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.   

This "modern" Vanity Fair is actually not half bad

When trying to analyse why it has taken me so long to watch the most recent TV adaptation (on ITV) of Vanity Fair, I've had to face up to something I've never really admitted to myself before. It wasn't the adaptation's reputation of being very hey wow and attuned to the times that put me off, or at least not solely. If I'm honest with myself, I'm just not that fond of the novel.

As a villain-lover, I'm of course duty bound to root for Becky Sharp, and I do - though to be accurate, she is more of an anti-heroine. I particularly appreciate that Thackeray allows her to be such a bad mother. This is huge in a Victorian novel: in Dickens, even his "dark" women (with the honourable exception of Rosa Dartle) are overflowing with maternal sentiments towards some girl or other. Not Becky, who doesn't see the point of her own offspring, unlike the fond father Rawley (another nice touch). I also remember enjoying Thackeray's mildly ironic prose style when I read the novel ages ago. But apart from that, I didn't care for either the story or for most of the characters. Though Becky has some successes with her scheming, the novel never quite becomes the "bad girl goes from rags to riches" tale that at least I'd been hoping for. There are a couple of frustrating near-misses in Becky's career, and even at the height of her success she and her husband are still getting by on "nothing a year". Elsewhere, the downwards trajectory of the Sedleys is pretty depressing. As for the characters, many of them are created to be unpleasant, and even those who aren't can get on one's nerves, especially the blinkered Amelia. I did not look forward to spending seven whole episodes in the company of this sometimes downright grotesque bunch.

I started the ITV series (adapted by Gwyneth Hughes) pretty sceptically, and was at first extra sensitive to anything that might signal a typical late 2010 consciousness. That Becky threw out both her own Dr Johnson dictionary and Amelia's I considered overkill. There was a scene where the Sedleys were being racially insensitive in front of their black manservant Sam which felt forced, and Amelia and George got away with a remarkable amount of smooching for a courting Regency couple. Nevertheless, I had to admit that the story covered in the first episode of how Becky tried and failed to win Amelia's brother Jos and ended up in Queen's Crawley was effectively told.

As the series progressed, it became even clearer that the few "modern" touches - the pop songs that bookended the episodes worked more or less well, but I actually thought the signature song "All along the Watch Tower" was a good fit and very Becky-ish - were superficial adornments. At its heart, the series is a solid, straightforward adaptation of the novel. What's more, it is played more straight than the Andrew Davies adaptation from the Nineties, which tended to revel in the characters' grotesqueries. Here, even the likes of Sir Pitt Crawley and his heiress sister are more toned down. It helps that the series matches the stellar cast of its predecessor with a strong line-up of its own. The Davies adaptation may have had David Bradley as Sir Pitt, Miriam Margolyes as his sister and Anton Lesser as his son and heir, but the Hughes adaptation has Martin Clunes, Frances de la Tour and the cute, skinny one from Horrible Histories (oh, Mathew Baynton - thank you, IMDB) in the same parts (in the latter case it seems as if two members of the Crawley family have been merged into one). In fact, much to my surprise, I found myself enjoying the Hughes adaptation more than what Davies offered me - and usually I swear by Davies.

It's true, I preferred Natasha Little's Becky to Olivia Cooke's. Little had style and a charm that reminded me of Jennifer Ehle's Elizabeth Bennet. I could see how people were taken in, and how she could get away with playing the lady. Cooke's Becky has great enthusiasm and a hunger for what life has to offer, but it is always apparent that she's a common little piece. This is a perfectly valid interpretation of the character, though - her admirers (mostly men) don't tend to be that concerned with whether she's ladylike or not. Also, Claudia Jessie in the new version is the perfect Amelia, and though it's hard to match up to the great Philip Glenister, Johnny Flynn is Dobbin exactly as you imagine him.

I liked the more sober tone of the Hughes adaptation, and though there is some padding - Waterloo is made such a meal of one would have thought it was War and Peace - the episodes were not hard to get through. There were nice little moments where characters Thackeray himself seems to have despised were allowed some dignity. In one scene, the autocratic Miss Crawley is terrified because she realises that she will die unmourned. In another, Becky's dim husband Rawdon is made ill at ease by her banter - "maybe I'm a fool, but you shouldn't say so". An effort is made to explain why Amelia pines for her hopeless husband even after he's dead - she has loved him all her life, and never imagined living without him. It's still irritating, though.

The impression I got from the ITV adaptation was that Hughes truly cares for the source material - a great deal more than I do, in fact. She isn't using a Victorian novel as a way to parade her own enlightened opinions, which is a great mercy.

