Fifty-Five Years a Masterpiece
You know, five years ago when Masterpiece, no longer Theatre, celebrated their fiftieth anniversary and I dedicated several months on my blog to said celebration? Well, spending that year watching old British shows kind of became a habit. In other words, I started watching shows for the fiftieth anniversary and, well, I just never stopped. And now it's the fifty-fifth anniversary and I have watched so many shows in the intervening five years, not all done for Masterpiece, but, well, almost all done for Masterpiece. Or at least PBS. I mean, I had to get Ballykissangel in there somewhere. What this means is that I couldn't let the fifty-fifth anniversary pass without another celebration. I was like a kid in a candy shop searching out old Mobil posters I'd never seen and trying to find just one more series that hadn't been released in any format stateside. YouTube is, surprisingly, my friend now. It might be the biggest shock of the last year. Shows I'd never thought I'd be able to see were available, and shows that I thought I'd hate, well, it turns out I owe the seventies production of Poldark a big apology. Masterpiece helped form who I am, creating a love of literature, art, and England. I have recently made it my goal to somehow watch every show ever aired on Masterpiece. It might take another five years, meaning there's already a sixtieth celebration in the offing, but until I succeed, possibly by bribing PBS employees to help a girl out, let's celebrate what wonderful shows I have watched in the last five years. Are any of them your favorites? I mean, how could you not love All Creatures Great and Small or Downton Abbey? Or are there certain ones that left you cold? For example have you developed an extreme aversion to Ben Cross? Because I know I sure have. Here's to Masterpiece! It's a piece of us all.
The Forsyte Saga wasn't just how Masterpiece Theatre came to be, it was also the beginning of what we now know as Event Television. It was a runaway success in England, the country virtually shutting down when it aired. The then president of WGBH seeing the viewing numbers once it aired stateside decided that there was an audience for British programming in America and created Masterpiece Theatre, with another Susan Hampshire led drama, The First Churchills, as the inaugural broadcast on January 10th, 1971. If, like me, you knew about the Forsytes more because of the Damian Lewis adaptation in 2002 than the original and have therefore been hesitant to embrace this older, and dare I say it, black and white production with flimsy sets and sometimes ludicrous old age makeup, let me say that I loved this production. It was just what I needed at this moment in my life. The newer series has so much emotion, it's like a raw nerve, and I can't handle watching it because I end up a blubbering mess, despite which I still adore it. Now this isn't meant to be a slight on the older series saying it lacks emotion, it's entirely the opposite, I think it's more realistic. People don't live their lives like they're one of the Brontes! They live it in little, contained rooms where specific sets and emotions are kept in check. Therefore when something does happen, when change upsets these little well ordered lives, it has a greater impact. I grew to love all the characters and all these little rooms. Over the twenty-six episodes my opinions of all characters were constantly in flux, but I knew one thing, I never wanted it to end. There was just something so comforting in watching this family's life unfold over the decades. I always wondered why the 2002 series ended when it did, not seeing out the series until the death of Soames AKA Damian Lewis, but now I get it. There's a VAST tonal shift when we move from the older generation to the younger. Before there were huge swathes of time, the whole series taking place over forty-seven years, and tons of characters with a set narrator, and then we have a small set of characters going slowly through a few years in their lives. To give you an idea of the change, in one episode nineteen years elapses, and in the final fourteen episodes, more than half the series, only seven years! But of all the shows I've watched this years for Fifty Years a Masterpiece, I know I will return to this, and interestingly enough another adaptation by Donald Wilson, 
After the deathly dull adaptation of 
Years ago I went to the Paine Art Center and Gardens up in Oshkosh to see "Fashion in Film: Period Costumes for the Screen." I freely admit I went for one reason and one reason only, and that was to see the costumes from the Colin Firth adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. There were lovely surprises too, an amazing costume Cate Blanchett wore in Elizabeth that had a panel that was actually from the time of Queen Elizabeth I, the ballgown from Ever After, and on and on, I spent hours looking and looking again. They even had all the costumes for the 2000 Kate Beckinsale/Uma Thurman production of The Golden Bowl, AKA one of those movies I keep meaning to get to, especially as it was directed by James Ivory of Merchant and Ivory. But then I heard about the old Masterpiece Theatre adaptation, well, I figured six episodes had to delve deeper than a two hour movie! Plus