barnaby Rudge as a TV drama: an engaging title character, dramatic riot scenes, and an at least partly strong supporting cast including Maypole Hugh, Sim Tappertit, sharp-tounged Miss Miggs and the delightfully ignoble blind man Stagg. Not to mention Grip the raven (an animal trainer would be needed).

V for villain factor: High. This is the novel that includes Gashford and Sir John Chester - the latter even made my top ten male Dickens villains list. These are parts which I think top-notch British actors could do much with. Charles Dance could still work as Sir John, surely?

Armadale by Wilkie Collins Just about anything of what I've read by Collins would make great television - excepting perhaps Hide and Seek. I'll limit myself to mentioning the two books which I think are his best (apart from The Woman in White, which has been adapted, though not very well). Armadale takes a while to get going, but again this is something a skillful adapter would know how to deal with, plus watching the back-story acted out rather than narrated would be sure to add interest. It's a novel full of both incident and intrigue, and there are plenty of meaty parts as Collins knows how to take care of his secondary characters.

V for villain factor: No worthwhile male villains as I recall, but what a villainess! The flame-haired temptress Lydia Gwilt is so determined and intelligent she would be sure to appeal to male and female viewers alike - and you certainly can't say that for many femme fatales. One very likeable thing about her is that she remains completely unimpressed by the novel's ostensible hero, popular but dim-witted Allan Armadale, and instead falls head over heels for his loyal friend Midwinter, who is the far superior man. But Allan has the cash... What to do?

No name by Wilkie Collins  Anti-heroine Magdalen's efforts to regain the family inheritance she and her sister lost by unfortunate legal circumstances are another instance of exciting Collins plotting. She is wrong-headed and highly-strung to be sure, but needless to say a lot more interesting than her virtuous sister Norah. With new twists at every turn, this would make a thrilling mini-series, and whoever played Magdalen would have a show-case part which could bring her an award or two.

V for villain factor: It's not easy to say who counts as a villain, as you rather want Magdalen to succeed in her intrigues, though not at too high a cost for herself (and I don't think that's just me). The cousin who got the inheritance and whom she intends to ensnare, Michael Vanstone, I remember reminded me of the Disney cartoon version of Prince John in Robin Hood (it's been a while since I've read the book now). Not very impressive villain material then. Captain Wragge on the other hand, the swindler who helps Magdalen out and can be classified as either a high-prestige villain or a villain surrogate, is very entertaining, and his battle of wits against the equally intelligent Mrs Lecount, who tries to protect her master Vanstone from a woman she's convinced is up to no good, would surely be telly gold.

Villette or Shirley by Charlotte Brontë One is well-plotted, has an interesting setting and a memorable female antagonist. The other has two likeable heroines and a happy ending. Both have at least one worthwhile heroine love interest (irascible Paul Emanuel in Villette, somewhat Napoleonic mill owner Robert Moore in Shirley). If you could combine elements of these two novels, you'd have the perfect costume drama. As it is, it's hard to choose which one would work best on the small screen. My vote would, I think, go to Villette, as I remember it as being the better read. The heroine Lucy Snowe may not be a charmer, but she's not entirely without potential, and besides, they can't all be sunny, witty Lizzy Bennets. The ending poses more of a problem, but although Lucy almost certainly loses the love of her life she is successful professionally, so maybe it wouldn't have to be all bleak. One could do a "tomorrow is another day" spin on it.

V for villain factor: On the male front, zilch. Charlotte Brontë may give us brainy and interestingly flawed heroes as well as quite a lot of power play in the various love relationships, but there's a cost: she feels no need to introduce worthwhile male villains as other characters have already covered the cleverness and power-hungriness angle. And no, Brocklehurst still doesn't count. (Though wasn't there someone quite tasty in The Professor?) Madame Beck, the female antagonist mentioned above, is a great character, but the question is if she really counts as a villainess: she has nothing personal against Lucy, and when she opposes her you entirely see the Madame's point.

Lost Illusions by Honoré de Balzac or something else by Balzac, maybe? Colourful characters, attractive Parisian settings, lots of love entanglements, plotting that may sometimes surprise you, vivid language that would surely prove inspirational to an adapter - what's not to like? (All right, in this case, the appalling hero, or rather anti-hero, Lucien.) Not to mention...

