Sanditon series two: A Regency romp that works

The frothy costume drama Sanditon continues after all! It was originally cancelled by ITV after its first series – in spite of, to my knowledge, being generally well received by the costume-drama-loving public – but (if a brief Wiki search is to be believed) PBS and the streaming service BritBox came to the rescue. Series two was aired by Swedish television during the autumn of this year and became a welcome distraction on Saturday evenings. Irritatingly, the series creators (chief among them Andrew Davies), not having learned their lesson from last time, decided to end this series on a cliffhanger as well. At least this time we are assured that the story will go on in a third series.

Why do I like this show, when I was so stern about Netflix's attempt to jazz up Austen's Persuasion and haven't been especially blown away by Bridgerton, which is firmly in the same genre? It's not as if Sanditon has anything to do with its supposed source material anymore. Any tenuous link to the fragment penned by Jane Austen has been snapped long ago. And it's not Great Art by any means. The characters, though engaging enough and well acted, aren't especially complex, and the storylines aren't original – in fact they are cheerfully stolen from such different sources as Cyrano de Bergerac, governess novels and Gaslight. In my post about the first series, I warned against expecting anything Austenesque, and I repeat the warning for this series as well. This is not like Davies's Pride and Prejudice, let alone his Dickens adaptations. But, like the recent Doctor Who special, what we have here is an example of TV entertainment that understands its brief. It promises a light-hearted Regency soap, with romances and intrigues you can gossip and speculate about with other costume-drama nuts, and this is exactly what it delivers.

So why don't I feel like Jane Austen's good name has been violated, in the same way I did when watching Netflix's Persuasion? It is a bit cheeky to use an Austen fragment as merely a sales pitch for a series and then go completely in your own direction. I'm not fussed about this, though, and I suspect the main reason is that I didn't think Austen's novel fragment was particularly good, at least not by usual Austen standards. And it is only a few chapters long after all. Persuasion, on the other hand, is a completed work, and one of Austen's best novels, if not the best. Anne Elliot is a wonderful, mature heroine, and I feel it's far worse to take liberties with her than with the relatively thinly sketched characters in Sanditon. It's also worth mentioning that though Sanditon is unpretentious and doesn't feel overburdened by background research (a character struggles with a corset at one point, but corsets weren't really a thing when you wore forgiving high-waisted Empire dresses), it's not knowingly, wilfully anachronistic in the same way as the Netflix Persuasion. It does make some attempts to anchor its plot in a recognisable Regency setting.

As for enjoying Sanditon more than Bridgerton, I simply think there is more pace to the former. It's strange considering that the Julia Quinn novels I've read are usually very entertaining, but I find Bridgerton more than a little slow. The material feels as if it's been stretched too thin, and there's not a lot of the original author's wit in the screenplay. Sanditon, by contrast, bounces along and has a wider variety of subplots to keep it going.

What's series two about, then? Well, for one thing, they've killed off poor Sidney, presumably because they couldn't get Theo James back. I thought this too drastic at first, but as there are other characters who are unaccountably absent, I suppose because their actors couldn't or didn't want to return, I could eventually see why they went with this solution (is it likely that Lord Babington wouldn't check on his wife at least once? And do we ever get explained what happened to Diana Parker?). Anyway, poor Charlotte is grieving for Sidney, but eventually other romantic options come along. A dashing Colonel (Tom Weston-Jones, aka hot Compeyson from Dickensian) takes an interest, while Charlotte for her part is intrigued by the reclusive Mr Colbourne, by whom she is employed as a governess for his daughter and niece. There is some mystery concerning his dead wife... Meanwhile, Charlotte's romantic sister gets entangled with various redcoats; prickly heiress Georgiana Lambe is courted by the painter Lockhart, who plays on his unconvential image but doesn't seem entirely trustworthy; Esther Babington, upset that she's been unable to conceive a child, becomes the victim of a plot to to replace her as Lady Denhams's heir; and Thomas Parker frets over Sanditon's finances as usual, this time more and more ably assisted in his endeavours by his younger brother Arthur.

Needless to say, I liked some plot and character developments more than others. If there's one character who has suffered from being so far removed from the original source material, it's Thomas Parker: in Austen's fragment, he is my favourite by far, but in the series not even Kris Marshall's homespun charm can save him from coming across as a prize idiot. I wasn't a fan of the sugar boycott subplot – "moral" boycotts are a pet peeve of mine in any era. On the other hand, I am warming to its instigator Georgiana Lambe (Crystal Clarke): there's some good character development for her and for Arthur Parker (no longer simply "the fat brother") in this series. Also, the boycott plot has the advantage of casting a favourable light on the comic relief characters of the vicar and his spinster sister; they support Georgiana and are genuinely fond of her. For someone who watches a lot of Midsomer Murders and the Morse crime dramas (Morse, Lewis and Endeavour), a kindly vicar in British television makes a nice change.

