Wish list for 2021 (apart from, y'know, the obvious)

Happy Boxing Day! 2020 is nearing its end, and this might be my last blog post of the year. So instead of doing something comparatively ambitious, like gushing over the latest Pixar film Soul and having to explain exactly why it's wonderful (though I'll get to that at a later date, hopefully), I'll follow my own tradition and make a list, this time of things I wish to happen cultural-consumption-wise in 2021. That I would like us all to be able to get out of pandemic mode goes without saying. I'd better not start to think of those people who, with a smug, slightly pleased air, claim that "it would be naïve to think that things will ever return to what they were before", or I'll not feel Christmassy at all.

A new epic, multi-episode adaptation of a Dickens novel. I guess? I know I'm always whining over this, but I think it's fair to say that British costume drama is not in its best form at the moment. When I was sighing over the BBC only turning out villain-light stuff like Cranford back in the day, I didn't know how lucky I was. The Luminaries moved at a glacial pace, and overall the Beeb seems more concerned with polishing a progressive image than with presenting the viewer with something timelessly entertaining and thought-provoking, as a stellar Dickens adaptation should be. In short, I'm not sure I trust them with Dickens at the moment. ITV is a possibility, but I doubt they'd be prepared to take a risk with one of Dickens's lesser-known novels, like Barnaby Rudge or (you knew this was coming) Dombey and Son, and I would much rather see them adapted than yet another David Copperfield, Oliver Twist or Great Expectations. 

I suppose we costume drama nuts aren't entirely dependent on British TV anymore. There's always Netflix, for instance. However, after having seen the first episode of Netflix's Bridgerton, I'm not sure that - how shall I put this - they're that concerned with historical accuracy. I know the version of the past we see in period dramas is always incredibly sanitised, without all the filth, rotten teeth and premature aging that would have been part of (for instance) real 19th-century London. Still, I would like a Dickens TV series to be set in some approximation of Victorian England (or 18th-century England in the case of Barnaby Rudge), not Cloud Cuckoo Land. To sum up, I'd rather not have a Dickens adaptation at all than a botched one.

Disney animation getting its act together - and coming up with a new, strong villain Not only have the latest films from Disney animation, Frozen 2 and Wreck-It Ralph 2 - Ralph Breaks The Internet been lacklustre, they were seriously lacking in the villain department. The same can be said for Pixar's films since quite a while back: while the heart-warming Soul is a return to form (I liked Onward too, but Soul is better), it does not have a villain. (The biggest threat comes from an over-zealous soul-counter who is, after all, only doing his job.) I don't think I would have liked there to be a villain in this particular film, but the non-Pixar films could definitely have done with one. 

The trailer for Disney animation's next film, Raya and the Last Dragon, leaves me a little torn. The animation is beautiful, but the plot seems reminiscent of Moana/Vaiana: Plucky girl goes on a quest to save her home, followed by cute animal sidekick (not so cute in Moana's/Vaiana's case) and ultimately joined by a wacky character, who's supposed to be the answer to the problem but who proves unreliable, so the plucky girl has to do most of the work herself. Add to this that Raya is a trained warrior, and so is in danger of falling into the personality-free kick-ass category of heroines. Still, one shouldn't deduce too much out of trailers: those for Soul were pretty awful. It could be interesting to explore South East Asian folklore, if this is what the film is setting up to do. Question: are there any interesting villains in South East Asian folklore that we might have a chance of seeing in this film?

Chris Chibnall making a decent fist of series thirteen of Doctor Who - then bowing out I've always had my doubts about Chibnall as show runner, but I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, I really did. After two series and a special, though, I'm still not convinced by the Chibnall era. It's not always been awful, but it has very seldom been wonderful. Chibnall hasn't even been able to convince me that making the Doctor a woman was a good idea. I was rather taken with Whittaker's Doctor to start with, and I think I can stand her whimsical bounciness more than most - I'm grateful that we've been (for the most part) spared moral grandstanding from her. When she was supposed to go into darker, more serious territory in series twelve, however, she left me rather unconvinced: there was a great speech in The Haunting of Villa Diodati which she nailed, but other scenes worked less well. The whole controversy about the Doctor not knowing how to respond to Graham's fears that his cancer might come back could, I think, possibly have been avoided if Whittaker hadn't chosen to meet Graham's outpourings with a blank stare. Alien? Possibly. Doctorish? Not really. And though it's hard to dislike the Thirteenth Doctor's "fam" (though I hate that "fam" stuck - what's wrong with companions, anyway?), they're not as engaging as companions of the past.

We will be given a shortened run of Doctor Who next year, which was more than I dared to hope for (I'll probably be blogging about it in 2022 when the DVD is out). Before that, there's the New Year special which, judging from the trailer, looks like pretty typical Chibnall fare - competent, but not great. Captain Jack is back - good. Tru- I mean Robertson is also back - not so good. (I really like Chris Noth in Sex and the City, but not as an unsubtle American politico bad guy.) There's still a chance that Chibnall will produce a perfectly serviceable series thirteen - preferably retconning some ideas from series twelve that didn't go down so well -  but after that, could we please get someone else as show runner?

More Star Wars content to get really nerdy about I've not yet blogged about The Mandalorian, which I've finally been able to see as I now have a Disney + subscription (I got it the very day the streaming service was introduced in Sweden - the Mouse need fear no rebellion from me). Suffice it to say, for now, that it's as just as good as everyone says. One of the great joys of the autumn and winter of 2020 has been watching The Mandalorian, then the nerdy comments and discussions about The Mandalorian on YouTube. And now Disney has announced half a dozen or so Star Wars-inspired TV series, so there seems to be more geeky fun where that came from. Not all of the series sound that interesting, but hey - I'm prepared to give pretty much all of them a try. That Thrawn guy, who's slated to appear in the Ahsoka Tano series, sounds very promising.

In defence of the Star Wars sequels: The Force Awakens

Now that I've been half-way cultured for a time, can I be a geek again? Can I? 

My original idea was to write a defence of The Rise of Skywalker, which I really enjoyed when I saw it at the cinema, but which has been widely criticised, partly, in my view, for snobbish reasons ("too much fan service"). However, many of the things people complained about regarding the sequel trilogy's finale have their origin in the other two films, whether it was a story line followed through, or completely disregarded, or picked up again after having been shot down in flames by The Last Jedi. And as I can't possibly fit a defence of all three sequel films into a single post (they all have merits, in my opinion), it makes sense to apply some order and method and begin at the beginning, working my way through one film at a time (hopefully, with less nerdy posts in between).

We start, then, with The Force Awakens. I remember this film as being well received by critics and public alike, and it remains the strongest of the sequels. There were some quibbles that it was too derivative - many plot points were reminiscent of the very first Star Wars film, A New Hope - but seeing where the sequels then went, I don't think many people mind the reminders of the good old days now. Instead, with the completion of the trilogy, other things seem to have started to grate on the viewers in a way I can't remember them doing at the time.

A legitimate complaint against the sequels, which has its root in The Force Awakens, is that they in some ways spoil the happy ending of the first trilogy. Much of the success of the Star Wars franchise depends on the immense likeability of the original trilogy's golden trio: Luke, Leia and Han Solo. Even a villain-lover like myself wished them well. There was such triumph at the end of Return of the Jedi: the yoke of the Empire was lifted, there was widespread celebration and the heroes were free to live their own lives. Leia and Han could get married, and as Luke didn't seem to buy into all of that "you shouldn't care for anyone" Jedi nonsense, it wasn't out of the question that he could find a nice girl (surely?) and settle down.

From what we can gather from The Force Awakens, though, the trio were never given much of a break. In their private life, one can assume that things went well until Leia's and Han's son Ben turned to the Dark Side and became Kylo Ren. But after that, Luke vamoosed to a far-away island to brood, and Han and Leia split up! This saddened me even at the first viewing. Sure, they are reconciled later, but as with Rumbelle in season six of Once Upon A Time, I was yet again left to wonder:"Wait, so are they together as in really together now, or as in 'let's unite to save our kid?'". And then Han dies. 

Politically, the fall of the Empire was supposedly followed swiftly by the rise of the very Empire-like First Order. Defecting storm trooper Finn remembers being abducted by them as a child, so they've been around for quite some time. And this isn't some pesky little fringe of old empire nostalgics we're talking about - the First Order is so powerful that Leia's opposing force calls itself The Resistance (whereas, as Leia has the backing of the New Republic, it should really be the First Order who are the resistance in this scenario). How much breathing space did this leave the galaxy far, far away, one might ask?

Ruining things for Luke, Leia and Han did have some powerful payoffs, though. The only way not to touch their happily-ever-after would have been to make the sequels entirely their own thing, with none of the Old Guard (except perhaps a droid or two) reappearing. The First Order could have risen later, after a long, prosperous era while Solo and the Skywalkers held the fort. But would we really have wanted that? The price of seeing Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill again was that bad things had to happen to their characters. That's how drama works. And they were great. Some of the most memorable moments from The Force Awakens involved the Old Guard: Han and Chewie reentering the Millennium Falcon, Han reuniting with Leia, Ben/Kylo killing his father... If happy endings from the original trilogy had to be spoiled, this was the right way to do it.

