Why an evil Peter Pan is no great surprise

It may not be very festive to criticise the childhood hero of many a tot. But it's high time I blogged about something book-related, so here goes. I had my eye on Christina Henry's Lost Boy since a while back, especially after having enjoyed her Alice books (even if they didn't have that much to do with Alice in Wonderland), but I held back, as I felt it only fair that I should read the original Peter Pan story before I got to Henry's dark take on it. Though I have seen a good many adaptations of and riffs on Peter Pan, until recently I had neither seen the play by J.M. Barrie nor read his novelisation of it, Peter and Wendy. Now I've read the latter, considered the most important Peter Pan text by those responsible for Penguin Classics. It's easy to see what they mean, as Peter and Wendy offers a more detailed narrative than any play could, but I do still need to catch the play - in unadulterated form - some day. I still can't say for certain whether Skull Rock (not in the book) is a Disney invention or not.

Anyway, having read Peter and Wendy, I thought I could in good conscience move on to Lost Boy. In Lost Boy, Peter Pan is a villain. Strangely, though, this was no great shock to me, nor I suspect to a great many other people. In fact, my own reaction is more or less "Well, duh" or "Tell me something I don't know". I don't think I'm alone in thinking there is something a little off about J.M. Barrie's creation. Youtube videos on "dark stories behind Disney films" like to point out that J.M. Barrie more than hints that Peter killed off lost boys who committed the crime of growing up. As for the Peter Pan-as-villain idea, it has been done before: in Once Upon A Time (still my favourite TV series: how I miss it!), Peter Pan was one of the most memorable "guest villains", being the main threat of the first half of season 3.

So why is it less unlikely that Peter Pan should be a villain than, say, Winnie the Pooh? How similar are the two villain Peters in Once and Lost Boy to the original, and what can be said in defence of J.M. Barrie's version?

I didn't much care for the versions of Peter I came across as a kid, but this wasn't because I thought there was something sinister about him. The explanation was quite simply that I was Team Hook (that was long before Once nearly ruined the Captain for me). It's when you revisit the story as an adult that you start to question the good intentions of the protagonist, and the feeling of unease is only strengthened when you actually read Peter and Wendy. Neverland in the book is a pretty creepy place. Unlike in the Disney film (which, to do it credit, otherwise follows the original story rather faithfully) childen actually both kill and get killed on the island, and Peter is largely responsible for it. When he is away, the Lost Boys and the pirates are content with "biting their thumbs at each other", but that isn't good enough for Peter. Early on, he makes a careless comment about killing pirates, and one must assume that the skirmishes with the Indians were equally lethal until there is a truce. What's more, he isn't a very good leader. No-one is allowed to know more than him, so as he doesn't quite know what a twin is, the Twins live in existential uncertainty. As he's unable to distinguish between when he and his gang have had a real or a make-believe meal, the boys often go hungry. And yes, the Youtube videos are right: "The boys on the island vary, of course, in numbers, according to as they get killed and so on; and when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out".

As for his relationship with the Darlings, Peter is actually only interested in getting Wendy to Neverland as she can tell stories: the two boys just come along for the ride. When they keep falling from the sky in their flight to the island, Wendy is constantly afraid that Peter will tire of preventing their fall, as he sees saving them as a game rather than caring one way or another whether they live or not. Once in Neverland, Peter has no intention of ever letting the Darling children go back to their home, and nearly sabotages their attempt to do so, though he is finally reluctantly moved by Mrs Darling's plight. The boy who never grows up is a thoughtless, selfish one, and there is even something off-putting about those supposedly beguiling milk teeth.

However, the reimaginings of him in Once Upon A Time and Lost Boy are pretty harsh. The Once Peter is probably the one who would have upset J.M. Barrie most, not because he's villainous, but because he is really an adult, an irresponsible small-time crook called Malcolm who abandons his son in exchange for (almost) eternal youth. "A child can't have a child", he explains as the crying boy is carried away from the island by the Shadow (a separate, malign entity). Reinvented as Peter Pan, a name taken from his son's lost toy (the little'un having a flair for names), Malcolm lives it up for many, many years. He lures other children to the island to keep him company (doubling as the Pied Piper), until the time comes when he has to prolong his life by getting hold of the heart of his great-grandson. Not a problem for this Peter, who sets about it, until the boy's friends and relatives put a few spanners in the works.

The Peter Pan in Lost Boy is closer to the original, not least because he is a child, though a mad and malicious one. Lost Boy is essentially a back story for Hook, though the protagonist Jamie isn't very Hookish, and could more or less be any intelligent Lost Boy who gets disillusioned by his leader and friend. The trouble starts for real when Peter brings Charlie, a boy who is really too young for the Neverland life, to the island. Jamie starts caring for him which makes Peter jealous. Through the ensuing adventures it becomes more and more apparent that Peter is a monster who has to be the centre of the universe for all of the boys, Jamie especially, and who will try to get rid of anyone who stands in his way.

The dark Neverland of Lost Boy isn't so far removed from the original Neverland as the setting of Henry's Alice books was from Wonderland. J.M. Barrie's Neverland was, as I've mentioned, rather unsettling already, so Henry's interpretation doesn't feel altogether "out there". But while I liked Lost Boy quite a lot, and hugely enjoyed the dastardly Peter Pan in Once (brilliantly played by Robbie Kay, who must be older than he looks), I feel that neither Henry nor the creators of Once have quite grasped J.M. Barrie's intentions. Nor do they have to, obviously, as long as their riffs on the Peter Pan story work as their own thing, which they do. But it would be wrong to judge J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan on the basis of these reinterpretations. Barrie's Peter often behaves questionably to say the least, but that is because he is supposed to be the eternal, typical child: "gay, innocent and heartless" (I don't have to explain that "gay" means "carefree" in this context, do I?). Barrie's view of children is unsentimental, and Peter isn't the only one who acts selfishly. The Darling children, at first, have no intention of coming home to their grieving parents until years in the future, when they blithely envisage getting a hero's welcome. Their parents' distress isn't real to them - even Wendy, who is almost grown-up and should know better, dallies. When the "do you believe in fairies" scene is written into the novel's narrative, Barrie is aware that not every kid would play ball in the circumstances: "Many clapped. Some didn't. A few little beasts hissed."