it starred Gayle Hunnicutt, loved by me for being James Beaumont's mother on Dallas and the final girl in The Legend of Hell House. Another delightful surprise was Daniel Massey, brother of the amazing Anna, as Prince Amerigo, who also had a complicated love life just like the Prince, leaving his wife Penelope Wilton for Penelope's sister Lindy! So what of this Henry James story about a father and a daughter who end up caught up in the affairs of ex-lovers... I really don't know what to say. I watched six episodes and nothing happened. I'm not even sure if there was an affair. Was the dutiful daughter Maggie's husband having an affair with her father's wife Charlotte? Meh, can't be certain, and I couldn't even really bring myself to care. There is just so much verbiage and talking around the issue that nothing ever really gets said. And as for the narrator? Well, if he were still alive he would make a killing doing those little audios that help put people to sleep. I literally zoned out for whole chunks of time. I would have said I fell asleep without knowing it, but I was on a treadmill and seeing as I didn't end up in a pile on the floor I must have remained upright. I will say that the sets and costumes kept me entertained. And looking back on that long ago trip to Oshkosh, the large living room that they placed the costumes for the movie in looked very much like it could have been a room in Mr. Verver's house.
The Edwardians is an odd series because I don't think it was meant to be a series. It's just eight ninety minute long stories about prominent Edwardians. There is no cohesive theme, no cohesive style, more on that later, in fact some of the episodes are in black and white while others are in color and all have horrible sound. I'll note I have no idea if half the episodes being in black and white was due to a Colour Strike like with Upstairs, Downstairs, but my guess is that it wasn't. Also use the closed captioning, it will help with the sound. What the series did do well was highlight bizarre aspects of these seven peoples lives that might be common knowledge in England but which I personally didn't know too much about. And if you noticed that there are eight episodes but only seven eminent Edwardians profiled, it's because one of the episodes is just about Edwardian music halls and their performers unionizing leading to a very bleak ending when the days of the music hall died. You will learn lots of weird things about the Edwardians sex lives, Frederick Royce, of Rolls-Royce, had a sexless marriage, Edith Bland, the children's author known as E. Nesbit, was basically in a trupple and raising the other woman's child as her own, Conan Doyle was having an affair on his dying wife, and Lloyd George, well, he'd sleep with anything. As an interesting aside, the Conan Doyle episode does a better job with the George Edalji case than either 
Country Matters started with delight and surprise. So many favorite actors as fresh faced youths! There's Ian McKellen, Peter Firth, looking about twelve but actually nineteen, and yes, that is Isobel Crawley! It took me about fifteen minutes to confirm it was indeed Penelope Wilton in her second ever television appearance. I mention it to save you the fifteen minutes of confusion that I grappled with. But once you get past these revelations and the discordantly cheery theme music you come to the realization that this series is nothing but unrelenting pain and misery. The second episode almost did me in. I never give up on shows and "The Mill" made me want to throw in the towel. Every single episode just grinds you down with despair. Rape, unwanted pregnancies, prison, disfigurement, stillbirth, lies, affairs, suicide, unhappy marriages, on and on and on, grinding you down more and more. Many people complain that this DVD release contains only eight of the thirteen episodes produced, famously omitting episodes staring Upstairs, Downstairs favorites Pauline Collins and Meg Wynn Owen, as well as a second Peter Firth episode, but most importantly episodes starring Jeremy Brett and Michael Kitchen. All I can say is that if they are anywhere near as depressing as the eight episodes I slogged through we are all better off without them in our lives. Because I can tell you now, there is no way in hell I could have made it through five more episodes, I barely made it through these. Going back to the worst of the lot, "The Mill," it's about a poor girl no longer wanted under her parents feet so she's sent off into service where she dutifully attends to her bedridden mistress while being raped every night by her mistress's husband. She of course gets pregnant and is run off home. Why would ANYONE want to watch this? Episode after episode shows the perils of pregnancy for unwed women, but this was wantonly cruel. All these episodes are adapted from the works of A.E. Coppard and H.E. Bates, and after Bates's "The Mill" I came to dread his episodes, despite the fact he wrote the delightful The Darling Buds of May. Which makes it extra ironic that the ONLY story that could be said to have a semblance of a HEA was his "The Ring of Truth." So if you REALLY feel like after this last year you could do with a big old helping of despair, might I suggest Country Matters for your viewing masochism?
