I did manage to stave off my ordinary January blues for a while this year. Well, of course I was blue, but I had luck with my novel reading, which helped. The Winter Palace was great, and I followed it up self-indulgently with a feel-good Jenny Colgan (The Little Beach Street Bakery). On TV, I wallowed in costume drama rewatching. But now, grim reality asserts itself. I've run out of Downton to rewatch; the new Mr Selfridge series (fairly efficient methadone against Downton abstinence) has only just started in the UK and won't be out for ages here; and to top it all, I'm watching The Newsroom series two and reading Alias Grace, which turns out to be an unwise combination.
I'd forgotten how annoying The Newsroom can be. All the faults of the first series are present and correct in the second one (though in fairness, I've only watched three episodes so far). It is quite shamelessly biased and sometimes to the left even of right-on East Coast Democrats. Neal the internet expert is really into the Occupy Wall Street movement, and though his colleagues tease him about it ("look, they're wearing Salvador Dalí masks") you just know that the Quaker girl who's his personable contact within the movement (and possible love interest) will strike them all dumb in the end with a highly rhetorical speech on air. Meanwhile, there will be inspirational music in the background while the supposedly Republican news anchor Will McAvoy - far from "slaughtering" the Quaker girl - nods wisely. I may be wrong of course, but this is the kind of thing that usually happens in this series. In the last episode I saw, Jim (the producer who loves skittish Maggie but never gets together with her) holds a speech on a tour bus for journalists covering Mitt Romney's campaign in the Primary elections. First he bombards Romney's campaign organisers with questions to which the script does not allow them to give any satisfactory answers. Then he advocates a more honest and searching kind of journalism about political campaigns where candidates are properly put on trial. And there it is again, the political dishonesty that drives me mad. This series isn't about giving politicians generally a hard time. It is about giving Republican politicians a hard time, preferably Republican presidential candidates. It was exactly the same thing in series one: the Republican presidential candidates were attacked, not given any counter-arguments, and then we were told that it was all in the interest of improving political life, rather than a sneaky way of feeding the viewers anti-Republican arguments. The endless moralising is bad enough - the admirable Sloan has issues with drone warfare, and even Don gets caught up with idealistically fighting A Cause - but could we at least be spared the hypocrisy? Toby Ziegler, come back, all is forgiven!
It has to be said, though, that the series is still witty, as evidenced by the Salvador Dalí quip (the protester-trendy Guy Fawkes masks do look a lot like Dalí). But it is not as clever as it thinks it is - if it were, you wouldn't realise when it tries to manipulate you, and you do.
As for Alias Grace, well. So far, the plot reminds me a little of Affinity by Sarah Waters, a book I didn't much care for. There, a female visitor in Victorian London became fascinated by an imprisoned medium. Here, in mid-Victorian Toronto, a supercilious young doctor is interviewing Grace Marks, who's imprisoned for a double murder which she's said to have committed in league with a man called James McDermott. The doctor wants to find out if she's a) mad b) guilty. Was she in on the murders at all? Was McDermott her fancy man?
The case is not uninteresting, but so far (I'm on page 150 now) I haven't learned a lot about it. Not to be a ghoul or anything, but could we get to the actual murders soon, or the events leading up to them at least? What makes me think of Affinity is the relationship between the doctor Simon Jordan and Grace. He seems fairly easy to manipulate, and she is a lot more cunning than he gives her credit for. The problem is that neither of them is very likeable, so their complaints about the lives they lead are not particularly fascinating. Grace has just told Jordan in detail about the crossing of her family from Ireland to Canada. Jordan calls her story "the usual poverty and hardships etc." in a letter, and he has a point. Those who are fond of social history may enjoy this sort of thing: for my part, the sooner I get to the crime story, the more pleased I will be.
Tuesday, 27 January 2015
Wednesday, 14 January 2015
New Year's resolutions
I don't hold with New Year's resolutions generally. Isn't life difficult enough sometimes without adding unnecessary pressure? Still, when I look back on 2014, I admit it was a year where I played it incredibly safe where books, TV and films (were there any cinema outings at all? I think Frozen was it) were concerned. This had some effect on my blogging as well. True, most weeks when I didn't blog it was because I was too busy/tired from work/lazy (2014 was a tough working year), but I used the excuse "I've got nothing to write about this week, anyway" fairly frequently. So maybe it will help if I set myself some culture-consumption goals which can later be converted into blog posts. If I write them down, they'll be less easy to escape.
This year, I will try to do the following:
Test-watch at least one of the following series: The Wire or Mad Men. "I'm not sure it's the sort of thing you'll like", a friend informed me kindly when I proudly proclaimed that I'd bought the first series of The Wire. Even she, a much more ambitious TV viewer than myself, found it a little on the dark side. But it has been described as "Dickensian", and anyway, what's the alternative? I have to watch at least one of the series that everyone is praising, and the others - well - they sound awful. And the worst thing is, you've a feeling that they're meant to sound awful. Their pitch is a feel-bad one, and I'm not interested in that kind of pitch, thank you. I don't watch TV in order to be able to brag about how depressed but aware of this world's miseries I felt afterwards. The Wire's got cops, it's got robbers, and besides I've bought it now. It will have to do.
