strange and random happenstance

The British have such a love of their public schools that is equal parts nostalgia and trauma that they have immortalized it in print time and time again. Tom Brown's School Days is always the first that leaps to mind, but there are so many that I can name from those that embrace the genre, like Goodbye, Mr. Chips, to those that subvert the genre, particularly Ronald Searle with his St. Trinian's comics. You could even make a valid argument to include The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie amongst their numbers even if Wikipedia doesn't. Mr. Chipping has been depicted several times on screen by the great luminaries of the day, from Robert Donant, who won an Oscar for his portrayal, to Peter O'Toole, who sang and danced as Mr. Chips, to Roy Marsden, the most famous of all Dalglieshes. So why did the 2002 adaptation land on Martin Clunes? You have to remember that at this time he wasn't the household name he is now for portraying Dr. Martin Ellingham. "Doc Martin" was still very much in its nascence. Martin Clunes had played Dr. Martin Bamford in the film Saving Grace and the character had been re-contextualized for two television movies, only one of which had aired at this time, and which, in my mind, have almost nothing to do with the series. Other than that his career was almost all one-off episodes where his character was invariably along the lines of his portrayal of Barmy on Jeeves and Wooster or Anna Massey's ill-fated son on Inspector Morse. In other words, big-hearted and bumbling. A golden retriever or Labrador of a person. He comes in smiling with that big mobile mouth and his outsized ears and is just a ray of sunshine. And I honestly believe, from years of watching him, that this is exactly who he is as a person. In other words, the exact opposite of a taciturn doctor in Cornwall who graced our screens for ten series. Which is why I think he was perfect for this role. He shows up at this school where the most formative years of a young boys life will also be the cruelest and he is horrified by what he sees. And you can see it there, all on his face. He doesn't believe in corporeal punishment he believes in kindness. Soon he finds a woman who believes the same as him and they are married and she helps him to see that love is what these children need. He isn't able to get much traction on his desired reforms and soon he loses the love of his life in childbirth, but his students love him. Students who are going to die in droves in the first World War. Is this supposed to be happy? What is the message? Look what one man with a heart of gold can do and fuck war? Wait, were all these books written to self sooth to be a balm on the wounds of how horrible British public schools were and that war was actually better than being bullied at school? Because this starts out so uplifting and ends in tears. Mr. Chips changes hearts and minds and then the bodies housing those hearts and minds die in the trenches. I really can't believe how much death is in this. Why couldn't he and his wife have had a happy ending? Why did his only children have to be the students? I mean, it's too bittersweet for me. Yes, the war had so much death and given the time period I expected that this would encompass the first World War, I was just hoping, maybe, I don't know, something more upbeat and not bleak. Well, if I had stopped it halfway through that would have been the case. So I heartily approve of watching this nice fifty minute movie. There are not another fifty minutes. There are only fifty. That is all. His wife says she is expecting, cue the credits.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Barmy, British, DEATH, Doc Martin, Fifty-Five Years a Masterpiece, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Jeeves and Wooster, Martin Clunes, Mr. Chipping, Private School, St. Trinian's, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Tom Brown's School Days, WWI

