Matthewgate – the fallout

Well. So he did it after all – Dan Stevens opted out of Downton Abbey. Leaving Fellowes no choice but to kill Matthew off, in an unexotic car accident, and in the Christmas special too. This was almost the unkindest cut of all: couldn’t the blasted man have agreed to be bumped off in episode one of the new series at least, so the otherwise peace-and-goodwill-full special didn’t have to end on a tragic note?

So, one of my wishes for the new year is blown already. I am still concerned how the series will go on without the hero, but the rest of the Downton crew used the special to persuade us that they will do their level best to keep the show on the road, and I’m more hopeful than I was that the hero vacuum will  be filled somehow (probably by Branson, tamest revolutionary on the planet). And at least an heir is born, so there will be no Heir from Outside Mk II coming in – this, I believe, the fans would not have stood for. As for Stevens, I do understand why he may have a yearning to play something else than the decent, somewhat priggish Matthew. But I wonder if it was a wise career move. It’s not as if he was a household name before Downton, so his fans will for the most part be Downton fans, and they will be put out with him for some time to come for jumping ship.

I’m almost starting to feel that there’s a jinx on my Downton blogs. I praise the villain alliance between Miss O’Brien and Thomas – and they fall out. I dare to hope that Matthew won’t be written out – and he is written out. On the upside, it works in a positive way as well. Thomas has braved the Errol Flynn curse and came out of his latest misadventure surprisingly well at the end of series three. In my opinion, Rob James-Collier would have deserved a Golden Globe nod for so believably making the transition from arrogant prat to poor little black baa-lamb. Taking full responsibility  for his latest disaster with quiet dignity; sobbing vulnerably in the rain; in a word, Thomas  completely floored me, and I’m now more than ready to give this particular baddie a dispensation for his lack of brains. At least the ridiculously easily-suggestible darling isn’t thick the way Alfred is: you couldn’t suggest anything to Alfred, as he wouldn’t be able to take the hint.

As for Miss O’Brien, her plots achieved a black grandeur far from petty shirt-pilfering, so we can expect more high-quality villainy in the future. There was a suggestion in the Christmas special that she was longing for a change: well, she can keep on longing. Her talents are needed in Downton. Her nephew, though, should feel free to pursue his dreamed-of career in food.

Scripting a hit show like this must be frustrating, as the characters who leave are not necessarily the ones who would, normally, be the most likely to. Not only the actors, but also the (real or perceived) wishes of the viewers, are far more important than the characters’ own wants. Why Thomas would choose to stay, even as under-butler, in a house where his relationship to just about all the male staff is problematic to say the least is a mystery. Also, you’d expect Daisy to jump at the chance of taking over her father-in-law’s farm rather than stay on slaving in the castle kitchen. Branson wanted to get away, but was hauled back (even at the price of killing off Sybil rather than keeping her on as an invisible off-shore family member). I suspect (though I hesitate to say it and jinx it) these characters are not going anywhere. As long as the actors don’t quit, Downton fans will keep them exactly where they are.          

Wishes for the new year

Today, anything too tiring blog-wise is right out. It's December and my holiday starts tomorrow, which means I'm in my all-too-usual, pre-Christmas, I-don't-want-to-work-anymore grump. But a wish list is fairly easy. All I want (or some of them anyway) for the new year cultural-consumption-wise is:

A new villain (or several) Obviously, always. I'm not complaining, mind. It's not exactly been a villain-free year, though I have sometimes felt like the protagonist in some fin-de-siècle cautionary tale, in search of ever more depraved kicks. I comfort myself with the fact that however far I fall, the low point was already reached years and years ago with Monsieur Lheureux in Madame Bovary (though he was admirably mean to the ghastly Madame, no-one can call him glamorous). The main reason I'm always on the lookout for new villains is I want to be reassured that there are still new ones to discover out there. I can't quite get over  the unhappy suspicion that there will never be another villain-writer like Dickens. Which leads me to point two:

A new Dickens TV adaptation I know, that is never going to happen. They did Great Expectations and The Mystery of Edwin Drood this year and there was all the extra Dickens publicity about the bicentenary, which means the Beeb will probably want to, in the charming phrase of a few years' back, "take a rest from Dickens". There's always ITV, but they'll never risk adapting any of the lesser-known novels. And it's the lesser-known novels I would really like done: Dombey and Son, above all, but also Barnaby Rudge. Imagine what a great Sir John Charles Dance would be! And then he'd have a hat trick in Dickens villains: Tulkinghorn, Ralph Nickleby and Sir John Chester. Ah, what a trio.