You literally CAN NOT think or talk about Masterpiece Theatre without thinking or talking about Upstairs, Downstairs. They are inseparable. One can not mention Jean Marsh without thinking of Rose Buck. Or Gordon Jackson without actually believing that he might be Hudson, foibles, xenophobia, and all. Each season focused on the trials and tribulations of the Bellamy household and how they handled different crisis, from Elizabeth's imprudent marriage, to Lady Marjorie dying on the Titanic, to James's imprudent marriage, to World War I, to the roaring twenties and the bright young things, to that tragic ending! Oh James, how could you? The family had often faced financial ruin, but somehow there always was a way. There could have been a way if you had but tried! But I can see that the showrunners wanted to end on a dramatic note. What's interesting about the forth series is that we have perhaps the most sustained theme over any of the other series, that being World War I. Of course Upstairs, Downstairs handles even this most used of historical periods in their own unique way. This uniqueness is that we see how the war effects everyone at 165 Eaton Place. So yes, we get the tropes of the son being almost mortally wounded and nursed back to health by the woman he truly loves, who happens to not be his wife. As for the wife, she falls for someone else yet somehow they keep up the pretense of their marriage despite neither being happy. Yet what I'm drawn to is how the staff took part in the war. You rarely get to see how the everyday folk pitched in, other than knitting socks and balaclavas! Hudson becomes a Special Constable and helps police the streets because he is unable to serve, Rose works on an omnibus, Edward joins the Army, Ruby works in a munitions factory, everyone finds a way to help the war effort while also carrying out their regular duties, well, aside from Mrs. Bridges who just seems to be angry about the lack of produce and wants to hoard everything she can. Which seems very relevant today, as did the handling of the tricky topic of disinformation in the press with regards to the war. Upstairs, Downstairs was praised at the time for making history timely and relevant. And with season four ending with Hazel dying from the 1918 influenza pandemic, it's even more relevant today.
Madame Bovary isn't exactly a show to watch for some light fare unless you like watching someone die from eating arsenic. Emma Bovary literally has a "breakdown" in each of the four episodes. And by breakdown, I mean she throws a shit fit and takes to her bed because she didn't get what she wanted and "collapsed." Such causes for shit fits range from abandonment by lovers to not liking the shitty town her husband has stuck her in because he lacks ambition to financial ruin. Literally the only one worthy of a breakdown was the financial ruin she brought on herself. Because losing it over a young admirer whom you gave a rug to, seriously!?! You have got to admit that in older literature it's sometimes hilarious what causes women to suffer. Especially when they blame her second breakdown on plums. Yes. A doctor and a pharmacist blame her "illness" on plums! The absurdity of plums aside, this is worth watching for two reasons, the first is Tom Conti. I believe I first some him in an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's The Inheritance, where I first saw his patented air of benign absentmindedness. He is, in my mind, Mr Bennet in the flesh. Just sitting there in a room with a smile plastered on his face, exuding goodwill, and being baffled at the tumult around him. That is what he brings to Madame Bovary as her husband Charles. This wonderful vulnerable bafflement that makes you just want to protect him from his scheming wife. Out Emma! Let Charles just stick to what he does best and stop trying to make something of him. Ugh, if I had a husband as good as him I wouldn't treat him like filth. But, then again, by now you should have guessed I hated Emma. Though she did have a redeeming aspect, AKA, the second reason to watch this show, and that is that Emma was played by the always wonderful Francesca Annis! But the real reason is that this miniseries "reunites" her with Dennis Lill. Dennis Lill played Bertie, the Prince of Wales, in Francesca's career defining turn as Lillie Langtry in the miniseries Lillie. And while technically this was made first, I saw Lillie first, so I view this as them reuniting to have another affair. There should be some weird French or German word when you're someone's lover in different incarnations shouldn't there? Well, it sure tickled me to see them up to their adulterous ways once again. And it really tickled me when he dumped her ass. Oh, the blithe acting in that scene was perfection.
