Father Brown
Way back in January of 2013 my Mom and I become obsessed with the reboot of Father Brown. It had just the perfect light touch. What's more it had Mark Williams. Which is actually how I heard about the show. Most people think of him as Arthur Weasley, a role to which even Father Brown did the occasional nod. I am not most people. To me he is Olaf Petersen, "I've been to Titan, I've been to Juno, I can name eight things that go in jars that you know!" Olaf, you didn't deserve to die aboard the mining ship Red Dwarf, but you will forever be missed. When my Mom's health started to fade a lot of shows we watched fell by the wayside. Which means that somewhere around season three or four we had stopped watching Father Brown. The one upside to this clear demarcation point in my life is that going back now and catching up on shows I used to love I have so many more episodes to watch. Because as my life was derailed Father Brown was chugging along. Last year when I went back there were eleven seasons to catch up on! It goes to eleven! I mean, technically it now goes to twelve, but at the time I picked the show back up there were eleven seasons and a hundred and twenty episodes. All those adventures with Father Brown, Mrs. McCarthy, Lady Felicia, Sid, Inspector Sullivan, Sergeant Goodfellow, and of course, Hercule Flambeau! And then the new characters, Inspector Mallory, Bunty, Brenda, and Mrs. Isabel Devine whom I hadn't even met yet! This is a show that's simply done and that's why it's so comforting. It's a place where time stands still. Literally. It was until the season nine final and their hundredth episode, "The Red Death," that it actually became a new year. Despite having previous holiday episodes and several big events having to have occurred simultaneously, like Sid serving time before actually committing a crime, time was immaterial until the arrival of Claudie Blakley as Mrs. Devine who somehow brought time with her. As each season since has been approximately a year. I know! It's shocking how time is now flying in Kembleford! If they're not careful they might actually catch up to Sister Boniface in the sixties! While each season of this show has been a delight and, for Mrs. McCarthy, a way to dabble in her own homegrown variety of McCarthyism, this current season was especially delightful. What set it apart you say? I like how the mysteries were more tailored to the leads. In previous seasons it's murder comes what may, be it a travelling circus or a cult. Now we have the crimes reflecting the interests of our leads. Mrs. Devine loves acting and we got a historical reinactment, a murder mystery play, and a radio drama. For Ruby we had a ballroom dancing episode. And for Flambeau, we had him appear to go straight. I mean, we knew it had to happen eventually... But even with a divinely Gothic episode, "The Horns of Cernunnos," and us FINALLY meeting Violet Goodfellow and the return of Blind 'arry, Lady Felicia took the cake. In her episode, a now undoubted classic, "The Sisters of Aeschylus," Dan Douche Scott, AKA John Hopkins from Midsomer Murders is murdered and Lady Felicia asks for a little help on her novel. Which is some of the best and most comedic acting that I have ever seen from Nancy Carroll. Lady Felicia doesn't understand similes! Oh, how I never want this show to end. These are my friends. I get them. I get their humor. BATS!
I am perhaps not the best judge of this show. I might be a tad obsessed with the Mitfords. I have poured over everything these prolific sisters have written and therefore know their history. I know what came before and what came after so I don't know if someone who at the very least hasn't read 
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If you are a fan of British comedy if I were to randomly yell at you "Yes, I can hear you Clem Fandango!" you would hopefully laugh and then become my new best friend. The name Clem Fandango brings joy into the world. And the echoes of Matt Berry as Steven Toast screaming. Shazad Latif is Clem Fandango. Because, while he has been wonderful in so many shows, big shout-out to Penny Dreadful, I will forever refer to him as Clem Fandango. And yes, it has to be his full name. First and last, not just Clem not just Fandango. The whole Clem Fandango. Anyway, for this I will try to refer to Shazad Latif by his real name and even if I didn't I could totally cut and paste his name over my typing Clem Fandango before I posted this and you would never know the difference. What all this is in aid of is that because of my love for Shazad Latif I have been waiting for Nautilus for what seems like forever. This was a show in limbo. They finished filming over two years ago when it was going to be on Disney+. Dinsney+ shelved it because apparently that's what you do to make a buck these days, look to 