If not Dickens, then at least lots and lots of new costume dramas I very much hope that the BBC has learnt its lesson by now, after that disastrous period when they consciously avoided "bonnet dramas". Then ITV's Downton Abbey happened and became a smash hit, and the BBC was left looking rather silly. I see signs that they've thrown in the towel and are now desperately trying to catch up with their commercial rival. There was Parade's End which the critics loved, and The Paradise which they hated. I look forward to watching both and am wishing for more try-to-catch-the-Downton-crowd dramas. And while on this subject:

Dan Stevens signing up for a fourth series of Downton All right, I promised not to Downton-blog until after Christmas, but just a teeny-weeny bit, without giving anything away? And yes, I know Stevens is the one playing Matthew. So, do I suddenly have a thing for Matthew now? Ha, no fear!

The reason for this wish is that I've heard the rumour that Stevens hasn't signed up for series four of Downton Abbey yet, and I'm worried about what this will mean for the future of the series. I can understand if he hesitates. There was only ever talk of three series at the start: I remember it well. But now a fourth series is on the way, and it looks like Downton could run and run, but only if it keeps its act together. And the centre of this act is the main plotline, what could be called The Heir's Tale.

Matthew may not have turned out to be the middle-class champion I'd hoped for when he first came on the scene in series one. The Downton set had him house-trained in a trice. There was much caustic talk among TV reviewers about how little time he spent in the trenches, but at least he's spent more time there than in his lawyer's office - now, the estate appears to be his full-time job, and he is as gentrified as anything, even to the point of being snooty to Sir Richard Carlisle. Having said that, the main plot of Downton, the one all the other plots are latched on to, is how Matthew faces up to his inheritance, and how his romance - now marriage - to the present Earl's daughter Lady Mary will work out. Just because I (normally) don't fall in love with heroes doesn't mean I don't appreciate the way they keep things together. After all, you can't have David Copperfield without David Copperfield. No, you really can't.

New novels by favourite authors This is the up-side of having authors like Morgan and Fforde on one-book-a-year-contracts (well, I assume they are, anyway). From Fforde, what I wish for most - as always - is another Thursday Next novel. It is greedy of me, because we had one this year - The Woman who Died a Lot. Wonderful read as always, but sadly there were no BookWorld outings this time. Not even a visit from the Emperor Zhark. So, next time, some fiction-fun please, preferably not all relating to the Dark Reading Matter - I'd like adventures in/about books that are actually read. I want some more!

More Doctor Who Of course. And stop splitting the series up - send it in one go, so I can get proper whole-series box sets.

Sweden doing really well in the Eurovision Song Contest but not necessarily winning again - I don't think we can afford it. And, naturally, I hope that we put on "a fantastic show".
  
            

And now for the Dark Side - Gashford and Sir John

"[T]his man, who has crawled and crept through life, wounding the hands he licked and biting those he fawned upon"...