Fans minding what had become of the old characters I understand. What I don't quite get is the Rey hate. When she first appeared, I had the impression that most viewers liked Rey. With time, though, the protests grew. Rey was a "Mary Sue", a too-perfect character who ruined the story by being good at everything and admired by everyone. How, the fans asked, could someone who hadn't had any force training at all almost kill the powerful Kylo Ren in a duel? How could she be such a fighter after having lived her whole life on an isolated desert planet?

Well... if living as a scavenger on a desert planet after having been sold into slavery as a kid doesn't make you tough, what will? Rey would have more experience of fighting off low-life than Luke did in A New Hope - he was sheltered by his uncle and aunt, after all. And yet, with little more training than trying to hit a humming ball and shooting womp rats, it's he who destroys the Death Star. I don't have much trouble with over-capable protagonists as a rule - every film can't have a training montage, after all. Sometimes we just have to accept that the hero/heroine know their stuff, even if they're relatively unprepared, just so we can move on with the story. 

What matters is that the main character shouldn't be bland or too perfect. And Rey, in my view, is neither. I've previously mentioned her as an example of a strong female protagonist done right. She's not flawless: she almost passes on the opportunity to be a part of The Resistance because she's so hung up about her missing parents and feels she should go back to Jakku to wait for them. That duel with Kylo Ren? She's in with a fighting chance because she's so furious about Han's death and tapping into the Dark Side of the Force with gusto. On the subject of Kylo Ren, there are sparks between the two from the start, and you can't tell me that Rey only fancies his good Ben Solo side.

I'm not one to deny that there seems to be an ongoing trend - in films, on TV and sometimes even in books - of supposedly "strong" female protagonists with little personality and interest whose main characteristic, apparently, is that they can "kick ass". I've not seen the live-action remake of Mulan, but reports of what they have done with the character fill me with horror. But Rey, in my book, isn't one of these bland heroines, and her being the focus of the new trilogy doesn't take anything away from characters from the old one, like Luke. But more of that another time.         

From prestigious drama to Gossip Central: strange development of The Crown

Well, now the Trojan horse is well and truly open, and the Greeks are storming out. There's no more room for doubt: The Crown has outed itself as anti-Monarchist.

I can say this much for myself: I did call it in season three, so I wasn't as surprised as some reviewers. But that is still embarrassingly late to cotton on to what Peter Morgan was up to. Even so, I wasn't alone in thinking The Crown gave a largely positive picture of the Queen and her family in season one, was I? Even season two didn't seem like a hatchet job, with the exception of the episode where Prince Philip sent Prince Charles to that awful school. Then there was Morgan's track record: he had shown himself sympathetic with the Queen both in the film The Queen and in the play The Audience. So has The Crown really been a con, lulling viewers largely favourably disposed towards the royals into a feeling of false security, only to finally denounce the whole pack of 'em? Or has there really been a change of perspective on Morgan's part over the seasons? To be sure I'd need to rewatch the series from the beginning, which I'm not that eager to do, as I have always found it rather slow.

Because here's the shame confession: the most ethically questionable episodes, about the short pre-wedding romance and unhappy marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, have been the ones I most enjoyed watching throughout the series. All in all, this season feels a little pacier than the others: there are few scenes so slow that you can hear steps echoing and the grandfather clocks ticking in the palace. Also, it can't be denied that an unhappy relationship between two mismatched people (Charles and Diana) makes for better drama than a few spats in a happy relationship between two well-matched ones (the Queen and Philip). Is it fair to the real Prince Charles and his sons to make his failed marriage with their mother into a TV entertainment which probably contains a fair amount of horrendous falsehoods? Probably not. Does it work as TV entertainment? I'm afraid so.

Morgan could argue that the Charles-Diana breakup has been televised before, and that he gives a more nuanced picture than those soapy dramas did (yep, I saw them too, so I'm not in a position to morally judge anyone). This is true, as far as it goes. There's been a lot of talk about how different the two spouses were, but in The Crown a convincing argument is made for the possibility that there were similarities too, and that these similarities created their own problems. In the TV series, both Charles and Diana admit to each other that they crave affection and approval, which is why Charles, who already feels rejected by his parents, cuts up rough when he's rejected by the public too in favour of his wife. The performances from Josh O'Connor and Emma Corrin as the miserable couple are brilliant, and for a while you can see both sides of the argument. At the end of the series, however, Diana, though not depicted as a saint - she shows both self-centredness and errors of judgment - is clearly seen as a victim of her emotionally cold in-laws and the nastiness of her emotionally all-too-hot husband. The perspective feels more than a little skewed, though I thought Camilla came out of it surprisingly well, perhaps due to a likeable performance from Emerald Fennell.

Enough with the gossip: what about the rest of the season? Well... I'm sorry to say, the gossip was the best bit. Something that's bothered me with The Crown for some time, though I've never been able to put my finger on it until this season, is that it's so manipulative. The events are very clearly presented in a certain way to make us feel something specific. Though I'm happy to be manipulated into sadness over Lord Mountbatten's death and satisfaction over Michael Shea's successful career as writer of political thrillers (I don't know if he was really made the fall guy over a palace leak he disapproved of, but I want to give his books a try now!), there were other instances where I wasn't so ready to play ball. The worst duds of the season, in my view, were the episodes Fagan - about a man who broke into Buckingham Palace twice, who is here made into a symbol of Everything That Was Wrong With Thatcherite Britain - and The Hereditary Principle, where Princess Margaret learns of a couple of severely mentally disabled cousins hidden away in a mental institution. "It is cold and cruel", rails Margaret, who isn't normally given to moral indignation. But the establishment was well-run and the cousins were obviously in need of care: I didn't quite see what made her so upset, apart from the secrecy. It's not every day you feel less empathic than The Crown's version of Princess Margaret.

What of the other Margaret then, Margaret Thatcher? I'm a little torn over Gillian Anderson's performance: it wasn't terrible, but it didn't really convince me, either. It felt more like an impersonation than acting in the "getting inside a character" sense. Also, the script is rather clunky: Thatcher's conversations with the Queen feel more like interviews with a Guardian journalist, where Thatcher makes public statements and the Queen quietly criticises. I thought Thatcher's crack in an interview about the Good Samaritan was rather neat, but I doubt she was so pleased with it that she bothered to rehash it with Her Majesty. Not until the very last scene between the two do we actually get a feeling of there being a meeting "woman to woman". However, there's a marked improvement of the treatment of this relationship compared to the Thatcher scene in Morgan's The Audience. Overall, could have been worse.

To circle back to the beginning, I think there has been a shift in perspective in The Crown, and that it coincided more or less with the changing of the cast in season three. Olivia Colman doesn't really convince us the way Claire Foy did that this version of the Queen is worth caring about. In this season, you have a feeling that both the Queen and Thatcher are played by actresses who don't quite get them. The spouses do better: Denis Thatcher (Stephen Boxer) is allowed to be an absolute sweetie, and Tobias Menzies as Prince Philip still has great chemistry with Colman's Queen. Even when he criticizes her, he is affectionate and humorous about it rather than needling as Matt Smith's Philip often was.

I used to feel guilty for preferring TV series such as Once Upon A Time to the prestigious-seeming The Crown. The latter is still good drama, and I'll continue watching it, but I no longer feel guilty about preferring pacier - and less defamatory - fare.

Morgenstern's puzzling maze of stories

Like many readers, I was engrossed by Erin Morgenstern's debut The Night Circus. I didn't fall completely under its spell right away, but I remember being really caught up in the final chapters and desperately wanting everything to turn out fine. What Morgenstern really pulled off, apart from making us care at least for some of the side characters, if not necessarily for the leads, was to make the titular Night Circus seem alluring. As a dream world of magic with a hint of danger, it was convincing and drew in the reader like it drew in its visitors.

Morgenstern's second novel, The Starless Sea, also invites the reader to enter another, magical world. This time, though, it took quite a while before I got properly into the book. When I did, it was partly because I wanted to see how the author would be able to tie all the disparate story threads together. The structure is really complex with stories within stories, and I was curious to know how it all connected. Also, with time, I did care enough for the characters to go "aww, thats too bad" when things seemed to be going to pot for them and to be relieved every time they cleared a hurdle. Overall, though, it didn't engage me as much as The Night Circus did.

One reason for this was that the magic world we were supposed to want to escape to didn't seem all that appealing at first. The main character, Zachary Rawlins, comes across a mysterious book called Sweet Sorrows in the library of the university he's attending, which includes a scene from his own life. There seems to be no room for doubt, yet the book is hundreds  of years old, written long before the events it describes in such detail. 

It's a fascinating premise, but the world that Sweet Sorrows is about felt a bit off for me. It speaks of underground harbours around the Starless Sea, where stories are stored in multitudes as in one sprawling, fantastic library. That's nice. Like so many bookish people, I'm usually a sucker for stories about the power of stories. Only, among the first things we learn about the whole Starless Sea society (for want of a better word to describe it) is that they go to extraordinary lengths to preserve their precious stories. There are three "paths" you can follow, Sweet Sorrows solemnly tells us, if you want to do your bit for the story collection: you can become an acolyte, a guardian or a keeper. Each path has its own initiation rites and examples of extreme devotion to the bookish cause. Acolytes (who seem to be glorified dogsbodies) sacrifice their tongues, the better to serve the stories of others (what?). Guardian candidates who, after being given a grand tour, declare that they are not prepared to give their life for what they would be set to guard, are swiftly killed: they are of no use to the cause and have seen too much. Keepers used to be kidnapped children who grew up training for the job, until the powers that be decided that the career choice should be voluntary. Now this, I would argue, is taking devotion to stories a little too far. What's wrong with common or garden librarians, anyway?