If there's one thing Janeites can agree on since time immemorial, or since fans of Jane Austen agreed on a moniker, that one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of Jane's life is why her sister Cassandra burned practically all of Jane's letters. Of all the letters Jane wrote in her lifetime only 160 remain. What was in those letters that Cassandra deemed necessary to expunge? I mean, one of the surviving letters is Jane getting blind drunk and puking, so, why'd Cassandra do it!?! In fact, most Janeites, if given a chance to change one aspect of the history surrounding Jane, would probably choose for the phoenix-like return of the letters, while I personally would have liked Jane to have lived long enough to finish Sanditon so that she'd have written seven novels instead of six. At least she wrote more books than Jack the Ripper had victims. Why am I bringing up Jack the Ripper while discussing Jane Austen's letters? Because it is another of life's mysteries that will forever remain unsolved. Unless the premise to Anthony Horowitz's show Crime Traveller becomes a reality that is. Miss Austen is a bittersweet story of family connections and sisterly love that involves Cassandra Austen going to attend the deathbed of family friend Reverend Fowle, who, if fate had been kinder, would have been Cassandra's brother-in-law. Whilst helping the Reverend's daughter Isabella dismantle the household on the Reverend's death Cassandra hopes to find her sister Jane's letters to Isabella's mother Eliza who was Jane's dearest friend. But it is not an easy task with Eliza's sister Mary, who is also Cassandra's sister-in-law, on the hunt for the letters. What follows is a dreamlike rumination of the past and present and what you are willing to sacrifice for love and will that sacrifice be worth it in your dying days. Here we see Cassandra as a driving force. She was Jane's dearest friend and confidant but she also acted as a midwife to Jane's books. This posits that she turned away from a traditional life because she knew she had a greater purpose. The love of Cassandra's life wasn't Tom Fowle, it was Jane. Cassandra was the shepherd and the champion of Jane. In a scene where she starts to place Jane's books on their bookshelf, it isn't just Jane's legacy, it's their legacy. And when Jane dies it's up to Cassandra to protect that legacy. She was Jane's secret keeper and Jane wanted no one to see the darker side of her. The bleak thoughts and the moments of despair. She wanted to be remembered for her work. Work she published anonymously while alive, though don't read too much into that because it was the convention more than anything else. And historically it must be remembered that Frances Burney was viewed as an author equal to Jane but when her letters were published they overshadowed her works. Perhaps Cassandra didn't want this for her beloved sister. Let the work Jane wanted to share with the world be that by which she is known. And only that. And by the end of Miss Austen after crying your way through Jane's death you are so emotionally raw you will believe anything. Of course Cassandra had to do this. It's what Jane would have wanted. But then, later, once you've recovered, you realize that we're not talking about a few letters taken from a vicarage, we're talking about the destruction of approximately three thousand letters. The scale isn't taken into consideration here. So while emotionally I fully want to believe Gill Hornby's suppositions, the logical part of my brain says that this wholesale destruction must mean something more. Something we will never know. 
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Wolf Hall is an intriguing look at the life of Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII wherein it tells the story by telling the stories around the story. We don't see the big expected moments, we see the quiet contemplative moments where time stops and takes a beat before resuming. Mark Rylance is able to portray all that is going through Thomas Cromwell's mind with just a look, a simple sigh, a readjustment of his robes before entering a room. This is a masterclass in acting while at the same time you don't think of him as an actor in a role, he becomes Thomas Cromwell. Just as Damian Lewis becomes, in my mind, the definitive Henry VIII. There's humor, there's pathos, there's regret, and there's menace. All that is needed for a king because they can turn on a dime. One minute you're in favor, the next, because you couldn't do the impossible, you're dying in a cold room alone crying out for your loved ones. The first season covered the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn culminating in her death while the second season, arriving a decade later, charts Thomas Cromwell's life mirroring Anne's all the way to the gallows. They both went above their station and displeased the king and their downfall was inevitable. Because to gain power you gain enemies and if those enemies, even for a second, gain the ear of the king, well, you're in trouble. And the second season covering the final book in Hilary Mantel's trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, is Cromwell realizing that to get where he is in life he has done some pretty despicable deeds for the greater good of the kingdom. I mean, I could have told him that right away, no one involved with the monarchy in any way has a clear conscious. Yet I think he really thought he was the good guy, he thought that what he did was right and it's only when the daughter of his mentor spurns him and calls him out does he start to question his life. For someone who was so good at his job to lack such self-awareness is kind of an interesting sight to behold