As for Mad Men, it's got mixed reviews from my closest circle, but once again I did buy the first series for testing. It can't stand gathering dust forever. Actually I did watch the first episode once on TV ages ago and wasn't that impressed - it seemed like one of those dramas which point a finger at the Fifties or Sixties and shudder "weren't they horrible? And it wasn't that long ago!" Nowadays, the Fifties and Sixties are almost depicted as more strange from our modern perspective than Victorian times or the Roaring Twenties. However, Mad Men is a costume drama of sorts, and I should give it another chance: few series are at their best in the first episode. I hope I don't fall for Don Draper, though - that would be too mainstream.
Read or try to read at least one of the following books: Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt or White Teeth by Zadie Smith. I do own all three of them. Alias Grace is a historical novel, plus I would then have read something by Margaret Atwood; The Goldfinch features a cameo from Foxy Francis, apparently, and I did like The Secret History although I thought it terribly sad; and White Teeth, well... I've read some articles by Zadie Smith, and they were well-written enough to make me curious. With hindsight, On Beauty would probably have been the place to start in my case, but there's something to be said about starting from the beginning, and the book was a bargain.
N.B. If I start reading one of these books and find I don't like it at all, I'm allowed not to finish it.
Finish watching The White Queen: Honestly, I can't give up after nine episodes. Besides, there can't be much more to go now. But I do wish it could be a little less solemn.
Go to the cinema at least once, perhaps to watch Cinderella with Lily James, Sophie McShera and some others. Well, I have to have one resolution I'll definitely be able to hold to, don't I?
This year, I will try to do the following:
Test-watch at least one of the following series: The Wire or Mad Men. "I'm not sure it's the sort of thing you'll like", a friend informed me kindly when I proudly proclaimed that I'd bought the first series of The Wire. Even she, a much more ambitious TV viewer than myself, found it a little on the dark side. But it has been described as "Dickensian", and anyway, what's the alternative? I have to watch at least one of the series that everyone is praising, and the others - well - they sound awful. And the worst thing is, you've a feeling that they're meant to sound awful. Their pitch is a feel-bad one, and I'm not interested in that kind of pitch, thank you. I don't watch TV in order to be able to brag about how depressed but aware of this world's miseries I felt afterwards. The Wire's got cops, it's got robbers, and besides I've bought it now. It will have to do.
As for Mad Men, it's got mixed reviews from my closest circle, but once again I did buy the first series for testing. It can't stand gathering dust forever. Actually I did watch the first episode once on TV ages ago and wasn't that impressed - it seemed like one of those dramas which point a finger at the Fifties or Sixties and shudder "weren't they horrible? And it wasn't that long ago!" Nowadays, the Fifties and Sixties are almost depicted as more strange from our modern perspective than Victorian times or the Roaring Twenties. However, Mad Men is a costume drama of sorts, and I should give it another chance: few series are at their best in the first episode. I hope I don't fall for Don Draper, though - that would be too mainstream.
Read or try to read at least one of the following books: Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt or White Teeth by Zadie Smith. I do own all three of them. Alias Grace is a historical novel, plus I would then have read something by Margaret Atwood; The Goldfinch features a cameo from Foxy Francis, apparently, and I did like The Secret History although I thought it terribly sad; and White Teeth, well... I've read some articles by Zadie Smith, and they were well-written enough to make me curious. With hindsight, On Beauty would probably have been the place to start in my case, but there's something to be said about starting from the beginning, and the book was a bargain.
N.B. If I start reading one of these books and find I don't like it at all, I'm allowed not to finish it.
Finish watching The White Queen: Honestly, I can't give up after nine episodes. Besides, there can't be much more to go now. But I do wish it could be a little less solemn.
Go to the cinema at least once, perhaps to watch Cinderella with Lily James, Sophie McShera and some others. Well, I have to have one resolution I'll definitely be able to hold to, don't I?
Tuesday, 6 January 2015
Middlebrow reading
OK then. I have to confess that for most of the time, in spite of my interest in Dickens and other Victorian novelists and a general willingness to watch Shakespeare plays, I'm a typical middlebrow culture consumer. TV-wise, I watch costume dramas slavishly, but have not got round to testing The Wire yet, and my Our Friends in The North box set that was going for a song is as yet untouched. I don't even feel tempted to try Breaking Bad or True Detective. As to books, this is what I've been reading the past month or so:
1) Havisham by Ronald Frame, a prequel/retelling of Great Expectations, giving Miss Havisham's story. This novel is good on Miss Havisham as a business woman, and you'll be pleased to hear that Frame's Miss H got to have some fun in society before being seduced. In other ways, though, she turns out to be a bit of a disappointment - less mad than in Dickens, true, but also more calculating and less a victim of blind passion. She only dons the wedding dress - which she regularly changes for a new, identical one - after having been betrayed by her best friend as well as by Compeyson. I felt more sympathy for Dickens's version. Frame sticks to the Shropshire doctor ending: a bit of a downer in itself, but this is the sort of serious-minded book where you're glad that the author hasn't come up with a new, even more depressing ending.
2) The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova. Kostova's The Historian was a big hit when it came out, while this, her second novel, received some slighting reviews from what I recall. Nevertheless, I plumped for The Swan Thieves as the Leda motif seemed more enticing than a vampire story. As it happens, there isn't much swan talk in the book, but I enjoyed it, and am inclined to think that the bad reviews were largely down to the well-known second-novel-phenomenon where critics punish an author whose first book was hyped (often by the self-same critics). Strangely enough, I liked the contemporary plot line best, where a psychiatrist who treats an artist who has fallen prey to an obsession interviews the artist's two plucky exes: his wife and his girlfriend. This was interesting relationship drama. I was less impressed by the parallel historical plot about a female Impressionist painter and her uncle-in-law (also a painter) who develop romantic feelings for each other. This plot assumed an interest and sympathy for the characters - the woman Béatrice especially - that I didn't feel. Still, a good holiday read.