Rose Williams gives Charlotte a great deal of charm and somehow makes this often frustrating heroine work. How Charlotte can prefer Mr Colbourne to the handsome Colonel is a mystery to me, but I can't wait to find out how it all turns out in the end.

The power of Doctor Who nostalgia

Usually I complain that I don't have enough to blog about. I can't use that excuse at the moment: there are plenty of potential blog topics just waiting to be written up. But does that make things easier? Not really.

One comparably easy topic should be The Power of the Doctor, Chris Chibnall's sign-off as Doctor Who show-runner and the Thirteenth Doctor's final adventure. But not even that is plain sailing. I enjoyed it, despite its flaws, and now I have to explain why.

If series thirteen, the Flux series, was overstuffed with plot lines and characters, that's even more the case here. At least in Flux, the different storylines usually had some sort of pay-off, and there was only one serious plot thread left dangling at the end, namely: what happened to the Universe? Seeing as its apparent destruction hasn't been brought up since, I presume that it's fine, somehow. The annihilation of the Daleks was clearly not long-lasting either, but that's nothing new in Who. All in all, though, you realised why the different components were there. The Ravagers, the Sontarans, the Dog Aliens (sorry, can't remember what they were called), the Grand Serpent, Williamson the "mad mole", the Weeping Angels – though it wouldn't, in my view, have been impossible to lift some of them out of the story, they did all have some part to play.

Now on the other hand, I have no idea why many of the plot lines in The Power of the Doctor were included, especially those that were supposed to be part of the Master's plan. Did the Qurunx have to be part of the plot? Or for that matter the whole "conversion planet"? What was Vinder's part in the story? Why was the Master masquerading as Rasputin? Or is he supposed to have actually been Rasputin? Why did he deface fifteen famous paintings? Why did he kidnap and shrink fifteen seismologists – was that necessary to the "cover the Earth with lava" part of the plot, or what? Did we need a Cyberman-Dalek-Master team-up when the Cybermen and Daleks were usually just standing around and acting as muscle for the Master? Some of the story elements were so cool I wished Chibnall would have stripped back the episode content and made more of the remaining plot lines. For instance, I was glad to see Ashad again, one of the best villains from series twelve, but in the end he acted little differently from how an ordinary Cyberman commander would. More could have been made of his anti-human stance versus Kate Stewart's pro-human one.

I would rather have the messiness of late Chibnall Who, though, than the flaws of early Chibnall Who. The Power of the Doctor delivered where it had to: on the nostalgia front. Doctor Who specials, especially ones that mark the end of a Doctor's career, aren't the kind of episodes where you introduce new exciting characters or story arcs – it's where you pay tribute to all the show has offered in the past. Chibnall understood the brief and delivered. The nostalgia content was more geared towards Classic Who than New Who, but maybe that is only fair. After all, Chibnall's Timeless Child nonsense could be said to be most disrespectful to the classic Doctors, in implying that the history they provided the character with was not enough. By including old companions as well as old Doctors in his story, Chibnall had the chance to make amends – to some extent at least.

Strangely enough, seeing as I'm not nearly as well-versed in Classic Who as in New Who, the Classic Who nostalgia was what I appreciated most in The Power of the Doctor. Grumpy Tegan and enthusiastic explosions expert Ace were a great addition to the general shenanigans, and each got to share a moment with "their" Doctor, with moving results. Having the Doctor encounter versions of herself in a sort of regeneration limbo where it didn't seem strange that they had all aged considerably was a really clever move. In the end we even caught a glimpse of some more classic companions, including one of the very first, and I was all there for it.  

Also, does it really matter why we get Sacha Dhawan's Master as Rasputin when we get Sacha Dhawan's Master as Rasputin? Dhawan is still a great Master: not as funny as in his other appearances, I thought, but nailing the underlying sadness of the character, whose maniacal outbursts somehow ring hollow. And there are funny moments too. A Cyberman and Dalek sharing a bemused glance as the Master does a dance number to the Boney M. hit Rasputin is priceless.

Also – a significant negative virtue this for a Chibnall offering – there is no preaching. Absolutely none. Just pure nerdy Who fun, ending in a not entirely unforeseen but welcome return of a familiar face. I believe Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat would both have done more with the plot elements in The Power of the Doctor than Chibnall did. Nevertheless, even if the final meal could be improved upon, Chibnall deserves credit for getting the delicious ingredients together.

