Season 46 - The Durrells in Corfu (2016)
The Durrells in Corfu is a series whose existence defies explanation other than a starring vehicle for Keeley Hawes, which I would normally wholy agree with, just not in this case. The thing is, in 2005 Simon Nye wrote the delightful movie, My Family and Other Animals, adapting the book of the same name by Gerald Durrell. A mere decade later he revisited the exact same subject matter but made it into a series. It's the same team just with prettier actors! Embrace the glow up! Imelda Staunton is out, Keeley Hawes is in! And while I would have liked to have spent four seasons with the cast of the movie, I did not enjoy spending four seasons with this iteration of the Durrells. The overwhelming problem is that this show boils down to two concepts; English exceptionalism and mom needing a man. Time and time again the Durrells think they know best, and while they are proven wrong over and over again, they don't grow from their experiences, instead by the end they are putting on a show of how much they've learned from Corfu when really it's just patronizing the locals. And it is oh so painful to watch. This show smacks of jingoism and now I get why the Queen said it was her favorite television show. But moving beyond the racism, there's the sexism. Oh dear lord. While it might be funny to have the writer Lawrence Durrell, who wrote rather racy literature, to boil all of one's problems down to sex, I just couldn't stand it. Not a second went by in this show where he didn't declaim that all of his mother's problems would just evaporate if she just got herself a man. While yes, during this period in history, a lot of a woman's financial stability relied on having a husband, I think Louisa was doing the best that she could. Why would she burden herself with another male? She has two sons who are insufferable asses, aside from being misogynistic, a self-centered daughter, and only one child who is delightful and his only crime is curiosity. I honestly do not get how people not only liked this show but loved it. I could barely get through it. There are literally only two episodes I can think on fondly, all the rest I want to pretend I never saw. Each and every single episode created a new aspect of these characters for me to despite. Let's take Leslie played by Callum Woodhouse who went on to play a slightly tamer version of the same character on All Creatures Great and Small. So his girlfriend gets pregnant and he fully gaslights her. It's not his, she couldn't be pregnant, is she sure she's pregnant, oh, it's totally not his. And the story is framed in such a way that we are to find it humorous and to side with Leslie. A man during this time could walk away from his responsibilities and just pick up his life elsewhere, whereas a woman would be destroyed. And yet we are to side with the man!?! The more I watched this show the more I thought that Simon Nye himself has to be sexist because how could you even write this if you didn't believe it? I just, ugh, I can't with this show. I am an anglophile and this was just too in your face about the greatness of England. I mean, they are on Corfu, maybe celebrate Corfu a little!?! Don't always deride it. But then, if this show was boiled down to one concept it is derision. Derision of women, derision of others, and, even derision of the audience because they don't give a shit about wasting your time.
Wives and Daughters is the most nearly perfect miniseries that exists that I can not watch. Based on Elizabeth Gaskell's unfinished novel of the same name it is a perfect compromise between fans of Austen and the Brontës. Because the world sucks and feels the need to always pit women against each other, for the longest time you had to identify as either an Austen fan or a Brontës fan, you just couldn't be both. Which is bullshit and where Gaskell enters the frame. She's like Austen with politics or the Brontës with more balls. She revels in a happy ending and social satire, much like Austen, but unlike Austen she deals with weightier subjects and, like her friend Charlotte Brontë, is willing to go a bit broody and bleak when the story requires it. In simpler terms, she's totally willing to kill characters that you love and have no regrets about it. Which is why I have such a problem watching this miniseries almost to the point I just can not watch it. Which pains me because I love it so very much. The thing is, I am perfectly comfortable watching Tom Hollander die over and over again. I even once had to watch Tom Hiddleston do the dirty deed. What I can't handle is Michael Gambon's reaction to Tom Hollander's death. Hollander is after all playing Gambon's eldest son. It is, to me, the most accurate portrayal of grief I have ever seen and it just rips open my very soul. Just even thinking about it makes my heart hurt. And this annoys me all the more because I didn't much care for Hollander's character, but he was so beautifully acted and pathetic and poignant. But where there is love, there is pain. And Wives and Daughters is probably the closest Gaskell ever got to writing a straight-up love story. Sure, she does go on about the inter-dynamics of mixing a family, but in the end, it's the love of two characters, Roger and Molly, that makes this perhaps the best miniseries I have ever seen. Even more than Andrew Davies's other beloved adaptation, Pride and Prejudice, this broke and mended my heart a hundred times over and left me nearly satisfied. For some reason Davies decided to focus on the fact that Roger's first love with Molly's stepsister, Cynthia, was more about attraction, whereas the love between Roger and Molly was more a meeting of the minds and companionship and mutual respect. I feel that they are soul mates, and in need of a good snog, thank you very much. True love wins the day, so let the curtain close on a kiss. And right there is why this is only nearly perfect. Because Roger and Molly never kiss. They have their HEA, the times, they are a changing, and yet, there is no true satisfaction. I don't know if this is because Andrew Davies had to create the ending himself. Usually left to his own devices he brings something to a miniseries that otherwise would be lacking, I'm thinking in particular of the songs in Tipping the Velvet, which also starred Keeley Hawes. Here he's so close. The proposal, the rain, the admission of love, and then the lack of a kiss. It just doesn't work. Which is why it's best I don't watch this miniseries. It angers and destroys me in equal measure.