So Nicola Pagett is a woman unhappy in her marriage and pregnant by a man other than her husband. And no, this isn't season two of Upstairs, Downstairs, this is Anna Karenina. Though you could be forgiven for mistaking one for the other if you took out the fact that I like Karenin far more than I ever liked Lawrence Kirbridge. Moving on, I should put in a train reference here but I'm just not that witty today... Anna Karenina is a classic that I have been meaning to read for forever, have not gotten around to, knew it ended with Anna's death under a train, and eventually just decided to watch the miniseries. Because if there's one thing you can be certain of, this is the definitive adaptation. Yes, there have been many movies, yes, there have been quite a few other television adaptations, but are any of them ten episodes long and bother to included the somnambulist psychic Landau? No they do not! And I'm sorry, but Landau became my favorite character with only a single scene. He's basically Rasputin if he was played by Seth Green. Seriously, one scene just wasn't enough! What I loved about this series is that it makes you believe at all times that it is a true epic, but with a very human element, which is what the best epics are. There's love and betrayal and wonderful snarky society snubs that surely had to inspire Edith Wharton when she sat down to write The Age of Innocence. There's all this great grandness, even the palace from Netflix's recent adaptation of Shadow and Bone gets a look in, but at the end it's about Anna. And my feelings about Anna are complicated. I get the whole, she is trapped by the strictures of society of how a woman should behave and therefore her only option is suicide. But on the other hand, time and time again she is given options, she is given other ways she could live, and she chooses that which will make everyone as miserable as her. She makes people suffer for loving her. She has a slightly justified persecution complex, but one wonders, as she herself does, even if she hadn't found Vronsky was it all just inevitable? Was her life destined for entropy? All I know is that unlike some of the series I've watched for the first time for 
Last year I decided to watch a whole lot of old BBC miniseries that I had been meaning to get to with the loose theme that they all related to Edward VII. I watched Edward the King, because, Edward obviously! I watched two shows about Edward's mistresses, Lillie and The Duchess of Duke Street. Then I went more generic with The Edwardians and Berkeley Square bringing the viewings to a close. Berkeley Square was the only series I had actually seen before but now I can proudly say I've seen them all! As Patrick Stewart said, "I've seen everything." What's interesting about Lillie is that Francesca Annis played the character of Lillie Langtry in Edward the King and was so popular they made a whole series about the infamous mistress to the king and the famous actress she became from childhood to death, and the death was probably not meant to be hilarious, but she was picking fights in bars where you paid men to dance with you, so, that's on her. If the series had one fault it was that they didn't bring Timothy West back to play Edward, but I forgive them because I got to see a bitty baby Rupert Giles as Lillie's older brother in his second ever role! But while Francesca Annis, in my mind, didn't make that much an impression in Edward the King to warrant her own series there is one actor in her series that deserved their own. Lillie fell into the artistic community of the time where she quickly became it's star. She hung out with the likes of Millais and Whistler, her presence inspiring them. But the one historical figure she formed the strongest relationship with was Oscar Wilde. Now I am a huge fan of Oscar Wilde, I even wrote a lengthy paper on him for a class on writing for the threatre in undergrad, so I take my interpretations of Oscar VERY seriously. Stephen Fry is probably most famous to my generation for portraying the author, but no offense to Stephen, Peter Egan just blew me away. Peter Egan is still a stalwart British actor keeping his hand in the game, he was on this past season of The Spanish Princess AND he was on Downton Abbey. But forever more to me he is the only portrayal of Oscar Wilde I will ever think about. The pathos, the feeling, the tragedy, I don't know if I have ever, in my entire life, seen a better performance in ANYTHING! While I wish he had gotten a series of his own, Oscar's life is fully seen through the lens of Lillie's life. I'm just greedy because I want more. 