To sum up, J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan is selfish not because he is Peter, but because he is a child. To make out that he's much worse than all the other children in Neverland is not completely good form. Then again, I never went to Eton, so I don't complain.

The Crown season three: What side is Peter Morgan on?

I was cautiously looking forward to the third season of The Crown. I felt guilty for not getting into the first season more, and the second one didn't really hit home with me either. Nevertheless, I acknowledged that it was well-made and well acted. This time around, with no favourite series featuring fantastic villains to compete, I felt that I was finally ready to appreciate it as much as period drama fans generally seem to do.

Sadly not, though. The series still has the same strengths and weaknesses as in previous seasons. On the plus side, the acting's still great (mostly). Olivia Colman doesn't convince quite as much as Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth; you never really buy that she's supposed to be a bit of a cold fish, as her face is too expressive. Nevertheless, she gives a good performance as always. I preferred Tobias Menzies as Prince Philip to Matt Smith's version: Smith's boyishness, which is charming when he plays the Doctor, grated rather when he was Philip, especially in season two. Menzies is a bit stiff, but has great rapport with Colman and other co-actors. While it felt unnecessary to recast the roles of Lord Mountbatten and the Duke of Windsor, seeing as Greg Wise and Alex Jennings did such a good job of them and could easily have been aged up just a bit more, the advantage was that we got to see Charles Dance and Derek Jacobi on screen. Jane Lapotaire was spectacular as Philip's mother, a put-upon, chainsmoking nun. Also, the production values are impressive, and the series still feels like a quality product. On the minus side, the pacing was still slow, and there wasn't much going on in each episode. Some of the events highlighted deserved the attention they got, while others didn't.

However, this time around something else bugged me that hadn't before. Back in season one, I'd assumed Peter Morgan's project was about understanding both the Queen and the British monarchy better. It didn't have to be a ringing endorsement by any means, but I saw it as an earnest endeavour to find out the inner workings of the monarchy and what it must be like to be its figurehead. I thought we were supposed to see things from the Queen's point of view, as in Morgan's film The Queen. That's not to say it should go unchallenged, but I expected the base note of the series, so to speak, to be sympathy with the Queen.

This is what I thought we got in season one, which I even claimed was good PR for the royals. In season two, after I read an article where Peter Morgan showed republican leanings, doubt set in. By now, and after having heard some more choice quotes from Morgan about the Queen and the monarchy (admittedly, from a hostile source) I'm starting to wonder if The Crown is in fact a Trojan horse of a series. It attracts largely pro-royal viewers with the promise of making a believable drama out of Queen Elizabeth's home life, then starts to feed them the message that the monarchy, to which she's devoted her life, isn't really worth it. Maybe those early instances in the series of the Queen putting duty before her own wishes weren't explorations of ethical dilemmas at all but part of a bigger pattern, which is supposed to show us how the Crown demands far too much of its bearer. We seem to be getting the "poor little royals" argument for abolishing the monarchy again and again: look how the members of the royal family have to sacrifice who they really are, and how miserable it makes them. Wouldn't they be happier living an "ordinary" life?

Now, it's not as if I were an ardent monarchist myself, though I happen to think that the Swedish and the British royals are (for the most part) doing a good job. In principle, there's not much to be said for monarchy, and if Morgan wants to get rid of it, that's a perfectly respectable opinion. However, if the purpose of The Crown was to show us how worthless said crown is, then it hasn't been playing fair. Whether monarchist or republican, one doesn't want to be made a fool of. Anyway, the "poor little royals" argument doesn't cut much ice with me as it's possible, if difficult, for a royal to opt out of the whole thing. They seldom choose to do so, however. Hmmm, wonder why.

This royal rant has left me little time to get into the specifics of season three. I enjoyed the two first episodes - especially the second one, where Princess Margaret (a hilarious Helena Bonham Carter) charms President Johnson. Episode three was "Aberfan" and can't be called enjoyable, but it did pack a punch and had something interesting to say about why we shy away from the grief-stricken (because we think we'd be rubbish at comforting them) and why we shouldn't stay away (because even if we don't have much to say, showing up is a help). Whether it was entirely ethical to highlight these dilemmas on the back of an actual tragedy is another matter. Episode four brought us Lapotaire, but one of the plot lines - about how poorly received a documentary about the royal family was - was, according to one review I read, a complete invention. A journalist called John Armstrong plays an important part in the episode, but apparently there was no such person. Learning this shook me and made me question whether Morgan actually knows what he's doing. If the documentary wasn't poorly received, then the whole point of this plot is undermined. Morgan may not care for the documentary himself, but he shouldn't foist his opinions on the national press of the day.

Then followed a string of episodes where we see royals discontent with their lot. The Queen confides to a chum who's helping her out with her horses that horse breeding was what she really wanted to do with her life, not "the other thing". Prince Philip has a mid-life crisis triggered by the moon landing - what is his life of visiting factories for dentures and such-like worth compared to walking on the moon? (As to that, I bet the employees of that factory were happy to get a spot of royal glamour.) Prince Charles doesn't feel he can get his voice heard. His split with Camilla is blamed firmly on his family, for dramatic effect (though if she did two-time him with Andrew Parker-Bowles, I would have thought that had something to do with it). Princess Margaret gets routinely shafted, as in the previous two seasons. And so on and so forth. It's pretty tiring, though things do get more exciting every time Margaret's around.

"Everything is politics", prime minister Wilson glumly states when an adviser questions whether anyone would want to make political hay out of the tragedy at Aberfan. Ironically, The Crown is best when it's not political, but dwells on human relationships. The friendship between the Queen and Wilson is nicely handled, and more believable than in Morgan's play The Audience. Philip reaching out to a group of clerics he has earlier derided is a moving payoff to an uneven episode. After Margaret tries to kill herself, she and her sister are allowed a scene of real affection and understanding, where Queen Elizabeth confesses that to go on without her sister would be unbearable. Moments like these are welcome, though I feel myself more and more viewing the protagonists in The Crown as fictional characters who happen to have the same names and positions as some real-life figures. I do believe that's the best way. 

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.