The dubious Riley, Ace of Spies holds a special place in my heart. Why would this suspect series with Sam Neill playing "ace" spy Sidney Reilly hold any meaning for me with all the miniseries I have watched over the years? Because it's my most hated. Well, it was. Until now. The Citadel was looking towards just tying Riley, Ace of Spies and then I realized something, at least I got to watch Sidney Reilly die. I had no such luck with Dr. Andrew Manson M.R.C.P. M.D. Out of curiosity is there an acronym for egocentric monomaniac whinger who I really want to punch in the face? Because if not there should be. Or maybe anyone with those traits should just be called Dr. Andrew Manson? OK, so you're probably thinking, I mean, this is a miniseries adapted from the book by A.J. Cronin that helped inspire Britain to found the NHS so it can't be that bad? Oh, you naive child. You have not suffered through ten of the most miserable hours of television ever created so I will forgive you. And explain. Because I don't want to make you go search out this series to understand my ire, I watched The Citadel so you don't have to. Dr. Andrew Manson is fresh out of medical school and moves to a small Welsh mining village to be a medical assistant to a doctor who is incapacitated. He didn't know this when he took to appointment. So he feels very put out and rails against everyone and everything and how unfair his life is that he lies about being engaged in marriage to get another job in a bigger mining town towing along his now wife Christine who has been sucked into his moaning maelstrom. He's even more dissatisfied at his new job, because of course he is, as his good friend pointed out, he's a man who always wants to reach that pinnacle, that citadel of science up on the hill, and anything less than is viewed as beneath him. So Christine works her ass off and helps him get his M.R.C.P. and then he does some research to get his M.D. but the villagers have offended him and off he goes to London. Where his job isn't perfect, so he quits. He buys a practice, but it's shit. He finally becomes successful, but at what cost? It takes him nine episodes to ask that. At. What. Cost. Because here's the thing, he's not a bad doctor, he's helping to improve everyone's life along the way and the truth is a coal mining village in Wales needs him far more than the hypochondriacs of Harley Street. It's oddly kind of the Doc Martin dilemma, he eventually understands his place is Portwenn. The problem with Dr. Andrew Manson is the damage he inflicts to those he supposedly loves. The way he treats Christine is horrible. He yells and rages and he claims to love her yet because of his self-centered behavior she suffers a horrible miscarriage and can't have children. Then he cheats on her. For quite a while. Then, like she always does, she forgives him and then dies. Getting hit by a bus. While buying cheese he didn't need for his sandwich. FFS! And yet, it wasn't all these horrible things that lead to him realizing he was an ass, it was when his shoe cobbler died at the hands of a doctor he thought was his friend but wasn't any better than a back alley abortionist. I just can't with Dr. Andrew Manson. He is just such an infuriating person. He is a horrible person. I mean; "Flames. Flames! Flaaaames…on the side of my face, breathing, breathless, heaving breaths." Just thinking about him enrages me. The only ONLY mild piece of interest in this entire series is that it's obviously the inspiration for Bramwell. As at his first job there's an inept Dr. Bramwell who likes a sing-a-long, and, well, that, as they say, is history. Sadly I have a feeling Dr. Eleanor Bramwell and Dr. Andrew Manson would get along. All egos in it together.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A.J. Cronin, Bramwell, Clue, Coal Mine, Dissatisfaction, Doc Martin, Doctor, Dr. Andrew Manson, Eleanor Bramwell, Fifty-Five Years a Masterpiece, Mrs. White, NHS, Riley Ace of Spies, Sam Neill, Sidney Riley, The Citadel, Wales

Danger UXB is about a bomb disposal unit during World War II created by the late great John Hawkesworth. The show goes into the danger and minutiae of dismantling a bomb and making it safe. The unit are constantly having to figure out the insidious new ways the Nazis have invented to create the most damage and to make bombs almost impossible to defuse. This even includes the introduction of the dreaded Butterfly Bomb. Now, I'm not saying that I could 100% disarm a bomb after watching this series, but I think I'm definitely in with a chance. Which is actually rather useful because they are still finding UXBs to this day. Not that I'd want to. Watching this show was stressful enough without having real world implications. The show starts with Anthony Andrews as Brian Ash, a man with no experience put in charge of bomb disposal. Which means that we the viewer get to follow him into this world that basically meant your life expectancy was measured in days. The problem with Brian Ash and therefore Anthony Andrews is he's too boring. He's your general romantic hero lead. The blue-eyed blonde haired boy who the women swoon over. In fact he's soon having a romance Susan Mount, the married daughter of boffin Doctor Gillespie who is a specialist in bomb fuses. Their romance is the definition of milquetoast. You don't care because you actually feel that deep down they probably don't care. It's too contrived and trope heavy. Which means, of course, she has a husband who's a codebreaker, who suffers mental breaks and whom she has to see to. Eventually he dies and that means they can be together and in the only moment of their relationship I approve of, she realizes he loves his men and the thrill of defusing a bomb more than he'll ever love her and that's where the series ends. Suck it Susan. Suck it! Because it's the men who make this show. 347 Section, 97 Company is made up of the best of the best in British character actors but Robert Pugh, George Innes, and Kenneth Cranham all deserve a special shout-out. Especially Kenneth Cranham. When I watched this show it happened to coincide with Kenneth Cranham being in everything I was watching. I don't know how he was so ubiquitous, but there he was on the stupidly renamed C.B. Strike, then popping up on the final season of Doc Martin, then on Inspector Morse and Pollyanna, even the nearly unwatchable Reilly: Ace of Spies. I was viewing shows spanning fifty years of British television in no particular order and there he was. There he always was. And he was always fabulous. His character of Lance Corporal Jack Salt was more interesting in one minute of screen time than Brian Ash was for the entire series. He had a wife up north but was conflicted and worried about the safety of this woman whom he'd met. Everything keeps compounding on him, even where he's home on leave and his house, with his wife inside, explodes before his very eyes. He's eventually taken out by a Butterfly Bomb in what I view as suicide by cop. He had so much trauma and that gave us viewers someone to root for. We wanted him to suceed. But, when you're not sure if you'll live another minute every minute is precious. If there's anything this series imparted to us, it was this. Oh, and that Nazis are evil. All Nazis are evil. There are no exceptions. They take delight in creating killing machines. If you're on the side of the Nazis YOU are a baddie.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anthony Andrews, Bomb Disposal, Butterfly Bomb, C.B. Strike, Danger UXB, Doc Martin, Fifty-Five Years a Masterpiece, George Innes, Inspector Morse, John Hawkesworth, Kenneth Cranham, Nazis, Pollyanna, Robert Pugh, Tropes, UXB, WWII

