Scenes from a marriage, 1870

So, Belgravia: The Next Chapter turned out to be... not quite what I hoped for. Firstly, it wasn't written by Julian Fellowes. I was surprised by how much I ended up minding this. After all, Fellowes isn't the kind of a-zinger-a-minute script writer where you actively think: "Wow, this is so good". That other costume drama supremo, Andrew Davies, farmed out the script-writing of Mr Selfridge and Sanditon to no ill effect; there's clearly plenty of talented telly writers out there. What Fellowes has, though, is a knack of making his characters interesting and/or likeable. That's a talent this series would have benefited from.

Another disappointment was that the series didn't follow the adventures of the offspring of the main couple from the first Belgravia series, Charles Pope/Bellasis and Lady Maria Grey, which would have made it a proper "next generation" sequel. Instead, the connection to the original Belgravia is rather tenuous. Frederick, aka Lord Trenchard, is the bastard child that side character Oliver Trenchard from the first series decided to acknowledge as his own. We see the grown-up Frederick meet and marry the romantically minded Clara. However, he's so troubled by his upbringing and his "father's" disdain that he has a hard time accepting Clara's love, and much marital strife ensues.

I was sorry that Oliver Trenchard, one of the few links to the original series, was portrayed in such a bad light. Accepting his unfaithful wife's child was part of his redemption arc in the first Belgravia, and it detracts from his characterisation there to see him turn against Frederick from the moment he surprisingly gets a son of his own. For all that, I did manage to get into Belgravia: The Next Chapter after a bumpy start. But for seven of its eight episodes, the supposed connection to the first Belgravia was a hindrance rather than a help.

The series is in fact a competently crafted and well-acted (especially from the secondary characters) marital drama with a couple of amusing side intrigues. Some problems remain, though, the major one being that the two protagonists just aren't very engaging. Now, don't get me wrong, it's quite convincing that a naïve, impulsive girl and an emotionally stunted man would experience these kinds of romantic problems in 1870s Belgravia (perhaps even in modern Belgravia). But there's only so much of Frederick sitting around looking miserable in a repressed way, or Clara confiding in a society doctor who clearly has the hots for her, that this viewer can take.

The other problem, as I've hinted, is the branding. From a series called Belgravia: The Next Chapter, it's not unreasonable to expect the same kind of comfort viewing as from its parent series. For most of its run time, though, this drama isn't particularly comforting. I started thinking that I would have liked it more if it hadn't had any connection to Belgravia  whatsoever, and if I'd known roughly what kind of story I could expect from the start.

But – and here's the rub – episode eight was really strong, and tied back to the events of Belgravia in a way I would have been sorry to miss. Finally, after seven episodes of distraught flailing, the characters managed to get their act together in a supremely satisfying way.  

Also, the secondary characters add spice to the story throughout. I wasn't always convinced by Elaine Cassidy's Katherine in The Paradise – though she could act up a storm all right, especially in the second series, she just wasn't the spoilt heiress type  – but she absolutely slays as the loyal lady in waiting Davison. Sophie Winkleman and Miles Jupp manage to wring every drop of pathos they can out of the ducal couple with an epileptic heir (I know this is the late 19th century, but sometimes the characters in this series seem to know less about epilepsy than Marco Polo). There's a fun French marquise who's obviously up to no good and spinning intrigues seemingly just for the heck of it. Clara's envious sister has a solid character arc, and Frederick's brother James is such a pretty parson in distress you wonder how any thug could have the heart to blackmail him, especially when there are more worthwhile things they could be doing.

So in the end I was quite torn about this drama. I do think it would have benefited either from being shorter, or from giving more time to the side plots. What is the shared history (clearly not of the romantic kind) of Davison and the gimlet-eyed servant Fletcher? Why does the marquise meddle in Frederick's and Clara's marriage, something she does not have to do to further her financial goals? I wouldn't have minded spending more time with these characters and less with silly Clara and stuffed shirt Frederick.

All in all, though, the ending was strong enough to cancel out many of my gripes, and it was nice to see John Bellasis getting just a bit of a redemption (though not too much). It's just too bad it had to be at the expense of Oliver's. 

How to fix Disney's Wish

So, Wish finally aired on Disney Plus, in the middle of the week and after the Easter Holidays, when I (and I suspect many others, not least families with kids) would have had more time to watch it. It's not the only puzzling choice Disney has made in connection with this film.

I had a bad conscience in advance. I knew I wouldn't be able to watch the film totally unbiased, after the film has been generally panned by critics and fans. Throughout, I would be asking myself: "what's wrong with it?". At the same time, it's a fairy-tale film with a front-and-centre villain: just what I've asked for from Disney. Wouldn't it be disloyal not to appreciate their efforts? As King Magnifico would say: ungrateful, much?

But no. I don't feel bad anymore. I think it's pretty obvious Disney dropped the ball with this one. As the film is all over the place, a review risks being all over the place as well. Instead, I'll come up with suggestions on what I would have changed about Wish to make it work better, for me at least. It's a smug perspective, but it'll have to do, and I'll better get started 'cause there's a lot to get through.

Lean into the "wish conflict" plot line Before I watched Wish, my guess on what went wrong with it was that Disney made the premise over-elaborate. This is an easy trap to fall into when you construct a fairy tale from scratch. Actually, though, the premise is not at all bad. 

The subjects of the kingdom Rosas have willingly given their dearest wish to their sorcerer-king Magnifico, either on their 18th birthday or when they arrive in the kingdom, in the hope that he may one day grant it. Meanwhile, the wish is stored as a luminescent orb in his tower, and the wisher forgets all about what it was. Now, Magnifico only grants wishes he doesn't consider to be a threat to him or the kingdom, which turns out to be not that many. Asha, the film's heroine, finds out just how restrained he is in his wish-granting during an interview for a job as his apprentice.