3) Rereading of Agatha Christie's The Moving Finger, purely for fun. This must be one of her best. The latest TV adaptation of this book is one of the more faithful ones, and you can see why (though there was no lack of sex appeal on the part of Elsie Holland in the adaptation).
4) The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak; this is the historical novel I'm reading at the moment. The protagonist is a girl spy at the Russian Court, who befriends the future Catherine the Great when she arrives as a poor German princess destined to marry the crown prince. Very promising so far, though books with historical spy plots depress me a bit as I'm forced to acknowledge that I would never in a million years have been a good spy myself. This is a drawback when fantasising about spy masters, whom I usually fall for (not so sure about Chancellor Bestuzhev though).
See what I mean? Not a trashy reading list by any means, but not full of future Booker Prize winners either. Quite simply, middlebrow.
1) Havisham by Ronald Frame, a prequel/retelling of Great Expectations, giving Miss Havisham's story. This novel is good on Miss Havisham as a business woman, and you'll be pleased to hear that Frame's Miss H got to have some fun in society before being seduced. In other ways, though, she turns out to be a bit of a disappointment - less mad than in Dickens, true, but also more calculating and less a victim of blind passion. She only dons the wedding dress - which she regularly changes for a new, identical one - after having been betrayed by her best friend as well as by Compeyson. I felt more sympathy for Dickens's version. Frame sticks to the Shropshire doctor ending: a bit of a downer in itself, but this is the sort of serious-minded book where you're glad that the author hasn't come up with a new, even more depressing ending.
2) The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova. Kostova's The Historian was a big hit when it came out, while this, her second novel, received some slighting reviews from what I recall. Nevertheless, I plumped for The Swan Thieves as the Leda motif seemed more enticing than a vampire story. As it happens, there isn't much swan talk in the book, but I enjoyed it, and am inclined to think that the bad reviews were largely down to the well-known second-novel-phenomenon where critics punish an author whose first book was hyped (often by the self-same critics). Strangely enough, I liked the contemporary plot line best, where a psychiatrist who treats an artist who has fallen prey to an obsession interviews the artist's two plucky exes: his wife and his girlfriend. This was interesting relationship drama. I was less impressed by the parallel historical plot about a female Impressionist painter and her uncle-in-law (also a painter) who develop romantic feelings for each other. This plot assumed an interest and sympathy for the characters - the woman Béatrice especially - that I didn't feel. Still, a good holiday read.
3) Rereading of Agatha Christie's The Moving Finger, purely for fun. This must be one of her best. The latest TV adaptation of this book is one of the more faithful ones, and you can see why (though there was no lack of sex appeal on the part of Elsie Holland in the adaptation).
4) The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak; this is the historical novel I'm reading at the moment. The protagonist is a girl spy at the Russian Court, who befriends the future Catherine the Great when she arrives as a poor German princess destined to marry the crown prince. Very promising so far, though books with historical spy plots depress me a bit as I'm forced to acknowledge that I would never in a million years have been a good spy myself. This is a drawback when fantasising about spy masters, whom I usually fall for (not so sure about Chancellor Bestuzhev though).
See what I mean? Not a trashy reading list by any means, but not full of future Booker Prize winners either. Quite simply, middlebrow.
Monday, 22 December 2014
2014 – TV and book highlights
No, December is not a great blogging month, but when all else fails, you can usually rustle up an end-of year list of some sort. My wishes for the new year are more or less the same as in 2012, with the exception of the vain wish that Dan Stevens would stay put in Downton – that ship has sailed long ago. What then, in blog-related areas, has happened during the last year?
Author discovery of the year: Sally Beauman. Yes, this is middlebrow romance we’re talking about, but middlebrow romance with quality. After quite liking Rebecca’s Tale (though it was, as one would expect, too pro-Rebecca) I decided to give Destiny a go and was hooked. Since then I’ve worked my way through Beauman’s back catalogue, and am now looking forward to investing in her newest novel The Visitors, once it’s out in paperback. Let’s hope it has more in common with Destiny and Dark Angel than the over-gloomy Landscape of Love – and I would be grateful if no fictional children were harmed during the making of it.
Villain of the year:There’s still a dearth of new villains on the book front, but TV dramas seem finally to have twigged the importance of villains. Both Mr Selfridge and The Paradise topped up their cast list with new villains, and then there’s Morse’s hot envious colleague in Endeavour (hm – wonder where they got that idea from). But my prize goes to a villain from 2011 whom I haven’t caught up with until now – the delectable, devious politician Troels Höxenhaven in Borgen. Mr Lang – sorry Thackeray – in Mr Selfridge gets an honourable mention. This doesn’t mean I’m over Thomas, though.
Villainess of the year:No contest – it has to be Missy in Doctor Who. The series was in great form this year - more, please!