All you need is The Beatles (almost)

I want to be as positive as I can about Richard Curtis's newest film Yesterday. Together with About Time, it marks his return to the genre he does best - the heartwarming rom-com - after the terrible blip of The Boat That Rocked and that awful "No Pressure" commercial. It's also pretty cute that Danny Boyle, a director I associate primarily with grim and gritty fare like Trainspotting and its sequel - films which, alluring cast choices notwithstanding, I've not been able to bring myself to watch - agreed to direct something as lighthearted as Yesterday and stood the course. No "creative differences" here. (Also, I assume it's thanks to Boyle that we get an uncredited cameo from Robert Carlyle, albeit covered in prosthetics. Squee!) Finally, the film has a prominent Beatles theme, and I'm a huge fan of the fab four.

So when I say that I had problems with both the romance and the comedy parts of this rom-com, I know that sounds harsh, but I did enjoy it, honest. Neither Yesterday nor About Time reaches the heights of Four Weddings and A Funeral and Notting Hill (rom-com perfection) or Love Actually (a bit more flawed, but still very, very good). However, they are pleasant to watch, and I appreciate their underlying sweetness. Curtis, in my view, is at his best when he doesn't shy away from sentiment. I'll keep wishing and hoping (to quote a non-Beatles song) that he'll come up with another rom-com masterpiece, and if he doesn't, films in the style of Yesterday will do just fine.

The premise of the film is that its hero, Jack Malik (Himesh Patel), a failing musician, is just about to give up his music career when the whole world has a power shortage at exactly the same time and he's run over by a bus. He survives, but when he wakes up he finds that only he remembers The Beatles and their songs. The film isn't really interested in what exactly happened during that power shortage. It's less a sci-fi conundrum, more of a plot convenience so as to be able to set up the main story. There's also a running joke about random other phenomena who are unknown in this new reality. Fair enough: geek as I am, I still realise that a Beatles-themed rom-com is hardly the time or place to get into parallel universes and alternate realities. So, we just take it as read that Jack knows about The Beatles and everyone else (almost ) doesn't.

Jack is unable to resist passing off The Beatles' work as his own, and in time he achieves huge success. However, he feels dreadfully guilty. What's more, his new career takes him away from sweet schoolteacher Ellie (Lily James), his friend and (somewhat implausibly) manager during the lean years, whom he has just realised that he loves.

Yes, it's that old chestnut. The main problems with this film has to do with the story. First, the hero is a real whinger. Patel sings well - which is important - but struggles to make a convincing romantic lead, and no wonder. Even Hugh Grant in his heyday would have had his work cut out trying to make the glum Jack, who's miserable when he's a failure and miserable when he's a success, appealing. When Ellie, in good old Curtis-heroine fashion, takes the first step and confesses her love, Jack freezes instead of responding - not once, but twice. What's the poor girl to think except that he's just not that into her?

Second, the "fame and fortune versus true love" setup is not only a cliché, it's a very irritating one. It always bugs me when protagonists are called upon to sacrifice worldly pleasures like money, fame or power for the sake of their loved ones. Because why would their loved ones demand that of them? What kind of bastards are they, that they can't be happy when someone near to them hits the big time? An image which has stayed with me as an illustration of this kind of storyline is from a Barbara Taylor Bradford adaptation: the successful heroine's husband is lounging by the swimming pool while complaining via phone to her that he never sees her. Well, how do you think she pays for that pool, you jerk? Ellie gives mixed signals regarding her feelings about Jack's fame - she claims that she's thrilled for him, but at the same time asks him to stay with her when he has important meetings to attend, as a sort of evidence that he does care for her. I suspect his success isn't really the issue here, and that had he simply said "I love you and I want you to be by my side" at the right time, she could have got used to a life in luxury in California fairly easily.

For these reasons, the Jack-Ellie romance didn't grip me, and as for the comedy, I could have done with more of Curtis's trademark wit. The dialogue doesn't dazzle in, say, Notting Hill fashion (and speaking of Notting Hill, Anna Scott got to keep her movie career and get her man - only sayin'). Many of the funny lines go to Jack's American manager, who's blunt and unapologetically greedy, but her schtick gets old after a while, and when we see the last pop-eyed freeze-frame of her we realise how one-dimensional the character was all along.

What does work, and saves the film, is the admiration and affection it shows for The Beatles. Not only do we get to hear a great number of their songs, as rendered very creditably by Patel, Jack is hailed as "the greatest songwriter of all time" on the basis of their output. Curtis is never one for half-measures: just like Vincent van Gogh according to the Curtis-scripted Doctor Who episode "Vincent and the Doctor" was the best painter ever, so The Beatles, in his view, is obviously the best band ever. Reviewers have speculated that the film would have been more interesting if Jack had failed to make the Beatles songs popular in the modern age; in my opinion, they're missing the point. By having Jack's audiences being wild about Beatles songs, Curtis not only tips his hat to the band and its enduring appeal, he shows a touching faith in the taste of the masses. Like all his rom-coms (I'm not counting Boat) and "Vincent and the Doctor", Curtis's latest film is life-affirming.

Patel is at his most convincing too as a Beatles fan. I can partly make peace with Jack's misery because he clearly hates stealing from John, Paul, George and Ringo, although in his reality they're unaware of it. One of the best scenes in the film is when he meets the two other people in the world who remember The Beatles, and things unfold in another way than he feared.

Seeing as how he managed to coax Paul McCartney into singing "Hey Jude" at the 2012 Olympics inauguration ceremony, I expect Boyle shares Curtis's enthusiasm. Ultimately, you could say, they're just two fanboys, standing in front of a band, asking it to love them.

Spinning a tale without the spinner

OK. So. Obviously, I was not expecting some hotted-up, Once Upon A Time-style sorcerer, with or without scales (though considering Naomi Novik's Once-y take on Beauty and the Beast in Uprooted, there was some room for hope). But something along the more traditional line? Gnome? Goblin? To (reluctantly) quote Shrek, "curly-toed weirdo"? C'mon, is it too much to ask from a novel called Spinning Silver, where the inspirational fairy tale is referenced in the very first sentence?