As a book lover I am intrigued by what books are touchstones with my friends. What book was their everything when they were growing up? Because everyone has some book that is the backbone of their personality and often they read it at a young age way before they should have. When discussing this with my British friends it's even more intriguing because there are books they read that were nowhere near as popular Stateside and some that were never even available here, and yes, I'm mainly thinking of Enid Blyton. Here everyone will talk about The Chronicles of Narnia, while there they're all about The Dark Is Rising Sequence. The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham is one of those books, loved overseas but overlooked here. The 1960s film adaptation, The Village of the Damned, was hugely successful, which is how it's known here. But just the film, not the source material. In fact, while this adaptation was put up on Acorn originally as The Midwich Cuckoos within a month they renamed it Midwich Cuckoos: Village of the Damned because apparently Americans are that ignorant. And at the moment I wouldn't really argue with that. The important thing was that two and a half years after it was released in the UK I was finally able to watch this stunning science fiction exploration of what life is like now starring Keeley Hawes. Hawes plays the gender swapped Dr. Zellaby played by the incomparable George Sanders in the film. Though gender swapping the role adds so much to the understanding of this adaptation and to the horrors of the story told as seen from a female perspective. Because while previous adaptations have focused on the malevolent children this one isn't just about that. It's far more about female autonomy and how these women are impregnated against their will, forced to carry the babies to term, even going so far as to show how the unborn children are able to take control of the women's bodies so that they are unable to have abortions, and then are forced to live in a police state where they raise "their" children. While I'm sure a lot of people out there are like, well, that's not likely to happen, we're not living in The Handmaid's Tale yet... I counter that the reason this is so powerful is that it is exactly a scenario that could play out. I mean, take away the alien aspect, and it's a government forcing women to bear children and then monitoring their every move. That is totally plausible and as more and more rights get stripped away, terrifyingly likely. What ups this version though is having Dr. Zellaby go from a Gordon to a Susannah. Having the interface between the government, the children, and the mothers be a mother herself adds another layer to this. Add in that she herself has a secret about how hard she handled becoming a mother, and well, the impact of this series is all that more powerful. And as for the children? Oh, they are still very much terrifying and deserve what they get, but at the same time it's interesting because while they are a hive mind they actually do have individuality as Dr. Zellaby points out to her granddaughter Evie that she has tastes in ice cream different than the whole, that there are predilections. They are really evil only as a whole and individually they could be good. So what does this show teach us? Mob mentality is real and dangerous and the government want to control us. Especially if we're female. I can't think of anything more spot on. Terrifying but spot on.
Adaptations of books were abundant this year. So much so that even if I watched a show this year if I knew it was getting another season I saved it for the future. Which means, yes, I loved Murderbot, I'm just not talking about it. Yet. Because Ruth Ellis only got four episodes to tell her life story so she was one and done. Though damn. I really relate so hard to a character that's head is full of old television theme songs and doesn't want to make eye contact. That being Murderbot, not Ruth Ellis. Though that could have been an interesting twist in that depressing story. And because I'm me I watched a lot of British adaptations this year which meant that there were several actors who've made multiple appearances here. Keeley Hawes crushed it on The Midwhich Cuckoos AND Miss Austen where she costarred in both with Synnove Karlsen, once playing her mother and once playing the same character but obviously older. As for Alfred Enoch? So delightful in Miss Austen and then so amusingly unhinged in The Couple Next Door. But don't think these weird reoccurrences were limited to actors, oh no! Neston Park in Wiltshire was owned by Lady Tressilian in Towards Zero AND Lord Tony Baddingham in Rivals. Now that is a showdown I'd like to watch. Or how about we just sign Anjelica Huston up for a role on Rivals. I think she'd be perfect in how she chews the scenery. I mean that has to be why they just cast Rupert Everett! So here's to all the books adapted this year and all the rest to come. What adaptations have you been enjoying this year? Or dare I ask, which adaptations did you despise? I'm physically recoiling at the thought of ANOTHER Tommy and Tuppence adaptation.
