Season 47 - The Collection (2017)
Why was this on PBS!?! No really, I want to know, why was this on PBS!?! It was made by Amazon. It was released on Amazon. It was still on Amazon when PBS aired it eight months after it dropped and instead of having to wait seven weeks to realize this series was going nowhere you could have sat on your couch for almost seven hours and come to the same conclusion. This is actually worse than when Masterpiece randomly airs feature films because at least in some of those cases, especially in the early nineties, people didn't have access to those films. So while it felt like cheating just airing someone else's work, at least it was with the interest of their viewers in mind. Whereas here!?! Everyone has access to Amazon. Literally everyone. I could have forgiven them this weird decision if the show actually was something. But it isn't. This show is nothing. The Collection has an amazingly talented cast but the story, what was the story!?! Was it about the Sabine fashion house being Nazis collaborators? Was it about the family's complete ineptitude at covering up a murder? Which makes me think that they couldn't have been collaborators because they were just too damn stupid and they so would have been caught. You don't bury a body in the backyard of a house you own! And then, when it's discovered, you don't move it! Nothing here is straightforward. Everything is told in the most roundabout and confusing manner possible. For example, one of the girls in the seamstress shop secretly had a baby. Yet the father of the baby appears to be the closeted brother played by Tom Riley who's the genius behind the house's designs. How did he hook up with a woman? Especially when his current boy toy is fertilizing his mother's garden in the country? Well, your guess is as good as mine. Because, they don't tell us. Even if this show hadn't been rightly cancelled I don't think they would have ever given us answers. They were too interested in things looking pretty, the costumes just so, the photographs in the vein of Funny Face, just right. The irony of a show about fashion being all surface isn't lost on me. Though I honestly think it's lost on them. I really think they thought they were making something important, something of worth, something that made a statement. That statement was look how easy it is to waste Amazon's money. The only thing I am here for is that we are firmly in the era where Frances de la Tour is choosing her roles based on how much she gets to sit around and what delicious foods she gets to eat. She's doing a Maggie Smith, with just as barbed a tongue, but a lot more noms. Vanity Fair, Professor T, she's just living her best life. Sadly, this show wasn't up to her abilities, but at least I could take solace that at least someone enjoyed this series, because I sure as hell didn't.
My late teens coincided with Ewan McGregor being the darling of Indie films. For those who were introduced to him through Star Wars and his portrayal of Obi-Wan Kenobi, or, dare I utter the title, Moulin Rouge, let me tell you something, you are missing out on a whole heck of a lot of Ewan. As in all of Ewan. As in, he's naked. A lot. Like a lot a lot. Like full frontal in Velevet Goldmine, and in The Pillow Book, it's not just him naked, but his naked skin is then turned into a book and an old man does very inappropriate things to it... And let me tell you, that was memorable and creepy and it's been twenty-five years and I can't get it out of my head. When he was cast in Star Wars there were many jokes circulating as to how he'd get his "lightsaber" on screen... unless there is a cut of Star Wars I don't know about that didn't happen. Yet. Who knows what's going to happen on his Disney+ series. So, my point is, Ewan became mainstream and I missed the edge, I missed that wild abandon that marked his earlier roles. Seriously, Curt Wild in Velvet Goldmine, damn! Which is why I was so excited about Halston. It felt like it was a return to his roots while also being "Ryan Murphy Mainstream." The show is interesting in that while it does show a lot of the orgies and male prostitutes that surrounded Halston there's a disconnect. The pairings are very flat and emotionless and there's not as much naked Ewan as you'd expect. But it works. It's compartmentalizing Halston's life and it shows that his real passion, his real emotions, are for his work. With only five episodes Murphy does a wonderful job of showing us this way of life Halston lived and then how it all broke down. The series would not have worked with someone of lesser abilities than Ewan. He has the suave masters of the universe vibe that gets chipped away at piece by piece and the man who was almost glacial at the beginning is a sympathetic wreck by the end. It's a wonderful little piece that gives you insight into a man who changed fashion and a different time from the one we live in now. Looking back at Halston's life it's amazing how much he shaped the look of my childhood. He was one of a kind and deserved this tribute to his life.
Gilded New York: Design, Fashion, and Society by Phyllis Magidson, Susan Johnson, and Thomas Mellins
"What do I love about the golden 20's? It is truly a glamorous and fun time especially needed after the horrors
of the Great War (WWI). I adore Poirot mysteries so built this series with a blend of the two : frivolity, fashion and intrigue - a deadly combination." - Joanna Challis
