strange and random happenstance

Agatha Christie adaptations in recent years have been very hit or miss. And let's be honest, they're almost all misses. The BBC, Amazon, Sarah Phelps, and Kenneth Branagh should all be banned from ever doing another adaptation of Christie's work again. And whomever thought up the Partners in Crime reboot with David Walliams and Jessica Raine should be charged with crimes against humanity. Therefore I was understandably wary that there was a new adaptation of Why Didn't They Ask Evans? on the horizon. But once I heard about Hugh Laurie's involvement I felt a slight fluttering in my chest, was this hope? Was this the first hope I'd had since The Witness for the Prosecution? And yes, never watch The Witness for the Prosecution unless you really want to see Toby Jones in a sex scene no one ever asked for. And the reason I had hope for that adaptation was because the previous year's adaptation of And Then There Were None was brilliant. It was also the last good new Christie adaptation I've seen. And yes, that sadly extends to Why Didn't They Ask Evans? But here's the thing, it's not horrible by any stretch of the imagination. In fact it literally is the best of the newer adaptations, excluding And Then There Were None. The problem is it's not amazing, it's not perfect, it's just serviceable. It goes along at a decent pace and after three episodes you know why they didn't ask Evans. And that is probably where I had problems. I usually forget who commits crimes in books and shows unless they are really memorable or heavily foreshadowed or obvious from casting, so not knowing the answer is kind of important to give an element of suspense. Here the problem was I knew why they didn't ask Evans. The reason I knew why is from the weird Marple amalgamation where they ran out of stories after the departure of Geraldine McEwan and shoehorned Marple as played by Julia McKenzie into any story of Christie's that didn't have one of her continuing detectives present. So many stories stripped for parts and put back together in the most absurd ways. Yet for all the mysteries they changed and maimed, I remembered why they didn't ask Evans. So I just watched this show waiting for the supposed brilliant comedy and wit of Frankie, and it fell flat, though she did have some awfully nice clothes. I recently watched the old series of Partners in Crime starring Francesca Annis and James Warwick. Now that was fun, that was funny, that had what this wanted to have. And there was not a single miscast character in that series, seriously, don't get me started on Badger here. For some reason Christie and modern sensibilities haven't found a happy medium, and if anyone was going to succeed it should have been Hugh Laurie. Perhaps Emma Thompson might be willing to try next?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Agatha Christie, And the Emmy Goes To, And Then There Were None, David Walliams, Emma Thompson, Francesca Annis, Hugh Laurie, James Warwick, Marple, Partners in Crime, Why Didn't They Ask Evans?

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.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Affair, Arsenic, Bertie, Dennis Lill, Emma Bovary, Fifty Years a Masterpiece, Francesca Annis, Lillie, Lillie Langtry, Louisa May Alcott, Madame Bovary, Mr. Bennet, Plums, Suicide, The Inheritance, Tom Conti

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.       

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Downton Abbey, Edward VII, Edwardian, Fifty Years a Masterpiece, Francesca Annis, Lillie, Lillie Langtry, Oscar Wilde, Peter Egan, Rupert Giles, Stephen Fry, The Duchess of Duke Street, Timothy West

The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie
Published by: UK General Books
Publication Date: 1922
Format: Hardcover, 320 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

When Tommy and Tuppence run into each other outside a tube station it's fate. They've been friends forever but have fallen out of touch since they last saw each other when Tommy was sent home from the front to hospital and Tuppence was the nurse sneaking him out to late night picture shows. Since the end of the war they've both fallen on hard times financially. Tuppence only thinks about money morning, noon, and night, as does Tommy. While nibbling away at a rather meagre tea Tuppence decides that they should do something about this destitute situation they are in immediately and form a joint venture, she likes the sound of that: "Two young adventurers for hire. Willing to do anything, go anywhere. Pay must be good. No unreasonable offer refused."

As luck would have it, after leaving Tommy a man called Whittington follows Tuppence out of the restaurant and asks for her help, if she would just come to his office tomorrow. The next day she arrives and things seem to be going smoothly enough until she gives the false name of Jane Finn as her own. Whittington explodes and tells Tuppence to leave after paying her rather handsomely. Meeting with Tommy they decide that maybe accidentally blackmailing people is the way to get some money, yet they itch to know why Whittington reacted so strongly to the name of Jane Finn. They place an ad in the local paper and the next day they have two replies, one from a man within the government going by the name of Mr. Carter, who wishes to hire them off the books, and another from an American, Julius Hersheimmer, a millionaire who is looking for his cousin Jane Finn, who disappeared after surviving the sinking of the Lusitania.

What becomes clear from these meetings is that there is an elaborate plot afoot and finding Jane Finn is the biggest priority, not only of Tommy and Tuppence, but Julius Hersheimmer, and a mysterious Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown is the real danger. No one knows who he really is or what he really looks like. He is the controller of a vast network of thugs and spies and he will not allow Tommy and Tuppence to get in his way, but perhaps he can use them for his own means. 