Sometimes there is an adaptation so perfect that you don't know which came first for you, reading the book or watching the adaptation. This is how it is for me with The Moonstone, the two are forever intertwined and my story is a mystery even to myself. On the shelves of our library cum television room we had the complete set of the Franklin Library's Masterpieces of Mystery, The Moonstone being one of the volumes, with it's faux red leather binding and colorfully garish illustration on the cover. As an aside, seeing as The Moonstone laid the groundwork for the entire detective genre if the Franklin Library hadn't included it it would have been a major oversight. Now the mystery becomes did I pick up that volume prior to one Sunday night when I was ensconced in my corner of the couch and watched a few minutes of The Moonstone with my mother or not? I remember sitting there so clearly, the warm light, the copy of The Moonstone on the shelf near my right shoulder. I'm pretty sure I didn't watch more than a few minutes of the movie because I was all about reading the book before watching the adaptation. At that time it was a strict rule in my life. But did I bend the rules? Later events might indicate I did... Maybe I'll claim that I was sleepwalking like Franklin Blake? Eventually I did pick up The Moonstone to read and the entire time I kept thinking, damn, have I read this before? I swear I've read this before... Or had I just watched the movie? This is compounded by the fact that when reading the book the character of the old house steward Gabriel Betteredge came into my mind as the incomparable Peter Vaughn. He was just there, in my head, and I accepted it as fact. Fast forward to me watching or perhaps re-watching the film and Peter Vaughn IS in it as Betteredge. Thinking of this which came first the chicken or the egg mystery just does my head it. But one thing is confirmed no matter what order events happened in, this is the best adaptation of The Moonstone you could hope to find. It's literally my headcanon. 
If you're a reader of my blog you're pretty sure in the knowledge of my love of books. Oh, who am I kidding, I'm obsessed with them! You know it, I know it, everyone is assured of this fever that grips me, especially workers at local bookstores. This blog is one of the many ways I express my love of the written word. But there are other ways! Oh yes, dear readers. Now, I'm not talking interpretive dance, which I would be awful at, but art, which I am good at. Some of you who've gotten to know me better through this lovely thing called the internet know that this blog is just my little side project, my little bit of fun, while what I really do is Graphic Design. After slogging through the University of Wisconsin-Madison and getting out with a BS in Art and a BA in Theatre, I realized that I didn't actually have any marketable skills, what with not knowing how to work a computer. Hence I went back to school at our wonderful technical college and now I have some wicked skills and some outlets for my bookishness. I don't always make my projects about books, it sometimes just happens, just like you just happen to breath. Books are in my blood and I need to express this, and what better way then through art. 
This piece here is a glamour spread for an annual report. Annual reports are sent out by a company to their investors to show how they've done in the previous fiscal year. There's charts and graphs and what have you. I chose to do mine on Penguin Publishing, surprise, surprise. I also got the comment from my teacher that he would never let me near any of his copies of Charles Dickens because of what I did to mine, aka, the little penguin on the page. But let me ease your fears, I did not deface a book that could have been read. I went to my local bookstore and searched through old penguin books, because it just HAD to be a penguin book. I found an old copy of David Copperfield that was barely held together any longer, the pages were falling out. But falling out pages was just what I needed! So rest assured, I took a book and gave it new life, I did not murder it!
What I am most proud of, though, is my series of Elizabeth Gaskell DVDs. My teacher is a huge movie fan, and a fan of the movies 
For my second piece I have Margaret Hale as played by Daniela Denby-Ashe. As you can see, she has just suffered an injury at the hands of the strikers and holds a newspaper, which details, not only the strike, but the threat of Irish workers and the love of the home she left behind. The background is of cotton, because when she first enters Thronton's Marlborough Mills she says: "I believe I have seen hell and it’s white. It’s snow-white." Not only did this piece win an award as part of the DVD set, the illustration of Margaret also won a separate award. And not to slight Cynthia, this is my favorite of the three.
For my final piece I have Cranford depicted as Miss Deborah Jenkyns as played by the wondrous Eileen Atkins. I don't think I captured her as well in the face as the others because you don't immediately think that it's her. Though I do love how it turned out, in particular the lace (which kept crashing my computer), because "this is no occasion for a sport!There’s lace at stake!" This also won an award as a separate illustration.