V for villain factor: ... absolutely marvellous villains! The best in this novel are found in Lucien's provincial home: the two businessmen brothers Cointet, especially Boniface aka "the tall Cointet". He enlists the help of lawyer Petit-Claud (a good, solid minor villain) in order to pinch a valuable patent, and in return furthers his associate's career by arranging his marriage to the bastard daughter of a local nobleman. "She's so ugly", Petit-Claud complains. "Do you think you'd be allowed to have her if she was pretty?" Boniface coolly responds. There's a lot more in the same pleasingly cynical vein. Given that Balzac's villains can be so enjoyable, it's a wonder my interest in them never quite erupts into a long-lasting villain crush - with the exception of Frédéric de Nucingen, whom I did not fancy but felt a great deal of sympathy for in A Harlot High and Low, they are maybe somewhat lacking when it comes to leader of the pack appeal. But they're certainly good enough for a fictional villain fling.

onsdag 6 september 2017

Redemption Once Upon A Time style: villains do get happy endings (if they reform - kinda)

Well, where to begin? As regular readers may be aware, Once Upon a Time is my new series poison - displacing Downton up to the point where I almost don't care anymore if there's a film or not - and last week I finished watching the emotional rollercoaster that was season six. The series will return with season seven, but we're told it will be a "new adventure", and that season one to six can be viewed as an entity - viewers are able to sign off here if they please. So, no more wanton destruction of happy endings then, thankfully. Which is just as well, as season six - after an unpromising start - gathered momentum about half-way through and then delivered the most satisfying dénouement imaginable for everyone concerned. Yes, everyone (well, the series regulars anyway).

I make no apology for my obsession, since if ever there was a series designed to entrap villain-lovers like myself, it's this one. I could go on and on about it, but will limit myself for now to one theme - one relevant for the subject of villains and happy endings, namely redemption and how it's handled. At a later date, I will come back to my hopes and wishes for season seven. There's no space to go into the complicated premise of the series: my reflections on the first one-and-a-half seasons here will give you a general idea.  

In the case of Once Upon A Time, the common complaint of series viewers is actually true: the first season really was the best. Season two was almost equally good, though, and although season three had its longueurs, it also had some satisfying emotional pay-offs, plus the first three seasons as a whole form a near-perfect story arc, not least for the original villain duo. Regina Mills (Lana Parrilla), aka the Evil Queen from Snow White, was the main antagonist in season one: she had her own weighty reasons for hating Snow White that had nothing to do with which of them was fairest of them all, and her warfare against Snow, her prince David aka Charming (initially an ironic nickname given to him by his later loved one) and their daughter Emma was relentless. It was hard not to be impressed by all that passion, not to mention the cutting one-liners. Then there's my reigning villain crush (and not just mine, happily): Mr Gold, aka Rumplestiltskin - Rumple to his friends (if he had any), to his lovers, occasionally - confusingly - to his enemies, and to online commentators everywhere. If IMDB is to be believed, the part was expressly created for the Scottish actor Robert Carlyle, and boy does he make the most of it. Initially I preferred the more understated Gold to the outré fairy-tale version of Rumplestiltskin, but as I got used to the mannerisms of the latter I got to appreciate them equally. The trademark flippant callousness of fairy-tale Rumple can be just the tonic when Gold is having a hard time in the Storybrooke part of the plot, and besides he's such fun. So, to borrow an old tag line from a trailer of Dempsey and Makepeace: "He's mean, she's moody, together they're magnificent", and without this strong villain pairing (more than occasionally working against each other) I doubt the series would have been such a hit.

All of which meant that a "despair and die" ending for these two characters would hardly have satisfied the fans. Neither of them showed much inclination for reforming in season one - we gathered from their powerful back-stories that they hadn't always been bad, but also that if they were nicer in pre-dark magic days they were also completely miserable. In season two, however, both Regina and Gold came under pressure from their loved ones to mend their ways, and tried to do so - interestingly, though, they found it a hard slog and far from instantly rewarding, so progress was shaky to say the least. Season three nearly got them there, as redemption started to look as something worth striving for for its own sake, not just to please demanding sons/love interests. With a little tweaking - the removal of an unnecessary complication in Regina's love life, the inclusion of Gold's moving speech at his son's graveside from the first episode of season four - the perfect end point would have been reached in the season three finale.

But the show had to go on, and there's little you can do dramatically with a reformed villain. Cue Problematic Season Four, where Gold fell spectacularly off the redemption bandwagon and saw his happy ending unravel as a consequence, simply because the plot demanded it. There were great Gold/Rumple scenes in this season, but this villain magic certainly came with a price. As for Regina, she stayed on the road to reform - more or less - but it didn't do her much good plot-wise, and it took away some of her glamour from the days when she was wicked. This was even more apparent in the less harrowing but decidedly muddled season five, when she became almost dull. 

I had hoped that season six would manage to answer some of the questions thrown up by the previous five seasons on the subject of redemption in a convincing way. Like "change": it's not possible to have a personality transplant, so if you're a villain and happy to be one, how is reform even possible? Can someone who makes "change" a condition of their love be said to truly love you, or do they simply love the idea of what their wonderful rehabilitative powers could mould you into? And what's the point of redemption anyway, besides being the only way those bastard script-writers will give you a happy ending? The series makes many a compelling case for going dark, but it's less convincing when arguing for doing good: even (for the moment) reformed villains aren't much good at this. "Don't make the same mistakes I made" is the brunt of their argument. Why not? You had a blast, didn't you?