The trailers made it look like Asha's goal was to make all the wishes come true, but the film is actually cleverer than that. Instead, what she wants is for the wishes to be returned to the people that have given them, if they're not going to be granted anyway, so that the wishers have a chance of making them come true themselves. Magnifico testily points out that the people who come to Rosas and voluntarily give him their wishes have already given up on making them come true. They see him as their only hope, and if he doesn't grant their wish then at least they don't have to long for something that will never happen.

That's actually an interesting discussion to have. If you're convinced your wish will never come true, is it better to forget it altogether? I'd say no, but the point is worth arguing. Too bad Magnifico goes dark so fast the main difference of opinion between him and Asha is soon forgotten.

Show King Magnifico's back story I had high hopes for Magnifico, and though they're not quite realised he's still the best thing with Wish. Reviewers have been frustrated with him, however, pointing out that he switches from tragic to moustache-twirling villain at the flip of a coin. Is he motivated by his traumatic past or by narcissism? Which is it? Pick a lane!

In fact, I could see a way to connect the Leader of the pack and Beagle boy sides of Magnifico's nature. Instead of using the classic storybook opening to tell us of his back story, why not show it to us in flashbacks? Seeing what he's been through for ourselves would make it easier for us to understand Magnifico's frail ego. His vanity could be linked to insecurity, which in part could be explained by his past. Maybe he wasn't always considered handsome and loveable?

Make the Queen evil (but loyal to her husband) Whenever a creative decision had to be made about Wish, the powers that be seemed to have made the wrong one. Apparently, someone had the idea of making Magnifico and his wife an villainous power couple, but it was left by the wayside. Instead, the Queen is all against using dark magic and such, which means sooner or later, for plot reasons, she will have to turn against her own husband.

If there's one cliché I hate more than any other, it's the "Oh, you're a bad guy now? Then I don't love you anymore" one. Quite apart from everything else, that's not how the Force works. Love tends to trump moral judgement. In the case of Queen Amaya, Wish initially made a good job of pressuring her into a situation where she simply had to sell out hubby (something he wasn't that sad about). But come the finale, she was far too chipper about his gruesome fate. She once loved this man. She should be heartbroken.

How much better it would have been to make her his evil ally and another enemy for Asha and Co. to defeat. Then the hinted-at prequel-to-Snow White elements of the story at the end would have gained in significance.

Make the Star a boy – and a love interest to Asha Another idea that was scrapped along the way. When a troubled Asha wishes upon a star after her failed interview with Magnifico, an actual wishing star comes down from the sky to help her. But instead of the studio going with one suggested concept of the Star as a boy of Asha's own age (17), the Star in the film is a cute little side character whose actual magic powers are unclear. Asha is a pretty standard New Disney Heroine with her "oh look, she's clumsy and nervous, isn't that relatable?" ways. That approach is getting tired by now. A proper romance – for the first time in ages in an animated Disney film – would have made her stand out more as a heroine.

Get rid of the cutesie-wutesie bits The film first started to go off the rails with the song "You're A Star", a nauseatingly saccharine and inconsequential number featuring singing animals, trees and mushrooms. Another fiasco is a song performance by over-excited hens conducted by Asha's baby goat Valentino. I thought Valentino was charming in the first trailer, but it turns out that the trailer contained his one funny line. All the others are so aggressively unfunny it almost looks like sabotage, and he adds nothing to the story. If one cute sidekick has to be retained, an improvement would have been not to give Valentino the gift of speech until the finale. Then he could just make cute faces throughout the story and finally trot out his one funny line at the end.

Cut Asha's mother and develop her friends Legend has it that the dreaded Jeffrey Katzenberg had the writers of Disney's Aladdin cut the hero's mother from the script: "the mom's a zero". Say what you like about Katzenberg, he's savvy: Aladdin's mother was not missed.

I'm sorry to say Asha's mom is a bit of a zero too. To be frank I didn't care much about her old grandfather either, but at least he had a plot function to fill. Asha's mother does practically nothing. She could easily have been removed from the story. Or, one of Asha's band of seven friends, whose personalities (or lack thereof) are based on Snow White's seven dwarfs, could have been adjusted to fill the part. Dahlia (based on Doc) seems motherly enough.

The seven friends are severely underdeveloped as characters, and of course you could have cut them too, or at least some of them. But another route to take would have been to flesh out the characterisation a bit. It's a mystery to me that only one of them has given his wish to Magnifico. Surely, not all the others are under 18 years of age? Including Dahlia the castle cook? Also, it makes it laughably easy to predict which of them will betray Asha. 

It would be better if most of the friends had given away their wishes and it had some effect on their personality. At one time in the story, Magnifico destroys the wishes of three random townsfolk who have been vaguely uppity in order to make a magic staff. Wouldn't the impact have been much greater if the wishes had belonged to three of Asha's friends? Plus at the end, you could make a little gag of Gabo (Grumpy) staying cynical even after getting his wish back, because that's just how he is.

Make the film 2-D or rethink the watercolour aesthetic The backdrops in Wish, like Magnifico's castle, are truly stunning. But the watercolour-y softer lines on the characters' faces look downright strange at times; I had a hard time looking at Asha's old grandpa. If the film creators wanted to lean into a celebratory "old-fashioned" Disney look, they should have gone the whole way and made the film (at least appear) hand-drawn.

Skip the clunky Disney references Yes, yes, Disney celebrated its 100th year last year, we get it. I don't mind characters from other animated Disney films showing up in the end credits, in fact I enjoyed that. But the clumsy references throughout the film were just pointless. Keep the ones to Snow White, seeing as it was the first animated Disney film: the dwarf-inspired friends, the magic mirror (and in my version an evil queen too). Cut all the rest.