Oooh. He licks hands. And then wounds them. Only methaphorically, but even so! What promising representative of the villain fraternity is this? Answer: Mr Gashford (we never learn his first name), the oily and entirely fictional secretary of Lord George Gordon in Barnaby Rudge. As the quote above suggests, he's a great fawner and manipulates his naive employer effortlessly: one of his  tricks is to be "caught out" praising Lord George to himself while supposedly under the impression that the lord was sleeping. He is a hypocrite, who affects mildness while egging the Gordon rioters on, especially his own little band of trusted helpers. Even Maypole Hugh, who is no fool, is taken in by such strategies as Gashford's "nothing" speech, containing gems such as "When one of them was struck down by a daring hand, and I saw confusion and dismay in all their faces, I would have had you do nothing - just what you did, in short". His manner is described by one of his minions as "so awful sly". He foreshadows other Dickensian villains of the same embittered, upwardly-mobile type. Like Carker, he "smiles as if for practice". Like Uriah, he is "angularly made, high-shouldered, bony, and ungraceful". According to his enemy Geoffrey Haredale's account (from which the quote about the hand-licking is taken), Gashford seduced his benefactor's daughter, married her, and then broke her heart "with cruelty and stripes". This is the kind of proceeding both Uriah and Carker would heartily approve of (except for the stripes bit, which is a bit unsubtle when there are more cunning ways of making a girl miserable).

Gashford should, in short, be close to being my ideal baddie. And yet, and yet... He doesn't really come alive. He's more a collection of admirably villainous characteristics than a real character. We never really learn what makes him tick. He's not quite as much of a join-the-dots-villain as Bitzer in Hard Times - once you've made up answers to all the open questions about Bitzer's motivation, chances are you'll have ended up with a completely new character - but all the same, there are mysteries about the way Gashford acts, and not because Dickens means him to be mysterious (like Tulkinghorn), but more, one feels, because Dickens didn't really care that much about him as a human being. Why does Gashford encourage the riots? What has he to gain from them? Why does he hate Haredale so much - is it merely because Haredale humiliates him publicly by denouncing him and striking him down, or has Haredale crossed him in his past (of which he knows so much) as well? Why would Gashford go so far as to try and abduct Haredale's niece Emma, a girl he's most likely never set eyes upon? The author's answer would perhaps be an irritated "Why? Why? Because he's a total bastard!" But that just isn't good enough.

And so, for once, the most enjoyable villain in a Dickens novel is the dandy rather than the social climber. Sir John Chester (Mr Chester until about half-way through the book, but the title suits him) is marvellous fun, and somehow completely different from other Dickensian dandy villains such as Steerforth, Henry Gowan and Harthouse. Yes, Sir John is of high birth, disdainful of those more plebeian than he is and physically lazy, but unlike the often listless gentlemen mentioned above, he keeps his mind active. He has two goals: his own comfort, to be brought about by pimping his son to an heiress, and revenge on Haredale, whom he dislikes (plausibly enough) because he, Sir John, has done Haredale wrong in the past. Sir John pursues these goals with a single-mindedness and cunning that would honour the most diligent bourgeois villain in the Carker mould. And he has great style. Because of the nature of the good characters in Barnaby Rudge and their weakness for moral platitudes, Sir Johns runs rings around them without breaking into a sweat. Haredale's boorishness, Edward Chester's honourable speeches, Gabriel Varden's uprightness - they are all made to look sligthly ridiculous by the worldly and sham-amiable Sir John. When Haredale thunders: "Mark me [...] If any man believes [...] that I , in word or deed, or in the wildest dream, ever entertained remotely the idea of Emma Haredale's favouring the suit of anyone who was akin to you [...] he lies", Sir John responds blithely: "it's extremely manly, and really very generous in you, to meet me in this unreserved and handsome way. Upon my word, those are exactly my sentiments, only expressed with much more force and power than I could use". Try beating the wits of a man who can dress an insult up as praise as well as that. It can't be done - Sir John has to be brought down with violence at the end.

I was going to dwell a little on the likeability of Maypole Hugh - the most sensible rioter you are ever likely to meet, and fond of Barnaby, too - but I see I've already gone on at some length about the Barnaby baddies. Time, I think, for a little lie-down Sir John-style, maybe with a mug of hot chocolate. Too bad I don't have Lord Chesterfield's letters in the house for perusal.            

Sweet Barnaby (shame about the other good guys)

How very vexing. I've seen the whole series three of Downton Abbey now, but because of Swedish Television's scheduling, my fellow Swedes won't be finished watching it until Christmas - which means, for the sake of loyalty, I'll have to postpone any further blogging about it until after the Christmas special (ages away). Maybe it's just as well - a Downton blog post at this stage would probably just turn into a list of twenty-odd more or less good excuses for rooting for a dolt (sterling acting; O'Brienishly manipulative script; hormonal imbalance on part of villain-loving viewer - that's three already). Come the new year, I may be in a more reasonable state of mind. Or not.