One concept touched upon in season two but never developed is to become "the best version" of oneself - which would mean that villains wouldn't have to change their personalities in order to better themselves, merely to give good qualities that they've always possessed a chance while toning down their crush-your-enemy's-heart-into-dust side. I'd have liked to have seen this reasoned out in season six, but I'll have to be content with the fact that they managed to get the redemption part of the story right in practice, even if there weren't many explanations attached to it. The villains are still recognisably themselves: Regina is still a sharp-tongued boss lady, and Gold still doesn't really care a button for anyone but his nearest and dearest. Elsewhere, Captain Hook (Emma's love interest) is still a hothead with a piratish swagger, and one senses that buried hatchets could in certain circumstances be unburied at a moment's notice. Regina's half-sister Zelena aka the Wicked Witch of the West won't be putting herself up for charity work anytime soon either. In different ways, though, they have distanced themselves from their villainous pasts and acknowledged that the way forward lies in another direction. And if that isn't enough to earn you a happy ending - along with keeping the show entertainingly on the road for six seasons - I don't know what is.

onsdag 30 augusti 2017

Why the idea of a new Pride and Prejudice adaptation is so provoking

They must be joking, right? A little while ago, BBC announced that they were going to do a new adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, and like - I suspect - at least 80% of the costume-drama viewing populace I reacted with profound scepticism. The Beeb completely nailed it last time they adapted P & P back in 1995 - the series, penned by costume drama supremo Andrew Davies and starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth as Elizabeth and Darcy, was an instant classic. I have even heard it referred to by die-hard Pride and Prejudice fans as "PP2". So why on earth, when they've already got it right, would the BBC consider doing another?

Well, it has been 22 years, hard as that is to swallow. I realise that adapters can't be expected to keep their mitts off certain classics indefinitely only because they've once been done well. And considering that we watch the same plays over and over again with new casts, why are things so different when it comes to TV and film adaptations of the same material, which will after all not be identical to each other? Why shouldn't there be twenty Oliver Twists, if there are twenty good Fagins to be had?

I think that part of the reason so many of us are irritated when TV channels or even film-makers churn out yet another version of a work that has already been done to death, and where there exists a near-flawless adaptation already, is that the budget for new period drama is bound to be limited. TV spokesmen don't tend to be over-fond of "bonnet dramas" anyway - the new P & P is already billed, absurdly, as less "bonnet-y" and more "dark" (honestly, what's next? A "dark" Winnie the Pooh?). They will tolerate a few of these dramas per year, but if one costume drama project goes ahead, it is safe to assume that it is at the expense of others that do not. And there are so many books that would make wonderful costume dramas, where adaptations have not been attempted for ages if ever. Dombey and Son is an example I keep coming back to: the 1983 adaptation is so creaky that, in spite of Paul Darrow's delectable Carker, I feel unable to recommend it to anyone but the most nerdy and patient Dickens nut. The most aggravating thing is that a Davies adaptation of this novel in the same vein as his Bleak House and Little Dorrit was actually commissioned, then axed (I have already whined about this at length). There are other examples of neglected adaptable novels, closer to Austen in genre, as mentioned in this Telegraph article (though I admit I couldn't get through Evelina myself). However, if a novel's title isn't already known to the public, then it's far less likely to make it to production. But a new Pride and Prejudice? That they can do.

Which leads us to another irritant: that it actually seems as if it's more likely that a novel will be adapted if a good film or TV version already exists, because then it will be more well-known - thanks to the already existing adaptation. I doubt that the 2002 Forsyte Saga TV series would have been made if hadn't been for the classic 1967 version with Eric Porter, or that they would have done a film of Brideshead Revisited if it hadn't been for the practically perfect TV series with Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews (especially as the film showed none of the understanding for its source material that was apparent in the TV version). It's a game of ever decreasing circles. And honestly, how do you think they came up with the idea of doing Poldark? Because the novels are so great? Somehow I doubt it - I may be underestimating their literary qualities, but I suspect the reason for the new Poldark TV series is - the old Poldark TV series.

Some novels can bear over-adapting better than others, because there are so many dimensions and perhaps previously neglected sub-plots to bring to light. I can't pretend I'm wildly excited about the prospect of yet another Les Misérables adaptation (by Davies - surely his time could be better used?), but at least there is a wealth of material there which couldn't be addressed at length in either the latest film versions or the musical, and the French TV version with Gérard Depardieu was frankly a bit hit and miss. But the plot of Pride and Prejudice isn't that complex, and the existing TV adaptation covered most aspects of it. True, Mrs Bennet could do with being less ridiculed, seeing as her fears of a penniless future for her daughters if they do not marry are entirely realistic. But we had a less caricatured Mrs B in the latest film, as in Lost in Austen which played around with the P & P plot... Yep, Darcy and company have already had a lot of outings.