When the first proposed spin-off from Upstairs, Downstairs set in a boarding house run by Hudson and Mrs. Bridges, now Mrs. Hudson, had to be scrapped due to Angela Baddeley's death, John Hawksworth was apparently so stuck on the idea of doing a period show set in a residential hotel that we got The Duchess of Duke Street. Considered by most to be the natural successor to Upstairs, Downstairs, and I will fight anyone who tries to say, "what about Thomas and Sarah?" Because that show was a piece of shit and you know it! Based on the life of the Duchess of Jermyn Street, Rosa Lewis, who rose from humble cook to hotel owner, The Duchess of Duke Street, while having a certain Upstairs, Downstairs vibe with the patrons and servants of the Bentinck Hotel has in my mind more humble heart than it's predecessor. Here everyone is a little mad, a little off kilter, a little rough around the edges, and that endeared me to each and every character. The elderly Merriman, who came with the property and is a house-elf in human form, the doorman Starr and his faithful pooch Fred, Mary, The Major, who while technically a guest is also technically staff, and Charlie, the young buck who was turned down only to become the money man and love interest of our erstwhile owner, Louisa Trotter! Louisa is rough and gruff and she knows what she wants and doesn't let anyone stand in her way, let alone an annoying husband. But while every episode is a wonderful little vignette of Louisa fighting against convention and making a place in the world for herself and her family series two has one of my favorite episodes of any show ever, "Winter Lament." By this point Charlie is married to the rather sweet but weak Margaret and is no longer living at the Bentinck. Instead he's taken up residence at the ancestral pile with his wife who is not well. He begs Louisa to come and help, but it's too late, Margaret is too far gone and this episode feels as if the Brontes came back to life to write a television show. It's just such a weird little bottle episode but it's perfect. In fact it's because of this that I ended up watching all of Dynasty because Christopher Cazenove who plays Charlie plays Ben on that eighties soap staple.
Thérèse grew up beside her cousin Camille in his sickbed. When they were older it just made sense for her to stay in the bed and be his wife. She walks through her life in a daze. Nothing ever breaking through the monotony of her day to day existence with Camille and Madame Raquin. The shop bell below their home rings and customers must be served. Every Thursday their friends come over for tea and dominoes. Life plods on. Then one day Camille runs into his old childhood friend Laurent. Laurent's passion is painting, but sadly it can not support him so he's taken a mundane office job. But soon his passion is Thérèse. They begin a torrid affair resulting in the murder of Camille. This three part miniseries starts out rather sedately. The first episode is interesting but it isn't until the second episode, after the murderous denouement of the first, that it becomes something more, something memorable. Kate Nelligan as Thérèse and Brian Cox as Laurent fully embrace the over the top Gothic nature of the tale in such a way that they are mesmerizing. There's a feeling of the darker tales of Edgar Allan Poe when Laurent starts taking to visiting the morgue daily and having his dreams haunted by the dead. Also there's a wonderful unsettled feeling as to what Thérèse's motives were. Did she ever care for Laurent or was he just a means to get ride of her husband? Or did she really not know how her mind would unravel following Camille's death? The height of this is their frantic wedding night. They knew they could never just marry because then perhaps people would wonder what really happened to Camille. So instead, a year after their crime, they have finagled their Thursday night domino friends to insist that the two of them wed, and wed they are. But the haunted honeymoon to come is so deliciously Gothic it almost felt like the Brontes wrote it while taking acid. Laurent is haunted by the painting of Camille he executed that is hanging in the bedroom. He also keeps thinking he sees his dead friend's bloated corpse in their wedding bed. Thérèse is equally frantic. Soon they are beyond miserable, the three of them in the marriage, Thérèse, Laurent, and Camille. All this is happening behind their closed bedroom door while trying to maintain a happy facade for Madame Raquin. But soon that even cracks and tragedy besets tragedy until the scales are balanced.