Surely, even a normal person must find it a bit odd that a novel which takes inspiration from the story of Rumplestiltskin or Rumpelstiltskin (the latter spelling seems to be more common, although as a Oncer I stubbornly stick to the first one) fails to include any version of the title character. Granted, there are other interesting aspects of the story - like, say The Frog King, it's a fairy tale hearteningly devoid of a moral. The heroine doesn't achieve happiness by being good or kind but through sheer dumb luck, and strangely enough seems perfectly content with being hitched to the mercenary king who threatened to kill her three times if she didn't fulfil an impossible task. "Marry a bastard and you can still be happy" - now that is a message I can get behind. But remove the helpful but malevolent gold-spinner from the mix, and you're not left with much of a plot - or of anything. Nice as it is to see elements of the story pop up in new contexts in Spinning Silver - Ooh, there's the ring and necklace! Wow, three questions a day, that's classy, it's not even from the Grimm version! - they also remind you of the one element that is missing. This is my only major gripe, but me being me, it is major.

Spinning Silver is best enjoyed as an entirely independent tale with folklore and fairy-tale touches. As such, it is immensely readable, and just as good as Uprooted. Though I think Uprooted is my personal favourite, as it delivered on the sorcerer front, Spinning Silver is more ambitious in a way, as it's told from the point of view of multiple characters. Miryem is the granddaughter of a successful moneylender, and the daughter of a rubbish one. Her father being too kind-hearted to squeeze his clients, who duly take advantage of him, Miryem's family live in poverty while the people her father's lent money to prosper and look down on their benefactor at the same time. When she's sixteen, Miryem finally has enough and takes over the reins. She proves superb at making money, and saves her parents from penury - not that they're very happy about it, as it involves her becoming tough and hard-hearted. Refreshingly, the novel is very much on Miryem's side here. The villagers who complain about her are a whingey lot, and you gradually realise the reason they treated her father like dirt wasn't only because he was a moneylender, but because he is a Jew. But the hostile villagers aren't the only problem. The country - fairy-taley Russia-something (plus Lithuania? The name used for it is "Lithvas") - is plagued by the Staryk, inhabitants of a magical winter kingdom who go on raids for gold and leave cold and destruction in their wake. The Staryk King overhears a conversation where Miryem's father claims she can turn silver into gold, and makes her an offer she is in no position to refuse. Three times he leaves her silver from his kingdom. She must return the same amount of gold to him or die. If she succeeds, he will marry her.

Luckily, the Staryk silver has magical properties and proves valuable. With the help of a silversmith who hopes to marry her cousin, Miryem hawks an exquisite ring, then a necklace, then a crown, to the Duke of the nearest large town (where her grandfather lives). These items make his mousy, neglected daughter Irina seem entrancing, and give him hope of being able to marry her off to the Tsar himself. The only problem is, the outwardly young and handsome Tsar is an even worse bet marriage-wise than the Staryk King.

The third heroine of the story, besides Miryem and Irina, is Wanda, who becomes Miryem's servant when Wanda's father can't pay his debt. She seems simple compared to her wily mistress, but does in fact have a lot of good peasant common sense. Favourably disposed to Miryem, and even more to Miryem's kindly parents, Wanda and in time her brothers have an important part to play when it comes to helping Miryem - and, indirectly, Irina - out of what appears to be a hopeless situation.

Miryem and Irina are good, resourceful heroines, but seeing as they are seventeen at most when the story takes place, they are almost over-capable. I can buy Miryem being so sharp and bright, but when Irina proves to be a master political plotter who can outwit the whole of the Tsar's court I did think Novik overstrained the "sisters are doing it for themselves" theme a bit. The book blurb hints that the heroines may find love, and at one point I thought Miryem and Irina would fall for each other - they are quite alike in many ways. That's not the way the story goes, though, and I confess I was quite grateful that the two super-girls were allowed some interest in the opposite sex. I think my favourite of the heroine bunch is Wanda - also strong and capable, but in a more stolid, believable way, and with a touching affection for those who show affection to her.

With well-drawn characters, fascinating settings - among them the Staryk's land, where Miryem has to wrap her head around an alien culture, and the witch's house that exists in the Staryk land and the non-magic world at the same time - and a twisting plot, there's a lot to like about Spinning Silver. Also, the Staryk King - though no Sarkan or Solya - is a great deal more appealing than Katherine Arden's version of the Winter King and makes for a more than passable villain (or is he?). But although he has some Rumple-like traits - like always keeping his side of a bargain - the function he fills in the story is essentially the one of the gold-mad king. He may not reveal his name, but I'm pretty sure that there's one we can rule out.                  

The Glums (or, Les Misérables Andrew Davies style)

Yes, I know that I claimed to be looking forward to watching the Andrew Davies adaptation of Les Misérables. When it finally aired on Swedish television starting at the end of February, though, I wasn't exactly raring to go. What with the first episode being slow-moving, it has taken me this long to finally watch the rest of them, after they'd languished on my TiVo recorder box for months. The pace and story did pick up, but the adaptation remains easier to admire than to love. From the reviews I read before I watched it, I gathered that it was gloomy, that Jean Valjean was great and that it was difficult to get a handle on Javert. And guess what? The adaptation is gloomy, Jean Valjean is great and it's difficult to get a handle on Javert.

You could argue that it's no surprise when a programme with the title Les Misérables turns out to be on the glum side. The thing about Victor Hugo's original novel, though, was that it was such an exciting story full of colourful characters. That's what I've always felt was appealing about Les Mis, not any wallowing in the miserable state of some of the characters' lives. So the slowness and unrelenting seriousness of the first episode put me off rather, though in theory it's a clever idea to tell the back stories of Jean Valjean, Fantine and Marius in tandem. The glimpses from Marius's childhood don't really pay off much later, incidentally, which is a shame. The second episode, when the story gets going properly, is an improvement, but did we actually have to witness Fantine's teeth being pulled?

The one who carries this adaptation through some rough patches is Dominic West as Jean Valjean. He's been good in other parts where I've seen him, but here, freed from the "handsome lead" label, he really shines. Whether as a threatening convict, a shy and awkward do-gooder or the loving, possessive guardian of Cosette, he completely nails the characters. Of the Jean Valjeans I've seen - and there have been a couple - I believe he's the best, at least when it comes to the "straight" non-musical adaptations of the novel.