Costume drama of the year, not counting Downton:I have to take Downton out of the running, or it would win every year until it ends (my guess is series six will be the last, but I’m happy to be proved wrong as long as the characters are not stuck in a Bramwell-like limbo). Adaptations of classics seem to have gone quite out of fashion, regrettably. I’ve begun rewatching Little Dorrit recently, and was once again struck down with melancholy over the axing – many years ago – of the planned Andrew Davies adaptation of Dombey and Son. Nevertheless, the current trend of scripted-for TV costume dramas has its advantages. For one thing, they have a longer life-span, and you don’t know what will happen next. The Paradise has run its course, which is a shame considering what an improvement the second series was on the first, but Mr Selfridge will be with us again next year. And in spite of the trying Selfridge himself and the cool shop-girl Agnes who lacks Denise’s charm, Mr Selfridge continues to trounce The Paradise.
High-brow read of the year: Well, strictly speaking there may be only one high-brow read to choose from. I really must buckle down to some more Ambitious Book Projects next year. Anyway, The Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst was a good read. It’s strange to think that largely thanks to a whole crop of not-really-into-chicks baddies, I not only cheerfully wade through guy-on-guy scenes which would have me reaching for my smelling salts ten years ago but positively ask for them – “come on, surely it’s time to give him one?” I’m telling you, villains build bridges.
Totally trashy beach read which you would never admit having read to your friends of the year: I had a surprisingly good time reading a 50-pence copy of Judith Krantz’s Lovers, and I suspect that it’s not her best novel by a long chalk. The characters don’t stay with you, but some of them talk a great deal of common sense. Krantz knows how to spin a yarn, and she’s no fool.
Apology of the year: OK, sorry about having sneered at Zola’s part in the Dreyfus case. He was right, and he was not simply in it to brandish his anti-establishment credentials. Read all about it in An Officer And A Spy by Robert Harris. This doesn’t mean I like Zola – on the whole, the pro-Dreyfusians including Harris’s hero Picquart could have been a more likeable lot. But they were indisputably fighting the good fight.
Comebacks of the year: Jeeves and Wooster made a successful and welcome return in Sebastian Faulks's homage to P.G. Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Wedding Bells. And then there's Bridget Jones's last hurrah, Mad About The Boy. Forget the sneering reviews: if you enjoyed thirtysomething Bridget's diaries, chances are you'll snigger over and sympathise with her fiftysomething self as well.
Author discovery of the year: Sally Beauman. Yes, this is middlebrow romance we’re talking about, but middlebrow romance with quality. After quite liking Rebecca’s Tale (though it was, as one would expect, too pro-Rebecca) I decided to give Destiny a go and was hooked. Since then I’ve worked my way through Beauman’s back catalogue, and am now looking forward to investing in her newest novel The Visitors, once it’s out in paperback. Let’s hope it has more in common with Destiny and Dark Angel than the over-gloomy Landscape of Love – and I would be grateful if no fictional children were harmed during the making of it.
Villain of the year:There’s still a dearth of new villains on the book front, but TV dramas seem finally to have twigged the importance of villains. Both Mr Selfridge and The Paradise topped up their cast list with new villains, and then there’s Morse’s hot envious colleague in Endeavour (hm – wonder where they got that idea from). But my prize goes to a villain from 2011 whom I haven’t caught up with until now – the delectable, devious politician Troels Höxenhaven in Borgen. Mr Lang – sorry Thackeray – in Mr Selfridge gets an honourable mention. This doesn’t mean I’m over Thomas, though.
Villainess of the year:No contest – it has to be Missy in Doctor Who. The series was in great form this year - more, please!
Costume drama of the year, not counting Downton:I have to take Downton out of the running, or it would win every year until it ends (my guess is series six will be the last, but I’m happy to be proved wrong as long as the characters are not stuck in a Bramwell-like limbo). Adaptations of classics seem to have gone quite out of fashion, regrettably. I’ve begun rewatching Little Dorrit recently, and was once again struck down with melancholy over the axing – many years ago – of the planned Andrew Davies adaptation of Dombey and Son. Nevertheless, the current trend of scripted-for TV costume dramas has its advantages. For one thing, they have a longer life-span, and you don’t know what will happen next. The Paradise has run its course, which is a shame considering what an improvement the second series was on the first, but Mr Selfridge will be with us again next year. And in spite of the trying Selfridge himself and the cool shop-girl Agnes who lacks Denise’s charm, Mr Selfridge continues to trounce The Paradise.
High-brow read of the year: Well, strictly speaking there may be only one high-brow read to choose from. I really must buckle down to some more Ambitious Book Projects next year. Anyway, The Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst was a good read. It’s strange to think that largely thanks to a whole crop of not-really-into-chicks baddies, I not only cheerfully wade through guy-on-guy scenes which would have me reaching for my smelling salts ten years ago but positively ask for them – “come on, surely it’s time to give him one?” I’m telling you, villains build bridges.
Totally trashy beach read which you would never admit having read to your friends of the year: I had a surprisingly good time reading a 50-pence copy of Judith Krantz’s Lovers, and I suspect that it’s not her best novel by a long chalk. The characters don’t stay with you, but some of them talk a great deal of common sense. Krantz knows how to spin a yarn, and she’s no fool.
Apology of the year: OK, sorry about having sneered at Zola’s part in the Dreyfus case. He was right, and he was not simply in it to brandish his anti-establishment credentials. Read all about it in An Officer And A Spy by Robert Harris. This doesn’t mean I like Zola – on the whole, the pro-Dreyfusians including Harris’s hero Picquart could have been a more likeable lot. But they were indisputably fighting the good fight.
Comebacks of the year: Jeeves and Wooster made a successful and welcome return in Sebastian Faulks's homage to P.G. Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Wedding Bells. And then there's Bridget Jones's last hurrah, Mad About The Boy. Forget the sneering reviews: if you enjoyed thirtysomething Bridget's diaries, chances are you'll snigger over and sympathise with her fiftysomething self as well.