I fully admit that the one and only reason I watched this miniseries was to see a young Giles. I might have a thing for Anthony Stewart Head, especially as Watcher and librarian on Buffy the Vampire Slayer... Therefore, over the years, I've tried to make sure I watch everything he's currently in and in my spare time watch his back catalog. Back in that catalog was this wonderful adaptation of Love in a Cold Climate, where just two years after appearing on Lillie he's back on the small screen as Tony Kroesig, the very minimally fictionalized Bryan Guinness. He's just simply adorable with his blonde hair rescuing a rabbit for his future wife who will bolt on him. He's just so perfectly cast and that's what makes this adaptation stand out for me. The cast was so fully rounded and actually felt like a family. Well, when Judi Dench signs on, even in the eighties she had pull, and well, everyone else just fell into place, even her real life husband Michael Williams joined as Davey Warbeck! See, a family! And as Tony's wife Linda is the wonderful Lucy Gutteridge, whom I adore as the love interest opposite Val Kilmer in Top Secret! and in Till We Meet Again, the miniseries I always call "the one where Hugh Grant's a Nazis!" And in an entirely random roll we have Anthony Higgins, Rathe from Young Sherlock Holmes, playing an over-the-top chef who doesn't speak English! I could go on and on, but just take my word for it, perfect casting. Also, seeing as until now, all adaptations named Love in a Cold Climate are actually adaptations of two of Nancy Mitford's books, The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, crammed under the more memorably named book, we have a lot of ground to cover in one series. Unlike the one at the turn of the century which was only two episodes jammed together as one movie stateside, here we have eight episodes to luxuriate in the story. To get all the details right. And why is that important now? Because we have another adaptation on the way! So it's time to bring out the books, sit down and watch these two adaptations, and then see if this new version with Lily James is up to snuff or if she should have stayed away, like with Rebecca.
If you are watching this for Jeremy Brett, be forewarned that there is a lot less Jeremy Brett than the DVD cover would have you believe. This is a starring vehicle for Susan Fleetwood and Robin "OG Poldark" Ellis doing his best Morgan Freeman narration in the era before Morgan Freeman started being known as the go-to narrator and was known as that guy from The Electric Company and various soap operas. The Good Soldier is a tale of infidelity set against the backdrop of a German spa town revolving around two couples, the Dowells and the Ashburnhams. This adaptation leans heavily on the 1974 adaptation of 
My parents made it a habit that for the holidays they'd give me box sets of their favorite Masterpiece Theatre shows so that when I wanted to watch something they'd get to watch something they wanted to as well. One Christmas I got a gift "From Your Irish Friends." After me trying to guess what the present was and failing, it turned out to be season one of The Irish R.M. staring Peter Bowles. I feel bad that it's taken me about twenty years to finally get to this show, but it really needs to be taken into account how many shows are out there and how many shows Masterpiece Theatre did that I'm trying to catch up on. That is a hella big backlog people! On the scene we have a lot of my favorite actors, or I should say, Peter Bowles, but behind the scenes we have the whole crew from Upstairs, Downstairs, a classic if there ever was one! So I knew the show had rightly gained it's status as a classic in it's own right. Yet it did take me awhile to get into. The show deals with the clash of the very British Resident Magistrate with his very Irish neighbors who come before him in court and seek to manipulate him outside of it. My problem was that I felt the show's humor was at the expense of the Irish, and that made me feel a bit dirty. The Irish have always been the oppressed in any relationship with the British and the way jokes were set up to have the Irish use their humor and wiles to try to outwit their enemy felt too much like it was written by British writers to make fun of and further demean the Irish. Eventually they found the right balance where everyone was the butt of the joke, British and Irish alike, and with this the show found it's footing. It could also be that as time went on I started to love the characters and saw them less as the initial stereotypes they were set out to be and more as the individuals they were. But this has to do with the actors more than the writing in my opinion. In the end the show is a marvelous amalgam of All Creatures Great and Small and Father Ted. I defy anyone to argue that the R.M.'s housekeeper Mrs. Cadogan (which she insists is pronounced Mrs. Cadergorn) isn't the inspiration for Mrs. Doyle on Father Ted. They both so enjoy their misery.