What about Javert, then? I have to admit I was one of those who raised my eyebrows enquiringly when they went with a black Javert, since he is not black in the novel. In fairness, though, if you want to do an ethnic switch, Javert is not a bad candidate - it fits neatly enough into his back story of an underdog who works himself up to an important position in the French police force. Also, fortunately, David Oyelowo is a strong actor, and manages to sell his overall Javert-ness better than, say, John Malkovich in the adaptation with Gérard Depardieu as Valjean. In fact, the credibility is more stretched by the general multiethnicity of the casting than the specific case of Javert. I can buy that 19th-century France wasn't uniformly white, but no way was it as diverse as this. It's a bit distracting, but there are rewards to accepting that a greater percentage of the characters have complicated back stories than is entirely probable. For instance, Adeel Akhtar's portayal of Thénardier is so spot on - the whole Thénardier clan is a success - that I'll gladly swallow their having a more exotic family tree than you'd usually find among French, small-town, 19th-century tavern keepers. After all, stranger things have happened.

To get back to Javert, Oyelowo puts in a good performance, but the problem lies in the way the character is written. One advantage with having trudged through the unabbreviated version of the novel - battles, sewers and all - is you get an answer to the question why Javert is seemingly so obsessed with a petty criminal (what's more, who's made good) like Valjean. The answer is: he isn't. The plot demands that the characters are confronted with each other time and again, but this is largely through coincidence. Whenever Javert chances on Valjean's trail, then of course he wants to nab him - after all, Valjean's the one who got away. But Javert's life isn't all about putting this one felon behind bars.

It would be truly novel if an adaptation chose to highlight this instead of depicting the Valjean-Javert relationship as the feud to end all feuds. Instead, Davies has gone the opposite route and made Javert more obsessed with Jean Valjean than in any other adaptation. Fair enough, but in that case there had better be an explanation as to why a stellar police officer would act so irrationally - a strange twist is that here, even Javert's spying on the barricade is tied up with his hunt for Jean Valjean. His motives are largely left a mystery, though. It's a pity, because there are promising hints here and there which would have been worthwhile following up on. When Jean Valjean saves Fantine from jail and takes care of her, after she's insulted him, Javert is flummoxed - "I don't understand you" is all he can say. Here's something one could have made something of: Jean Valjean as a puzzle, the only thing that doesn't fit Javert's orderly world view, and therefore a threat. But the adaptation never quite makes this case, or any other, in order to account for Javert's idée fixe.

As a mostly faithful adaptation, this series works well enough, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it to someone who isn't already interested in Hugo's novel. For newcomers to Les Mis, I'd first recommend the musical (a stage version, where everyone can actually sing, rather than the film version), then the 1998 film with Liam Neeson as Valjean and Geoffrey Rush as the ultimate Javert. For all that it's six hours and a bit long, the Davies adaptation doesn't offer us that many more insights into the characters than the musical he despises. Marius and Cosette remain pretty uninteresting, though there's a forced attempt to give Cosette some "agency" at the end. The students still seem supremely silly in their willingness to die - and kill - for a lost cause (it was the same in the novel, though). At least in the musical they had some rousing songs. Lily Collins's Fantine is fine, but so is Uma Thurman in the Neeson film and pretty much any Fantine you get to see in the West End/on Broadway.

Where the adaptation wins over both musical and film is in the depiction of Jean Valjean and the Thénardiers. The latter hardly feature in the film and are grossly misrepresented - with the exception of Éponine, who gets a good press - in the musical. As for Jean Valjean, Davies gives due weight to some important issues which are usually glossed over in other Les Mis versions, such as the fact that Valjean does commit a theft (which he immediately regrets) after having met the Bishop of Digne - he steals a coin from a small boy. It is also made clear that he has no love for Marius. Beautiful as the ballad Bring Him Home from the musical is, Jean Valjean's feelings towards the young man who wants to take Cosette away from him are rather the exact reverse, which makes his saving of Marius all the more remarkable. And then there is West. If Jean Valjean is your favourite character from the story, the Davies adaptation is worth seeing for him alone.               

(Somewhat girly) reasons for keeping my HBO Nordic subscription

Summer travelling and a summer cold are two explanations for my lack of blogging of late, but if the truth be told I'm always lazy blogging-wise during my precious four-week summer holiday. At least my cold has given me an excuse for a fair amount of irresponsible TV watching. One modest goal has been to find reasons why I shouldn't cancel the subscription to HBO Nordic, which I only got in the first place because of Game of Thrones.

I admit I've always been a bit suspicious of HBO as it's the home of so many of those "must-see" series which I have no burning wish to watch: The Sopranos  (mafia in a domestic setting: apparently the guy dies); Six Feet Under (black humour in a funeral parlour); True Detective (truly depressed detectives solving truly depressing cases) and so on. Before my subscription, I'd tested Mad Men, which left me unimpressed, and The Wire, which I decided (to use the style of the script) was not my fucking cup of fucking tea. To sum up, I had reason to believe that this channel's image was a bit too edgy for the likes of me, and that I'd have been better off with an ABC Nordic subscription, if such a thing had existed.

However, it's really cheap. Also, the latest news on The Gilded Age, the new costume drama by Julian "Downton" Fellowes which has been an age in the making, is that it's been snapped up by HBO. When it finally airs (and I was probably over-optimistic in thinking it would be this year), I will want to see it as soon as possible, without having to wait for Swedish telly to air it or for the DVD box set - knowing as I do from my Once Upon a Time experiences how long that can take. And so, the hunt is on for HBO series that aren't too dark or too twisted. It's not that I expect sunshine all the way, I'd just rather be without a surfeit of dead kids or jokes involving making up stiffs so they look nice. Please?

Staying away from the ponderous historical dramas which I suspect are there to fill the Game of Thrones gap, as they seem really po-faced, I've managed to unearth three series which form a good enough excuse to keep on paying for HBO - for now:

Big Little Lies I started to watch this series because I expected enjoyable rich-bitch infighting in luxurious venues, but got something else - and was pleasantly surprised by it. Settings like a wealthy US East Coast town and characters like the yummy mummies who live there are usually the starting point of satire, but this series takes its protagonists seriously and sympathises with their trials. There is a surprising amount of female solidarity, and sometimes (not always) cat fights can be put to rest simply by the two combatants levelling with each other. I found myself warming to all the main female characters - meddling but loyal Madeline, fragile Celeste, tough newcomer Jane and the short-tempered hotshot Renata. Even Bonnie, introduced as the annoyingly perfect hippieish wife of Madeline's ex, turns out to have inner depths. A mildly addictive series which is also mildly depressing (the domestic violence plot line is pretty grim), but perked up by a sharp script and the characters' ability for survival.