The Secret Adversary is the first book staring Agatha Christie's famed crime fighting duo, Tommy and Tuppence.  A few years back I was thinking of watching the series that ran in the 80s, Partner's in Crime, staring the always fabulous Francesca Annis, but I had the misfortune of watching the deathly flat production of Why Didn't They Ask Evans, which had the same cast, first. After that waste of a long evening I decided to shelve my plans of watching anything further with these stars. While I'm now thinking I might go and try the series, what it did give me was a rare experience. I had an Agatha Christie novel that I knew nothing about! Most books and stories have been adapted somehow and in someway in recent years to be part of Marple if they weren't already part of Poirot. So the only real experience I had of Tommy and Tuppence was the odd mash up they did of By the Pricking of My Thumb. So I had a miraculously clean slate on this one.

Oh, and how I loved how alive and vibrant Tommy and Tuppence are. They just jumped off the page radiating the energy and the witty banter that films like His Girl Friday are known for. It reminded me, more then a little, of the wonderful series by J.J. Murphy with Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley as a crime fighting duo, that is how quick and funny and rabid fire the dialogue was with our hero and heroine. Tuppence is a little English Dorothy Parker through and through. I'm sure Dorothy would have taken the money if she was unexpectedly blackmailing someone. The supporting characters didn't lack anything either, all the evil henchmen are nice and evil, while Julius Hersheimmer radiated "American." There's a broadness to the way Americans are depicted that can be a bit grating for us Americans who don't all have endless pocket books and a gun next to the cash, but Christie was still able to make Julius feel real, despite embodying this stereotype. The one flaw was that, after the amazing first chapter, Tommy and Tuppence are separated in their investigations, whether from expedience or fowl play, when they aren't with each other the book becomes a bit limp. Tommy and Tuppence are like a circuit, they need the other to spark.

Then I come to the newness of Christie as a writer. As I said before, she obviously doesn't have the fluidity that she would later develop, but here there was a marked improvement over The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Here the problem wasn't so much the particulars of writing but the style of the convoluted plot. Now, I could be doing a disservice to Christie, and the convoluted nature of the plot could be more a device, a red herring thrown out so that we don't suss out too early who the bad guy really is. Yet, there's a point when you realize that Christie had some demented need to not just throw everything into this novel, but everything and the kitchen sink, that makes you want to shake her and ask for restraint. There are abductions... three of them, false identities, amnesia, government conspiracies with missing documents and the looming threat of Communism. Um... just one of those would have been good, or at least, not that many abductions... with all these plot devices, the book veers a bit out of the cozy murder mystery genre and heads closer to espionage and a pre Cold War thriller. While I do enjoy that kind of story, overall, big government conspiracies and the fate of nations leaves me a little cold. I like my murder a little warmer, a little cosier, thank you very much.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Agatha Christie, Dorothy Parker, Francesca Annis, Golden Summer, J.J. Murphy, Lusitania, Marple, Mr. Brown, Partner's in Crime, Poirot, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Secret Adversary, Tommy and Tuppence

Today is just a BBC Miniseries news day. Shortly after I announced that we had an airdate set for Return to Cranford, PBS then followed it up with a DVD release date! On January 19th you could be the proud owner of the next chapter in the village of Cranford. My guess is that they will split the show up onto two consecutive Sunday nights, the 10th and the 17th of January, with the release on the 19th, as they have been known to do in the past. Great news for those who love repeat viewings of classic miniseries, which this is sure to be.

Need more details? Other than the fact it's 180 minutes and will have a 20 minute featurette called "Cranford in Detail." Let's look to the press release for "the official patter":

"Judi Dench, Imelda Staunton, Francesca Annis and Julia McKenzie return in the Emmy-winning drama based on the novels by Elizabeth Gaskell. Miss Matty's house is full of life and bustle. Her dream of having a child in the house has been realized in the birth of Tilly, daughter of her maid Martha and carpenter Jem. Elsewhere, the shadow of the railway still looms, but the line has been halted five miles outside of Cranford - a disaster as far as Captain Brown is concerned.

Meanwhile, as Mr. Buxton returns to town with his son, William, and his niece, Erminia. Miss Matty becomes concerned about another young person - Peggy Bell - who lives in an isolated cottage with her mother and domineering brother. She decides to intervene and engineers an invitation that will bring the four young people together. But when tragedy strikes, she fears she has opened a Pandora's box that Cranford will never recover from."

But not only was there Cranford news today... oh no! We also got Jane Austen Emma news! I recently reviewed (yesterday is recent right?) the new adaptation, indicating that it would be shortly stateside... well the wait to know when is over. I know the wait since yesterday has been unbearable for you! Anyway, the DVD will be out February 9th. Indicating that it will air sometime after Cranford and before the release date, around the 24th (confirmed on their facebook page, and yes, they have a facebook page, kind of shocking) till the 7th, indicating to me that they might be doing some "creative editing" to make it three one hour hour and twenty minute episodes versus four one hour... they do like there "creative editing," having done some heavy handed things in recent memory just to fit it in it's time slot or remove objectionable content... Prime Suspect anyone? Or all Captain Wentworth's scenes in Lyme Regis in the new Persuasion! But that's another rant, not the fun filled, yeah Emma that I'm here to announce. So yeah Emma! Can't wait for the extras either, hopefully that costume special will explain why they made Jodhi May all boxy.

Till the next announcement! I'm sure there can't be anymore today! Can there?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 10:54 PM 1 comments  

Labels: Captain Wentworth, Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell, Emma, Francesca Annis, Imelda Staunton, Jane Austen, Judi Dench, Julia McKenzie, PBS, Prime Suspect, Return to Cranford