Because of these overtones of tyranny, the world which, by the time Zachary reaches it, is vanishing fast and well past its heyday, didn't feel like a lost paradise to me. It turns out, though, that Zachary's function isn't really to restore the particular Harbour he reaches to its former supposed glory, so it doesn't matter if you don't quite buy into the marvels of yesteryear. In a way, the declining world in which Zachary stumbles around, containing less than half a dozen people and a great deal more cats, is more appealing in its melancholic way than the Harbour in the grand old days. Zachary doesn't think so, though, and is haunted by a sense of disappointment in what he finds on the other side of his particular door-to-Narnia equivalent. Would it have been better if he'd dared to try that magic painted door he came across as child, or would he have been too late even then?

So the Tyranny of Stories angle didn't bug me for long: however, the stories-within-stories structure felt too clever-clever at times. In some ways, The Starless Sea seems less assured than Morgenstern's debut novel, as it strains for effect more. Critics usually claim that the second novel is especially problematic for many authors. I'm not sure that's true: I believe it's more a case of critics overpraising someone's debut and taking it out on the next book that comes along. The Starless Sea's problems do tend to be classic second-novel ones, though. It has a way more complicated plot than The Night Circus and throws anything but the kitchen sink at it: portals to a hidden world; a huge library; a secret society wanting to close the portals; star-crossed lovers; tales containing stars and the moon and owls and swords; abstractions that are made into characters; foreshadowing mentions of a character that turns out to be more of an abstraction etc. What with the main story being told in tandem with other narratives, one after another, you can get a little impatient with it all, especially when "interludes" are added into the mix.

For all that, I enjoyed this novel. A clue to what the author may be aiming at is that Zachary is something of an expert on storytelling computer games. This proves useful when he comes up against various difficult situations: instead of giving up when facing, say, a locked door, he searches around for clues on how to open it. His adventures resemble an ambitious computer game in many ways, which gives the book some licence for not tying up every loose plot thread. As in a game (says I who haven't played one for many a day, but I think I understand the concept), there are paths left unexplored and consequently stories left untold. There is also an underlying sweetness in the descriptions of the various love stories which is very winning. Morgenstern is clearly a romantic, and that, to me at least, is an attractive trait in a storyteller.

What does Enola Holmes have to do with Holmes?

I found I sort of missed hate-watching when I'd made it through the Netflix series Cursed, so when I saw the trailer for Enola Holmes (also on Netflix) and cringed throughout, it seemed like a good candidate for a hate-watching session. Only, I've learned that it's far more comfortable to hate-watch a series one bite-sized chunk at a time rather than a 2+-hour film. There were moments when I nearly gave up on Enola Holmes, even though I watched it at a time when I had little energy to do anything else.

It was awful. The jokes were unfunny, the supposedly moving moments didn't land and the characters were as thin as tracing paper. The film is supposed to be about the little sister of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes and set in late-Victorian times but has clearly no idea of either Sherlock Holmes lore or Victorian England. Now the actors, I grant you, were good, but a stellar cast was completely wasted on their barely-there or caricatured characters. And the "yay, women!" messaging was really clunky.

I've been reluctant to bring up Enola Holmes as I'm afraid of being unnecessarily hard on what is meant to be unpretentious entertainment. In spite of its puzzling 12+ Netflix rating, this is clearly a kids' film, best enjoyed by those who are 12- years old. It's been adapted from a book series of Young Adult mysteries, so isn't it unreasonable to expect that it should show any historical or Holmes-related insight?

There were so many things about this supposedly light confection that got my goat, though. There's the taking advantage of the Sherlock Holmes brand, when the script-writer (and possibly the author of the original books?) don't seem to know the first thing about the detective in question and his associates. Sherlock's and Enola's older brother Mycroft not only has the ungrateful task of representing the Old Horrid Order which represses women and poor people, it is expressly stated that he doesn't have his younger siblings' aptitude for deductions and detective work. Conan Doyle's Mycroft, on the other hand, was described as even more brilliant than his younger brother, and easily scores points off him when it comes to deductions. He's not into detecting simply because he can't be bothered. As for the Enola version of Sherlock himself, he has more in common with Mr Darcy than with the famous detective (including his looks): he's a bit socially awkward and doesn't know how to express his feelings, but his heart is in the right place. There's no Dr Watson, no Mrs Hudson, no Baker Street. Lestrade shows up briefly, played by Adeel Akhtar, an actor I have a lot of time for after he nailed Thénardier so brilliantly in the BBC’s Les Misérables. But he gets nothing to work with here, and is obliged to utter lines like: "Sherlock Holmes always works alone." Lies, I say!

The film wouldn't have lost anything if it had dropped the Holmes references altogether and contented itself with being a caper about a plucky girl with an unconventional upbringing and a bent for detecting who wants to find her mother (vanished without a trace, but voluntarily) and is caught up in high intrigue along the way. For my part, I could have borne it better, though I still wouldn't have liked it.

Another thing that really annoyed me about the film was the combination of its wanting to show how female-empowering it was at the expense of Those Horrible Victorians while not having done any homework about Victorian times. Now, films for children and teenagers in historical settings don't tend to be over-researched. And that's fine, mostly, that's the genre. But what with Enola Holmes making such a big deal out of how repressed women and the deserving poor are, you'd expect them to get the nature of said repression more or less right. In the film, Enola is for a time consigned to a finishing school with shades of Lowood. But elegant ladies attending a finishing school would never be subjected to simple attire and terrible food à la Lowood. Think it through.

The political circumstances of the plot are kept deliberately vague, which is just as well. But with nothing substantial to say about social conditions in Victorian England, the hand-wringing about "powerlessness" - poor Sherlock gets treated to a whole lecture on the subject from a friend of his mother's who teaches women martial arts in secret - merely comes across as irritating posturing.

Admittedly, one scene that threw me is passably historically correct. At one point, Enola comes across one of her mother's hideouts, and discovers gunpowder and bombs. "Mycroft was right", she muses, "mother is dangerous". Enola's mother is working for women's suffrage, and as I only found out fairly recently, there was a part of the suffragette movement which endorsed using violent means, though they stopped short of actually killing people. I was shocked when I discovered this, as it seemed not only wrong but counterproductive - were I a male MP, a bunch of angry women attacking my home wouldn't make me a convert to the cause of women's suffrage. Mrs Holmes is clearly one of these hard-liners, but the bombs are never touched on again, and it's not even made clear that they're not meant to be used on people. It would have been natural to bring the subject up when Enola and her mother finally meet again, or else why include the initial scene in the first place? Are we supposed to embrace the bomb-making, or what?

In its efforts to big up the resourcefulness of the heroine, the film also treats us to the tiresome trope of the Useless Male Love Interest. The young lord Enola comes across on her adventures may not be quite such an idiot as he appears in the trailer, but he is still the weak part of the pairing, what with Enola being much more intelligent, inventive, good at defending herself etc. As a woman, I feel patronised by this kind of plot-constructing. I enjoy strong women protagonists (not that they have to have kick-ass abilities, incidentally), but that doesn't mean I want to see male characters depicted as weak and pathetic. It reminds me of old Donald Duck adventures from my childhood, where Hughie, Dewey and Louie were always the responsible ones while Donald and Scrooge behaved like children. It was meant to pander to kids, I'm sure, but we saw through it - and thought Hughie, Dewey and Louie were being smug pains in the neck. (Luckily, the adventures improved with time.) A female protagonist doesn't need a useless male by her side to make her look good. Just make her interesting as a person.

It has to be said, though, that Frances de la Tour manages to rise above the material she's given as an aristocratic Dowager. Also, I did find it interesting that Fiona Shaw's finishing-school headmistress has the hots for her old school friend's son (Mycroft), which is fairly transgressive for a woman in her position. Mind you, that's played for laughs - not very sisterly, I would have thought. 

Iannucci's Flying Circus David Copperfield

Well. That was... different.

To be honest, I didn't think I would like Armando Iannucci's adaptation of David Copperfield at all, and when I first heard about it and saw the trailer I debated whether it would even make a good subject for a blog post. In some instances it is really better to heed Thumper's father's advice: "If you can't say anything good, don't say anything at all". But as my local cinema actually aired the film (it's not making any profit anyway), it seemed foolish not to see it. And in some respects it was a pleasant surprise. I doubt it will ever be a true Dickens fan's favourite adaptation of the novel, but if you take it on its own terms it can be quite entertaining.

Let's address the Indian elephant in the room. One of the things that made me sceptical towards the film was that Iannucci and Co. seemed to have carried diversity casting to unnecessary extremes. Now, I understand why film and TV makers are tempted to change the ethnicity of some of the characters in adaptations of classic novels. I don't think it should be mandatory or anything, but if it means a first-rate actor gets the chance to sink his or her teeth into a part they would otherwise not have been considered for, I'm ready to roll with it. However, ethnic switches (as I call them) should preferably be done for characters whose back story can be tweaked to accommodate the change. (Or whose back story already fits perfectly, as with Tattycoram in the BBC adaptation of Little Dorrit.) A David of Indian descent is actually not out of the question if you make his mother an Indian bride (which Iannucci doesn't, by the way). But characters like Mrs Steerforth or the Wickfields, whose well-entrenched privileges play an important role in the story, seem odd choices for an ethnic switch. 