And next year we get an RTD-penned three-part special run with the (sort of) new Doctor... I can't wait. The Celestial Toymaker sounds like a very promising villain.

What's the deal with magic schools?

If House of the Dragon and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power have one thing in common (besides pacing issues), it's that they take themselves very seriously – one could argue, more seriously than any franchise in which dragons are a thing should. The Netflix film The School for Good and Evil looked like the perfect antidote fantasy-wise. One film reviewer compared its vibe to Barbara Cartland, which made it an appealing prospect when I was looking for fluffy weekend entertainment. The film's length was a bit daunting at approximately two hours twenty minutes, but fairy-tale based fantasy is the part of the genre I enjoy most, so I had to give it a go.

Not long after I started watching I thought to myself: "I forgot fairy tales are usually meant for kids". Even if the film started getting into slightly more adult (or at least teenage) concerns later on, this reminds you more of early than late Harry Potter (I'm talking about the HP films here as I haven't read the books). If you're a grown-up, this is by no means required viewing. Having said that, I wasn't bored. It was light-hearted fun in the same vein as Harry Potter and the Disney Descendants films and had the sense to question its own daft premise.

Is The School for Good and Evil derivative, then? I think it's fair to say it is. It's based on a book series where the first book was published 2013, well after the Harry Potter craze had started – though, it has to be said, two years before the first Descendants movie. Just tell me if the film setup sounds familiar: The School for Good and Evil is a school where future fairy-tale characters are trained for the roles they are to play as good and evil protagonists in various tales. Two girls who feel out of place in a humdrum village read about it and one of them, who imagines herself as a princess, longs to go there. In the end, they are both taken there, but the princess-wannabe is dropped off at the School for Evil, while her no-nonsense friend (believed to be a witch in their home village) is dropped off in the School for Good. Much what-am-I-doing-here-ing ensues.

Yeah, we've seen this before. We've had magic plus school, fairy tales plus school, fictional characters plus school... Without having seen it, I believe the whole training for future roles in fairy tales thing was the premise for the animated series Ever After High which the Descendants films were accused of borrowing from. The critical look at what is considered good and evil in a fairy-tale context we recognise from Once Upon A Time and, I hate to admit it, the Shrek movies. Fervent Oncer that I am, I will always claim that Once tackled the subject matter best by nuancing the picture rather than just flipping the coin and making the good characters bad and vice versa: the villains, though incredibly charismatic, are still villains, and still have to reform to get their happy endings – well, sort of. For all that, I'm not above a bit of simple ragging of vain, empty-headed princes and princesses, but no-one can say that it's original. 

The School for Good and Evil does less simple coin-flipping than the Shrek films or, say, Maleficent, and I liked the way it called out the nasty actions that "good" characters sometimes commit in classic fairy tales. On the other hand, the fairy-tale flavour is pretty generic: most of the school pupils are supposed to be the offspring of existing good and bad characters, but they don't particularly resemble their famous parents. Instead, you pretty much have goth kids versus popular kids. Sophie, the girl who's dropped off at the School for Evil, thinks she belongs in the School for Good because she's pretty, but her selfishness is supposed to make evil the better fit. But plenty of the princesses in the School for Good are equally self-obsessed, so her confusion is understandable. Seeing as the franchises I've mentioned aren't churning out new material, though, I can make do with this kind of fare. It's not the best fairy-tale-based fantasy has to offer, but it's not the worst either.

One thing I find hard to understand, though, is the popularity of the magic school. When Harry Potter rose to fame, I sort of saw it: there was the combination of two popular genres, (children's) fantasy and tales from boarding school à la Malory Towers, and it seemed like a fun enough idea for one book series for kids. But since then, I've come across magic schools time and time again. There's the Blythewood book series by Carol Goodman; the Winx TV series on Netflix that I've quite enjoyed (I know it's for teens, but... Robert James-Collier is in it, and that's my excuse); a book series by Naomi Novik which features a school that, I suppose as a contrast to other fictional magic schools, is sinister and not cosy at all; the list could go on. And here's the thing. Learning magic at school – even a sinister one – is lame. It deglamourises and demystifies magic. Maybe child readers fondly imagine that if they were taught spells and potions at school they'd enjoy it. Well, they'd be wrong. Even the most interesting subject loses its charm when you have to do homework on it.

I vastly prefer fantasy franchises where magic is either self-taught or the subject of one-on-one tutorials with suitably cool mentors. Learning the ropes from a (non-demonic) sorcerer who's at the top of his game: now that's what I call real magic. Being stuck in a school just isn't enchanting enough.