The trend for British newly-scripted costume dramas seems to have stopped of late, and what with these unimaginative new projects on the go, I do wonder what the future will bring. Still, last time I was really despondent about period dramas, Downton showed up on the horizon, so no need to fret yet. Maybe the Yanks will come up with something juicy for us? I mean, if they can do other genres so well (and import Brits for the all-important villain parts)...

onsdag 16 augusti 2017

The negative virtues of Game of Thrones (first look)

All the hype finally got to me, and finally I felt I had to give Game of Thrones (the TV series, that is) a go. So, years after everyone else, I've now watched half of the first season - and I feel strangely pleased that it's not better.

I had a lot of acknowledged fears about Game of Thrones - that it would prove a complete waste of time, that it would be impossibly grim and gory or that I would be fool enough to fall for one of its universally hated villains. But one unacknowledged fear, that I only admitted to after it was done away with, was that it would actually turn out to be a masterpiece of a series, and unquestionably superior to Once Upon A Time quality-wise. I would then be in the same position as with Great Expectations vs David Copperfield or Upstairs Downstairs (the original series) vs Downton Abbey: I would have to admit through gritted teeth that the first alternative is better objectively speaking, while in my heart of hearts preferring the second alternative because of its more satisfying villain content.

Luckily, Game of Thrones isn't that great. The plotting is often clichéd, the characterisation (so far) crude and the dialogue heavy-footed. What's more, a comparison with Once isn't really a given - the two series may both belong to the fantasy genre, but they have little in common otherwise. Game of Thrones concentrates on political intrigues; yes, there be dragons (not that I've seen any yet), and probably magic too, but the fantasy trappings are peripheral to the story, and you get no fairy-tale vibes at all. GoT actually has more in common with slightly ponderous period dramas than with most fantasy yarns Ive seen. It's like The Tudors, but with made-up characters - which some would argue makes it exactly like The Tudors.

So, how does it hold up as a Tudor-esque drama in its own right? I find it has other negative virtues, apart from the important one of not being better than Once:

It's not orcs-vs-elves fantasy: I have some problems with the fantasy genre, which is why I haven't really read that many books belonging to it, though I'll gladly watch a film or TV programme with a fantasy theme. Fantasy so often ends up as a fairy-tale with all the fun somehow sucked out of it. I think the trouble may be that fantasy writers, in their eagerness to impose some sort of order and method into the lawless lands of fairy tales, oversimplify matters and divide their imagined world into good, beautiful magical creatures like elves and unicorns vs bad, ugly magical creatures like trolls and orcs. In the frequent battle scenes, it's not hard to spot which is the army supporting truth and light. This is a lot less interesting than fairy-tale figures, who tend to have their own agenda and aren't lined up in some larger, overblown fight of Good vs Evil. Some of them may be more mischievous than others, but there's no fail-safe rule as to whether you'll end up better or worse for encountering them. I bet the poor girl who was left coughing up toads as a punishment for being rude didn't think the fairy who cursed her was particularly "good".

All of which has absolutely nothing to do with Game of Thrones, and that's one of its advantages - it doesn't use the plot setup of The Lion, the Witch And the Wardrobe, Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings. Its protagonists are humans - not the most complex you'll encounter, true, but at least not impossibly noble harbingers of light or confusedly motivated minions of evil.

The characters aren't too engaging: In GoT, apparently, you have to be prepared for key characters being sliced and diced at a moment's notice. I've heard it argued that this is a big point in favour of the series: it adds real jeopardy to the scenarios played out. I can see where this argument is coming from. The fight scenes in The Musketeers would have been more exciting if there had been any chance that one of the Musketeers might actually cop it. Also, there are times, in my favourite TV programmes, where I've sighed a bit over "miracle saves" where characters who should be gone geese climb back from certain death or even come back from the dead because they're too popular to kill off (though sometimes, of course, this plot device feels completely justified...). To pick a fairly uncontroversial example, bringing Clara in Doctor Who back after she'd faced a suitably heroic and affecting death in "Face the Raven" was unnecessary in my book - we would have been able to handle the loss, and so would the Doctor.

Here's the thing, though. When you really, truly care about a character - when they may, in fact, be one of the main reasons you are watching a TV series in the first place - your first reaction to a random killing off of this character won't be "oh, what fresh and daring storytelling". It will be "sorry, what?!". Blood sacrifices are necessary sometimes in a TV series, for plot reasons or absconding actor reasons. But adding deaths simply to add "edginess" and a "who lives and who dies" factor? I don't know.

