Season 24 - The Cinder Path (1994-1995)
Ah, The Cinder Path, I think this might have been my first foray into Catherine Cookson territory. There's a chance that this other movie I was obsessed with might have been written by Catherine Cookson, but I have yet to figure out which one or even if it is by her. Let me know in the comments below if you have a detailed knowledge of films that are about farm girls who look vaguely like Kathy Ireland who get involved with their boss's son/nephew and have a magical summer together but she ends up pregnant and he goes back to his friends... You would literally be solving one of the mysteries of my life. Back to The Cinder Path. So there's one reason and one reason only I watched The Cinder Path, and that's Lloyd Owen. So I've always been obsessed with The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Like hardcore obsessed. Like I have a fan magazine actually signed by Indy himself, that would be Sean Patrick Flanery to everyone else. Well when I was rewatching the show a few years back now I was all, who is that hot actor playing Professor Henry Jones, Sr., the role iconically created by Sean Connery? The answer was Lloyd Owen. So I started looking up other things he'd been in around the time he was Indy's dad. I vaguely remembered him in Coupling, but The Cinder Path looked interesting. Also Catherine Zeta-Jones from around the time of The Darling Buds of May! Interesting fact, she was also on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles if you were interested in other facts from that show. I have lots of facts from that show. LOTS. Anyway, this is pure Catherine Cookson, slightly over the top, I mean, love saves our hero from the shrapnel that could either move towards his heart and kill him or away from his heart and save him. It's so melodramatic it's kind of ridiculous but also hits the spot just right when you're in the mood. The only real complaint I had for this miniseries is that Catherine Zeta-Jones spent way too much time on horses and "the cinder path" which was a form of punishment didn't look that punishing. I wanted more, walking on hot coals, this was kind of, could they at least look like they're in pain?
In the days before the internet you'd be channel surfing, usually late at night, and find something you really liked and you'd watch as much of it as you could before you fell asleep because you never knew if you'd see it again let alone find out what it was called. After the successful airing of Colin Firth's Pride and Prejudice, on a cable channel no less, lots of shows that were originally shown on Masterpiece Theatre started showing up on cable channels late in the night to the delight of Anglophile insomniacs and night owls everywhere. Of course I'd catch them and wouldn't find out what they were until years later. Sometimes it was because I was able to accurately describe a scene to someone and they'd fill me in on what it was, hence the miniseries about deflating sheep turned out to be Far from the Madding Crowd with Colin Firth's younger brother Jonathan. But most often it was eventually an actor I recognized that got me to finally put a title to a favorite movie or series. This is how I learned the title of Louisa May Alcott's The Inheritance, because of Greg from Dharma and Greg. Also it's fabulous but nothing like the original story if you watch it and yes, that is Chilton from Gilmore Girls. So all I had to go on to find the title of The Buccaneers was that it stared the actress from Pauly Shore's Son in Law. To more knowledgeable people, that would be Carla Gugino, to me it was Crawl's love interest. I might have seen that movie a few too many times. So once I finally knew the name of the miniseries I obviously bought it, no questions about watching it first. This is everything an Anglophile growing up in America wishes for, that they go to England and are wooed by the most eligible of bachelors. Oh the cast, Michael Kitchen, Jenny Agutter, Connie Booth, Mira Sorvino, Greg Wise, and James Frain before he made it his lifelong ambition, or so I assume, to be in every science fiction show I've ever watched. And the houses! Yes, they DO film at Castle Howard, made immortal by Brideshead Revisited. Oh dear, I think writing this has convinced me I need to go watch this miniseries immediately, it's been too long.
The Lady Has A Past by Amanda Quick
The Glorious Guinness Girls by Emily Hourican
The Nature of a Lady by Roseanna M. White
Bronte by Manuela Santoni
The Shadow in the Glass by Jja Harwood
The Bookshop of Second Chances by Jackie Fraser
I Speak Boy by Jessica Brody
The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel
Rogue Untouched by Alisa Kwitney
Bottle Demon by Stephen Blackmoore
Shadowed Steel by Chloe Neill
Hail Mary by Andy Weir 
Thief of Souls by Brian Klingborg
Friend of the Devil by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
21st Birthday by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
I am delighted that this gem of a show is available on DVD, albeit as an extra on the DVD release of the far inferior The Queen's Sister, which ironically aired on a rival station to PBS, BBC America. This production in just an hour gives an insightful and oftentimes hilarious look into the marriage of George IV, AKA Prinny, and Caroline of Brunswick. To say theirs was not a love match would be understating it. But what is amazing about this little glimpse into royal life during the Regency Era is that all the vitriol spewed back and forth showing them as nothing more than children was taken from what they actually said. They seriously said this!?! I'm horrified to think of what Prinny on Twitter would be like. Note to self, I want to see the Prince Regent on Twitter as a parody account. Seriously, why isn't this a thing!?! All I had remembered of A Royal Scandal was the interesting framing device of a narrator and the brilliance of Richard E. Grant as Prinny and Susan Lynch as Caroline evilly glaring at each other while on a very nice black and white tiled floor. Obviously hinting at the combative chess-like nature of their marriage. So for your edification and mine I rewatched it. I was blown away by who they got as the supporting cast! And I didn't even remember there was a supporting cast! Michael Kitchen, Frances Barber, Denis Lawson, Oliver Ford Davies, and Ian Freakin' Richardson as the pitch perfect narrator! This cast was more than one could hope for, how did I forget them!?! The subtlety of Michael Kitchen facing the opprobrium of Prinny's rage and just replying that he was sent to set up a marriage not weigh in on the suitability of the match. Perfection! Oh, and my favorite scene by far is when Caroline arrives in England and is greeted by her husband's mistress, Lady Jersey! There's a real repressed British cat fight about Caroline's dress and in particular her hat. Caroline wins on the point of her hat! She LOVES that hat! It has been said of Lady Jersey that she possessed "a heady mix of charm, beauty, and sarcasm" and I really can't think of a better way to describe this little glimpse at royal life, come for the charming sarcasm!