By the way, can anyone explain the tasty Steyne trend? Isn't the Marquess of Steyne supposed to be physically repulsive (which leads one to assume that Becky's reluctance to sleep with him isn't motivated by moral reasons)? Unless I remember incorrectly, the actor who played Steyne in the Davies adaptation gamely sported large, false teeth in order to uglify himself. In the newest adaptation, however, Steyne's played by Anthony Head - sans dentures - who though plainly a great deal older than Becky is a bit of a silver fox. I find it remarkable that the role of Steyne of all people has now twice been taken by hot actors - Gabriel Byrne played him in the film with Reese Witherspoon, which was such a whitewash of Becky's character the whole point of the story was somehow lost. Byrne did a good job of playing the "ugly on the inside" card, but all the same - neither with Byrne nor with Head you feel that Becky is in quite such a painful dilemma as in the book. In this instance, however, I won't complain too much about unfaithfulness to the source material. It has its compensations.

Beecham House - a very mixed bag

What with no new Once Upon a Time material to obsess over (though I try to make do with the existing 157 episodes), I have drifted back towards old interests - a good thing, I suppose, even if they sometimes feel like a poor replacement. For instance, I've finally caught up with some costume-drama viewing. Beecham House, which aired a while ago in the UK, takes place in late 18th-century India and has been marketed as the "Delhi Downton". It has an upstairs-downstairs set-up, featuring the upright English merchant John Beecham, his family and his Indian household. In the role of his mother, we see the excellent Lesley Nicol, best known as Mrs Patmore in Downton. Of course I had to have a look at it.

Is it worth bothering with, then? Hard to say. I think it all depends on whether there will be a second series. The first two episodes were really boring and the third one, though lighter, is still pretty thin. This surprised me, as Beecham House is the brain child of Gurinder Chadha, who wrote the screenplay for the funny and charming film Bend it Like Beckham. I also remember enjoying her Bride and Prejudice, an Indian take on the Pride and Prejudice story. Even if she's not the sole writer of the series, I did expect a little of the sparkle of Beckham to shine through. Instead, although the settings are sumptuous and the acting is good overall, the script for the three first episodes remains wooden, and the actors have a hard time breathing life into their one-dimensional characters. Beecham is impossibly noble, having walked away from the East India Company because they were... Generally Very Bad. He assures the Emperor (I confess I didn't know there was an Emperor of India at this time, so the series is mildly educational at least) that he thinks "India should be ruled by Indians". He takes the moral high ground on every issue, but for flimsy plot reasons neglects to reveal to his worried family and servants (and incipient love interest) until late in the day that the half-Indian son he's brought with him is legitimate and the mother dead. Because of his reticence, baby August is assumed to be a bastard by the household and two Indian beauties are each in turn suspected to be the mother. When asked point blank about it, Beecham only broods (yep, he's one of those brooding heroes). "Why would you want to marry the dullest man in Delhi?" Beecham's brother Daniel asks one of the ladies vying for John's affections. More than one reviewer has concurred with this view, and I must too.

For the last three episodes, however, things picked up. The characters gained some depth and sympathy, though there was still no spark between Tom Bateman's John Beecham and the English governess Margaret Osborne (Dakota Blue Richards), who were supposed to be interested in each other from the get go in spite of making pretty basic small talk at their first meeting. I'm currently watching Bateman as Rawdon Crawley in Vanity Fair, where he has the required chemistry with Olivia Cooke's Becky, and I liked Richards a lot as Police Officer Trewlove in Endeavour. But the romance between Beecham and Margaret is just too undernourished to fly.

All the same, stories have survived having a hopeless hero and a bland heroine before. Beecham House was moving in the right direction when the first series ended (with a cliffhanger, a strategy I do not approve of). There is room for further development of the characters, who are likeable in their sketchy way. I for one would be interested to know what Violet, a friend of the family who accompanied Mrs Beecham to India in the hope of bagging John, will do next in her endeavours to find a husband. All the downstairs characters could do with more screen time. Elsewhere, Grégory Fitoussi's scowling French General Castillon is pretty fun, especially as it turns out that, though an antagonist, he's not really a villain. You see, he too thinks that India should be ruled by Indians - with maybe just a little help from the French. Then there's Marc Warren as Captain Parker, who isn't given much to work with but who is still Marc Warren.

If there is a second series, I'll be checking it out, but I won't feel obliged to watch it until the end if the quality drops. If you haven't already seen Beecham House, I would recommend you to wait until we know if there is to be a second series. The six existing episodes alone are not necessarily worth investing time in on their own. 