So, moving on to something completely different. For the past weeks, I've been rereading Barnaby Rudge. I thought it moved a bit slowly the first time I read it, and I was interested to see whether I'd matured and gained some patience since last time. The answer is, not really. It's a novel that's big on atmosphere but a bit short on pace. The Gordon Riots, which form the backdrop of the second half of the book, slow things down considerably. The truth is a little of angry-crowd-in-fire-scenes go a very long way with me, especially as Dickens insists on embellishing them with long, semicolon-full sentences. Yes, they contain powerful images, but there is only so much of those you can take in, and anyway I can't say I care that much. I want to get on with the story. After all, if I wanted to read up on the Gordon Riots, I'd probably choose a more trustworthy source that the opinionated Dickens.

All the same, even if you're not really into angry-mob scenes as told by a shocked model citizen, there is much in Barnaby Rudge to enjoy. Barnaby himself is an acquaintance worth making. The Wise Fool is one of my least favourite stock characters normally, but with Barnaby the conceit works because he's not such a fool as all that. He's not "wanting" as people used to say; his wits are over-heated rather than slow. A madman with a surfeit of imagination and a certain instinct for what is right - though it leads him astray more than once - he easily engages the reader's sympathy, not least when he's bravely but wrong-headedly fighting for a misguided cause.

A shame the characters who are in their senses aren't always as compelling. I seem to remember an Amazon review complaining that the villains in Barnaby Rudge weren't really up to Dickens's usual standards. In my view, the villains do their job well enough: it's the good characters, aside from Barnaby, who are the problem. The two young heroes are ciphers, especially Edward Chester (Joe Willet shows a little more spirit, but he's not what you'd call a memorable personality). Edward's love Emma Haredale is just as colourless. Dolly Varden, the other heroine, at least has some humanising flaws - she's a flirty piece - but if you are a woman, and straight, it's hard to share Dickens's cooing admiration of her charms. I felt more than a little sympathy with her mother's latently malevolent (and plain) maid, Miss Miggs, who has no time for her young mistress. Emma's gloomy, hard-done-by uncle Geoffrey Haredale stands out by his uningratiating manners; given that he is such a bear it's not so strange that various villains should take against him (especially as they're of the Dickensian, easily-slighted kind). Barnaby's suffering mother is such a model of hand-wringing selflessness it's almost ridiculous. And don't get me started on the awful John Grueby, staunch British-bulldog servant of the deluded Lord George Gordon. One of my main pleasures when I'm in a how-would-I-adapt-this-novel-for-television fantasising mood and am thinking of Barnaby Rudge is to imagine how I would cut out John Grueby completely from the story.

The main good character besides Barnaby, Gabriel Varden, is one of two examples in the book of a tried and tested Dickensian recipe for a character not working out quite as well as it usually does. Varden shares many characteristics with famous good Dickens characters such as Mr Pickwick. He is good-natured; he is generous; he is quick to forgive; he likes to spread good cheer wherever he goes. The phrase P.G. Wodehouse used about Dickensian characters - "yeasty benevolence" - springs to mind. And yet somehow he doesn't quite "take". I couldn't warm to him, and yes, I do warm occasionally to good characters in Dickens as well as the bad ones. Part of the problem is Varden's role in the story. The tale of how a locksmith refused to help the rioting crowd pick the lock to Newgate was what inspired Dickens to the idea of Barnaby Rudge in the first place; the trouble is, once we get to the Newgate bit, we want the prison to be taken. Why, Barnaby's in there! Gabriel Varden's refusal to comply with the mob's demands doesn't inspire the thrill of admiration for his courage which it's probably supposed to.

The other character who follows a Dickensian recipe but isn't a whole-hearted success is Gashford, a typical fawning Dickens villain on the make who somehow does not attain the dizzying heights of Uriah or Carker. But more of him and the other Barnaby Rudge villains some other time.