Happily, I don't much care whether the characters in GoT get sliced and diced or not. They're not interesting enough for that. Tyrion Lannister's likeable enough - you can see why he's a fan favourite, as he's what passes for a fully-rounded character in this story. But much of his appeal is down to Peter Dinklage's laid-back cynicism in the role, and even Dinklage struggles with a script that could have done with being a whole lot funnier. Other clever characters, like Lord "Littlefinger" Baelish and sort-of-spy-chief Varys, also lack a certain bite in their banter. Elsewhere, you see familiar tropes like The Noble Outsider Youth or The Girl Who Wants To Fight, Not To Marry. They're nice, I suppose, but if they get killed off, I won't be heartbroken.

The villains are decidedly not seductive: I would usually not count this as a virtue, but I have my reasons not to look for a new villain crush right now - I'm quite happy with the one I've got, thank you very much. And even if I were on the prowl, I would not like to fall prey to someone who risked making a "Top Ten Hated Characters in Television" list, which tends to be the case with GoT baddies.

No fear, though, because boy are the villains one-note so far. Prince Joffrey's a whiny brat who can be relied upon to behave in the most reprehensible way imaginable in any given scenario - because that's what his plot function is. A Draco Malfoy haircut can't save him, nor can comely Harry Lloyd save Viserys Targaryen from being anything else than the pathetic shit who pimps his sister to a savage war lord in order to get an army and then spends the rest of his time being spectacularly ungrateful. (Granted, the sister is tiresome.) True, I've not come across Charles Dance in armour yet - here's hoping he won't test my resolve.

I know all this is damning with faint praises, but I'll say this much for GoT: I enjoy it more than The Tudors or The White Queen. But guys, don't think we straight women viewers don't notice all those gratuitous brothel scenes and bare-chested lovelies. I'm not averse to objectifying myself - villain snogging scenes are always appreciated (though not in a GoT context) - but it hardly makes a series a grand work of art, now, does it?                  

onsdag 2 augusti 2017

Goodbye to a brainy male hero

Apologies for going down the doctorish road again, but I just can't wait until Peter Capaldi's last Christmas special (which we foreigners don't get to see until well into the new year anyway) before posting some final thoughts on the Capaldi era. Whatever adventure his Doctor is going on this Christmas together with the very first Doctor (with David Bradley taking over the William Hartnell role), it feels likely that the finale of series ten is where we say a proper goodbye to Number Twelve - the Christmas two-Doctor caper being more of a lap of honour.

This series delivered all the way through. Bill Potts (Pearl Mackie) continued to be a great companion, and comedian pro Matt Lucas managed to keep comic relief Nardole from becoming annoying - also, it was a nice touch that for all his apparent goofiness, he was actually more reasonable and responsible than the Doctor himself. Missy as played by Michelle Gomez was great entertainment value, as in series eight and nine, and even when she showed signs of being ready for redemption it wasn't too much or too soppy. Moffat latched on to the idea of two old friends with vastly different moral outlooks who for all that really wanted to find a way to save their friendship and ran with it. Adding another layer to this relationship, John Simm turned up again as the previous incarnation of The Master (I don't think it can be regarded as a spoiler anymore that The Master and Missy - short for The Mistress- are one and the same), who had no interest in reconciliation with the Doctor whatsoever. The dynamic between the two Masters, and between each of them and the Doctor, was a thrill to watch. And of course Capaldi was superlative throughout. Let's face it, whoever was going to succeed him would have suffered from the fact of not being Capaldi. More of this anon.

I know Steven Moffat's twisty plots can get on some people's nerves, and I do see their point. For all their cleverness, there are loose ends that never get properly tied up, and I have occasionally found Moffat too smart-alecky myself - with the overlong story-arcs for the Eleventh Doctor, for instance. But I'm really going to miss him. The finale of this series, World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls, was as gripping as ever, and full of the trademark witty dialogue which has the pleasing side-effect of making the viewer feel clever for appreciating it. (Not all of it was equally good though - that bacon sandwich conversation? For shame.) But once again, I wonder about the younger audience that Doctor Who is supposed to have. Are there any of them left? World Enough and Time was particularly grim, almost like a horror film at times. This is not what I'd consider family viewing - having said that, it works for me.

What's next, then? I must confess that the news that the new Doctor was going to be a woman did not leave me jumping for joy. However, the Master's sex change worked out all right, and I'm willing to give the Thirteenth Doctor a chance. I've not seen Jodie Whittaker in anything else that I can remember (she was in Cranford, apparently, but I don't recall her character), but judging by looks alone she's the right type for a female Time Lord - serene and intelligent-looking. Still, I can't help wondering why making the Doctor a woman was necessary. The thing is, there are plenty of engaging heroines in TV shows already, not least in Doctor Who. Strong women are all the rage, and they tend to have plenty of smarts as well. Brainy heroes, on the other hand, are harder to come by. The Doctor was one of the few who could measure up intelligence-wise with the average villain. When he tries to explain his attachment to Missy to Bill, he says that Missy is the only one who is even remotely like him. Turning the argument around, the Doctor is if not the only then one of the very few heroes I can think of who is even remotely like a villain - while at the same time trying to do the right thing. Those who claim that boys will lose a role model have a point; while far from perfect, the Doctor is a good male character who is also clever, which makes a nice change considering the more-brawny-than-brainy heroes you usually find enacted on your average playground.