Arthur and George
Based on the book by Julian Barnes
Release Date: March 16th, 2015
Starring: Martin Clunes, Arsher Ali, Charles Edwards, Art Malik, Emma Fielding, Pearl Chanda, Hattie Morahan, Timothy Watson, Hilary Maclean, Matthew Marsh, Ciarán Owens, Michael Hadley, Sandra Voe, and Geraldine Alexander
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Arthur Conan Doyle has just buried his wife. Yet he feels he is unworthy of the outpouring of condolence letters and sympathy because while he loved Louisa as best as he could, his heart for sometime has belonged to another. He is mired in guilt and can not seem to put pen to paper. In his copious correspondence his secretary, Woodie, finds a letter that might just invigorate him. People are always writing him assuming that he is equally adept at crime solving as his greatest creation, Sherlock Holmes, is. But this letter from George Edalji is different. Here is a true miscarriage of justice brought about by small town bigotry. If the evidence alone didn't speak for itself, meeting George and seeing this innocent man suffer is enough to make Sir Arthur swing into action. Surprisingly there is much push-back against his investigation. Many shadowy figures don't want the Edalji case brought up. They all site that it was a clear case. George is a degenerate who is out of place and maimed livestock and sent horrific letters to his family and threatened little girls because that's what he is. Arthur sees none of this, while Woodie is a little more skeptical. Yet once they arrive at the scene of the crimes in Wyrley, they start to realize that it's not just about proving George innocent, it's about finding the guilty party. The guilty party who might still be in Wyrley and might take against the great Sir Arthur trying to root him out. Yet the bluff and brash author won't back down from idle threats. For the first time in a long time he has a purpose and the vigor has returned to his life. Woodie sees this, and if it wasn't for Sir Arthur's well-being, he'd view the risks as too parlous. Because there is no doubt that in investigating George's case they are putting their very lives on the line.

If you are looking for a straight up adaptation of Julian Barnes's novel this is thankfully not it. That flawed self-indulgent pseudo-biography has been plundered for it's successful core and made into a story that is more akin to the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. While loosely based on true events this adaptation isn't a slave to them. Unlike it's source material, this miniseries understands that adapting truth into fiction should also be fun and entertaining. It should be about Conan Doyle racing through the woods in the pursuit of a killer, not his premature ejaculations. There is fun to be had in taking the truth and spinning it into a fiction that makes good viewing for a Sunday night in. The biggest shift from book to miniseries is that we are given closure. The crimes perpetrated and attributed to George Edalji aren't solved by Conan Doyle in reality, but what kind of mystery is that I ask you? We viewers want some finality, some closure, some feeling of an ending; which we are given here. But oddly, despite how much I disliked the book I wonder if giving this adventure a "satisfying" ending is maybe doing the truth a disservice. The ending makes the whole story lose something of it's reality. Yes, it's more enjoyable, but perhaps they had a duty to make it more believable. There could have still been a more concrete ending while sticking closer to the truth. The diversions they made were occasionally so over-the-top that I found them to rank among the less believable of Conan Doyle's stories. This also did a disservice to how much work Conan Doyle actually put into George's exoneration. He used the tools available to him, mainly the press, but here he used the tools of Holmes and in that regard was more bumbling, less productive. But then again, since his death Arthur Conan Doyle has become a larger than life character, so why not just go with it?

But I don't think that the changes to the truth were intended to undermine it, but just to make it more in line with what mystery aficionados of today expect. The diversions made seemed to serve one goal, to pump up the mystery. We viewers have become very demanding in our blackguards. We want them to have an apparent purpose, to be relentlessly evil, and to have just that edge of crazy that makes hunting them down dangerous. In other words, a creep factor. Oh, and extra points if their lair is full of "otherworldly" symbols and dead bodies, or to be more accurate, parts of dead bodies. This production did all this. You get a hint that the creep factor is rising when the killer is found in a picture the family took outside the vicarage, if you look in an upstairs window. Almost like the ghosts that Conan Doyle believed in so fervently appearing after film is developed. The killer had left their mark indelibly on what should have been a happy and joyful family snapshot. But the scene that really left an impression on me was when Conan Doyle was racing through the woods and stumbled on what could be called a demonic fairy ring, with candles all in a circle and George's sister's doll taking pride of place in the center. This shows us that our perpetrator is truly unhinged. The mounting crimes, dead animals, and progression to actual murder don't actually need the final reveal of the shed of death later to confirm what we already know, Conan Doyle has found a villain worthy of his efforts. He has found Wyrley's own Jack the Ripper.