What bugged me even more was that there wasn't any inner logic to the casting - children and parents were cast without any consideration to whether they could convincingly be related. I'd rather not go through a film seriously doubting the virtue of the late Mrs Wickfield. Leaving skin tones aside, I was miffed that Peter Capaldi - one of my favourite actors - had been cast as a non-bald Mr Micawber (not exactly one of my favourite Dickens characters). Ben Whishaw as Uriah sounded dandy, but couldn't they have bothered to put a red wig on him?

In the end, the eccentric casting choices mattered less to me than I thought they would, as the whole film leans heavily towards the surreal. The framing device is that David, as an author, is reading out of an autobiographical novel to a theatre of enthusiastic fans, much in the style of Dickens's own public readings. From the theatre, we enter into the narration, and the story we witness is the one of David's life as he himself sees it and has written it up. This means we can't be sure if what we see is what actually happened - it's filtered through David's imagination. The film plays around a bit with this conceit, but not too much. When we first see Peggotty's boat-house it's in vibrant colour, but when David visits it again with Steerforth it's quite drab, much to his consternation. 

While the story starts out familiarly enough, events soon start to diverge from the novel, and the film becomes more of a jumble of characters and themes from the book than an adaptation. Creakle is the manager of the bottle factory where young David finds himself rather than a headmaster, and his school has been dispensed with. David doesn't escape the factory until he's a youth, and doesn't meet Steerforth until he attends a gentleman's school as a young man, which makes his blind devotion less forgiveable. Mrs Steerforth and Rosa Dartle are blended into one character. At one time, David and his aunt and Mr Dick and all the Micawbers live in one slum apartment owned by Uriah. Stephen Blackpool might have called it a muddle.

I suppose I should object to anyone being so free and easy with Dickens, but one reason I feel indulgent towards this approach is that I realise a simple retelling of the book in a film format would probably not have worked. David Copperfield the novel is huge, and would benefit from getting the epic series treatment accorded to Bleak House and Little Dorrit by the BBC many, many years ago now. With a series of several episodes, scenes and characters usually cut could have been included and the story could have gained depth. As it is, David Copperfield is usually adapted as a mini-series, which means the adaptations tend to get predictable, showing the same whistle-stop tour of memorable scenes. With a film, you have even less time on your hands. One solution is to find an angle on the source material and go with that.

This is what Iannucci has chosen to do, and to be fair, the angle works well. The recurring theme of the film is David's writing, and whenever we see Dev Patel's David discovering words and phrases, writing them down, being impressed by strong characters he meets and "acting them out" when he makes them into writing material (again, much like Dickens), I was more or less riveted. Patel is excellent as David, who is allowed to be more of a personality than is usual when David Copperfield is adapted.

There are still many things in this film I didn't care for. Perhaps the most serious criticism I have is that for a film that elects to go for pythonesque farce as often as this one does, it's not particularly funny. Few of the jokes land, and some of the running jokes are downright puzzling (what's with Mrs Heep and her heavy cakes?). Moreover, even if you have a light-hearted approach, there are some things - such as Mr Wickfield's drinking - that really shouldn't be played for laughs. Dora is supposed to be silly, true (though a pet theory of mine is that she's not as stupid as everyone thinks) but she's downright subnormal here. None of the characters except David (and possibly Mr Dick) are accorded much of an inner life - they're mostly just a gallery of oddballs.

Still, there were little things I liked - and enough of them to make a sort of critical mass in the film's favour. Such as how Tungay (whose parrotting of Creakle's words is otherwise dragged out too long) gets ahead of himself and blurts out "she's dead" when David is told of his mother's demise, and Creakle is still on the "very seriously ill" stage. It's probably just a blunder, but can be seen as small act of mercy towards David, cutting short the agonisingly drawn-out delivery of the bad news. Or how the thoughts that assail Mr Dick when he's in one of his "King Charles's head" moods are actually thoughts relevant to Charles I's life and state of mind. Or how neatly Dora disappears from the picture without having to die: when she sees how awkwardly she fits into a rendition of the Uriah confrontation scene, where David has written her in as a character, she realises that this goes for the whole of their relationship. "Write me out, Doady", she pleads, "I really don't fit". In the film, Ham, while still risking his life to try to save Steerforth, actually survives the storm, and I found myself thinking "I wish Dickens would have gone with that".

Ben Whishaw is great as Uriah as expected; he's at his best when bitter rather than cringing (and with reason, too: everyone is horrible to him in his 'umble days, including Agnes, long before he becomes a threat to her family). I would say, though, that the most memorable performance aside from Patel's is that of Hugh Laurie as Mr Dick. He is not the least bit as I imagine Mr Dick from the novel, but the scenes with his mournful philosopher of a madman hold the attention, and his comic timing is impeccable.

Not even a film full of surrealism, however, can convince me that Peter Capaldi is Mr Micawber.

Random Classic Who viewing - Seventh and Eighth Doctor

Time to finish what I could call "Classic Doctor Who Month" with the final post about my initial viewing of Classic Who episodes. After the First to Third Doctor and the Fourth to Sixth Doctor, I've now come to the last two Doctors belonging to the classic era.

Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy). Episodes watched: Remembrance of the Daleks, The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, The Curse of Fenric.

A good place to start? Yep. I have to reluctantly admit, the times I forego the box sets and cherry pick Classic Who adventures I've heard praised or think sound interesting it tends to pay off. I didn't expect to like the Seventh Doctor much. What with all those question marks and the umbrella, he certainly looked as if he was supposed to be a goofier version of the Doctor which would appeal more to a young audience than the Sixth. That instantly made me want to prefer his less crowd-pleasing predecessor. Which one I do prefer is still undecided, but I have to admit McCoy's Doctor is a solid one, brainy and a great deal less whimsical than I feared. It's probably a good thing that I picked late adventures with the Seventh, as I gather he grew more Machiavellian with time, which is fine by me. The pairing with feisty young companion Ace also works very well.

Admittedly, the plots in the adventures I watched are more than a bit confused at times, but the pacing is better than in much of the earlier Classic Who episodes, so I can roll with it. The side characters are not quite as strong as in the very best episodes of the classic era (usually penned by Robert Holmes, who had died by this time), but they are good nonetheless, and often make more of an impression than the cannon fodder we meet in some episodes of New Who. But why do the bad guys in Greatest Show turn out to be "the gods of Ragnarok" of all things? They look more Egyptian to me, and there's not a wolf or snake in sight. I suspect the name's just an excuse so as to allow McCoy to roll his r-s a lot: a mannerism that irritated me at first but which I soon got used to. It suits his "maverick uncle" take on the Doctor.

Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann). Watched: Doctor Who The Movie from 1996.

A good place to start? Well, where else would you start? Maybe with the new Who short The Night of the Doctor, where McGann reappears and gives a memorable enough performance for the viewer to regret that we never got a chance to become better acquainted with his Doctor. Otherwise, the TV movie is the only time we get to see McGann's Doctor on screen (though there are a great deal of audio dramas at hand).

The TV movie, which had American backing (hence the "movie" part), is a strange thing. It does try to capture some of the quirkiness of the original show, but that means it rather falls between two chairs. It's too off-beat for a mainstream action film, but it's not Who-ish enough for most Whovians. Concepts are introduced for mere mechanical plot reasons which would have serious consequences to Who lore if they weren't routinely ignored by fans and show runners alike (yes, I'm thinking about the Doctor supposedly being half human). All things considered, though, I found the film/movie closer to the show than I'd imagined, maybe because I'm so used to new Who that a Doctor kissing his companion (and what's more, not very romantically, because he's relieved to have regained his memory) doesn't really shock me. Eric Roberts's Master has been much criticised and usually ends up at the bottom of Master rankings, but I quite liked him and his dynamic with confused youngster Lee - it's as if the Master's trying out the whole companion thing for himself, but isn't sure it does much for him. Again, having started with New Who probably helps. It's hard to imagine how a Master could be too over the top after the rampant insanity of John Simm's Master in the third series of new Who - and campness isn't an unheard of trait for this character either, surely?

McGann puts on a good show, but we're not given much of a hint of how his Doctor would have turned out had the TV movie become the prelude to a series. My guess is, considerably closer to Tennant than McCoy: the Doctor comes across as a bit of a glamorous action hero, which was certainly new for the time. McGann was unfortunate enough to land the role of the loathsome Eugene Wrayburn in a Nineties adaptation of Our Mutual Friend, and this combined with one of his brothers playing a smug jerk (who was meant to be dangerously attractive) in the TV series The Grand made me allergic to the distinctive handsome-in-a-horsey-way McGann features for a while. But I'm over that now: holding it against McGann that he played Wrayburn convincingly is taking the Lucky Luke audience syndrome a step too far. And he is very good in those audio dramas.

Random Classic Who viewing - Fourth to Sixth Doctor

I'll continue with the overview of my completely random and far too box-set-based watching of Classic Doctor Who adventures right away: for the preamble, see my previous post. 

Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker). Episodes watched: The Key to Time series including The Ribos Operation, The Pirate Planet, The Stones of Blood, The Androids of Tara, The Power of Kroll and The Armageddon Factor; The Pyramids of Mars.