Thursday, 4 December 2014
Splendid sci-fi Scots
Fiddling while Rome burned comes to mind. In the middle of a national political crisis, I've spent my time watching Doctor Who series 8, three episodes per evening. Luckily, the DVD arrived just as I had run out of Downton episodes. Last night, when I'd finished watching the finale, I somewhat half-heartedly checked the news online and found out an extra election had been called. Well, what do you know.
I doubt a new election will bring much joy, but the new Doctor, Peter Capaldi, certainly did. I recently cheered on his Richelieu in The Musketeers: this time around, my feelings are more friendly approval than swooning villain-fangirliness. Which only goes to show how convincing Capaldi is as a) a hero b) an alien. Like Clara, his companion, you sense that cuddles are not on the menu, and their relationship developed interestingly in a quite new direction. Clara's boyfriend Danny, when he thinks he's cracked the whole mystery, exclaims:"You're an alien! And he's your space dad!" He's not as far wrong as all that.
For a comparatively new Who fan like me - I've watched and loved the whole new series from Christopher Eccleston onwards, but I still only have the slightest acquaintance with the old one - a Doctor-companion relationship without any hint of flirting makes a refreshing change. For the old hands, this is the rule rather than the exception, but the first companion I saw was Rose, whom the Doctor actually fell in love with. Then came Martha (one of my personal favourites among the companions), who fell in love with him. Then, it's true, came Donna ("I just need a mate" "Well, you're not mating with me, sunshine") - a very chaste friendship, but the Doc and she were still mistaken for a couple more than once. Then came Amy, who loved her boyfriend deeply, but still occasionally fancied the Doctor in his new Matt Smith guise. And then, finally, there was Clara, who did not seem completely averse to Doctor Smith's boyish charms either.
You see what I mean? Enough of the flirtatious Tardis bantering already. When her and the Doctor's relationship shifted, Clara had the chance to become something more than Amy make two. As usual, there is tension between the Doctor and the companion's boyfriend - who is an ex-soldier to boot, and a good counterweight to the Doctor's occasional hippie-ishness - but this time, the Doctor's disapproval is more that of a stern father-in-law than of a potential love rival. This doesn't mean he has to go entirely without flirting, however: to his own discomfort, he is thoroughly flirted with by the head villain, or rather villainess, of this series. She's called Missy, short for - on second thoughts, I'm not telling.
Missy, played with great relish by Michelle Gomez, is a treat. That she, like Capaldi, is Scottish adds an extra dimension to their scenes together - there's a bond here which the Doctor may deplore but never quite get rid of, and the accent highlights it. Also, I must admit that it was tremendous fun to watch a baddie with the safety catch entirely off. That's not how I usually like my villains, I know. Normally, I want them to have limits, rules and psychologically credible motives. Missy doesn't need any of that. She kan kill off a likeable bit-part player on a whim, and you're still up for more. I don't know if it's the fact that she's female (i.e. role model as opposed to villain object of pining affection), or if it's the whole alien thing. Anyhow, I hope we'll see more of her: I don't know how they'll explain it, but in Doctor Who, there's always a way.
The whole series eight was entirely satisfactory, without a single dud episode, though of course it was impossible to like them all equally. The connecting story arc, with mysterious glimpses of what looked like an afterlife, was more or less resolved in the finale, which was a mercy: in the Matt Smith era, we got story arcs spanning over several series, and very confusing it was too. Yes, the explanation of the afterlife scenario was a tad overcomplicated and not without plot holes, but I can live with that. Bring on the Christmas special (er, Santa Claus? OK, fine) and series nine. And let's hope the Doctor won't have to regenerate for a wee while yet.
I doubt a new election will bring much joy, but the new Doctor, Peter Capaldi, certainly did. I recently cheered on his Richelieu in The Musketeers: this time around, my feelings are more friendly approval than swooning villain-fangirliness. Which only goes to show how convincing Capaldi is as a) a hero b) an alien. Like Clara, his companion, you sense that cuddles are not on the menu, and their relationship developed interestingly in a quite new direction. Clara's boyfriend Danny, when he thinks he's cracked the whole mystery, exclaims:"You're an alien! And he's your space dad!" He's not as far wrong as all that.
For a comparatively new Who fan like me - I've watched and loved the whole new series from Christopher Eccleston onwards, but I still only have the slightest acquaintance with the old one - a Doctor-companion relationship without any hint of flirting makes a refreshing change. For the old hands, this is the rule rather than the exception, but the first companion I saw was Rose, whom the Doctor actually fell in love with. Then came Martha (one of my personal favourites among the companions), who fell in love with him. Then, it's true, came Donna ("I just need a mate" "Well, you're not mating with me, sunshine") - a very chaste friendship, but the Doc and she were still mistaken for a couple more than once. Then came Amy, who loved her boyfriend deeply, but still occasionally fancied the Doctor in his new Matt Smith guise. And then, finally, there was Clara, who did not seem completely averse to Doctor Smith's boyish charms either.
You see what I mean? Enough of the flirtatious Tardis bantering already. When her and the Doctor's relationship shifted, Clara had the chance to become something more than Amy make two. As usual, there is tension between the Doctor and the companion's boyfriend - who is an ex-soldier to boot, and a good counterweight to the Doctor's occasional hippie-ishness - but this time, the Doctor's disapproval is more that of a stern father-in-law than of a potential love rival. This doesn't mean he has to go entirely without flirting, however: to his own discomfort, he is thoroughly flirted with by the head villain, or rather villainess, of this series. She's called Missy, short for - on second thoughts, I'm not telling.
