Freewheeling Sanditon

Yes, I know, now would be a good time to reflect on the themes of The Crown. But it's November, and it's been a long day. So instead, I will reach for low-hanging fruit - in fact the lowest-hanging fruit in all the land - and blog about the TV series Sanditon.

Though the first half-hour or so is based on the fragment of an unfinished Jane Austen novel, I hesitate to call it an adaptation. In fact, if you haven't watched the series and would like to try it, there is one thing you have to bear in mind at all times: don't expect anything even vaguely Austenesque. The characters Jane Austen sketched in her fragment are there, true, but they neither speak nor act like Austen characters - even the more off-colour ones - do. TV Sanditon is a romp. It features, among other things, a girl giving a rake a hand job in order to disarm his advances and the heroine surprising the hero emerging stark naked from a spot of sea-bathing (because these days, a wet shirt would be much too subtle). Sanditon may not be as racy as those regency romances with a half-clad beauty on the cover and titles like Seducing a Duke, but it has more in common with those kind of books than with anything by Austen.

But regency romps can be very entertaining, and I enjoyed this one. To own the truth, I had a much easier time getting through it than, say, The Crown (which I'm still not quite finished with). At least half of Sanditon is penned by costume-drama supremo Andrew Davies, but what's notable is that most of the better episodes were written by his co-authors. Davies is surprisingly coarse, especially in the earlier episodes (I know he has that reputation, but somewhat unfairly in my view - there is nothing coarse about, say, his adaptation of Bleak House). In time, the show finds its feet more, but even at its best it's more seaside postcard than delicate ivory miniature. And as long as that's what you're prepared for, it's fine.

As Davies and Co. don't even try to finish the story the way they think Austen would have done it, it leaves them free to do anything they like with the Sanditon characters. In fact, Sanditon in some ways demonstrates the advantages and disadvantages of not having a set story to follow. There's the thrill that comes from the fact that anything can happen - and pretty much anything does. The script-writers can spin out the story, come up with new ideas that can be incorporated along the way, sometimes perhaps even respond to viewer reactions (even Dickens wasn't above a bit of fan service). Since Downton and Mr Selfridge ended, I've missed this kind of freewheeling drama. Attempts have been made to follow the Downton template - as with The Halcyon or Indian Summers - but they haven't been that successful. It remains to be seen whether Beecham House will make the transition from one-series wonder (which wasn't as wonderful as all that) to long-running costume drama soap. Sanditon, too, has aspirations to soapdom.

And here's where we come to the disadvantages of the freely invented costume drama that hopes to go on and on. The writers are averse to giving us a proper ending. In the optimistic hope of bagging a second series of Sanditon, Davies and Co. gave us a cliffhanger at the end of series one. Instead of getting together, astute country girl Charlotte Heywood and her brooding love interest Sidney Parker went their separate ways, as he had to make a wealthy match in order to salvage his brother's finances. What's more, Charlotte's friend and Sidney's ward, the East Indian heiress Georgiana (!) Lambe, was also separated from her love, and the personable foreman Mr Springer, who aspired to better things (and was a far better match for Charlotte than Sidney in my book) chose to give up an apprenticeship as an architect in order to honour his dead father's wishes.

All these problems could be resolved somehow if there is a second series - but what if there isn't? As with Beecham House, series one of Sanditon doesn't quite manage to stand on its own two feet. I don't like cliffhangers at the best of times, but they are especially irritating when there is no guarantee whatsoever that there will ever be another series. The trick in these cases is to end on a note which will leave the viewers content if the worst comes to the worst, while keeping a couple of plot twists up your sleeve should the possibility of a sequel come along.

All in all, though, I'd be more likely to recommend Sanditon than Beecham House to costume-drama lovers. Yes, the hero Sidney, who is brusque and impolite to Charlotte for no reason for a good chunk of the story (in an effort to channel Mr Darcy, supposedly - but Darcy's rudeness had its explanations, and anyway he didn't win his girl until he learned to behave) is a bit annoying. And why doesn't he shave? He's played by Theo James, aka Mr Pamuk, who is undeniably handsome, but he doesn't look his best with stubble - no man does. Yes, there is some clumsy anti-slavery pontificating at times, but it's not as if this wasn't a legitimate concern of the day. With an East Indian heiress as part of the cast, the race/slavery theme fits better into the story than when it's, say, rammed into a Mansfield Park adaptation for no particularly good reason. Yes, the characters are by no means remarkably complex. All the same, there's a lot to enjoy.