A good place to start? I rather think so, at least the Key to Time adventures. True, there are more highly regarded Tom Baker episodes - I really must see The Genesis of the Daleks, which everyone talks about - but there are also, I've gathered, those which are a great deal worse. I enjoyed every episode of the Key to Time series; even The Power of Kroll, which is probably the weakest, has its highlights. Yes, the assembling of the Key to Time itself is a classic McGuffin, but I'm a sucker for a story arc - any story arc. What's more, Romana, the (comparatively) young, competent Time Lady accompanying the Doctor on these adventures, proves a good match for him.

You could say that Tom Baker is the Great Expectations of Classic Doctors. Although he's not my personal favourite, he is in all probability, objectively speaking, the best Doctor of the Classic era. He nails the excentric, charismatic alien perfectly and when he breaks into that smile you just have to surrender. However, I do have some inner resistance to overcome when the Fourth Doctor's concerned. Most likely it has to do with him being popular, and me being contrary. For whatever cause, the Fourth Doctor, like David Tennant's Tenth Doctor in a different way, strikes me as a bit of a diva. They are both great Doctors, and they know they are. Therefore, it's good to see this Doctor with a strong companion who doesn't stand for any nonsense. On paper, it may not seem like the best idea to have the Doctor travelling with another Gallifreyan (the Doctor will always be a Gallifreyan to me, never mind The Timeless Child). The companions are mostly earthlings and the audience's point of reference in the Tardis team: they are partly there to be as confused as we are and ask the right questions. A Time Lord and a Time Lady ought to be too much of a muchness. But Baker's Doctor thrives on being occasionally put in his place by Romana. Mary Tamm is really classy in the role, and I look forward to seeing the second version of Romana played by Lalla Ward in future adventures. Her chemistry with Baker was apparently something else (they married, though it didn't last). Oh, and one bonus with The Androids of Tara is seeing Peter "Bulstrode" Jeffrey acting his socks off as the dastardly Count Grendel.

The Pyramids of Mars was included as a bonus on one of my Sarah Jane Adventures box sets and is very well thought of, but I must admit I enjoyed the Key to Time episodes more. True, the villain in Pyramids is great, but he doesn't really feature until the end of the adventure, and there's a lot of not very thrilling stuff to sit through first. What's more, I didn't really care for the Doctor in this episode: he's grumpy even before encountering the serious threat the villain represents and dismissive of Sarah Jane. Some of my favourite New Who Doctors are grumpy (Capaldi and Eccleston), but it doesn't work for the Fourth Doctor.

Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison). Episodes watched: The Black Guardian/Turlough episodes, including Mawdryn Undead, Terminus and Enlightenment; The Caves of Androzani.

A good place to start? No. That is, The Caves of Androzani is excellent, one of the very best episodes of Classic Who I've seen this far, but it is the Fifth Doctor's last adventure, so maybe not that good of a starting point. With The Black Guardian trilogy, my fondness for box sets led me astray. The unifying story which ties these three adventures together is that the villainous Black Guardian is half bribing, half threatening Turlough, an unscrupulous lad (who's actually an alien stranded on Earth), to ingratiate himself with the Doctor, travel with him and ultimately kill him. The Black Guardian is great fun when he appears (which is only intermittently), and I liked the Uriah Heepish vibes I got off the conflicted Turlough (he's a lanky redhead). However, the adventures themselves have considerable longueurs, especially Terminus  which feels interminable. (Though Mawdryn Undead was a tight story with an interesting ethical dilemma.) Also, you don't really get a handle on Davison's Doctor and what makes him tick. I loved Peter Davison as Tristan in All Creatures Great and Small, and I suspect it is as Tristan I will always primarily see him. There must be better show cases for his Doctor than the Black Guardian trilogy, though.

Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker). Episodes watched: The Trial of a Time Lord series, including The Mysterious Planet, Mindwarp, Terror of the Vervoids and The Ultimate Foe. 

A good place to start? Yes! Even though these are the last adventures of the Sixth Doctor, because I suspect he doesn't get much better than this. Poor old Sixie and Colin Baker got really shafted. When Baker replaced Davison, the role was taken in another direction than he would have preferred, and he was obliged to play an arrogant and confrontational Doctor wearing a multi-coloured jacket that makes the viewer's eyes ache. Then, when this version of the Doctor didn't catch on, Baker was made the fall guy and unceremoniously sacked. With that kind of context, you would have to be very un-contrary indeed not to go into a Sixth Doctor adventure really wanting to like him as much as possible.

And actually, the Sixth Doctor in The Trial of Time Lord series isn't half bad. In it, the Time Lords have put the Doctor on trial for wreaking universal havoc with his meddling. This is a kind of situation which suits the cross-grained Sixth Doctor, and I enjoyed watching him splutteringly defend himself ("Poppycock!") aginst the prosecutor, the sinister and impressive Valeyard. (I'm certainly one of the many fans who want the Valeyard to be brought back in New Who, though goodness knows how they'd manage it considering who he turns out to be.) The Doctor adventures submitted as evidence in the trial are maybe not the strongest, but they held my attention (Mindwarp's really a bit of a mess, though). Even new companion Mel, mostly known for screaming a lot, is perfectly all right here. I was left with the impression that though the Sixth Doctor may not be the best of the Doctors, he deserves his place in the line-up of Doctor regenerations.

Next time: Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor, whom I appreciated far more than I anticipated, and the oddity that is the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie starring Paul McGann's glamorous Eighth Doctor. Yes, even without The Timeless Child, this character has had good many lives.                   

Random Classic Who viewing - First to Third Doctor

I've been forced to resign myself to the distinct possibility that Doctor Who - one of my favourite TV series, and the only one still running - will never hit the spot for me like it used to as long as Chris Chibnall is at the helm. His run may not be as bad as some critical fans claim, but neither is it as good as the series was in the days of show runners Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat. In itself, that is no great shame, as they were both exceptional. Nevertheless, it's depressing for a New Who nerd like myself to know that the next helping of my favourite show will probably disappoint me, and I will have to wait for it for ages anyway. So what do I do now to get that Who fix?

The audio dramas of Big Finish is one alternative (a subject for another post). But I have also been dipping my toe into the vastness that is Classic Doctor Who - the first incarnation of the show that aired from 1963 to 1989 (I think it was). There are practical difficulties here. No streaming service available to us Swedes is interested in airing this part of the series. I simply do not have room to buy and house all the DVDs for all the classic adventures (and it would be a bit pricey, too). And what to do with Classic Who DVDs I've watched and don't particularly want to keep? I doubt the charity shop will be pleased to receive them - the fan base for Classic Who in Lund can't be that wide-ranging.

Nevertheless, I've taken my first nibbles and found that I enjoy the series, though it's very different to New Who. It reminds me more of, say, The Avengers (the Sixties TV series with Steed and co., not the superheroes). It's a problem that the adventures weren't originally meant to be watched in one go - each adventure being made up of several bite-sized episodes of a little more than twenty minutes. When watching them all at the same time, the story often feels unnecessarily padded out and sometimes rather confusing. But there is a great deal of charm and wit to make up for it, and the Doctor - and his companions - are engaging characters. Somehow, I must find a way to explore Classic Who further without plastering my walls with DVDs.

More than one blog post will be needed to go into my first impressions. Let's start with the very first Doctor, the original, one might say:

First Doctor (William Hartnell). Episodes (as in full stories) watched: An Unearthly Child, The Daleks, The Edge of Destruction, The Time Meddler.

A good place to start? Well, yes - and no. The very first Who adventure, An Unearthly Child, holds up very well indeed, especially the very first mini-episode where the Doctor, his grand-daughter Susan, and the two teachers who become their unwilling travel companions - Ian and Barbara - are introduced. It's a special feeling to see the very first Dalek adventure, too. A recurring theme in my Classic Who watching has been my fondness for box sets and story arcs, for good or ill. All adventures mentioned above except The Time Meddler are part of a box set with the very first episodes. While I'm glad to have seen them, only The Time Meddler, in my view, shows the full potential of Hartnell's Doctor. The character wasn't fully formed at the start and was clearly meant to be a sort of mad, often grumpy scientist figure whose heart is nevertheless in the right place. Ian (the action hero) and Barbara (the empathic and spunky heroine) are more the traditional leads in this kind of story (with poor Susan usually tagging along with little to do). In The Time Meddler, the Doctor is still flanked, to quote Sidney Newman in An Adventure in Space and Time, by "a good-looking guy and a good-looking gal" (Steven and Vicki), but he's much more the natural centre of the story. Also, he has mellowed into a real sweetie, though he still puts his companions in place when he feels he has to, especially Steven. He has great rapport with one of the side cast - a helpful Anglo-Saxon woman they encounter in 1066 - and The Monk is a fun antagonist. Though slow in places, The Time Meddler left me wanting to see more of Hartnell in his later, mellower mood.

Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton). Episodes watched: The Dominators, The Mind Robber, The War Games.

A good place to start? Yes. Well, The Dominators, though enjoyable, is not required viewing by any means, but The Mind Robber and The War Games are both top-notch, and all three adventures are good show cases for Troughton's Doctor and two of his companions, hot-headed Highlander Jamie and capable Zoë from "future Earth" (actually our time). I vaguely remember liking Troughton in the series A Family at War (my parents had it on tape) - fancying him, in fact. I don't fancy Troughton's Doctor, but I like him enormously. He is fun, quirky and sly, with a great flair for improvisation and talking his way out of scrapes. In fact, he is my favourite classic Doctor so far, and he, Jamie and Zoë make quite a team. A warning: The War Games is the Second Doctor's last adventure (except when he guest stars in later multi-Doctor stories), so best not start with that one. The Mind Robber takes place in the Land of Fiction - I was sold from the word go.

Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee). Episodes watched: Spearhead from Space, The Terror of the Autons, The Time Monster.

A good place to start? Good-ish, I'd say. The Time Monster should perhaps not be the first port of call for the Third Doctor, as it was for me. It was part of a box set which I thought only contained Third Doctor adventures, but it turns out only one was, and of the two remaining (Fourth Doctor adventures) one is a well-known dud. Though The Time Monster does contain the suave Roger Delgado as the Master charming the Queen of Atlantis, and a nice Doctor speech, it didn't really give me a good idea of the Third Doctor's personality. The two Nestene/Auton adventures Spearhead from Space and The Terror of the Autons (also a box set) are a much better starting point. Spearhead is Pertwee's first adventure, while Terror introduces Delgado's Master. Pertwee has charm and class, and good acting chemistry with his female companions (not to mention Delgado), but of the first three Doctors his is the one that has made the least impression on me so far. Still excellent, though.

I will continue with Tom Baker and the rest - another time, though. The Fourth Doctor will, as per usual, require some space. 

A tale as old as time about... pity and self-sacrifice?

The Beauty and the Beast, as we all know, is the story of a beautiful woman who learns to love an ugly beast, only to discover that he, too, was beautiful all along. Or wait... is it?

Previously, my knowledge of the original story of The Beauty and the Beast came from the fairy-tale series of Illustrated Classics, which were usually pretty accurate, though they sometimes softened the edges of the adapted tales. The Beauty and the Beast edition was, in the Swedish translation I read as a child, called Lena and the Lion. As the Beast was depicted as a lion, and I was a cat-loving kid not too fussed about inter-species relationships, I was dissatisfied with him turning into a prince in the end - wasn't a dashing lion a much better bet than just another run-of-the-mill fairy-tale prince? Some of that childish disappointment with the prince ending, I admit, still lingers. I can see the rationale of the Beast turning into a man - but did it have to be a prince?

From the Illustrated Classic, I learned of some elements of the classic story which didn't make it to the animated Disney film, such as Beauty actually being the daughter of a ruined merchant, the merchant getting into trouble because he picked a rose from the Beast's garden, Beauty's jealous sisters etc. But the story still seemed very much like a romance. Lena, ultimately, loved her lion.

As I set out to finally read the original The Beauty and the Beast, written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve in 1740, I was therefore shocked to discover how unromantic the central relationship was. The condition for the Beast's curse to be broken is not that a girl should love him (and he her in return) as in the Disney film, but that she should agree to marry him. As Mr Gradgrind would tell you, those are two very different things. Beauty (which is actually a nickname, not a proper name - you can see why adaptations have simplified matters and called her Belle=beauty in the original French) never falls in love with the Beast in the original version. In fact, she loves the prince he will become, who visits her in her dreams, all along, and doesn't twig that her dream lover and the Beast are one and the same. She finally agrees to marry the Beast because she pities him, feels under an obligation to him and appreciates his good nature. When she asks her dream prince whether this is the right step to take and he enthusiastically encourages her, she is most seriously peeved.

Another change compared to modern adaptations of the tale, which maybe bothers me more than many others, is that part of the Beast's curse is to appear not only ugly but stupid. In the course of their acquaintance, he only puts the same questions to Beauty each evening (how her day has been etc.), never showing any wit or superior understanding. It's not a question, then, of Beauty being beguiled by his personality. Like, one suspects, many other girls of her day, Beauty is faced with the prospect of marrying a suitor she doesn't care for because he is kind, and he is rich.

The Villeneuve version of The Beauty and the Beast is a good read in many ways. There are pretty details about the Enchanted Castle (where Beauty and Beast are served by genii in disguise - the cursed servants appear to be a Disney invention), and it's intriguing to see how the prince's gambit of visiting Beauty in her dreams threatens to work against himself as he becomes his own rival. The later part of the story should be of interest to fantasy aficionados, as it contains a great deal of intricate fairy lore. Far from being cursed because he needed to be taught a lesson, the hapless prince got into trouble because he turned down a vindictive fairy who wanted to marry him. A good fairy then tries to help him as best she can, though she can't break the curse directly. The good fairy/bad fairy set-up makes sense of the role of the Enchantress in the Disney films, who always seemed somewhat of a split personality. Anyway, there's a lot of back story involving these fairies and others and rules they have to follow, not all of which come into play in the story. What we see, in a word, is some "world building". Beauty turns out to be the daughter of a king and yet another fairy, and it's all very complicated. Though all this isn't really necessary for the central plot, the fairy shenanigans in themselves are interesting enough.

Nevertheless, the Beauty/Beast relationship being so very different from what I was used to gave me a nasty jolt. How could Lena and the Lion get its source material so very wrong? The answer is that it didn't, but that the source material was not really Villeneuve's tale but a simplified adaption of it written by another 18th-century lady, Jeanne Marie Le Prince de Beaumont. This is much closer to the story most of us are familiar with. Beauty does care for the Beast in the end, and there is no muddying of the waters with dream visions. The bad fairy and good fairy appear, but their motives aren't gone into, and the whole back story of Beauty being a princess with fairy blood is dropped. Nevertheless, shadows of the problems with the original (problems to me, at least) remain. The Beast is allowed to show plain common sense, but his wit is still hampered by the curse. The moral is that neither beauty nor wit makes for a happy marriage, but a good heart. That's all very well, but how happy would Beauty and Beast's marriage have been in the long run if he hadn't turned back into a prince?

I'll have to admit it: for my money, the animated Disney film - and the story it tells, which has then inspired other adaptations - is better than its source material. Though I'm still not a fan of the live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast, I can better understand now why it leaned so heavily on the animated version instead of taking a fresh look at the original tales. The re-focusing of the Beauty/Beast relationship from marriage of convenience to love match brings its own problems, but they are much more fun to explore. Modern Beasts (in the Disney films and in Once Upon A Time) are allowed to be interesting and far from foolish, but this development has its own price: the more personality the Beast has, the less inclined he is to mollycoddle Belle or to fall in love with her at first sight just because she's beautiful. We seem to have come full circle, from the dumb sweetie Beast of the original to Beasts who are intelligent but not noticeably sweet-natured (though there is ultimately Good In Them). Both parties have to adapt for the romance to work.

Villeneuve and Beaumont may point out that while you can question the wisdom of telling girls they will be happy with someone they consider ugly and stupid as long as he has a good heart, it is a no less dangerous message to claim that you can transform a beastly man with the strength of your love. I think they'd be particularly horrified, presupposing that they somehow gained non-18th-century knowledge of the Brothers Grimm tales, by the Once Upon A Time crossover. But to me, a spot of Grimm is exactly what this fairy tale needs.

Harriet Walter rules again

I'm almost prepared for another bout of Whovian nerdery (about Classic Who this time), but not quite. So more costume drama it is. HBO Nordic obliged me by releasing three Philippa Gregory-based miniseries -  The White Queen, The White Princess and The Spanish Princess - during my vacation, so I was spoilt for choice. Now, I've already watched The White Queen and had recently read The White Princess, so I started in the wrong chronological order with The Spanish Princess, based on the two Gregory novels The Constant Princess and The King's Curse.

It was intriguing to watch this miniseries with The White Princess fresh in my mind, as it also takes place in Henry VII's reign, but a couple of years later, when his eldest son Arthur is old enough (only just) to marry. What also added context was that I've actually read The Constant Princess, although it was a few years ago now. I haven't read The King's Curse, but I've encountered its protagonist, Margaret Pole, making trouble in her old age in Hilary Mantel's Cromwell trilogy. It's interesting to see how it all started and to get an idea of why the Poles kept plotting so tenaciously during Henry VIII's reign. The main character of the series, though, remains the titular Spanish Princess, Catherine of Aragon.

From what I can remember, there are quite a few changes compared to The Constant Princess. In the novel, Gregory wrote up the marriage between Catherine and Arthur as an unexpected romance: Arthur was Catherine's great love, not his younger brother Henry. In the series, by contrast, Catherine and Arthur manage to reach warmth and understanding in their relationship before he dies after only a few months of marriage, but they're not head over heels, and once Arthur is gone Catherine falls for Henry pretty badly. This seems to make a little more sense than her cool appraisal of him in the novel, as Catherine and Henry went on to be happily married - until they weren't. (Though some time must have passed before she started setting her sights on Henry in real life - he was just a kid when his brother died.) It also makes Gregory's take on the consummation of Catherine's first marriage more plausible. According to Gregory, Arthur and Catherine did consummate their marriage, but Catherine chose to stubbornly deny it. Only if she hadn't actually slept with Henry's brother could she hope to get a dispensation from the Pope to marry Henry, and because she saw it as her destiny to become Queen of England, she decided to lie.

Besides the shift of romantic focus, another change from the book is that a lot more is made of the hostility of Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII's mother and Princes Arthur's and Henry's grandma, towards Catherine. Once again, the "formidable old boot" role is played by Harriet Walter, and brilliantly too. What is really strange is that this time, for once in my life, I actually found myself rooting for Margaret. What I never quite realised when reading the novel was how insulting to Arthur Catherine's (here false) claim of being a virgin was. Previously, I've always thought: "well, he was just a boy and under a lot of pressure, surely it was no great shame if the short-lived marriage remained white". Arthur had just turned fifteen when he married Catherine. In Tudor times, though, royals were expected to be ready for all aspects of marriage at that age. Margaret herself, married off at twelve (which was obscenely early even for the times), would certainly not have bought the "oh, but he was far too young" argument.