Missy, played with great relish by Michelle Gomez, is a treat. That she, like Capaldi, is Scottish adds an extra dimension to their scenes together - there's a bond here which the Doctor may deplore but never quite get rid of, and the accent highlights it. Also, I must admit that it was tremendous fun to watch a baddie with the safety catch entirely off. That's not how I usually like my villains, I know. Normally, I want them to have limits, rules and psychologically credible motives. Missy doesn't need any of that. She kan kill off a likeable bit-part player on a whim, and you're still up for more. I don't know if it's the fact that she's female (i.e. role model as opposed to villain object of pining affection), or if it's the whole alien thing. Anyhow, I hope we'll see more of her: I don't know how they'll explain it, but in Doctor Who, there's always a way.
The whole series eight was entirely satisfactory, without a single dud episode, though of course it was impossible to like them all equally. The connecting story arc, with mysterious glimpses of what looked like an afterlife, was more or less resolved in the finale, which was a mercy: in the Matt Smith era, we got story arcs spanning over several series, and very confusing it was too. Yes, the explanation of the afterlife scenario was a tad overcomplicated and not without plot holes, but I can live with that. Bring on the Christmas special (er, Santa Claus? OK, fine) and series nine. And let's hope the Doctor won't have to regenerate for a wee while yet.
Monday, 17 November 2014
Very good, Faulks
I was in a grumpy mood for most of last week, but one thing never failed to cheer me: Jeeves and the Wedding Bells, Sebastian Faulks's authorised sequel to P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster tales (novels and short stories). Wisely, Faulks doesn't even try to match Wodehouse's linguistic fireworks: there are plenty of good jokes, but not one in every sentence which you can expect from Wodehouse. But the tone is just right, and what's more, Faulks has a marvellous hand with the main characters, Bertie Wooster especially.
It may not seem much of a compliment to say that an author manages to capture Wodehouse's characters. Deep characterisation is not something for which he is famous. But in Bertie Wooster he managed to create a truly loveable character, and in the canny Jeeves an intriguing one. Faulks realises this and does honour to the duo. His bit-part players - with the exception of Bertie's love interest, the splendid Georgiana Meadowes (nice name!) - are no more fleshed out than they are in Wodehouse's books, but it doesn't matter: it's what we're used to.
It may be strange for a villain-lover to be fond of Bertie Wooster, but I confess I am. He may be the ultimate anti-villain, especially if like me you're into earnestly striving bourgeois baddies. He's unfailingly naïve, a bit of an ass, and has never done a hand's turn in his life. But he's sweet with it, and Faulks quite rightly highlights his best points: his kindness and generosity towards others. Few of the scrapes Bertie's got into over the years have benefited himself, except so far that they've ultimately helped him get dis-engaged to a bevy of unsuitable females: instead, he's time and again called upon to take considerable risks and potentially make a fool of himself in order to help his countless pals with their love problems. Faulks's plot follows the Wodehouse template successfully in this instance as in many others. In fact, Bertie may actually stand to lose by his school friend Woody and his intended coming together, yet this thought never even occurs to him, much less deters him from giving Woody a (somewhat ham-fisted) helping hand. I don't know if I'm alone in this or if other villain-lovers recognise the same phenomenon, but I find it easier to like one-hundred-per-cent good eggs like Bertie than characters who are a bit iffy yet still pride themselves on being morally superior to the resident villain. Maybe it's because good eggs are so unthreatening, and Bertie is furthermore helped by the fact that out-and-out villains are thin on the ground in Wodehouseland.
What of Jeeves, then? Strange to relate, there was a time when servants - male ones especially - vaguely unsettled me, and the character of Jeeves did little then to ease my middle-class nervousness. I have always been a little suspicious of his good intentions towards the young master. Bertie may fondly imagine that Jeeves is full of "the feudal spirit", but the gentleman's gentleman takes few risks himself in his convoluted plans: it is Bertie who has to do the dirty work, and in the end, it is Jeeves who gets his own way, in small things - like deciding Bertie's wardrobe - as in larger, like going to the Riviera instead of spending the Christmas season at home. Jeeves may have helped his master out of countless unfortunate engagements, but in doing so he has also done himself a good turn. Bertie's fiancées tend to have one thing in common: they do not like Jeeves, and should Bertie marry one of them, Jeeves would soon have to find employment elsewhere. So, is the brainy Jeeves really concerned about Bertie's happiness, or is he just looking after number one?
Of course, one would like to think the former, and Faulks's Jeeves proves himself to be benign. This time, he actually approves of the girl Bertie has fallen for, and does his darnedest to bring them together rather than to force them apart. This is not to say that Jeeves neglects getting something out of the whole affair for himself, nor that he is above putting the young master in a spot or two - for his own good, naturally.
In sum, Jeeves and the Wedding Bells is a lovely, sunny read, and just the ticket for surviving dreary November days. It's also one of the best sequels I've read so far. Great stuff, Faulks.