Still, I'll let hero-fanciers worry about this. We villain-lovers will never be short of brainy characters to engage with. Come to the dark side: we still have clever, Scottish cookies.

torsdag 20 juli 2017

More on the subject of modern-day Austen plots

True enough, Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld proved to be a good, reliable read that I was not tempted to give up on. This novel is part of a project in which modern authors recycle the plots from the novels of Jane Austen – Sittenfeld got the fan favourite Pride and Prejudice. When I first heard about this project, I thought it was a great idea, as was the related project to let modern authors re-imagine the plays by Shakespeare. Now, after having read two of the Austen-inspired books – Eligible and Val McDermid’s Northanger Abbey – as well as plenty of reviews about the other novels in the Austen and Shakespeare projects, I’m no longer that sure.

I did like Eligible, and greatly preferred it to the McDermid Northanger Abbey, but I found myself liking it the most when it didn’t follow Austen’s template. There were some welcome plot surprises which kept the story interesting. In the exposition-heavy first chapters, I was afraid that here would be another author attempting a somewhat Austenesque style – I think Lydia once accuses Liz (the Elizabeth character) of using long words to make her seem cleverer, and the same accusation can sometimes be levelled at the third-person narrator. Soon, though, the style loosens up, and the dialogue between the Bennet sisters is lively and modern (even grumpy Mary is funny). But if I enjoyed the parts of the novel that were the least like Austen best, then how important is the whole Austen conceit?

My argument for approving, in theory, of retellings of the works of famous authors is that their readers are often as familiar with these plots and characters as they are with myths, legends and fairy tales. If these classic stories can be retold to interesting effect – as they so often are – why shouldn’t the same be true of the equally classic stories we find in novels and plays by authors like Austen and Shakespeare? The problem is that tightly plotted, realistic novels like Austen’s leave less room for manoeuvre than a myth/legend/fairy tale. The characters don’t need to be fleshed out – they are already – and there are few blanks to fill in as regards the plot. What’s more, while it’s par for the course to change things around anyway you like in a story that is part of an oral tradition, in Austen’s case there is a “true” story that the modern adapter has to take account of. You can depict King Arthur in a hundred different ways: the same can’t really be said for Mrs Bennet. Authors in the Austen project are further hampered by the fact that they to a large extent keep the same names as in the original, so there can be no question of “filing off the serial numbers” and keeping the readers guessing as to which character is supposed to correspond to which in the original.

In Shakespeare’s case – and I’m reluctant to admit this as I grew up with and loved the Lamb siblings’ Tales from Shakespeare in a Swedish translation – the plots of his plays, which he mostly filched from elsewhere anyway, are rarely the issue. From what I gather from the reviews, the authors of the Shakespeare-inspired novels have had more leeway than the ones involved in the Austen project, but they don’t seem to have come up with that many fresh ideas for all that. What, Leontes in The Winter’s Tale acts like a jerk? Shylock in The Merchant of Venice is hard done by? You astound me.

Having said that, I do think there is room for entertaining and even thoughtprovoking retellings of the classics. But it’s a tricky balancing act to provide variations on a well-loved author’s themes while in some sense staying true to the spirit of the original. In the “set in modern days” retelling subgenre, Sittenfeld fares better than most, but though I liked it, it reinforced my impression that prequels, sequels and retellings from other characters’ point of view do – at least in theory – provide more scope for the author and more fun for the reader. That is, as long as they are done well.    

onsdag 12 juli 2017

Becoming unstuck in novel reading – again

It seems that half the time when I blog about books, I write about the difficulty in finishing them rather than the books I actually have read through. Do other readers have the same problem? The book bloggers I’ve come across not only appear to read at an impressive rate, but also to finish the novels they’ve started as a matter of course. Since the spring, however, I’ve had several slightly depressing “I really don’t want to spend hundreds of more pages in these characters’ company” experiences.

