Season 19 - The Yellow Wallpaper (1989-1990)
Even if you weren't prescribed a rest cure for your postpartum depression so you can get back to your wifely duties that have nothing to do with the house when you have a spinster sister-in-law and everything to do with opening your legs, six weeks in the Bertha Mason suite with bars on the windows and a bed clamped to the floor would drive you round the bend. And that is exactly what happens here. The Yellow Wallpaper was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892 and strongly portrays what it is to be a woman, especially a woman under the "care" of her husband. Who happens to be a doctor. And if you're a woman you know exactly how inept doctors are when it comes to women's health, more so during the Victorian era. This adaptation is Henry James meets Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with some Shirley Jackson and Angela Carter on the side. And yes, I know that only one of those predates this story, but the other authors, in particular Jackson and Carter, can be seen to be profoundly influenced by Gilman so it makes sense that in adapting the earlier work the later would influence it. There's a definite ouroboros effect going on here. What I find most fascinating about this adaptation is that someone at the BBC obviously watched The Company of Wolves and followed it up with Dreamchild and went, OK, now this is what we want to do, but without any budget, anybody have any ideas? And someone went, well, have you read Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper? Woman menaced by wallpaper? I think we can manage that! They transplanted the story to England and created something that really needs to be seen to be believed. I mean, more than anything it felt like an episode of A Ghost Story for Christmas. Consummate British actors in a creepy house with an ambiguous ending? Yes, very much A Ghost Story for Christmas. But sadly not one of the stellar ones, more like the ones that got the series cancelled in the late seventies. There were parts where I felt "The Ice House" was being channeled. Especially when the husband was going on about pollination. At least there weren't any plants making oddly detailed holes in widows. Overall I felt like it skipped a step in the telling of this tale. The wife has an active imagination and left to her own devices and the company of only the wallpaper she cracks. But it didn't feel gradual, it felt like instantaneous insanity. Like, the visions she was experiencing, the pent-up energy, just exploded from overstimulation. I think this needed to be longer, expanded, so that her break with reality is earned. Though where this adaptation was really let down was in the special effects. I really don't think there was any way to save this show once she's making out with her doppelganger that has emerged from the wallpaper. OK, it's more of an embrace, but it's still weird. It's not the imagery, it's the eighties music video bad special effects that ruins it. Earlier there had been a terrifying reveal of eyes in the wallpaper. Because they are a practical effect they still shock. Over time practical effects will weather technology changes more than any "special effects" of the day. So yes, this does have merit, but it is also sadly very dated. Though not in regard to women's rights.
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