What I am about to say is going to sound like blasphemy to a lot of people, but when Alan Rickman was first cast as Severus Snape I wasn't that enthused. And while I admit he had that lovely menacing and melodious voice he never really became Snape for me until later. Don't get me wrong, I love Alan Rickman, just not in Harry Potter. I have a few friends who are probably disowning me at this moment for saying this, especially one specific friend who shall remain nameless who asked me to distract the security guard while she dove for Alan Rickman's Snape costume when we went to Harry Potter: The Exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. I opted to restrain her versus acting as a distraction. Seemed far more prudent. And I know the reason I disapproved is going to sound ageist... but there is no getting around the fact that he was too old to play Snape! Because of casting Alan every one of the adults was aged up, which annoyed me so much. In the first movie Snape should have been 31, not 55! That's a 24 year age gap and James and Lily Potter didn't even live to see 24! When I read the books I pictured a different Alan, Alan Cumming, as Snape because, when I first read the books Alan was 34, so about the right age. Then one day I watched The Barchester Chronicles and everything I thought I held dear changed. Because he was a 36 year old Alan Rickman and he WAS Severus Snape. There's a scene with Rickman as Obadiah Slope where he and Mrs. Proudie are trying to change the opinion of Obadiah's boss and Mrs. Proudie's husband, the Bishop Proudie, that isn't just sheer perfection showcasing a level of humor rarely achieved, but in that moment I realized I didn't hate Alan Rickman as Severus Snape, I hated the fact that he played the role too late. Yes, it's impossible for him to have starred in a movie of a book that wouldn't come out for over a decade, but now I can forgive the films. A bit. I can at least see a young Alan Rickman as Snape when reading the books. I also am starting to wonder if Rowling didn't see Rickman all those years ago and see him as the character herself... Slope/Snape... not too different. And don't get me started on how I am totally convinced she wrote Hagrid for Robbie Coltrane because of an episode of Blackadder. 
If you've only seen the Gillian Anderson adaptation of 
When I first "discovered" Colin Firth, AKA when I watched Pride and Prejudice in the summer of 1996, I embarked on a voyage of discovery among his back catalog of work. I rented EVERYTHING the local video store had. Another County not to be confused with the far superior A Month in the Country! The ill-timed and ill-conceived Valmont. Apartment Zero with it's deliciously devious denouement. I even trolled late night television and stumbled on Camille. But one day I saw a DVD release for a show called Lost Empires. Seven episodes full of Colin Firth! That's one more than Pride and Prejudice! I remember when it arrived I invited my mom to watch it with me. We made it only as far as the first episode. Because as she said; "If I have to watch Laurence Olivier for one more minute doing stupid jokes and dressed up as an Edwardian child with makeup I'll scream." Or something to that effect. I did try to point out that as he died at the end of the episode we wouldn't have to see him anymore. She didn't buy it. And in fairness, I wasn't that interested in completing it. Watching a baby Colin can only carry your interest for so long. But I've been viewing this Masterpiece Theatre retrospective as a chance to get around to the shows, some of them classics, that I hadn't gotten to yet. Therefore seeing as I already had the DVD set, Lost Empires was top billing! Oddly enough my first impressions aren't too far off my final impressions, but over the years I've watched a lot more shows of similar themes so I feel more justified in my opinion. I have watched a lot of miniseries set in music halls, from Tipping the Velvet to that one dreadful episode of Thomas and Sarah, and this has to be the least annoying due to the lack of songs getting stuck in your head combined with not being overly problematic with regards to black face and really horrific racial stereotypes. Yes, there's still an entitled white man playing an Indian mystic and a really weird hatred of midgets, but for what music halls were known for it's pretty tame, especially when you watch other shows. Which means instead of dwelling on how problematic it is in that regard, you can pick apart all the other problems. The bleak, fatalistic attitudes, the creepy sex parties, oh, and the shoehorned in happily ever after that really makes no sense. So if you want to see some really young Colin Firth doing an occasionally passable Yorkshire accent in a miniseries that is trying to state something bigger than they are capable of, IE the end of the music halls and the end of the age of the British Empire, than this downer of a miniseries is for you!