Simple Downton pleasure

Yes, it's finally time to comment on the Downton film (or movie). I've watched it twice now, and though I liked it a lot I'm still a bit torn about it.

First off: if you are a Downton fan, you will enjoy this film. If possible, go and see it in the cinema: not because it necessarily has to be seen on the big screen, but because you will then be in the company of other fans and get a warm, fuzzy feeling of sharing experiences as the audience around you laughs affectionately at Molesley and at the Dowager Countess's witty lines, gasps when Andy behaves even more stupidly than usual or goes "aaah" when Thomas finally gets a kiss from a nice bloke. You will not leave the cinema sad, angry or betrayed, and that, in these times of fandom discontent, is worth quite a lot.

In some ways, though, I can't help thinking this film is a bit of a wasted opportunity. Reviews have described it as exactly like the TV series, and in a way it is, but for most of the time it's not like the TV series at its best. I wouldn't take a Downton newcomer to see this film. If you want to give them a taste of what the show is like, it's better to go for one of the early episodes (and I say that although I have issues with series one) or maybe the first episode of series two. Downton was always at its most thrilling when exploring the relationships between its main characters: love affairs; family ties; friendships; professional relationships; tensions and bonding between employers and staff etc. In the film, there is little room for this kind of interactions, because a royal visit steals most of the limelight.

Yes, as I predicted, the film is, for the most part, a prime example of Simple Downton. We have glamour, we have beautiful dresses and palatial environments, we have high jinks in the servants' quarters. The King and Queen are coming to Downton Abbey. The Crawleys are nervous about pulling it off, and Mary asks Carson to come back for the occasion in a panic, though as the Earl tries to point out there is no real need for it. The staff are excited, with the exception of Daisy (Sophie McShera fights valiantly with a couple of pretty unconvincing bolshie lines). Then members of the royal household start arriving and make it clear that they'll be running the whole show, and the resident staff had better just keep out of the way. The servants are miffed at this and plan a coup so they'll be serving the royal couple their luncheon, not the stuck-up interlopers...

Hold on. If a fleet of royal servants would swan in, offer to do my job for a day or two and tell me to curl up with a good book in the meantime - while I'd still be earning my salary - I'd be delighted. And I don't work half as hard as the servants in a manor house in late 1920s' Yorkshire. Something about the whole premise feels wonky, and the stratagems employed by the Downton staff are not overly sophisticated. It feels a little like a children's adventure in period costume. It was fun enough, but I couldn't help begrudging the time spent on this trifle of a plot and on the rest of the royal visit. Geraldine James and Simon ("Bridey") Jones are sweet as the King and Queen - even maybe a little too sweet, as this is the formidable George V and the battleaxe Queen Mary we're talking about - but we're not here to see them, or their daughter, or engage in the latter's marital woes. Yet because of them, many of the main Downton cast are pushed to the background with very little to do at all.

I do get it. Fellowes usually uses a Big Event as a kind of Christmas tree to hang different plots on, and this is the function of the royal visit here. Because of the visit, the Earl's cousin Lady Bagshaw (the Queen's lady in waiting) also visits Downton and is confronted with the Dowager; Tom Branson gets to prove his loyalty to the family once again (but we already knew we could rely on him, didn't we?); the constant struggle to keep the Downton ship afloat makes even Lady Mary question if it's worth hanging on to the monster estate; Lady Edith gets upset when the King proposes to send her husband abroad just at the time she's about to give birth; Anna clashes with a lady's maid who, unlike her, has zero feelings of loyalty towards her employer, and so on and so forth. Nevertheless, I couldn't help feeling that the most important of these stories could have been worked into the narrative in another way, without the aid of kings and queens.

Then again, the film delivers on the one front it decidedly had to deliver on for my personal part: Thomas gets a man. All right, they don't actually get together - there's no hanky-panky except for that one snatched kiss which is very chaste by Thomasian standards - but everything is set up for a clandestine love affair. What's more, it's not just an opportunistic "You like guys? I like guys! Let's make out" hook-up. Royal valet Ellis gets a chance to show he truly cares for the accident-prone Thomas and is prepared to help him out of a scrape. In the circumstances, I could not have wished for anything better for my favourite shady manservant.

There is also a rewarding storyline involving the Dowager, Lady Bagshaw, her lady's maid, Branson and Lady Merton (formerly known as Mrs Crawley), who once again acts as the voice of reason. It's nice to see Imelda Staunton, a stellar actress, playing a likeable character such as Lady Bagshaw: I suspect landing a part in the Harry Potter franchise (as the universally hated Dolores Umbridge, whose mannerisms Staunton nailed with skin-crawling accuracy) has proved to be bit of a mixed blessing for her.

