strange and random happenstance: Brexit

Showing posts with label Brexit. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 17, 2026

Season 37 - The Amazing Mrs Pritchard (2007)

What most of us turn to Masterpiece for is a good old fashioned period drama. Yes, there have been modern shows here and there, and many quite exceptional, but for most of us it's all about the period drama. Well, watching The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard now, it feels like a period drama. Looking back on a simpler time in politics before Trump and Brexit it feels so long ago that it's a different era. Plus with the cast, Steven Mackintish, Jodhi May, Janet McTeer, Carey Mulligan, Geraldine James, Tom Mison, Siobhan Finneran, and Harry Hadden-Paton to name a few, it is like the best of the best from British period dramas are represented here. Then factor in the Downton-esque music by John Lunn playing over several characters from Downton Abbey, and well, it might be modern but it feels like Masterpiece to me. Though it's an odd little miniseries, written by Sally Wainwright who has gone on to create the procedurals Scott and Bailey and Happy Valley, the feel good Last Tango in Halifax, and the sensational period lesbian romp Gentleman Jack, The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard never really finds it's feet and ends on an abrupt note, and that note was only on the DVD at that. Ros Pritchard is a woman with no political experience who ends up Prime Minister by just telling it like it is and vowing to never lie. While I adore Jane Horrocks, she doesn't have the heft needed for the role and is outclassed by everyone around her. But more importantly, I couldn't figure out the message of the miniseries. What was it trying to say? It is oddly pro-Brexit before Brexit happened with a bizarre streak of British exceptionalism. Also Ros's Purple party is almost all women, is this a commentary on women in traditional male roles and how they succeed or fail based on how much of the traditional female roles they're willing to give up, like motherhood? Also, while this was obviously written about a fake election it seems prophetic. I mean, look what we're living through here in the States! A person entirely ignorant of government being elected to the highest position in the land. Again! But in reality there have tons and tons of deaths and concentration camps instead of everyone banding together and riding a bus. So yeah... it now cuts a little too close to the bone... The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard just doesn't understand the implications of what it's attempting and failing to say.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Brexit, Carey Mulligan, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, DVD, Fifty-Five Years a Masterpiece, Gentleman Jack, Geraldine James, Jane Horrocks, Janet McTeer, Jodhi May, Modern, Sally Wainwright, The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard, Tom Mison

Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Book Review - M. John Harrison's The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again

The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again by M. John Harrison
Published by: Gollancz
Publication Date: June 25th, 2020
Format: Kindle, 219 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Shaw and Victoria are an unexpected pairing. Coming together on a drunken night with Victoria ranting about people born looking like fish they quickly part. Are they actually star-crossed lovers or just narcissists oblivious to what is right in front of them? A kindred spirit. Another person who views the world as they do. Only time will tell. While their lives diverge they keep in sporadic contact, though mostly on Victoria's side with long rambling emails that go unread for the most part. Because the oddities of their lives need to be spoken to someone who will understand. Yet they seek no deeper meaning in the bizarre turn their lives have taken, they just need someone to hear their story. They need to hear the sound of their own voices. Shaw is trying to piece together his life. Living in a bedsit the only job he can hold down is as a courier for his neighbor Tim, who is awash in conspiracy theories which he promotes on his blog, The Water House, and runs his business out of a boat. Shaw travels around the country delivering boxes to stores that while all diverse have a samness to them. He's also trying to flog Tim's book which is just as disorganized as The Water House. He doesn't question his job, he just gets on with it, repulsed by the world around him while trying to reintegrate into it. In his spare time he visits his mother who is suffering from dementia, but those visits are too stressful to contemplate. Meanwhile Victoria has taken up residence in the Midlands in her mother's house which she has recently inherited. The townsfolk are odd and seem inordinately obsessed with Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies. The house feels alien to her. The land is menacing, ghostly voices trail through the air, and the water table is rising. Rumors of people with green skin are becoming more and more common. Entropy has taken hold, but are either Show or Victoria able to comprehend what this means? Or will their ignorance lead them into oblivion?