It may not seem much of a compliment to say that an author manages to capture Wodehouse's characters. Deep characterisation is not something for which he is famous. But in Bertie Wooster he managed to create a truly loveable character, and in the canny Jeeves an intriguing one. Faulks realises this and does honour to the duo. His bit-part players - with the exception of Bertie's love interest, the splendid Georgiana Meadowes (nice name!) - are no more fleshed out than they are in Wodehouse's books, but it doesn't matter: it's what we're used to.
It may be strange for a villain-lover to be fond of Bertie Wooster, but I confess I am. He may be the ultimate anti-villain, especially if like me you're into earnestly striving bourgeois baddies. He's unfailingly naïve, a bit of an ass, and has never done a hand's turn in his life. But he's sweet with it, and Faulks quite rightly highlights his best points: his kindness and generosity towards others. Few of the scrapes Bertie's got into over the years have benefited himself, except so far that they've ultimately helped him get dis-engaged to a bevy of unsuitable females: instead, he's time and again called upon to take considerable risks and potentially make a fool of himself in order to help his countless pals with their love problems. Faulks's plot follows the Wodehouse template successfully in this instance as in many others. In fact, Bertie may actually stand to lose by his school friend Woody and his intended coming together, yet this thought never even occurs to him, much less deters him from giving Woody a (somewhat ham-fisted) helping hand. I don't know if I'm alone in this or if other villain-lovers recognise the same phenomenon, but I find it easier to like one-hundred-per-cent good eggs like Bertie than characters who are a bit iffy yet still pride themselves on being morally superior to the resident villain. Maybe it's because good eggs are so unthreatening, and Bertie is furthermore helped by the fact that out-and-out villains are thin on the ground in Wodehouseland.
What of Jeeves, then? Strange to relate, there was a time when servants - male ones especially - vaguely unsettled me, and the character of Jeeves did little then to ease my middle-class nervousness. I have always been a little suspicious of his good intentions towards the young master. Bertie may fondly imagine that Jeeves is full of "the feudal spirit", but the gentleman's gentleman takes few risks himself in his convoluted plans: it is Bertie who has to do the dirty work, and in the end, it is Jeeves who gets his own way, in small things - like deciding Bertie's wardrobe - as in larger, like going to the Riviera instead of spending the Christmas season at home. Jeeves may have helped his master out of countless unfortunate engagements, but in doing so he has also done himself a good turn. Bertie's fiancées tend to have one thing in common: they do not like Jeeves, and should Bertie marry one of them, Jeeves would soon have to find employment elsewhere. So, is the brainy Jeeves really concerned about Bertie's happiness, or is he just looking after number one?
Of course, one would like to think the former, and Faulks's Jeeves proves himself to be benign. This time, he actually approves of the girl Bertie has fallen for, and does his darnedest to bring them together rather than to force them apart. This is not to say that Jeeves neglects getting something out of the whole affair for himself, nor that he is above putting the young master in a spot or two - for his own good, naturally.
In sum, Jeeves and the Wedding Bells is a lovely, sunny read, and just the ticket for surviving dreary November days. It's also one of the best sequels I've read so far. Great stuff, Faulks.
Tuesday, 4 November 2014
In two minds about Gregory
I'm currently suffering from something of a Philippa Gregory overdose. In a pathetic attempt to read a little more fiction in the Swedish language, I'm reading Gregory's The Boleyn Inheritance - in Swedish. At the same time, I'm trying to finish watching the TV series The White Queen, but it's proving rather a hard slog.
My first impression of the series, when viewing one of the episodes live in England more than a year ago, proves to have been more or less correct. The characters talk politics all the time, so it's a mercy that the politics are as interesting as they are. I do enjoy seeing Anne Neville portrayed as a plucky girl with more than a little of her father's ambition and ruthlessness, rather than as a meek wife wringing her hands and wondering what exactly her darling hubby's up to (true, Shakespeare's Anne was hardly meek, but then she was more or less a made-up character). But the serious tone of the series - I think the German word for it is bierernst - without any light relief, or much human interest as we only see the characters as politicians, makes it hard to watch much of it in one go. I usually follow a White Queen episode with a jaunty Doctor Who episode, to cheer me up. It puts some perspective on comic elements in TV drama: I'm not too keen on the more quirky storylines in for instance Downton (like Molesley getting into a jam or Mrs Patmore doing battle with modern kitchen devices), but maybe they are necessary to get the whole mood of the series right. You can't have meaty love stories all the time. I suppose.
Deborah Ross, The Spectator's film critic, nicknamed the Duke of Norfolk in The Other Boleyn Girl "the Duke of Exposition". It's an expression that often comes to my mind when watching The White Queen, and it's a useful label for a character that carries more than his or her fair share of plot exposition. In The Boleyn Inheritance, we meet the original himself.
Norfolk expositions quite a lot in The Boleyn Inheritance as well, but above all, he's the villain of the piece. If the film The Other Boleyn Girl is anything to go by, he plays roughly the same part in this novel as in the earlier Boleyn book: first he plots to bring a girl on the throne, and then, when she gets into trouble, he not only abandons her but actively contributes to putting her head on the block. But we only meet the political plotter, not the man. I've no idea what makes him tick, and my villain-loving heart remains unmoved. Of the characters in The Boleyn Inheritance, only the three progatonists are really fleshed out as characters: Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Lady Rochford a.k.a. Jane Boleyn, widow (as she keeps reminding us) of not-so-devoted husband George Boleyn and sister-in-law of Anne Boleyn.