Tom, Tom, turn around - you can't beat O'Brien

All right, so it's not the most shocking or sad thing to happen in the third series of Downton Abbey. However, I admit that I'm still grieving for the demise of the Old Villain Alliance. Miss O'Brien the spiteful lady's maid and Thomas the wicked valet (formerly footman) have fallen out.

As I've purchased the DVDs, I have been able to cheat and watch ahead of other Swedish fans of Downton. I'm now on episode five while Swedish Television are showing episode three this weekend. I'll be a little careful with spoilers, if not overmuch.

The baddie falling-out already started in episode one, though. Poor old Thomas. Like Errol Flynn (according to a famous quote), you know where you are with him: he lets you down every time. I like the idea of a villainous footman/valet so much that I've always been inclined to cut Thomas a lot more slack than he deserves. But he is an idiot. If you think he could not possibly do anything stupider than not checking the goods he plans to sell as a war racketeer before sinking all of his savings in them, think again. Suddenly, he picks a quarrel with O'Brien, and for what? Because she brings in her nephew to the household as footman and wants him to advance to the position as valet eventually. Thomas is miffed because it took two whole series for him to become a valet proper, and he doesn't want anyone else to manage the jump in just one episode. Is that a good reason to antagonise someone who has been a good friend, and is known to make a formidable enemy? No, I should think not indeed.

Clearly, Fellowes couldn't resist the temptation of manufacturing a quarrel between his two head villains so they can tear each other's throats out. I wish he had resisted. A villain alliance that stands the test of time is a rare and beautiful thing, and I really enjoyed this one, as I've commented on before. What's more, it's an uneven fight. There is absolutely no contest: of course Miss O'Brien is going to win. She was the brains in the Downton villain club from the start, while Thomas followed her orders and quite often messed them up. He is officially toast. Not that he needs O'Brien to get into trouble. I can see the new Thomas Catastrophe on the horizon already, and it ain't gonna be pretty. One can always hope that the accident-prone Tom realises the pickle he's in, gets down on all fours and grovels to O'Brien before it's too late. But I'm not betting on it.

Things aren't helped by the fact that the cause of the unrest - O'Brien's nephew Alfred - is such a clod, the point of whom I still struggle to see. I think Fellowes is trying to set him up as a goodie, but the only worthwhile thing he has done so far is to say a nice thing about Edith at a time when it mattered. He spends most of his time flirting with a pretty new kitchen maid while being oblivious to the obviously yearning Daisy. Somehow, I don't think that will win him many viewers' hearts.

Otherwise, Downton delivers its usual pleasant mix of intrigues up- and downstairs. There are a few mysteries. For instance, why is everyone of the opinion that Sir Anthony Strallan is "too old" for Edith? One, as she herself points out, there aren't that many young fellows left after the war; two, in the first series the Granthams were quite happy at the prospect of marrying off any one of their daughters to Strallan (well, maybe not Sybil); three, he's not that old, is he? He's played by sweet-seeming Robert Bathurst, who was the yuppie in Cold Feet. What, are Helen Baxendale, James Nesbitt and Hermione Norris thought of as ancient too, now? And what happened to the threat of Sir Richard Carlisle? Did he decide not to print the scandalous story about Mary, and in that case, shouldn't someone mention it and give him some credit for his decision?

Well, Downton wouldn't be Downton if you couldn't pick holes in it. It's a pity though, to come back to the theme of villainy, that dastardly plans in Downton tend to be so - well, petty. The corrupt screw and drug-dealing prisoner who are harassing Mr Bates are no better than the baddie servants in this regard. Say what you like about dour Sir Richard, he was at least an adult. He didn't hide his Lordship's shirts, and had he been caught out in a drug racket he wouldn't whine "it's all his doing" about a burly innocent he'd been trying to frame. Come back, Carlisle, all is forgiven.

Doctor addiction (contd.)

"I thought you had run out of ways to make me sick. But... hello again. You think hatred is beautiful?"

