Season 49 - Les Misérables (2019)
When I was in grade school and high school Les Misérables was everywhere. In grade school the t-shirt for the musical was a badge of honor that your parents had taken you to a big city to see the show. In other words, that you had money. Just like winter coats with ski lift tags. In high school it was the cool music and theatre kids who wore them as a coat of arms. I, being the misanthrope that I have always been, took it as a mark of how cool I was that I had never seen the musical and had no desire to. Cats ALL THE WAY! I continue to revel in the fact that I have never seen Les Misérables and have no plans to ever see it. I know some of you are shocked and even some of you who I consider my close friends are planning on disavowing me, but you're not going to guilt me into seeing it. EVER! Therefore hearing that Masterpiece was doing a no singing, no dancing adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel made me very happy. I could finally see an adaptation without hearing "One Day More!" Even better, Andrew Davies was adapting it. I know a lot of you have issues with him, to that I say you're hypocrites. Davies can have a moistened Colin Firth but any other sex is off bounds? How do you think say the Bennet's had children in the first place!?! Sigh. Some people would rather live in cloud cuckoo land than the real world I guess and "modern" adaptations have, for the most part, succeeded by grounding them in reality. I also liked Davies attitude going in that he was going to adapt the book to show the lesser known storylines, the plot points that weren't worthy of the musical. Plus casting Dominic West as Jean Valjean and David Oyelowo as Javert was genius. I will watch anything with Dominic West, I ever finished out the shit show that was The Affair because he was in it and am really looking forward to the new adaptation of The Pursuit of Love. As for Les Misérables itself... it showed a very bleak and at times incomprehensible world. There is a lot of death and so much of it is unnecessary... but then, that's life. None of us get out of it alive. Though most of us don't just randomly die in a garden with no ovious cause of death. Could we get a crossover with Masterpiece Mystery and bring in Poirot?
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