and Mark Rylance is able to give it the right gravitas. But my problem with this series is that the first season was sheer perfection. There was not a wrong note. In only six episodes it showed how this man moved through the world and was shaping history by taking care of the little details. Then a decade passes and they decide to finally adapt the final volume and things have changed over time. And instead of striving to maintain faith with the first season they decided to shake things up. There's still basically the same fantastic leads, the same sumptuous costumes, the same music keeping pace with time advancing forward, but there are serious missteps. My main quibble was with the recasting, some of it blatant stunt casting. Obviously some actors had to be recast because they had died. That is the only legitimate excuse for recasting. They should have dragged Tom Holland back to set and demanded he play Cromwell's son. Spiderman can wait! There were just so many cast replacements that I was baffled. And none of them for the better. They didn't even have the same vibe. I mean, what the hell is going on with Chapuys!?! The two different actors don't even have a nominal similarity. And don't get me started on the lack of Jessica Raine! And yet, the way this was filmed they act like we should somehow be able to intuit without being told that these are the same characters. I fear that is not the case. You can tell a story by telling around it, you can't tell a story if you don't tell us who the people are. I recently read a review of the first two books and the reviewer was outraged that they had tried to adapt such stunning works for the small screen saying it would take away the magic. I say, they did have the magic. They just lost it after a decade.
Dame Jilly Cooper and her bonkbusters never really made a splash stateside. So you'd probably think it safe to assume that the one and only reason I watched this series was because of David Tennant. You'd be partly right, but throw in Aidan Turner, Katherine Parkinson, Oliver Chris, and Claire Rushbrook as well. But the thing is, if you're a fan of British television and in particular older classic sitcoms like The Vicar of Dibley, there are many cultural references that you either educate yourself about or allow to go over your head. I chose to educate myself, so while I've never read a word Dame Jilly Cooper has written I was well familiar with her name and her subject matter. I mean, the dust jackets of the Rutshire Chronicles are pretty iconic and are very clear as to what they're about. In other words, Dame Jilly Cooper is Dallas and Dynasty in prose form. And I love me my Dallas and Dynasty and was so stoked that they were going all in on the eighties excess for this adaptation. The clothes, the music, the lifestyles of the rich and famous, but at the same time, oh so British. It was like a mashup of all things I love in one perfect package. And you will see many a package. Because what sets this show apart is that it's seen through the female gaze. So it's the men whose bodies are being sexualized, and I say about fucking time. The romance genre is primarily female dominated and yet how often are adaptations still seen through the male gaze? And why I ask myself!?! Women want a little rumpy-pumpy with their own needs met. Though I will say that the coupling montage sequences that close out a few of the episodes go a bit too far... Or should I just say, I bit too much. It's like sensory overload which tips it a little too far into the camp category. And while there is no denying that this show is camp, camp is a fine line to walk, wobble too much to one side or the other and you could end up stodgy or ludicrous, which it occasionally does, in both directions. Though I shouldn't read too much into my nitpicking, because this is about abundant joy, and it doesn't take itself seriously at all, and boy did I enjoy it. I mean, the bad guy is named Baddingham and they live in Rutshire! That's the level it's playing at and playing with! And oh, David Tennant loves to chew the scenery villainously. If there's one flaw to the show it's a lack of explanation as to how television worked in the eighties in England. So Lord Tony Baddingham runs Corinium, an independent commercial television station which currently has the franchise rights for the southwest of England. But these rights are up for renewal so another company could pitch for them and a board made up of Sister Boniface's mother and a rapist priest get to decide who gets it. Which is where the rivalry really heats up because Tony's nemesis Rupert Campbell-Black, the top TV show host Declan O'Hara whom Tony fired, and electronics impresario Freddie Jones form Venturer which in the finale gets through the public hearing to being allowed to pitch for Corinium's franchise. Or at least I think that's what happens. It's confusing to an American like me where this isn't at all how television works. Anyone can have a station as long as you have money... So... Yeah. Love the show but don't really understand a lot of what happened in the middle. I guess that just means I'll have to watch it again. The lengths I'll go to to make sure I have all the facts! Grueling I tell you! Grueling! I think I'll read the book as well...