Killing Eve I'm still not 100% sure about this series. It's apparently adapted from a book series about one of its protagonists, the female assassin with the code name Villanelle. She is very convincingly portrayed by Jodie Comer as a psychopath who takes an almost childish delight in her job, but once you know that's what Villanelle's all about, little that she does seems that interesting or shocking. The main reason I continue to watch is Sanda Oh's Eve, the agent who is set to hunt down Villanelle with very few resources and no official backing. I loved Sandra Oh's Christina in Grey's Anatomy - she's one of the reasons I kept watching that series for as long as I did - and she still has that enjoyably dry delivery as Eve. The script's good too. I'll finish season one and see how it goes.

Sex and the City I didn't watch this when I was younger because I suspected that I'd feel envious of the main characters both when it came to the sex part and the city part (the city in question being New York). And I probably would have. When I watched the very first episode and only laughed once, I thought "I'm too old for this". From episode two onwards, though, I started to enjoy this light-hearted sitcom more and more. It's not the least bit relatable to me - the four female leads all live in Manhattan, have glamorous jobs and get as much action as you'd expect from the title. But somehow it doesn't matter. It's restful with a TV programme where, unlike say in Big Little Lies, the stakes are never that high. No matter how many dating disasters the quartet goes through, there seems to be plenty more Manhattan bachelors on offer. It's blissfully unedgy escapism and ideal viewing for when you have a cold. Plus, I'm not that envious of the characters anymore - their lifestyle seems a bit exhausting. And the guys, though good-looking enough, lack that certain wow factor for me. Sour grapes, I suppose.

Reflections on the Downton Abbey film (or movie) trailers

Much of my TV time recently has been spent on rewatching programmes which I've already blogged about comprehensively. I've revisited Steven Moffat's whole stint as a Doctor Who show runner (minus the Chibnall-scripted Silurian two-parter which I couldn't face), which has made me really miss Moffat - one might not agree with all of his ideas and conceptions, but boy, the man can write. Also, I've finally finished a drawn-out rewatch of Downton Abbey, interrupted in the middle and taken up again during the spring/summer, in time for the film's/movie's release in September.

My aim was to prep myself and be able to give the kind of predictions that I've done before the later series of Downton the TV drama. Looking at the two recent trailers, though - and if you've missed them, you can find them here and here - I suspect that the film will be as standalone as one can expect and will not feature resolutions to dangling plot threads from the series. We are unlikely to find out why the first Mrs Bates really killed herself, if Sir Richard Carlisle ever published that story about Kemal Pamuk bedding Lady Mary and dying in the attempt (I suppose not, but doesn't his reticence deserve a mention in that case?) or if poor Sir Evelyn Napier will finally get over his Mary crush and marry someone else. I'll wager neither Michael Gregson nor Bertie Pelham's "artistic" and "delicate" Cousin Peter, both unconvincingly killed off off-stage in the TV series, will disconcert the Crawleys by coming back from the dead. Instead, the main thrust of the story seems to be centred on a royal visit to Downton Abbey, which means you won't have to know all the ins and outs of the TV series in order to follow the plot of the film, although you'll be much more invested if you're actually familiar with the Crawley family and their servants (as I assume they won't waste time reintroducing characters that most of us know pretty well by now to newcomers).While I understand why Fellowes and co. have made this decision - they don't want the boyfriends and girlfriends of old Downton fans, who get dragged along to the cinema though they've not really followed the show themselves, to die of boredom - I think it's a pity in a way, and I'll try to explain why.

When I'm in the middle of rewatching Downton, I'm struck by how good it really is; when it comes to getting me engaged in the characters, it knocks spots off Game of Thrones any day of the week. This tends to come as a bit of a surprise, though, because when I'm not rewatching Downton, I sometimes wonder whether I haven't hyped it a bit too much and whether it was worth it being obsessed with the series for years. I think part of the reason why it's so easy to forget how good this series can be is that there are, in a manner of speaking, two Downtons. Not an upstairs and a downstairs Downton - they're well intertwined - but what you could call the complex Downton and the simple Downton. Complex Downton has fascinating character development and character interactions, strong scenes and moving lines, sometimes containing a deeper wisdom. Simple Downton seems to share the outlook of the decent but naïve Earl of Grantham when it comes to world events as well as members of the Crawley household. Isn't the Dowager Countess funny? Aren't the Bateses sweet? Isn't Carson a loveable old curmudgeon? Isn't it awful that the good old days are coming to an end and the great landowners have to sell off their homes? Why can't Thomas just be nicer? Taking these things as read, simple Downton offers us whimsical plot lines centred on small household crises rather than high drama, points that are hammered home by repetitive events or exchanges, characters who act like caricatures of themselves and sentiments that don't always feel earned.

I understand that Downton is supposed to be light entertainment, and I would certainly not have wanted it "grittier". The mixture of drama and whimsy is the old Dickensian "streaky bacon" recipe, and some of the simple Downton elements work really well, mostly thanks to great performances by the actors stuck in the more whimsical plots. Kevin Doyle as Molesley has first-rate comic timing, which I suspect is a reason why his character was expanded to such a degree in the later series, and sparks fly in the scenes between Sue Johnston's Denker and Jeremy Swift's Spratt, although the Denker-Spratt wars have little relevance for the Crawley household saga. Nevertheless, I often feel that Downton sells itself short by going down the simple route. After all, you can be funny and give the characters their due, as evidenced by the plot line where an unwilling Mrs Patmore acts as a go-between between Mrs Hughes and Carson and tries to figure out whether he expects "a full marriage" from Mrs Hughes. It's hilarious, but also moving, and shows these three characters from the best possible light.