As a person with an obsessive disorder once I find a film I love I will just watch it over and over again. This was very bad on VHS tapes when I was young. I would literally wear them out. I even once wore out a DVD set... At the beginning of high school the film being obsessed over was Dead Again. Doomed lovers reincarnated to not only get their happily ever after but to get revenge for their deaths? Oh yes please! What I loved most about it was the fact that Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson weren't just lovers in the film but their love was real! I became a little obsessed with their relationship and would watch anything they were in together, with especial love for Peter's Friends and Much Ado About Nothing. In our house we had a book on the history of Masterpiece Theatre and there was a picture in it from Fortunes of War. Seeing as this was the miniseries they met on and where they fell in love, to me, this was the beginning of their love story and therefore it was very important that I watch it. At the time you couldn't rent the miniseries so I had to content myself with drawing the picture in the book. I remember that I was convinced the only way to get Emma's hat right was with watercolor pencils. Let's just say I'm still not the best with this medium and when I was a teenager I was worse. I kind of ruined the picture and moved on to obsessing over the movie The Tall Guy, Emma Thompson, Jeff Goldblum, pure genius. By the time I finally got to watch Fortunes of War Kenneth and Emma's marriage had imploded, and she had thankfully found love again in the arms of Willougby and as I thought at the time, Kenneth could go fuck himself. In fact I kind of still feel that way but begrudgingly admit he occasionally has talent. So it was bittersweet seeing this miniseries that meant so much to me long before I had seen it. In fact, in my mind, they aren't the stars of this miniseries. Yes, I know, I know, it says they are, but Ronald Pickup as Prince Yakimov stole the show. He had a little bit of an Edward Gorey vibe with his long fur coat, and I just adore him. And when he met his tragic end in Greece, not only did I learn about the atrocities the Nazis perpetrated on the Greek, but I also felt like I had lost a friend. RIP Prince Yakimov. But thankfully Ronald Pickup was still making movies and television shows until his death at the age of 80 this year.
Starting out in a whorehouse and ending in a prison with heavy Jack the Ripper overtones throughout makes The Charmer feel a bit off-brand and risque for Masterpiece Theatre. But it was the late eighties, perhaps they were trying to embrace an audience fed on years of Dynasty and Dallas? And you can't say it doesn't grab your attention with the charming yet menacing turn by Nigel Havers as Ralph Gorse, a man who'd never say no to a ligature. But knowing it's based on a series of books by Patrick Hamilton, the master of despair and dread, who supposedly based the character of Gorse on a serial killer, you can't say you didn't know what you were getting into...Unless you totally forgot about Patrick Hamilton's pedigree of Rope and Gaslight like I had, then you're watching the show slightly baffled that what you thought was going to be a nice little romp in the thirties veers into very dark territory. In fact, this note should have been passed along to whomever did the music, it's a little too cheerful, if you get my drift, and you'll get the Cole Porter song "You're the Top" stuck in your head for days. The material is primarily pulled from the second volume in Hamilton's series, Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse, which I think would have been a far better title. Because while Gorse is a charming gigolo working his way into weary women's lives for a bit of lucre it's really the cat and mouse game between him and Mr. Stimpson that drives the plot. Mr. Stimpson feels that Ralph thwarted his love affair with Joan Plumleigh-Bruce, played divinely by Rosemary Leach. And OF COURSE Ralph did. But the problem is even if Ralph is a psychopath with sociopathic tenancies, he's not this dogmatic hypocritical stick in the mud that is everything Mr. Stimpson is. I'm not sure if it's because of how Bernard Hepton plays the roll or just how Mr. Stimpson is written, but you want him to lose. You want him to lose so bad. Yet ironically he is the voice of reason. But while there are reviewers who claim they wanted Ralph to get away with his crimes, I did not. I wanted accountability for everyone and for Joan to come out on top. Well, two out of three isn't bad.