Sometimes there is an adaptation so perfect that you don't know which came first for you, reading the book or watching the adaptation. This is how it is for me with The Moonstone, the two are forever intertwined and my story is a mystery even to myself. On the shelves of our library cum television room we had the complete set of the Franklin Library's Masterpieces of Mystery, The Moonstone being one of the volumes, with it's faux red leather binding and colorfully garish illustration on the cover. As an aside, seeing as The Moonstone laid the groundwork for the entire detective genre if the Franklin Library hadn't included it it would have been a major oversight. Now the mystery becomes did I pick up that volume prior to one Sunday night when I was ensconced in my corner of the couch and watched a few minutes of The Moonstone with my mother or not? I remember sitting there so clearly, the warm light, the copy of The Moonstone on the shelf near my right shoulder. I'm pretty sure I didn't watch more than a few minutes of the movie because I was all about reading the book before watching the adaptation. At that time it was a strict rule in my life. But did I bend the rules? Later events might indicate I did... Maybe I'll claim that I was sleepwalking like Franklin Blake? Eventually I did pick up The Moonstone to read and the entire time I kept thinking, damn, have I read this before? I swear I've read this before... Or had I just watched the movie? This is compounded by the fact that when reading the book the character of the old house steward Gabriel Betteredge came into my mind as the incomparable Peter Vaughn. He was just there, in my head, and I accepted it as fact. Fast forward to me watching or perhaps re-watching the film and Peter Vaughn IS in it as Betteredge. Thinking of this which came first the chicken or the egg mystery just does my head it. But one thing is confirmed no matter what order events happened in, this is the best adaptation of The Moonstone you could hope to find. It's literally my headcanon. 
Star Wars: Thrawn Ascendancy by Timothy Zahn
Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells
Alias Space and Other Stories by Kelly Robson
Smithy by Amanda Desiree
The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
An Earl, The Girl, and A Toddler by Vanessa Riley
The Music of Bees by Eileen Garvin
One night back in undergrad two of my friends and I decided to go rent a movie. Remember video stores? Full of all those wonderful films yet somehow kind of grubby. We were walking from Rivendell (no really, my friend Matt lived in a big purple housing co-op named Rivendell) to the local video store a few blocks away. On the way there we found over $20 in cash on the ground that some drunk college student had obviously dropped. So dinner and a movie was on said drunk college student who was probably pissed in more ways than one when they found out. Four Star Video was known for it's rather indie pics. You could find basically anything there that was offbeat. After much toing and froing we decided on the Ethan Hawke/Kyle MacLachlan version of Hamlet and The Turn of the Screw, because Colin Firth. I'm not sure how far we got into Hamlet before it was ejected, but could have been twenty minutes could have been a thousand years. And that, my friends, is why you always rent two movies when you go out in case one is an absolute stinking pile of shit. Well, we didn't fair that well with The Turn of the Screw either. None of us had actually read the story, so we were all unprepared for the whole evil wins ending. What's more, and in fact more to the point of why it failed to meet our expectations is that Colin Firth was in the first five minutes and then never seen again. That's false advertising that is putting his name first! And yes, after this debacle my friends said I should pay them for having to sit through videos dubbed my choices... but they were free! And more importantly we did put it to a vote! But looking back, while The Turn of the Screw isn't my favorite ghost story out there this is the best direct adaptation there is, because at least they didn't throw in a weird insane asylum/murder conviction plotline like the 2009 version with Michelle Dockery did. So if you're looking for a faithful adaptation of The Turn of the Screw you can't go wrong with Jodhi May and Pam Ferris who are superb actors, but if you're looking for the best adaptation out there check out The Haunting of Bly Manor instead. 
