The Confessions of Frannie Langton
First impressions are important. Yes, you could get an inaccurate impression but only time will tell. My first impression of The Confessions of Frannie Langton sadly bore out. Because a show that starts with the year in a big large font, 1826 if you were interested, and then follows it up with all the characters wearing Empire waisted dresses, well, that's such a glaring inaccuracy that I just couldn't look beyond it. Every second a character was on screen I was aware that the costuming was entirely wrong. What's more there were flashbacks and they were wearing the same clothes! Fashion changes. You could make the argument that Frannie herself was poor so she would still be in older fashions, that doesn't apply to ANYONE ELSE. The Empire silhouette ended six years before this story starts. SIX YEARS. How can a costume designer get it this wrong? It's like the time I watched a documentary on the Adnrew Davis adaptation of Sense and Sensibility and the costume designer said they purposefully changed the style to add more color. And I'm still pissed about those costumes all these years later. That and David Morrissey's bad wig. But it's not like I'd actually recommend The Confessions of Frannie Langton to anyone so I guess it can go about being historically inaccurate all it wants behind everyone's back, except that there's me here stewing, I will NEVER let this go. I really want to know what was the point of making this other than to make us angry and depressed about the world we live in as well as pissing me off about costume design? We have slavery, we have implied vivisection, we have drug addiction, we have miscarriages, we have incest, we have prostitution, we have murder, and in the end, we bury our gays. Some reviewers have pointed out that the "unapologetic" nature of the love between Frannie and Marguerite somehow makes the story rise above the fact that they both die in the end. Were they watching the same show I was? Because their relationship is toxic, Marguerite turns Frannie into an addict and then cheats on her with her own "son." Oh and I totally forgot, that Marguerite then killed herself. Yeah, I'm spoiling it for you, but as I said, you shouldn't be watching this anyway. This was only four episodes long and that was four too many. There were so many good actors just doing bad material I just couldn't bear it. I was looking back at my notes from when I was watching this and I literally only like the cat. All the other characters were grasping, mean, evil, ruinous sorts. Maybe an author the likes of Dickens could have made these people interesting, but Sara Collins, adapting her own book, couldn't. And you know what, when her book came out I was excited to read it, and then excited that it was being adapted, but a dark tale told by an unreliable narrator done by incompetents wasn't what I was looking for. This was a tale dark in nature and just dark, as in the crew obviously didn't understand that lighting was needed for the viewers to see the characters and it was glaringly obvious they had never lite a dark skinned person in their lives. So all those people out there decrying that a show about lesbians is morally reprehensible, first off, I will never agree with you, but more importantly, if you watched this you'd have legitimate reasons to complain.
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