I wonder how I would have rated this film if I had still been in the middle of my most fervent Downton obsession. Would I have been disappointed by the lack of core Downton storylines in favour of royal fluff? Or would I have thought: "Thomas has a boyfriend - the rest is immaterial"? I suspect the latter.

What is the meaning of The Meaning of Night?

It's been a while since I wrote about a straightforward historical novel, without fantasy and/or fairy-tale elements. Michael Cox's The Meaning of Night, which I bought years ago and have finally got around to reading, is as straightforward as they come. Written in the style of a Victorian novel, and set in Victorian England (London, mostly) it was - judging by what I've read while trailing Amazon reviews - a labour of love on the author's part, reputedly thirty years in the making. I'm favourably disposed to fellow ardent fans of the Victorian novel, but although the prose style was thankfully not as knotty as pastiches of this type of novel often are, I nearly gave up after finishing the first section of the book. There was mainly one reason for this: the hero's lack of likeability.

Edward Glyver aka Glapthorn, the protagonist, is something of a puzzle. He has an inflated sense of self-worth, is arrogant, and jumps to conclusions on scant evidence. When he is being blackmailed he immediately suspects his neighbour, the somewhat Heep-ish Fordyce Jukes, of being the culprit for no better reason than that he doesn't like him, and attacks Jukes when he thinks he's caught him in the act. Edward also underappreciates his lovely mistress while sighing for a woman we don't meet for hundreds of pages. What's more, the whole novel starts with Edward killing an innocent stranger merely as a rehearsal for a murder he plans to commit later on. This is such a mindbogglingly stupid idea, even coming from an opium addict, that I for one had no doubt of two things: one, that the reader is not supposed to sympathise with Edward, and two, that he would turn out to be an unreliable narrator, mainly because he would be prone to delude himself as well as the reader. I admit that one reason I persevered with the novel was that I looked forward to the part where it dawns on the conceited Glapthorn just how wrong he has been about everything.

Because that's usually the point of unreliable narrators, isn't it? Either we are constantly interpreting scenes related by them in another way than they do themselves, or there is a great rug-pull waiting for us further down the line where it is revealed that the narrator has either deliberately lied or been mistaken about most things. The fallout is that we're left with a completely different story than it first appeared to be. To make the narrator hard to like is a related ploy, so we won't feel too sorry for them when their world view falls apart. Edward Glyver or Glapthorn fits pretty neatly into this kind of narrator category- or so I imagined.

But what can I say? Edward turns out to be not as deluded as all that. Yes, there are some twists - the major one of which I called, more or less - but quite a few that I was sure would happen never materialised. The absence of more twists became a twist itself. When I realised that we are not meant to completely disregard Edward's judgement after all, I felt a little baffled, though more intrigued than cheated. If Edward is in fact essentially correct in many of what appears to be his far-flung fantasies, why make him such a narcissistic jerk to begin with? It's either a sophisticated double bluff, playing on the reader's expectations, or it's just... well, different.

In the end, I quite enjoyed The Meaning of Night, in spite of never warming to Edward (he does get a little more bearable in the course of the story). The novel is long-winded, and starting the narrative with a long section about the murder of the stranger and its consequences, when we have zero investment in the murderer's fate, feels like a mistake. However, I rather liked not being fed a clear-cut message. If you like the sound of a Victorian revenger's tragedy, this could be worth trying out. After all, revengers are usually bastards, aren't they?

The final Toy Story (surely)

Yes, I have seen the Downton Abbey film, but I won't be blogging about it just yet - I need to reflect on this important topic, and maybe rewatch the film so as to be able to offer my considered opinion as a Downton fan and one-time Downton obsessive.

Instead I'll be musing on another film I saw recently, which is part of a franchise I'm considerably less enthusiastic about: Toy Story 4. Don't get me wrong, I like the Toy Story films just fine. They're cleverly constructed, and a lot of effort obviously went into both character development and what nerds (and thus I) call world building. It's just I've never liked the premise. Granted, I wouldn't be surprised if most kids haven't at some point or other fantasised about their toys living a secret life once they turn their back on them. This common fantasy, and the notion that your beloved toys somehow love you back, are charming - up to a point. The Toy Story films go way beyond that point, though: instead they illustrate just why it's a good thing that toys aren't alive, as the life of a toy as they describe it is hardly appealing.