The creepiness of the culprit wasn't the only thing upped in the production, so were the conspiracies. In actuality Conan Doyle faced bigots and bureaucracy. Here the bureaucracy is more faceless. Nameless men trying to warn him away. Police giving ominous warnings. You get the idea, the standard trope to outsiders when visiting a closed community. While this fed into the mystery this is one clear cut instance that I think they should have stuck closer to the truth. Just look at the world today. Seriously, look at it. The bigots, the hatred, the anger spewing forth not just from the random crazies on the street but from our elected or hope to be elected officials. This is the world we live in and it was like that over a hundred years ago as well! To try to downplay this hatred as organized yet mysterious versus the systematic hatred of the "other" is like trying to deny the truth. It is far more terrifying to live in a world with this directed and specific hatred than a nebulous hatred of this other. In the book, despite George repeatedly saying that this isn't about race, it so clearly is. Or, in this interpretation, it is to an extent... because in the end they make it clear that George was right. The initial attacks against him before the corrupt system became involved were a specific hatred of him for being such a good and favored student. While there is something satisfying in the personal vendetta, here, well, it downplays the real evil. As is oft quoted the idea that all it takes for evil to survive is for one good man to do nothing, well, there's a lot of people doing nothing here, and that is more terrifying than one lunatic with a grudge.

Yet I am very grateful for one change. The downplaying of personal guilt. They quickly get Arthur's guilt over his wife dying and his loving another quite quickly with a few lines of dialogue and a few insights, and that's that. While yes, guilt and his need for diversion did lead Conan Doyle to take on George's case in the first place, it really bogged down the book. Hundreds and hundreds of pages of it. There's only so much self-flagellation you can endure before you grow to hate a character as much as they apparently hate themselves. While this might be the spark, the impetus, by concentrating on the crime we are given a more balanced narrative. I know I didn't sign up for a treatise on self-denial and self-loathing, did you? Some people might like that in their books and movies, I do not. See, I view my reading and watching as something to entertain me. It's escapism, not torturous inner soul-searching. A mystery should be a mystery first and foremost, and the miniseries of Arthur and George is exactly that. A mystery. So if you're looking for something more, something deeper, perhaps the book might be for you? Personally I don't see how the book could be for anyone really, but then again, best sellers lists and must read books often baffle me as to how they ever became as such.

This review of this dramatization wouldn't be complete if I didn't touch just a little on the acting. Oh poor Charles Edwards, always the Watson, never the Holmes. Charles Edwards is probably best known now as Edith's ill-fated beau on Downton Abbey, but to me he is the true Arthur Conan Doyle from his portrayal of him in Murder Rooms. While being the creator of Sherlock Holmes, he played Watson to Joseph Bell's Holmes. Skip forward fifteen years and here he is playing Watson to Conan Doyle's Holmes, in the form Woodie, Conan Doyle's personal secretary. I can't help but feel a little sad at this. He's such a fabulous actor and here he is playing second fiddle again. Not to mention that I read in an interview that Martin Clunes thought that this format of Conan Doyle solving crimes could really work... aw Martin, do you not know of Murder Rooms? Or are you just trying to break Charles Edwards's heart? But even if I do love me my Charles Edwards, there can be no denying that Martin Clunes is the perfect actor to play Conan Doyle later in life. He has that bluff athleticism and bluntness that makes Conan Doyle a more socially acceptable Doc Martin. And was I the only one inwardly giggling and kind of cheering for joy just to hear him talk about the death of his wife Louisa? Yes, I know it's not the Louisa I hate... but still, I have to take my fun where I can find it. As for George, Arsher Ali was well cast, because there is no getting around the fact in print or in film, I can't stand George. And as luck would have it, I really can't stand Arsher Ali. He is SO GOOD at playing someone unlikeable and a bit of a stuck up prick, seriously, watch The Missing and him chain smoking near his child with cystic fibrosis and you'll get where I'm coming from. But these three did not the miniseries make. Filling out the cast with other top notch actors from Art Malik to Emma Fielding to Hattie Morahan made this an enjoyable little mystery that while not overly memorable, will give you something else to think about for a few hours, and thankfully none of that time will be spent thinking about Arthur Conan Doyle's dick. 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Arthur and George, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Edwards, Doc Martin, Downton Abbey, George Edalji, Jack the Ripper, Julian Barnes, Martin Clunes, Murder Rooms, Mystery, Racism, Sherlock Holmes, Sherlocked, Watson