Yes, the Doctor is back! And facing off the Daleks in the very first episode - whose head bozo calmly points out, as an answer to the comment above, that this strange concept of beauty is probably why they haven't killed off the Doc long ago. This week's highlight has undoubtedly been the first five episodes of Doctor Who series seven, all of which I watched in three nights (I'd have made it in two, only I came home late on Monday).

Much is the same, which is remarkable in itself. I and I think many others had expected the Steven Moffat take-over from Russell T. Davies as head script-writer would mean less plot holes: after all, the Moffat episodes during the Davies years tended to be tightly plotted ("Blink" above all). But no, series five, six and seven have contained as many plot holes the size of the Doctor's lost home planet Gallifrey as the Davies era, if not more. Whereas Davies sensibly had one overall story arc per series which was wound up in a grand finale in the two or three final series episodes, Moffat's has a complicated continuing story-arc where some things, but not everything, are cleared up in the series finale. It is frustrating, because you never know if a puzzling plot-line will be dropped completely or explained maybe twenty episodes later. It's a relief to read an article like this one in the Telegraph, which sums up the questions a poor bewildered viewer might be asking her/himself right now (don't read it unless you've already watched the latest episodes - spoilers...). YES, I wonder about the Clerics too! I'm glad it's not just me.

On the plus side, the wit, cleverness, warmth and sheer madness of the Davies era are still present, too. After having (yet again) rewatched series one to four, I must confess that I'm conventional enough to think that, on the whole, Tennant's stint as the Doctor was probably the best. Not just because of Tennant himself, though he was brilliant - all the Doctors I've seen have been good - but because I like the Tenth Doctor's adventures and, above all, companions the best. I've never really warmed to Amy as much as to Donna and Martha (and, occasionally, Rose). But for all that, series five to seven are full of high points, and few programmes - if any - can match Doctor Who for quality in my book.

So why is it considered to be a TV series for children? I've never really got my head round this. One of the reasons that Amy had a hard time winning my heart is because the youthful Karen Gillan, who plays her, was roped in as new companion at the same time as Matt Smith (still in his twenties back then) became the new Doctor. And why? Because, supposedly, "kids" relate better to younger protagonists, which makes it desirable to pick companions who look like they've just finished school.

Now, for fast-moving, clever dialogue, Doctor Who is only out-done by The West Wing. How is it possible that British kids get all this? Are they all potential Mensa members? Of course, it's wonderful that growing generations watch and enjoy a program as intellectually testing as this. But when the kid audience of Doctor Who is hauled in either to explain a market move, as above, or as an argument when critics try to cut down the series to size, it is a bit annoying if you happen to be a Who-addict in her thirties. "Its just a children's programme after all". No, it's not!

And, incidentally, script-writers have shown precious little consideration for their supposed core audience of "kids" in the past. There are Doctor Who episodes that can be traumatising even for the toughest child. The "The Impossible Planet" two-parter in series two was way, way, way too scary. The "Silence in the Library" two-parter was, in a way, sneakier, because while "The Impossible Planet" tackled a primal fear for children and adults alike, "Silence in The Library" played on childhood-specific fears. Never mind the flesh-eating shadows. Far more disturbing are scenes where a little girl is told that her nightmares are real, while what she thinks of as real life is a lie, and where she accidentally zaps her concerned daddy out of existence in a fit of pique. "Midnight" is a psychological chiller which, with its un-Doctorish pessimistic view on human nature, would have been more at home in a Torchwood series. I could go on at some length. "The God Complex"? "The Girl who Waited"? Strewth, "The Doctor's Wife"? Is this really the kind of stuff you sit your children in front of after they've grown too old for Bob the Builder?

Child-friendly or not, plot-holey or not, morally erratic or not (in one episode, the Doctor cheerfully sends a mass-murdering pirate-merchant to his death, the next - the very next - he agonises during a whole episode about sacrificing a baddie's life to save a small town), I love this series. I sometimes think I love it because I can find things to criticise. I'm reminded of  Streatfeild's two dons in Ballet Shoes, who happily find plenty to disagree with in a mounting of A Midsummer Night's Dream "or they would not have enjoyed themselves at all".