Walter's Margaret is depicted as the villain of the piece for wanting to keep Catherine and Henry apart, but I couldn't help thinking that she had a very good point. Leaving ecclesiastical law aside, a girl prepared to besmirch her dead husband's name in order to marry his brother does not feel like such a great addition to the family. There's nothing particularly commendable in Catherine's wish to become Queen, and though the romantic motive added in the series made her case a bit more appealing - well, we all know how it ended, don't we? She would probably have been better off going back to Spain while there was still time, and knowing this, it's hard to cheer when she finally gets her man.

Added subplots about Catherine's (I'm pretty sure fictitious) lady's maids feel mostly like padding, though as a way of getting a Moor element into the plot (Catherine being the daughter of Queen Isabella of Spain), it's way better than the Princess talking now and again to a Wise Moor Medic, which I believe was what happened in the novel. Here, Catherine's senior lady's maid, Lina, is from a Moor family (converted), and in love with one of the escorting soldiers, Oviedo, who is also a Moor (not converted). I did like Oviedo's realisation that his and his lady's interests don't necessarily align with Princess Catherine's, which finally leads him to start working for Margaret. Regrettably, she double-crosses him, which means in the end we have the goodies vs the baddies again with no interesting mix-up between the camps.

All in all, the series is entertaining enough. Charlotte Hope (who played Myranda - the chit who's even more villain-loving than me - in Game of Thrones) in the title role is convincing as a waif-like beauty with nerves and determination of steel. It was fun to see how uxorious Henry VII comes across here: in the novel, he quite fancied the notion of marrying Catherine himself once he became a widower, while in the series he only countenances the idea as it's a dying request from his beloved wife Lizzie (who for complicated reasons really doesn't want Catherine to get hitched to her second son). He claims that his dead wife was the love of his life, though in The White Princess the novel, he was smitten with the Scottish wife of a pretender to his throne a good fair while. It makes me curious how they manage this plot thread in the adaptation, which I'm nevertheless not quite ready to watch yet. Even I can get enough Tudor drama in one go.

How not to make a TV fantasy series: Cursed on Netflix

As I'm now in my last summer vacation week, one could argue that there are better things to spend my time on than the Netflix series Cursed, which is supposed to have something to do with Arthurian legend but doesn't really. Nevertheless, I have been "hate-watching" the entire ten episodes of the first season (there will probably be more, but I hope I'll have enough sense to stop here). There is something fascinating about the way the series tries and fails to be an epic fantasy adventure by ticking a number of boxes, and at least, unlike The Luminaries (which I don't know if I'll be able to finish), it is bad in an intermittently entertaining way.

The series is actually based on the books (graphic novels, maybe?) of two writers, otherwise one would have thought it the brain-child of a room of script-writers expressly hired by Netflix to come up with the Next Big Thing fantasy-wise, something that can be billed "the new Game of Thrones". I'm not that happy that every fantasy series now is supposed to ape Game of Thrones - I'd much rather see "the new Once Upon A Time" - but the occasional Game of Thrones-iness is not the problem. Indeed, I begin to see why GoT was so highly praised, if Cursed is the kind of dross fantasy fans usually have to contend with. There's a lot of blood, chopping off of limbs and nice side characters being killed off for shock effect (when a kindly lady gives the heroine a pep talk, I knew at once that she and her helpful husband were for it), but otherwise there are no noticeable links to the ambitious, knotty intrigues of GoT. 

The main story of Cursed is simple enough. There is the heroine, Nimue, who is neither a dark sorceress and beguiler of Merlin (that would be awkward, seeing as he's her dad) nor the usually nice and pro-Arthur Lady of the Lake. (She is in a lake at one time, but only to kill enemies.) When she gets hold of a magic sword, it responds to her, and there's never any question of handing it over to Arthur - here a happy-go-lucky wannabe knight and love interest to Nimue who (mostly) doesn't mind playing second fiddle to her. Nimue belongs to the fey, a host of magical creatures who are hunted down and killed by evil monks. When her village is destroyed, her mother with her dying breath tells Nimue to get a magic sword the mother's been hiding to Merlin. When she finally meets Merlin, though, Nimue starts to question whether handing the sword over to this slippery customer is such a great plan. Instead, she holds on to it and becomes the leader of the poor, persecuted fey who - wouldn't you know it - have formed a Resistance. Only, the sword (never named as Excalibur, but plainly meant to be it) is coveted by the king and a rival pretender as it would shore up their claims to the throne. The evil monks aren't too fussed about the sword, except as a source of magic, but they want to burn Nimue and all of the good, noble, diversity-embracing close-to-nature fey, because the fey are different and the evil monks are basically Medieval-style Nazis.

I have seen many a weird take on the King Arthur story in my day, but none which strays so far from any resemblance to any Arthurian legend, at least any I'm familiar with. It's not that Cursed stands the usual stories on their heads - that has been done many a time - more that it's completely unrelated to the usual stories. The characters with names from the King Arthur story don't stand in any recognisable relation to one another. Arthur is not related to Uther Pendragon, and if he ever makes king it will have to be by default when all the kick-ass heroines are gone. Gawain, Percival and Lancelot have no connection to their Round Table counterparts - they're just important characters in the general scheme of things who for some reason have been named after the knights in question. Arthur's sister is called Morgana, and she does dabble in magic towards the end, but that's it. It's also worth noting that the Morgana Le Fey of legend in this series is one of the few good (so far) protagonists who are not fey. Here is an instance where the writers could have dispensed with the Arthurian name-dropping altogether and given the characters different names, and nothing would have changed. It's not as if magic swords and sorcerers can't exist outside of an Arthurian-legend context.

Even as its own thing, though, this series is bad. It's so simplistic it's laughable, and in love with its own wokeness in a way that will make few converts. Fantasy can include a great deal of warrior heroines and melting-pot casting without it seeming strange or programmatic - after all, in a magical make-believe land, anything goes, and you're not in any way restricted by historical facts from the "real world". Still, the self-congratulatory tone grates - "look, we have lesbian nuns, aren't we enlightened?" What bothered me most, though, was the treatment of the Big Bad - the evil monks, otherwise known as "red paladins".

Menacing monks and shady clerics are something of a mainstay of popular entertainment, and usually I don't mind it - you have to be able to separate the character from the faith. Normally, somewhere in the story, someone will make a little Cadfaelesque speech on how the churchy bad guys in question seem to have forgotten all about the Christian virtues of kindness and mercy etc., or it will be made clear in some other way that the fanatics have got the wrong end of the stick. I'm not sure firmly secular writers always feel very warmly about inserting this kind of "look, we're not saying all Christians are bad" parenthesis in their work, but it's a show of good manners. We get nothing of this in Cursed, though. Here, all Christians are bad, period. The red paladins are backed up by a (literally) pox-ridden Pope. There's a Mother Abbess at one time who doesn't give Nimue away (without giving a reason: here a Cadfaelesque speech would have slotted in nicely), but otherwise, the nuns that are helpful to her are those who aren't in fact pious at all. The only nun displaying signs of piety is a young girl who's a murderous nutcase. We have several scenes where characters pray before an altar and are troubled because they don't feel any response - Morgana, at the end of such a scene, throws away her cross and joins the fey, as if there has to be a choice of the one or the other. Peter Mullan as Father Carder, the head Evil Monk, does his level best, but he's given nothing to work with, as every religious speech he or any one else gives feels false and hollow. The writers clearly don't "get" religion, which is fine, but they would in that case have been on firmer ground had they invented a religious sect of their own to play the baddies (similar to the followers of "The Lord of Light" in Game of Thrones). Quite apart from religious allegiance, it's a problem when a story is unable to explain the driving forces of its villains. As a comparison, the moral system of the Star Wars films may be black and white, but Palpatine still makes a darn good case for the Dark Side. 

There are good things in this series, such as the beautiful animated intro, some of the acting (the guy who plays Uther overacts painfully, though), and the way new plots and characters get thrown into the mix so as to liven things up a bit - a leper king, a pirate queen, a Viking pretender, a probably hostile old spirit taking over Morgana etc. I thought they tried too hard with making Merlin quirky and different at first, but he works well enough in the long run, and as a Swede I never object to seeing a Skarsgård as part of the cast. But if you want a popular-culture take on King Arthur and co., you're better off with Merlin (also on Netflix).   

Why Belgravia lacks the secret Downton ingredient

I've not been very lucky with my reading lately - there have been a couple of rereads and nothing very blogworthy. I did manage to finish Alix E. Harrow's The Ten Thousand Doors of January but I didn't care for it, and I don't feel that inclined to launch into a potentially contentious rant explaining why. (My favourite character was Mr Locke. He turns out to be the villain. And believe you me, that is not a spoiler.)