I like the unexpected angles in Gregory's tales: she often has some fresh theory about historical events we think we know everything about. What if, for instance, Catherine of Aragon wasn't a virgin after all when she married Henry VIII, but had actually consummated her marriage to his brother (Gregory spins a story out of this in The Constant Princess)? What if Margaret Beaufort conspired with her unreliable husband and Buckingham to have the princes in the Tower killed and then put the blame on Richard (I love this theory)? What if one of the princes was actually a fake prince? Gregory is the very opposite of those dry, killjoy historians who want to destroy every juicy historical scandal and expose it as a "myth": because she is a fiction writer, she can afford to believe whatever makes for the best story. Even historical pieces of gossip considered outlandish by most will be seized upon and used by her, which sometimes seems a bit unfair (come on, Elizabeth Woodville actually a witch?).
With The Boleyn Inheritance, Gregory seems on fairly stable ground when portraying Anne of Cleves not as the "Flanders Mare" of legend but as a brave, intelligent and, yes, pretty young woman who is punished for reacting most unromantically when Henry visits her disguised. Catherine Howard is predictably silly, though more sympathetically portrayed than in many a Tudor yarn, and Jane Boleyn predictably bitchy. Of the three, Catherine Howard is the most fun to read about: her reflections, typical of an airheaded teenage girl, often serve as the light relief that is missing in The White Queen. But as she loses the King's favour, there is little in the way of fun and games for her either. The novel is too long, and some themes - Jane Boleyn's obsessing about her dead husband and sister-in-law, for instance - are hammered home a trifle. But it's a painless way of getting to know a little more about two of Henry VIII's less famous wives. A reader who feels up for some Tudor gossip, but not of the high-literary Hilary Mantel kind, could do worse. Just don't expect to care passionately about the various Dukes of Exposition.
My first impression of the series, when viewing one of the episodes live in England more than a year ago, proves to have been more or less correct. The characters talk politics all the time, so it's a mercy that the politics are as interesting as they are. I do enjoy seeing Anne Neville portrayed as a plucky girl with more than a little of her father's ambition and ruthlessness, rather than as a meek wife wringing her hands and wondering what exactly her darling hubby's up to (true, Shakespeare's Anne was hardly meek, but then she was more or less a made-up character). But the serious tone of the series - I think the German word for it is bierernst - without any light relief, or much human interest as we only see the characters as politicians, makes it hard to watch much of it in one go. I usually follow a White Queen episode with a jaunty Doctor Who episode, to cheer me up. It puts some perspective on comic elements in TV drama: I'm not too keen on the more quirky storylines in for instance Downton (like Molesley getting into a jam or Mrs Patmore doing battle with modern kitchen devices), but maybe they are necessary to get the whole mood of the series right. You can't have meaty love stories all the time. I suppose.
Deborah Ross, The Spectator's film critic, nicknamed the Duke of Norfolk in The Other Boleyn Girl "the Duke of Exposition". It's an expression that often comes to my mind when watching The White Queen, and it's a useful label for a character that carries more than his or her fair share of plot exposition. In The Boleyn Inheritance, we meet the original himself.
Norfolk expositions quite a lot in The Boleyn Inheritance as well, but above all, he's the villain of the piece. If the film The Other Boleyn Girl is anything to go by, he plays roughly the same part in this novel as in the earlier Boleyn book: first he plots to bring a girl on the throne, and then, when she gets into trouble, he not only abandons her but actively contributes to putting her head on the block. But we only meet the political plotter, not the man. I've no idea what makes him tick, and my villain-loving heart remains unmoved. Of the characters in The Boleyn Inheritance, only the three progatonists are really fleshed out as characters: Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Lady Rochford a.k.a. Jane Boleyn, widow (as she keeps reminding us) of not-so-devoted husband George Boleyn and sister-in-law of Anne Boleyn.
I like the unexpected angles in Gregory's tales: she often has some fresh theory about historical events we think we know everything about. What if, for instance, Catherine of Aragon wasn't a virgin after all when she married Henry VIII, but had actually consummated her marriage to his brother (Gregory spins a story out of this in The Constant Princess)? What if Margaret Beaufort conspired with her unreliable husband and Buckingham to have the princes in the Tower killed and then put the blame on Richard (I love this theory)? What if one of the princes was actually a fake prince? Gregory is the very opposite of those dry, killjoy historians who want to destroy every juicy historical scandal and expose it as a "myth": because she is a fiction writer, she can afford to believe whatever makes for the best story. Even historical pieces of gossip considered outlandish by most will be seized upon and used by her, which sometimes seems a bit unfair (come on, Elizabeth Woodville actually a witch?).
With The Boleyn Inheritance, Gregory seems on fairly stable ground when portraying Anne of Cleves not as the "Flanders Mare" of legend but as a brave, intelligent and, yes, pretty young woman who is punished for reacting most unromantically when Henry visits her disguised. Catherine Howard is predictably silly, though more sympathetically portrayed than in many a Tudor yarn, and Jane Boleyn predictably bitchy. Of the three, Catherine Howard is the most fun to read about: her reflections, typical of an airheaded teenage girl, often serve as the light relief that is missing in The White Queen. But as she loses the King's favour, there is little in the way of fun and games for her either. The novel is too long, and some themes - Jane Boleyn's obsessing about her dead husband and sister-in-law, for instance - are hammered home a trifle. But it's a painless way of getting to know a little more about two of Henry VIII's less famous wives. A reader who feels up for some Tudor gossip, but not of the high-literary Hilary Mantel kind, could do worse. Just don't expect to care passionately about the various Dukes of Exposition.
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