I have no idea what I just read. Google tells me that The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again is about the psychogeography of post Brexit Britain. And that doesn't help at all. Because I have no idea what that means either. But thanks again to Google I now know that psychogeography is about how a location can affect someone's emotion and behavior. And, yeah, that does make a bit of sense, because we follow Shaw and Victoria and how their environments change them. How their paranoia takes hold and the weird Lynchian situations they find themselves in and the people they encounter are very much people who Trump would love to have on his jury, so hardcore Brexiters. But here's the thing, I'm not sure even David Lynch could make sense of this rambling incoherent mess other than apparently everyone should be reading The Water Babies. Which oddly enough I have a copy of in my set of Children's Classics that my brother and I got one Christmas despite the fact that I'm pretty sure Charles Kingsley didn't want his book categorized as reading for children. But you don't get to choose once you're dead and gone. He should be content with the classic categorization. One this book will never get in a million years. Because the thing about this book is that there's not really anything here. It's situations and feelings and at the end you're left wondering where your time went. It should be a quick read but it's not. All I have are these vague feelings of unease. Which maybe ties into the psychogeography of it all? Can psychogeography relate to places you only encounter in books? Because if so, yeah, I experienced that. The overriding vibe I had though was that M. John Harrison really wanted to write something political while at the same time Lovecraftian and, well, maybe this is success? Because I felt unease about the politics and the environment, and well, I kept thinking of the people who reside in Innsmouth, the Deep Ones. The Deep Ones are part of the Cthulhu Mythos and have to be related to the "people" in this tale. But this is all just projection. Because seriously, I do not know what I just read. This was a screed, a rant, an unfinished thought. This was oddly a call to arms, but a call to arms that has come too late. We're just here watching the spread of deep-seated dread. So, if you want to be confused, paranoid, and develop some unshakable panic, then this is the book for you!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Brexit, Charles Kingsley, Cthulhu, Entropy, For the Love of Book Clubs, H.P. Lovecraft, Innsmouth, M. John Harrison, Psychogeography, The Deep Ones, The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, The Water Babies, Water

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Season 37 - The Amazing Mrs Pritchard (2007)

What most of us turn to Masterpiece for is a good old fashioned period drama. Yes, there have been modern shows here and there, and many quite exceptional, but for most of us it's all about the period drama. Well, watching The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard now it feels like a period drama. Looking back on a simpler time in politics before Trump and Brexit it feels so long ago that it's a different era. Plus with the cast, Steven Mackintish, Jodhi May, Janet McTeer, Carey Mulligan, Geraldine James, Tom Mison, Siobhan Finneran, and Harry Hadden-Paton to name a few, it is like the best of the best from British period dramas are represented here. Then factor in the Downton-esque music by John Lunn playing over several characters from Downton Abbey, and well, it might be modern but it feels like Masterpiece to me. Though it's an odd little miniseries, written by Sally Wainwright who has gone on to create the procedurals Scott and Bailey and Happy Valley, the feel good Last Tango in Halifax, and the sensational period lesbian romp Gentleman Jack, The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard never really finds it's feet and ends on an abrupt note, and that note was only on the DVD at that. Ros Pritchard is a woman with no political experience who ends up Prime Minister by just telling it like it is and vowing to never lie. While I adore Jane Horrocks, she doesn't have the heft needed for the role and is outclassed by everyone around her. But more importantly, I couldn't figure out the message of the miniseries. What was it trying to say? It is oddly pro-Brexit before Brexit happened with a bizarre streak of British exceptionalism. Also Ros's Purple party is almost all women, is this a commentary on women in traditional male roles and how they succeed or fail based on how much of the traditional female roles they're willing to give up, like motherhood. Also, while this was obviously written about a fake election it seems prophetic. I mean, look what we've just lived through here in the States! A person entirely ignorant of government being elected to the highest position in the land. But in reality there were tons and tons of deaths instead of everyone banding together and riding a bus. So yeah... it now cuts a little too close to the bone... The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard just doesn't understand the implications of what it's attempting and failing to say.