It seems, then, that I will have to stick to the TV series theme for a bit. Luckily, my streaming services have obliged me by providing decent material. I acquired a new service (free the first year: after that an absolute bargain) mainly so I could finally watch Belgravia, adapted by Julian Fellowes from his novel. Now, I actually read Belgravia when it first came out. It was published in instalments electronically and could be accessed by a mobile app, so it was the first (and probably the last) novel I read on my phone. The electronic reading experience wasn't great: I found it hard to make my mobile understand when I wanted to turn the page, and the screen went into idle mode every few minutes. This may have coloured my perception of the book, but I remember not being very impressed with it. Never mind not measuring up to Downton: the main problem was that it wasn't nearly as good as other novels by Fellowes, Past Imperfect especially. It felt a bit flat and full of forced exposition about 19th-century London, which could then be linked to more information about the history being explored. I'm afraid watching the adaptation doesn't do much to dispel these impressions, though it's considerably more enjoyable to get acquainted with Belgravia this way as opposed to per app.

The background of the story goes as follows. In 1815, before the battle of Waterloo, Sophia Trenchard and Edmund Bellasis, son of the Earl of Brockenhurst, get together in Brussels. They marry in secret (Sophia is the daughter of the English army's supplier and therefore as common as they come). Before Edmund rides off to battle, Sophia sees the parson who married them get up on the horse next to him, also dressed as an officer. She therefore concludes that she was tricked into a fake marriage and that an army pal of Edmund's helped him out with getting her into bed. Edmund dies in the battle and Sophia discovers that she is pregnant.

Fast-forward twenty-five years or so. Sophia's father James Trenchard has made good and is now a wealthy property developer, though the aristocracy and gentry still look down on him, much to his distress. Mrs Anne Trenchard meets Lady Brockenhurst, Edmund's mother, at a tea party. After having thought it through she goes against her husband's wishes and informs Lady Brockenhurst that she has a grandchild. Sophia died in childbirth, and her son has been raised by a respectable couple without knowing anything about his background. He is now a promising young manufacturer called Charles Pope.

It's a good set-up for plotting and counter-plotting, if you can swallow the premise that no-one even thought of looking into Edmund's pal's credentials during all this time. What with Edmund being such a decent chap, is it likely that he would treat his lady love so shamefully? Yet not even Sophia questions it, only Edmund's own mother when she eventually hears the story (and she assumes that Sophia was a hussy and that no marriage, sham or otherwise, took place). Even as a supposed bastard, though, Charles Pope puts a lot of noses out of joint as both Lady Brockenhurst and the Trenchards make much of him. The Brockenhurst heir, John Bellasis (the villain), and Trenchard's son Oliver both have good reason to ask themselves why this young sprig of a wool merchant is favoured above them. 

So, what's missing, then? The reviewer in The Daily Telegraph complained that the series and character lacked the Downton warmth, and I think she's on to something. It's worth remembering that Downton Abbey's characterisation wasn't very subtle to begin with, and the characters only acquired depth as the story went on. Nevertheless, it is disappointing that the two families involved in Belgravia's intrigues elicit so little sympathy. One major drawback for me was that I couldn't warm to Anne Trenchard. She is clearly supposed to be the Voice of Reason, yet in one of the first scenes (set in 1815), she complains about her husband having obtained invitations to a high-class ball where she feels they will be out of place. It is true that the Trenchards are out of their depth at such a gathering, but whingeing about it and wincing every time her husband makes a faux pax isn't going to improve matters. Tamsin Greig does what she can with the part, but the fact remains that Anne lacks the kind, forbearing nature of, say, Mrs Hughes in Downton. The scenes where Greig's Mrs Trenchard faces off Harriet Walter's Lady Brockenhurst may be the best in the series - they have a good dynamic - but there is zero chemistry between Mr and Mrs Trenchard. When their marriage hits the rocks, one feels that there was not much marriage left to ruin. Compare these marital scenes with the ones between Lord and Lady Grantham in Downton, and the aforementioned lack of warmth is apparent.

Belgravia is still very much worth the watch, and bears the Fellowes hallmark all right. The characters get down to business in a refreshingly down-to-earth manner without much flim-flammery. When John Bellasis's mother - married to an inveterate gambler - discovers that her son has robbed her of her little hoard of silver which she kept for an emergency, she doesn't go to pieces, merely sits down on the bed and resignedly hopes that he'll make good use of the money. When apparent calamity hits them, Fellowes characters face facts and make the best of things. Fellowes is also very good on English snobbery, as someone who - I imagine - hasn't been above serving up a few put-downs of his own in his day. When English snobbery is being satirised by an outsider, it's often overdone, and they miss the hurtful sharpness of it. A snobbish English put-down is as often as not dressed up as a pleasant remark, so that the snubbers can then tell themselves "Oh, I'm sure X didn't get that anyway". But if you do get it, you feel insulted twice over, as you have apparently been dismissed as stupid as well as vulgar.

If you catch it and are a fan of early Downton, you'll have a good time with this series. For my part, I'm still looking out for The Gilded Age, but with less and less hope that it will contain a satisfying villain.

What's with the slow costume dramas?

What's wrong with the BBC nowadays? It's been ages since I've watched a decent costume drama from them. This is by no means the first costume drama slump - I spent a good part of 2010 pining after the good old days of Dickens adaptations by Andrew Davies and other delights. Then ITV launched Downton Abbey, and eventually the BBC rose to the challenge, after unsuccessfully having tried to catch the public's interest with "anti-Downton" projects. (Well, all right, I admit the public do seem to like Peaky Blinders.) But now here we are again. With the exception of Poldark, which I may have given up on after two series but was at least pacy, costume-drama efforts by the Beeb are tending towards the dark, slow and sententious. It's almost funny how they've managed to put even me off buying the latest War of the Worlds adaptation, though I'll dutifully watch it if a TV channel or streaming service obliges, for the sake of Carlyle. Gay astronomer? Fine, it's Edwardian England after all, and I'm used to fancying gay characters (could have done without the funny glasses, though). Strong female protagonist who isn't in the book? Bit weird, but I haven't read the book, and she's played by Eleanor Tomlinson, so. Anti-imperialist waffling? Ugh, if you must, H.G. Wells would probably have loved it. Humankind going to pot even though they defeat the Martians? OK, now you've lost me.

What's brought my present anti-BBC sentiments on, except their hiring Sarah Phelps to butcher Christie again and again? (I regret being gracious about her  And Then There Were None now - if you don't get the main premise of the victims being indirectly guilty of murder, then you don't get the genius of Christie's plotting, and I should have realised that.) It's mostly down to The Luminaries, which has been snapped up by HBO Nordic and which I consequently have been able to watch practically at the same time as the UK. Now The Luminaries is by no means the worst costume drama the BBC has produced - it doesn't offend me the way, say, The Pale Horse travesty did. It's helped by the fact that it's an adaptation of a novel by a modern author, albeit set in the 19th century, so we don't get the painful spectacle of a script writer trying to "fix" the story by bringing in more "modern relevance". In fact Eleanor Catton - who wrote the novel - is herself responsible for the script, which means it must at least be respectful (I haven't read the original novel). At the same time, depressingly, letting authors adapt their own book seldom works well. You need someone with a bit of knowledge as to how the TV medium (as opposed to the written word) works. The Luminaries has some things going for it, but it's very, very slow.

Some positives first. As per usual with British drama, it's well-acted, and the settings look fine. The story takes place in New Zealand in the 1860s, and there's a gold rush going on, so there's a rag-tag, Wild West feel about the larger town the heroine reaches at the beginning of the story (um... not sure which town it's supposed to be now) and the smaller village she later ends up in. An early scene where the purity of a digger's gold is tested on the open street feels just exotic enough to catch one's interest. The Beeb can indulge in hiring a multi-ethnic cast without it looking out of place for the setting: in fact the plot demands it, which the execs must have loved. The characters are connected in intriguing and intricate ways. Though some of the characterisation seems clichéd - the prejudiced sheriff, the well-meaning but weak clergyman, the spineless politician etc. - there are some surprises along the way. The main villain, or villainess, is Lydia Wells (played by Eva Green, having fun), and she's worse news than the sheriff, the unscrupulous pimp and the ex-convict (her lover) combined. At this stage, not even a tragic back-story could make anyone believe that her actions are all the fault of the patriarchy. Her husband, Crosbie Wells, first looks like he's some drunken lout she got stuck with, but he turns out to be an intelligent man with a knack of befriending people.

But oh, the slowness. Eve Hewson, who plays the story's heroine Anna Wetherell, is lovely to look at: however, seeing her mooching around miserably in scene after scene with melancholy music in the background just gets too much. I watched the first three episodes available on HBO in the middle of the day two days in a row (my summer holiday has started, blissfully) and did not expect to be overly stimulated, but I was still frustrated by the snail's pace of the plot progression. Whenever Lydia and her ex-con squeeze were hatching some scheme (what's he doing in New Zealand, incidentally? Convicts were never sent there) things picked up, but none of the other story lines are that engaging. I liked Crosbie Wells, but I don''t much care who eventually shot him. Emery Staines, Anna's love interest and potential soul mate, is charming (Himesh Patel gets to show that the wetness of Jack Malik in Yesterday wasn't his fault) and his Maori pal Te Rau is sweet, but their adventures are hardly gripping either, and Anna just seems to be set up to be the perpetual victim.

From what I can see on IMDB, the series is only six episodes long all in all, so I'll probably watch all of it, being half-way in. However, I'm still waiting for a real return to form on part of the BBC. As costume drama is not the only thing they've handled less than competently lately - for instance, they've arrogantly dismissed well-founded criticism of Chris Chibnall's era of Doctor Who - maybe a more far-reaching rethink of the corporation's priorities is needed. Still, what do I know: it's not my tax money that's at stake here, after all.