Bond and Snow White

Yes, I know... Not the greatest blog subject in history. But it's been one of those weeks without any particular cultural highlight. Instead, making use of my local DVD rental's rent-more-than-one-film-and keep-them-for-a-week-deal, I rented A Quantum of Solace  - to get up to speed on Bond's development, with a view to possibly watching Skyfall at the cinema - and Snow White and the Huntsman. I'd already seen Mirror, Mirror and was interested to see what another take on the famous fairy-tale would look like.

When it comes to Bond, I know I'm not a connoisseur. Most of the Bond films I've seen are those I watched when I was still a kid or a teenager, which explains why I feel more warmly towards the flippant side of these films than most. I must be the only one in existence who doesn't double up with embarrassment over Jaws's love interest in Moonraker (why shouldn't he have a girlfriend? At least his redemption means Bond doesn't have to bump him off). I've never felt any need for Bond films to be "hard" and "gritty". Suave, non-thuggish, inner-depths-free Roger Moore was the kind of Bond I liked, as was Pierce Brosnan, especially in Goldeneye.

So, to get to the obvious point, Daniel Craig's Bond doesn't work for me. Yes, those icy blue eyes are attractive, but they don't make you forgive him everything. His looks and manner are definitely not the ones of the Bond of my girlhood. He is a grim, weather-beaten, psychologically damaged muscle-man, not a worldly-wise, witty, vodka martini-sipping gentleman spy. The troubling thing is, Craig may very well be closer to the "real" Bond, the one in Ian Fleming's books (which I haven't read), than the tamer version I've grown up with. I recall how shocked I was when Sean Connery's Bond locked a baddie in the sauna and turned up the heat - after said baddie had tried to do the same to him - in the early Bond film Thunderball, and how Bond actually chuckled with sadistic delight. But wait, he's the hero, isn't he supposed to be a bit more decent than the bad guys? I mean, boiling someone to death, who does that? A Quantum of Solace has a corresponding moment towards the end. Yes, the head villain is ultra-creepy (a bit my type, actually) and ruthless and bent on world domination and has killed one of Bond's squeezes etc. etc. Still, the way Bond handles him - again, who does that? I begin to suspect that were it not for the fact that Bond villains are so unbelievably wicked, there would be no reason to root for him at all. I'm in two minds about watching Skyfall on cinema now.

So, from Bond to Snow White. Get this - the evil queen in Snow White and the Huntsman has a nasty, white-haired brother sidekick. And I still thought the film was yawn-inducingly tedious.

I realise that fantasy - which is what most fairy-tale films resemble most nowadays - is a tricky genre. The attempts at humour in fantasy films (Two Towers, anyone?) can be so woeful that I can see why someone would want to dispense with light relief alltogether and go for straight-faced seriousness all the way. But the end result? Rain-soaked characters spouting earnest twaddle instead of getting on with the plot. Blimey, how dull. Character-building scenes are no good  when you really couldn't care less about the characters. It looks like a good idea, on paper, to big up the role of the huntsman a bit - in the original tale, Snow White does owe her life to him, and he takes quite a risk - but here, he is a dreary, wounded-macho specimen without much to recommend him. Snow White drifts around with a dreamlike, destiny-ridden look on her face (for the record, I thought the evil queen was fairer). The Prince (well, dukelet actually) is at a bit of a loose end, and who can blame him, when there's a rival for the hero part knocking about? We don't even get to know which of them Snow White picks, which some reviewers have seen as something very positive and indicative of the fact that she is a Person In Her Own Right. Is she? Could we please stop pretending that this moony girl will ever be the new Elizabeth I?

In the battle of the Snow Whites, Mirror, Mirror wins, though it can be very silly and the script could have been a great deal sharper (it's still Oscar Wilde compared with the Huntsman, though). It's got great costumes and Julia Roberts having a ball as the wicked stepmother. OK, so she doesn't have a nasty brother sidekick, but then one can't have everything.