So, to finally get to the point: a royal visit to Downton Abbey, complete with a "scary butler" and stuck-up chef from the royal household, feels like a simple Downton plot. It will provide sumptuous scenes and downstairs antics set to jaunty music, but this isn't something that has - or should have - any profound impact on the protagonists' personal lives. What difference does it make, in the long run, if the visit is a success or not? And why on earth should Mary have to call in Carson - what's he supposed to achieve that Thomas can't? I'm afraid a lot of time will be wasted on the Royal Visit Plot which could have been better spent on more high-stakes drama and on exploring the lives of the characters we have come to know and love. Fellowes should trust his fans more. We're not in it for the spectacle, honest, though a few glamorous dance scenes are nice. He can afford to dig a little deeper.

On the other hand, now it's finally here, I intend to enjoy the Downton film to the utmost and not look a gift horse in the mouth. There are elements of the trailers that look very promising indeed. Let's hope Tom Branson's new love interest is really The One (or more accurately The Second One After Sybil) and not another dud. And it looks as if Thomas is finally gettin' some tail! Hurrah!

The Winter King and the annoying maiden

I had first planned to compare Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver and Katherine Arden's The Bear and the Nightingale, as they are both (though only partly in Novik's case) inspired by Russian folklore, have similar settings and both feature a Winter King as one of the mystical characters that appear. However, I'm reading Spinning Silver right now and enjoying it a great deal more than Arden's book. (Though, in view of its main, non-Russian fairy-tale inspiration, it has a distinct "Hamlet without the Prince" feel about it.) A comparison would mostly be about me liking Spinning Silver better, so maybe it's a little more fair to look at Arden's novel in its own right. I still have problems with it, though.

I feel a little bad about this, because it's not as if The Bear and the Nightingale is a badly written book. On the contrary, it's impressive and well put together, and the Russian folk-tale creatures give an interesting flavour to the proceedings. Though Vasya, the book's heroine, is pally with most of them, it is made clear that they have their own agenda and aren't really interested in taking sides in a Good versus Evil showdown - a characteristic in fairy-tale creatures that is often missing in more streamlined fantasy yarns. However, I for my part couldn't stand Vasya. "Mercy me, not another wild child heroine" was my first reaction (I was out of temper with Game of Thrones' Arya killing the Night King at the time), and she did little to grow on me after that.

As someone who has been a villain-lover all my life, I can confidently claim that mostly, it doesn't matter if you root for the "wrong" character in a book, film or TV series. It simply gives you a different perspective, and the work itself isn't ruined for you. However, when the whole narrative is constructed around the reader/viewer liking a certain character, then having your sympathies knocked off course can have serious consequences. In The Bear and the Nightingale, everyone - including her enemies - somehow or other think that Vasya is a big deal, and so if the reader remains sceptical, it's hard to get into the story. Vasya is the youngest child of a wealthy landowner in Medieval not-quite-Russia-yet. Her mother, whose mother had magic but who has none herself, longs for a magical daughter and so gives birth to Vasya while dying. Vasya can see magical creatures and generally has the Gift. Once when she's lost in the forest during one of her adventures, she runs into the Winter King and his wicked, chained, one-eyed brother - The Bear of the title - who both take an interest in her powers. The Winter King tasks her father to give his daughter a talisman meant to protect Vasya, but her old nurse hides away the talisman until the girl is "old enough". She and the Winter King (and it has to be said this reader - for pity's sake, just give her the thing!) have differing opinions as to when exactly "old enough" is.

I did feel for one character in this novel, but unfortunately it wasn't Vasya. Her stepmother, Anna, sees magical creatures too but believes them to be demons, and is miserable for thinking herself mad. The chapter that introduces her really kindled my sympathy for her terrible predicament, but as she's not a kind stepmother to Vasya, we're supposedly not meant to care too much. At any rate, no-one in the book does. Not Vasya, who knows what's really going on, but doesn't bother to have a heart-to-heart with her stepmother about who the creatures really are. (Because she's afraid of being outed as a witch? But isn't she supposed to be fearless?) Not the village's new priest, Father Konstantin, sent out in the neck of the woods as he's considered too dangerously charismatic in the city. When Anna confides in him, he first seems to take her seriously and talks about exorcism, but it soon becomes clear that there's only one person he's interested in "exorcising": Vasya, now in her teens, for whom he has the hots.

So, to sum up: the magical creatures all think the world of the wild, fey and sensually attractive Vasya and teach her useful skills such as expert horse-riding; Father Konstantin desires her; a neighbouring landowner has his eye on her; her stepmother is jealous of her; the Winter King himself is drawn to her and at one point gives her a horse who is also a nightingale and who is, naturally, devoted to her. It's what you could call the Ross Poldark syndrome. If you're into Ross, then you will like Poldark which is mostly about how great he is; and in this case, if you warm to Vasya you will probably enjoy this book (the first of a trilogy) hugely.

I didn't, and this may just be my own personal hang-ups. I was suffering from wild child fatigue and was indignant about how no-one cared about poor Anna's plight while gushing about Vasya. But I do think there's a bit more to it than that. There was nothing to latch on to when it came to Vasya except her being feisty and the champion of folk-tale spirits. Novik's heroines, if I'm allowed to compare just a little, are flawed and complex in another way: they try to live their lives as best they can without bothering about whether they're "empowering"or not. As it happens, they kind of are, but that's not their reason for being. In short, I did not understand the Vasya hype, which is one reason I remained unimpressed by the Winter King. The scenes with potential romantic tension between him and Vasya had me rolling my eyes. "In the stories, the bird-prince and the wicked sorcerer - they only come for the wild maiden", Vasya's nurse says to her father when they discuss marrying her off fast so the Winter King doesn't get his mitts on her. Now there's a depressing thought.

Father Konstantin's campaign against the old ways - ways which involve leaving gifts for household spirits and which he considers unholy - was a storyline that left me pretty cold. Konstantin is first set up as a serious antagonist with remarkable good looks and real talents when it comes to preaching and painting icons, but he becomes increasingly daft as the story goes on, and the supposed clash of beliefs is hard to get involved in. However, it must be said that as soon as the real villain of the piece seriously enters the story, the plot thickens and grows more exciting. The Bear is sketchy when it comes to personality, but I had some time for him as a fairy-tale threat. He plays his cards well, and even shows some appreciation of Anna's gifts - admittedly, because he wants to kill her and feast on her fear, but even so. I will probably read the next part of the trilogy, The Girl in the Tower, at some point, and then I'll be interested to see what he gets up to next.                    