My favourite plot concerned the potential heirs circling the rich and, erm, challenging Lady Denham (Anne Reid elevating what is mostly a caricature). Making Sir Edward Denham and his sister merely step-siblings, in order for them to be able to have a clandestine affair without committing "real" incest, seemed a daft idea to me at first. If they're step-siblings, how come they're both called Denham? Shouldn't Miss Denham be called Miss Poorasachurchmouse or something after her dead father? I have to admit, however, that this amendment of their relationship pays off in the long run, as we realise just how smitten the outwardly cool Esther Denham is with her caddish step-brother, and in how much danger she is of denying herself happiness for his sake. Then there's Clara Brereton, Lady Denham's poor relation and not at all the innocent ingénue she appears. Esther calls her "a rat who would bite off her own tail to survive", and that sums it up neatly, but then she has good reason to hang on to Lady Denham for dear life. The schemings of the Denhams and Clara and their interactions are fun to watch while having somes serious aspects, too. At the end, everything seems to be resolved, but who knows? I only wish the other plots of Sanditon could have ended in an equally satisfying way.

Mary Poppins (Disney version) on good form

I'm starting to long for an opportunity to rubbish something. It feels like my recent blog posts have been comparatively benevolent, and it's a long time since I had a chance to tear a film, book or TV series to ribbons. Maybe the TV adaptation of His Dark Materials will oblige me by and by - the first episode was certainly dire, but the second, annoyingly, picked itself up a bit. I'll have to hold my fire for now. Meanwhile, I watched Mary Poppins Returns this weekend and found myself yet again enjoying something a great deal more than I expected.

I didn't think I'd like this film much at all, to be honest. I'd seen a scathing Youtube review of it, and it did seem like a rip-off of a franchise which I wasn't sure Disney handled very well to begin with. Yet from the get-go, I was charmed by the catchy songs, the adventures Mary Poppins takes the new generation of Banks children on and Mary herself as played by Emily Blunt. Yes, you can say the film's derivative - the numbers and adventures echo those in the first film in a number of ways - but for some reason this didn't really bother me. I had a good time for two solid hours without feeling that the story dragged.

Maybe the derivative aspect doesn't irritate me exactly because I don't quite consider the first Mary Poppins film a timeless classic. I rewatched it shortly after watching Saving Mr Banks and I liked it fine. For reasons explained in my Saving Mr Banks post, however, I don't see the Disney version of Mary Poppins as the "real" Mary Poppins - she's a far cry from the books (which, admittedly, I only remember very dimly). So as Julie Andrews was already not the Mary Poppins of my childhood, it doesn't feel like heresy to regard Emily Blunt as another manifestation of this particular version of Mary - Disney Mary. In some ways there's even a little more of the strict nanny about Blunt than Andrews, so she's a smidgeon closer to the book Mary, but not by much. Mary Poppins Returns sets out to deliver on the Disney Mary front - good songs, check; magical adventures, one of which includes animated characters, check (and where else do you get to see 2-D animation in the classic old Disney vein nowadays?); pretty uncontentious life lessons, check; heartwarming moments, check - and it does it well. There's nothing wrong with that, as far as I'm concerned.

My main criticism of Mary Poppins Returns relates, unsurprisingly, to its banker villain, played by Colin Firth. To see Firth deadpanning is always fun, but the part he's given is meagre to say the least. The main problem to overcome in the film is that Michael Banks, now grown up, owes the bank money, and will get his house repossessed if he doesn't repay the loan within a few days. The problem will go away if he can show that he was left shares in the bank by his father, as they are worth enough to settle the loan comfortably.

Now Firth's character Wilkins goes as far as to destroy the bank's records of the shares owned by the late George Banks, because for some reason he really wants that house rather than the loan paid in cash. But why? What banker would rather repossess houses than get his money back? Wilkins acts not only heartlessly, but stupidly and downright illegally. On no level does this display good business sense - no wonder his aged uncle sacks him in the end.

True, a Mary Poppins film isn't supposed to give a realistic picture of economic matters. But what bugs me is that Wilkins isn't given any motive at all, besides being evil. I could have bought an exaggerated, whimsical explanation, in tone with the story. He could have had a grudge against the Banks family (maybe the Banks children were always held up to him as shining examples by his tiresome uncles?) or some grandiose ideas about real estate being the Big Future and the only thing to keep the bank afloat during the great slump. It didn't have to be a good motive, as long as there was one.

Luckily, one of the bankers from the original story is reintroduced at the end, in time to reassure us that the film doesn't have some confused All Bankers Are Evil agenda. The bankers in the original film weren't evil: they meant well, and honestly thought they were helping Michael when they tried to persuade him to invest his penny rather than squander it on bird food. In a head-scratching twist from the new film, they weren't half wrong, either. They simply had a different outlook than the one Mary Poppins was trying to promote, and that's fair enough.

So, yes, the whole bank plot could have been better handled. But apart from that, Mary Poppins Returns is fun and occasionally moving escapism (I blubbed once or twice). Plus it's had me humming "The Cover is not the Book" tunelessly ever since I saw it.