The tone was set at the start of the first Toy Story, where the toys of Andy, owner of the films' protagonists for the first three films, anxiously spy on his birthday party, fearing that he will get new exciting toys which will replace them in his heart. The neediness of cowboy toy Woody and co. becomes increasingly unsettling as the films progress and we see toys emotionally scarred by being neglected, discarded, replaced or never played with in the first place. In this universe, children unwittingly come across as cruel little despots. It's not only Andy's neighbour Sid, who physically disassembles his toys and then reassembles them in creative if scary ways, who is unflatteringly portrayed, although he's the only kid who is downright punished. (And for what? In the real world, nothing Sid does - except when he's a jerk to his sister - is reprehensible. How was he to know the toys were alive?) In Toy Story 2, the cowgirl Jessie sings an affecting ballad about Emily, the girl who once owned her, and their special relationship - that is, until Jessie was first forgotten for years, then given away to charity. The viewer is left feeling upset with poor Emily, who did nothing worse than - quite naturally - outgrow a toy. This is one of the instances where the Toy Story franchise's message is not only confusing, but downright harmful. As I've mentioned before, scenes like this encourage our irrational feelings of guilt towards toys we've abandoned, for no use that I can see. If you want to put the best spin possible on the message of the Toy Story films, it would be something like: "The bond between a child and its toy is strong and true, but it doesn't last, and that's OK". The films don't really do much with the last "and that's OK" part of the equation, though, except for the admittedly affecting end scene in Toy Story 3 when Andy, now old enough to start college, hands his toys over to another child.

This is a long preamble to get to Toy Story 4, but part of why I like this film more than I expected is that it to an extent breaks with the usual Toy Story formula. Usually, the perfect life for a toy is depicted as the one when they're played with and loved by one specific child. In Toy Story 2, Woody fears rejection from Andy, to whom he remains obsessively devoted throughout the films, and momentarily considers becoming a prized exhibit in a toy museum, admired by hundreds of kids. But the other toys find him and persuade him to come back, and it turns out Andy still cares for him, so we never question if Woody made the right call. In Toy Story 3, Andy's other toys are tempted by life at a day-care centre, until they find out their lot is to be manhandled by rough toddlers while toys higher up in the pecking order get the cuddles from the older kids. In the end, they are passed on to Bonnie, a charming little girl they can form a special bond to.

When I saw the trailers, then, where Woody and Bonnie's new, self-made toy Forky - who not unreasonably thinks of himself as trash and for a long time only longs to be thrown away - are lost during a camping trip and trying to get back to Bonnie, I thought I knew exactly how the plot would play out. When Woody runs into his old flame Bo Peep and she tries to sell him the wonders of a life as a lost toy, where you can travel with a fairground and see the world, I was sure that he would reject the idea in the end, after some agonising. After all, following the logic of the previous films, his life belongs to Bonnie now, doesn't it? This would make the temptress Bo a strong candidate for the Surprise Villain of the piece, as the toy that tries to persuade the heroes to Abandon Their Child so often turns out to be.

I'm happy to say I was wrong, and the story goes in another direction. An important part of the different dynamic of the plot is that Woody is not as important to Bonnie as he was to Andy - at the start of the film, we see him get left behind in the wardrobe as Bonnie takes out other toys to play with and pins his sheriff badge on Jessie. He's not entirely forgotten yet, but he's not a favourite. Bonnie's still a sweet kid, and Woody does what he can to make her happy behind the scenes, but it doesn't seem entirely reasonable that he should sacrifice his own happiness for the sake of playing a periferal part in his new owner's life. Woody once put his owner's needs before his relationship with Bo, back in the Andy days. When he's faced with the same choice again, circumstances are decidedly different. Bonnie needs Forky, that much is clear, but she may not need Woody.

The moving away from the whole child-obsession theme and towards a plot where toys have adventures of their own was something of a relief to me. Here, not being the greatest fan of the other films made me more appreciative of the final film than I would otherwise have been. I've seen ardent Toy Story fans be disappointed by the lack of strong, emotional scenes relating to the toy-child relationship in this film, but for the reasons given above, I was more than happy with the change of direction.

Objectively speaking, this is probably not the best Toy Story film, but it's a fun caper and a good ending point for the series. I was also grateful that there was no Surprise Villain - at this stage, I will actually prefer no villain at all (the obvious antagonist Gabby Gabby, though morally questionable, turns out to be redeemable) to the tired Surprise Villain cliché. Well worth a watch if you like animated films - Inside Out it ain't, but it's certainly a step up from The Good Dinosaur.