Game of Thrones final season: Is it bad that I rather enjoyed it? (Spoilers galore!)

Sooo. Game of Thrones season eight. I feel a little bad about setting my thoughts on this season down at all, because judging from the Internet sources I've seen, many real GoT fans hated it. And though I came to enjoy the series, mostly from the second season onward, I can't call myself a die-hard fan. I didn't particularly want to like the series, only came round to it reluctantly and have always claimed that it was over-hyped. Of course it's much easier to enjoy a somewhat rushed final season of a series if your expectations aren't sky-high to begin with. It feels a little insulting to those more invested in the series and its characters to smugly state "well, I like it", especially as I see where they're coming from with many of their criticisms.

Having said all that, I've started writing blog posts about Game of Thrones, in spite of knowing nothing (in true Jon Snow fashion) about the books and suchlike, so I'll finish. It's hard to resist when there's plenty to discuss.

People have claimed that the series started going downhill once the scriptwriters ran out of books to adapt (George R.R. Martin hasn't yet finished the book series A Song of Ice and Fire on which the TV series is based - but you knew that already). From what I've found out from some superficial net surfing, the first four seasons are based on the books, and there was some material left for season five as well, but it was here the scriptwriters had to start flying solo in some instances. Now, if I would have had to guess where the join between adaptation and new content was in the series, I would have said season seven. Season five and six don't feel very different to what went before - though it's remarkable how many characters who have no role to play in the final showdowns get killed off in season six (no complaints from me in most cases). Season seven did have a more pacy and soap-operatic feel to it, but I kind of enjoyed that. I was never much of an admirer of the "edgy otherness" of Game of Thrones, and the more it resembled a regular epic drama, the more pleased I was. But yes, there was a change of tone. The dialogue in the earlier seasons was pretty full (at least it felt that way) of rambling speeches which were finished off with some strong lines, and the plot strands followed the same pattern in a way - they ambled along for a time, then there was a dramatic payoff. How much you enjoyed the plots depended on how good the payoff was and how well the road to getting there worked for you, much like the character monologues. In season seven, the monologuing is pretty much history, as are the plot lines that take some time to develop. It's less of an amble, more of a rush to the finish line. Season eight carries on the trend.

Ironically, though, the scriptwriters came into trouble with the fans not just for things that felt different to the "book seasons", but also for things that follow the tradition of the whole series - the "anything can happen" factor of earlier seasons clearly made them feel that they had to serve up some plot twists so as not to make the outcome too predictable. Here's the thing with predictability, though: sometimes an outcome is predictable because it's clearly the one that makes most sense. Injecting unpredictability just for the sake of it can be risky. For me, the most predictable character arcs in season eight were often the most satisfying. Theon was killed while redeeming himself by defending Bran, whom he had betrayed by invading Winterfell with his Ironborn troops many seasons back. Ser Jorah died in battle protecting his beloved Daenerys. Varys was dragon-executed for treason after yet another plot against his current ruler candidate in the higher interest of the realm. These deaths felt logical, and true to the characters.

As for the twists - I, for one, completely bought Daenerys's descent into darkness. It's fair to state beforehand that I never really cared for Daenerys. Having her torch King's Landing with her one remaining dragon after the town had surrendered boosted one of my particular hobby horses: the dangers of self-righteousness. I've already touched on how much I dislike murdering for moral reasons, and Daenerys did a lot of that. She was always implacable to her enemies, her rhetoric to her troops was continuously bloodthirsty, and she had intended to conquer King's Landing with all dragons blazing until Tyrion persuaded her otherwise. As her faith in his judgement dwindled, it's not that much of a leap to imagine that she would want to return to plan A. Many seasons ago, when she conquered Mereen, she had the whole slave-owning nobility of the town nailed up along the highway. Daenerys fans have pointed out that this is completely different from setting innocents - including children carrying affecting little wooden toys - aflame as the Mereen nobles were "bad men". However, as we later learned, there were one or two quite decent coves among them - inevitable when you go down the collective punishment route - and besides, there are some things so horrible that they remain wrong whoever you're doing them to.

Once Daenerys had a licence to mass-slaughter, as it were, it's not that strange that she ends up crossing another line. And after all, it's not unheard of in the history of warfare to specifically target civilians and level towns - resident kids and all - to the ground. The inhabitants of King's Landing weren't slaves: they had the option of leaving their homes or helping Daenerys out with conquering the city (as the slaves of Mereen did). However, though they loathed Cersei (as illustrated in her Walk of Shame), they still preferred her to an invading warrior queen and let themselves be used as pawns in Cersei's plans. Daenerys had already learned in Mereen, by the workings of the Sons of the Harpy, that civilians can pose a threat. If she needed arguments to rationalise the atrocity, they weren't impossible to find, especially as she was so convinced of possessing the moral high ground.

As for many of the other twists I wasn't too keen on them, so I can understand the fans' frustration there. Bran - who ended up king - was one of the first characters of the show I cared about, but back in the day when he was still a bright boy and hadn't merged with a mystical being which enabled him to have visions, detach himself from everyone and make vague statements in an annoying monotone. From the get-go of him becoming the Three-Eyed Raven, he was something of a dead loss, and it seems foolish to appoint someone who gives you lines like "I don't really 'want' anymore" to a position which requires savvyness in worldly affairs. He does have a great Small Council, though. Jaime haring back to Cersei after finally getting together with Brienne was a strange plot move - it's as if he hadn't had any character development the last five seasons. Jaimienne was the only GoT couple I shipped, but I felt that it would have been better if they had remained just mates if this was to be Jaime's end game. His "no, sorry, I'm not redeemed" speech might actually have worked then. And what was the deal with having Arya kill the Night King? I did think they backed away from making her a Grand Assassin Heroine quite neatly in the final episodes, though, so I can live with it. Her giving up her Kill List (which I was never a fan of) courtesy of The Hound and instead settling on a life of exploration felt like a good way of ending her story. Better Christopher Columbus than Titus Andronicus (yep, she went there).