Season 14 - The Jewel in the Crown (1984-1985)
This is the miniseries everyone holds up as the gold standard? THIS!?! This screed of hate where anyone viewed as "other" dies horrifically!?! THIS!?! I am honestly baffled by anyone loving this series. We are introduced to two lovely characters, Daphne Manners and Hari Kumar. Hari was born in India but educated in England at the same school as Daphne's brother. Returning home Hari is shocked by his decline in status and finds work at the local newspaper. Daphne is in India because all her family have died during the war and she can't volunteer anymore as an ambulance driver due to a heart condition and has been shipped off to her last living relative. Despite their differences love blossoms between Hari and Daphne and you think, I could really enjoy watching these characters for the next fourteen episodes defying the odds and finding a place for themselves in this world. Then after two of the fourteen episodes they make love only to be brutally attacked in the aftermath with Daphne being repeatedly raped. Hari's imprisoned and tortured for presumably being the rapist while Daphne ends up pregnant and dies in childbirth. After the third episode we're concentrating on an entirely different cast and the viewer is left with whiplash. Because they were obviously punished for daring to love outside the bounds of "proper society." This happens again and again. There's Barbie Batchelor, a queer coded disaffected missionary who is driven to madness because the object of her affection died by self-immolation. So we have two gays to bury in quick succession. Then there's Ahmed Kasim, the love child of Regé-Jean Page and Jason Momoa, who dies because he was making eyes at a white woman. The biggest "transgressor" though is Tim Pigott-Smith's Ronald Merrick. He is not only a closeted homosexual, but he dons brownface to get down with his bad self. Again, he is brutally killed. Although I would argue that he totally deserved it. This miniseries is so full of hate against the other that I don't know how anyone could like it. Sure, the scenery is amazing, the locations are to die for, but I don't actually want to see people die for them. This weird moral center is thrown off even more by the fact that if you're a woman who gets knocked up, well, as long as it's with an attractive white male, that's totally cool, even if you decide to have an abortion. I just don't get it. Was The Jewel in the Crown popular because the English love to relive the glory days of Empire and this shows that when they left everything went to shit? I honestly just don't get it. I was so looking forward to watching this show but slogging through thirteen hours of this hate just broke me. How can anyone watch this more than once let alone the rumored yearly viewing parties? Please, if there's something I'm missing please tell me because this is just hate on hate on hate and I hate it.
The very first thing I thought when I heard about this series was; "Can Jason Isaacs do the voice?" Because if he couldn't nail that studied yet somehow relaxed transatlantic accent there was literally no point to this miniseries. And the trailers they released didn't really confirm or deny this. Therefore I went into Archie blind with my fingers crossed. And somehow, I don't know how, Jason Isaacs did it. He pulled it off. You believed him to be Cary Grant, especially the older greying Cary. You were able to suspend disbelief for a few hours and learn about this very secretive man. Because Cary Grant was a secretive man. He believed his life was his life. He might have been a celebrity, one might even say one of the greatest stars ever, but no one really knew him. There were the rumors, was he gay? What about his drug use? And I give props to this series for not dodging any of those questions. They weren't interested in making a puff piece, they were interested in showing some truth, be it flattering or, well, not at all complimentary. The controlling Cary if you will. You came out feeling as if you really did know Cary Grant. Or at least more than you knew before. But you also have to keep in mind that having this based on Dyan Cannon's memoir you're getting it through the filter of her experiences. Therefore making sense of the fact that the best cast character on this show was Dyan's. Laura Aikman as Dyan isn't about suspending disbelief, it's about seeing Dyan living and breathing in this show. It was eerie to say the least. But by having Dyan kind of being the lens through which we see Cary my Dad who I was watching this with assumed that Dyan was the love of Cary's life and that they rode off into the sunset together, which isn't the case. At all. Dyan was Grant's fourth wife and their marriage only last three years. Which wasn't his shortest marriage, but it was far from his longest. But the importance of Dyan is that she brought Cary's only child into the world. Jennifer Grant became Cary's whole world. She was born in 1966 and after her birth he stopped acting. He was at the height of his career and he ended it to be a father. Which is the most amazing thing. He found the love he'd spent his life looking for. Because this show does a supreme job of showing the horrors her grew up with, the deprivation, the lies, the love he sought. He thought his mother was dead until he was thirty-one and found out his father had had her institutionalized when Cary was nine so that he could start a new family. The poor Archie Leach used vaudeville as his ticket to America and remade himself. Everything about his life was constructed. If there's one thing this show shows you is that the greatest role Cary Grant ever played was that of Cary Grant. To think that this man, this man who was always acting, was then an actor, it's astonishing the depths to which he was about reinvention. You might find him not as perfect as you'd hoped he was, but you will come away with awe at what he did.
Born to Be Posthumous by Mark Dery
I have so many ideas for theme months that only a fraction of them make it to fruition. That being said I feel that there are some that are so important that no matter what I have to do them; and that's how it is with Pride. I've been wanting to do this for so long and looking at the world today, at all the hate against the LGBTQIA+ community, I knew that this June, no matter what, I would celebrate pride with inclusive books; books that a lot of people would like you to not read. So with more bans and more just bullshit I wanted you all to know that I am an ally. Love is love and I love you and we all love books. So let's celebrate Pride together, and you know, if people start getting us down, throw a riot or two, because it's no longer the time for hollow gestures, it's the time for action.