First, it was a sort of crime story set in late 19th century New York. The settings were glamorous, the villain passably suave, if something of a gentleman gangster cliché, but after two hundred pages there was nothing to compel me to go on, as the protagonists – a well-to-do family who gets more and more involved with underworld activities due to their own stupid choices – did not interest me one jot. A little later, I started on Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which I might eventually get through, but not for a while. The Swedish translation is lively enough, but a little of this whimsy goes a long way: it’s awkward when a novel that would make a good lunch-time read during a working week is too bulky to lug to work (700 pages plus). Unlike with Kafka On The Shore, I don’t feel sufficienly drawn into a fascinating parallel world to want to spend hours of my precious summer holiday there. Then, there was the time-travel yarn in the vein of Jasper Fforde – complete with ballsy heroine – which was sadly not as good as anything by Jasper Fforde. I know that’s a pretty high standard to hold something up to, but it’s difficult to find the motivation to go on with something that is supposed to be light entertainment but which you don’t actually enjoy. I’d rather wait around for the real Thursday Next (where is she?).

A book I really must finish, as I’m already on page 426, is Anne O’Brien’s The King’s Concubine. And, well… It’s not bad. One quoted review calls it “better than Philippa Gregory”: I’d put it on the same level as Gregory novels I’ve read, but then I’ve not always been bowled over by those. The subject matter – Alice Perrers, a maligned mistress of the English king Edward III – sounds juicy enough. There’s a love interest with villainy attributes that jollies things along for a bit. But 620 pages? The rivalry between Alice and the king’s daughter-in-law Princess Joan, of which I had some hopes after a foreshadowing encounter between the two women when Alice was still a lowly novice in an Abbey, hasn’t really gone beyond petty court sniping yet. It doesn’t help that Edward III is the kind of chivalrous warrior king the English love, i.e. dull: not like his bruiser grandfather or his father of poker and unsuitable boyfriend fame. A plus when reading a novel about an historical figure you have no previous knowledge of is that you don’t know what will happen to him or her. The problem in Alice’s case is I don’t care that much. She rises from nothing, she’s ambitious, and a hard-headed businesswoman: the novel convinces me that she has a case. I just wish it hadn’t been such a lengthy one.

My own mood may be part of the problem here. The annual summer holiday is when you finally have time to relax hours on end with a book – which means that at least my expectations of a gripping summer read are sky high. Every page wasted on padding or less-than-thrilling exposition is deeply resented, as valuable holiday time ticks by. There’s also the fact that I’m on a bit of a daydreaming high at the moment. Daydreams are great when you have to wait in queues or perform the odd menial household task, but maybe they make it harder to engage in other alternative worlds: the ones you can reach by fiction. Perhaps the doors to other magical realms remain closed because I don’t push at them hard enough, being quite content to dwell in dream scenarios of my own.

Anyway, Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld is quite pleasant so far. If I finish that one, I might be in the right frame of mind to give Alice another try afterwards.

måndag 26 juni 2017

Vinick for President

If Doctor Who, with its whip-smart dialogue, likeable characters, engaging portrayal of different kinds of relationships (friendships, romances, family dynamics etc.) and (mostly) well-written ponderings on various themes can serve as an antidote to villain pining, then surely the same can be said for The West Wing, which also contains these ingredients? Sadly not. However, that’s no reason not to watch and re-watch this excellent series. If you’re a villain-lover like me, just be sure to have something a little less high-minded to break off with now and again. The West Wing is strictly superego fare, and a villain-free zone.

In a way, I respect The West Wing for having made this choice. Many political dramas concentrate on cynicism and wheeler-dealing, but they are also rather crude. I never got properly into the original, British version of House of Cards, and nothing I’ve read about the American version has made me very keen to give it a go. The Ruthless Politician so often ends up as just a hate figure for morally minded writers to tut-tut over. There’s no depth to this trope – if you’re looking for a convincing depiction of ambition and power-hunger, something to make you think “Yeah, I’d have done that too, and that, and… whoa, maybe not that, but I can see how you could end up that way”, you’ll have to look elsewhere than political drama. Perhaps it’s because we tend to see our political opponents as either fools or knaves, rather than as people who want the best for their country and humanity at large as much as we do, even if they are totally wrong about everything. And knaves, even really shallow ones, make better television than fools.

The West Wing does occasionally belittle the heroes’ opponents, but at least they’re not portrayed as plotting the end of civilisation in dark cellars. Yes, the political arguments are often weighted in favour of the West Wing team, but at least the opposition gets a hearing and some clever lines. Intelligent, articulate and funny Republican characters such as Ainsley Hayes do a good job of balancing out the pro-Democrat bias. Those involved in the political game come across as well-meaning men and women who are doing their best to make sure the country is governed as well as possible according to their lights. I think this might be a great deal closer to the truth than, say, Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister (admittedly comedy rather than drama), enjoyable though they are.

Yes, there were times when The West Wing risked becoming a little too smug – the episode where Will recycled eat-the-rich arguments which had been comprehensively panned by Sam in the early days of the series was a memorable low point. But then it rallied with season six and seven, and the presidential race between Democrat candidate Matt Santos and Republican candidate Arnie Vinick.

