Gilded Newport Mysteries
If you are looking for something to fill the gaping hole left between seasons of The Gilded Age this isn't where you should be looking. And yes, a lot of it just falls on the scope scale. The Gilded Age has a budget of roughly $15 million an episode and this, this did not. The average Hallmark movie has a budget around $2 million. So you can see there's a steep divide. And I went into this with an open mind. I knew to lower my expectations. That this was just the first movie adapting Alyssa Maxwell's Newport books and I should enjoy this delightful series getting exposure, but so many WTF moments kept pulling me out of the narrative. Which means let's talk letterpress. Our heroine, Emma Vanderbilt-Cross, works at a newspaper. Newspapers in 1895 means letterpress. But just slapping a press in a room with a cabinet does not a proper newspaper make. The entire newspaper seems to be run out of one office with an old guy in the corner with a small platen press... Which is actually impossible given the printed newspaper we are shown. Also don't get me started on how slow he sets the type. Did the writers of this know there used to be competitions among newspapers to see who had the fastest typesetters? Because our friend here would come in last. But the vagaries and lack of knowledge regarding printing is, in my experience, quite common. Don't get me started on the Heidelberg Windmill fiasco in Without a Clue! So let's tackle those issues that other people might actually notice. Just look to the inferior fabrics that the dresses are made of. Seriously, is that poor girl wearing a repurposed eighties prom dress for her coming out? And I mean 1980s not 1880s. It's sure pink and shiny enough. Molly Ringwald would approve. Also the costumes are all so ill-fitting and could they just stop randomly adding lace to cover up imperfections. I'd rather see the imperfections than that much lace. But the biggest sin of all is that this was filmed in Canada. "The Breakers" was previously home to Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. And yes, that at least means it's opulent enough, but it's not Newport enough. The thing is we're dealing with two different coasts and therefore two very different architectural styles. Newport is very gilded, as the title of it's most famous show indicates. The rooms in the homes look like they belong in museums with all that gilt. Whereas Vancouver Island, home to Hatley Castle, is all western lumber and oil barron wealth, so the look leans more towards wood with an occasional node to the arts and crafts movement when not just showcasing the lumber. In other words, nothing like the actual homes in Newport. And I just could not suspend my disbelief. You're probably saying, yes, we get it, the production quality annoyed you, what about the plot? Well, our heroine is too dumb to live. She never stays around to listen to people's answers and just hares off. She spent days looking for the servant Mason and she finds him and just wanders off without getting a single answer!?! Um, if you want to write for a newspaper perhaps actually follow through? At least her half brother looks enough like a young Michael Sheen that when she inevitably dies from doing something stupid he can take over the show and I'll be "content" with that.
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