Much has been said about Jed Bartlet as the idealised American President par excellence, and yes, he’s not bad. But Arnie, wow – he’s the great presidential candidate that never was in my book. Hats off to the series makers for pitting their own favourite Matt Santos – highly moral but still humorous, brainy and sympathetically played by Jimmy Smits – against such a strong contender from the opposite team. The respectable, decent, sensible Vinick avoids taking cheap pot-shots at his opponents, argues convincingly and passionately for his ideas and occasionally makes courageous political decisions in his campaign that make you gasp for awe. Oh, and did I mention he’s played by Alan Alda? Honestly, who wouldn’t vote for this guy?

Admittedly, the balance created by having strong presidential candidates for each party is partly illusory because they are both pretty near the middle of the American political spectrum (as far as I’m able to judge from my ignorant, European viewpoint). But personally, I have no problem with this. Also, it’s a great deal more even-handed than earlier election battles where Bartlet stood against a fairly slow-witted Republican whom he could easily defeat in any verbal slanging-match – while simultaneously sounding as if he was far above such things as verbal slanging matches.

Arnie has my vote – at least my superego’s. My id wouldn’t mind a bit more of a whiff from the dark cellar.

tisdag 13 juni 2017

Just what the Doctor ordered

The good old remedy against villain pining, tried and tested during my Downton period, thankfully still works. Pity that there's such as limited dose of it available. But with the first part of Doctor Who series ten, containing six episodes, I did get two whole evenings' worth of TV watching without wistful thoughts about unattainable episodes of  Once Upon a Time season six (out on DVD in August, if I'm lucky). And hey, at least the present Doctor is a brainy being with special powers and nearly unlimited lifespan played excellently by a distinguished-looking Scottish actor and... argh, brave, moral and heroic. Not the same at all, then. Ah well, moving on.

I must admit to the cynical reaction "well, someone's earning some British Council funding" when I read that the Doctor's new companion Bill (a girl) was to be black and lesbian. (Not that Doctor Who creators need any financial incentive to be right-on, and it's perfectly possible they're not taking any of the BC's buck for "portraying minorities in a positive way".) However, the cheerful, inquisitive Bill proved to be a fully-rounded character, not an exercise in box-ticking, and may in my opinion be the best companion since Donna. I found Amy vaguely irritating at times, especially the nonchalant way she treated the supposed love of her life Rory, and Clara was hard to pin down - an intelligent control freak, yes, but otherwise a little too like Amy in her young Tardis babe-ness. It's not that I disliked them, but they didn't win me over the way Donna and Martha did. Bill seems warmer, and her crush on a mysterious girl in the first episode did not feel tacked on for effect, merely sweet. Once again - as in the Capaldi Doctor-Clara pairing - I'm relieved that there's no flirty Tardis banter on the menu. Bill's the Doctor's favourite pupil and surrogate granddaughter rolled into one, and it's a relationship that shows promise. I'm less sure about the inclusion of Nardole, the comic relief from the Christmas special The Husbands of River Song. True, they've beefed up the part, but he still doesn't feel entirely necessary to the setup.

Given the Doctor's aforementioned bent towards heroism and morality, not to mention the various script-writers' more or less well-guided attempts to Tell Us Something Meaningful, it's strange that I have as much patience with Doctor Who as I do and consider it one of my favourite shows. There are irritants in this series as in all the others. I'm getting fed up with the respect-for-artificial-life argument which gets another airing in the episode Smile - are we never to be free of bloody work, if not only clones but also robots are out of the question as unpaid workforce? And would even Karl Marx be able to make sense of the clumsy criticism of vaguely defined "capitalism" in Oxygen? But even if the Doctor's claim in Thin Ice that he's never had the time for "the luxury of outrage" is patently untrue, at least he and the series as a whole don't spend too much time on it. The adventures move on and the wisecracks keep on coming. Moreover, and I think crucially, the Doctor doesn't see himself as a hero. He always carries a fair amount of self-doubt with him, fuelled by the fact that trouble turns up wherever he goes. Even if he's "mucking in" and trying to solve every crisis he finds himself in, is it possible that he's creating more problems than he's solving? In series eight, the Doctor asked Clara "Am I a good man"? The answer is yes, of course, but the fact that he asks himself the question and never takes his own goodness for granted may have quite a lot to do with it. And he does have reasons for self-doubt - as we are reminded in Thin Ice, this is a man/time lord with so many lives on his conscience he's long since stopped counting them.

Part two of series ten won't be available on DVD until the end of July (still earlier than Once), but I'm greatly looking forward to it - especially as we're promised more of Missy and a glimpse of her previous incarnation. Maybe it will finally be explained in which circumstances that particular regeneration took place, and how much loopiness was passed on to the time lady "upgrade". This series is Capaldi's - and show runner Steven Moffat's - last hurrah, and I intend to make the most of it.