Season 27 - Bramwell Series 3 (1997-1998)
Growing up in a house where Masterpiece Theatre was always on in the background it's interesting what impressions remain of shows I only glimpsed in passing or watched a few minutes of. Over the years I had caught bits and pieces of Bramwell but my memory of the show boiled down to a room with bare brick walls with metal beds against them that looked like a warehouse. That would be Eleanor's hospital, The Thrift. Eleanor Bramwell is a doctor who, due to sexual discrimination, can't get a decent job, let alone actually enter an operating room. And who, because she tells female patients the truths their husbands are trying to hide and eschews unnecessary operations, is viewed as problematic. So in walks an angel investor and The Thrift is born. I can't help but feel that this was England's answer to ER. When ER debuted in 1994 it took the world by storm. A year later Bramwell premiered and since that time everyone has been wondering, what the hell was going on with this show. There literally isn't a likable character on it. They are all bombastic and problematic and have raging god complexes. This applies most to Eleanor. You want to root for her because she's breaking new ground, but she's annoyingly dogmatic until something goes wrong and then she's even more dogmatic about finding a solution. Which sometimes never happens. Her patients die. A lot. Though this just plays into the melodrama and Gothic nature of the show. Because if you thought that England's answer to ER would be mildly normal, well you don't know those crazy Brits. Amputations, ovariectomies, asylums, child prostitution, abortion, self-harm, transphobia, murder, wrongful imprisonment, faith healers, rape, you get it all with Eleanor Bramwell! And everything is handled in a barely contained hysteria, because the melodrama is what this is all about. And the melodrama is the only thing consistent in the show. Each season they felt they wanted to go in a new direction. Season one was setting the story, season two, well, it was extra asshole Eleanor, which, given she is a doctor makes sense, but given you're supposed to like her, not the smartest move, season three the show becomes more "realistic" due to the purchase of a handheld camera and character driven episodes, and season four, the less said about the fever dream that is season four where half the cast is gone without explanation and the show decides it wants to be really gritty with a vibe that can only be described as The Crimson Petal and the White meets From Hell well, the better. This show had it's moments, mainly between Eleanor and her father that were sweet and hopeful and showed a functional if fractious family that was of a class not often depicted on screen. Too bad its legacy is for the more wild moments. Even Google's AI overview agrees. And that's a bad sign.
Ah, The Cinder Path, I think this might have been my first foray into Catherine Cookson territory. There's a chance that this other movie I was obsessed with might have been written by Catherine Cookson, but I have yet to figure out which one or even if it is by her. Let me know in the comments below if you have a detailed knowledge of films that are about farm girls who look vaguely like Kathy Ireland who get involved with their boss's son/nephew and have a magical summer together but she ends up pregnant and he goes back to his friends... You would literally be solving one of the mysteries of my life. Back to The Cinder Path. So there's one reason and one reason only I watched The Cinder Path, and that's Lloyd Owen. So I've always been obsessed with The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Like hardcore obsessed. Like I have a fan magazine actually signed by Indy himself, that would be Sean Patrick Flanery to everyone else. Well when I was rewatching the show a few years back now I was all, who is that hot actor playing Professor Henry Jones, Sr., the role iconically created by Sean Connery? The answer was Lloyd Owen. So I started looking up other things he'd been in around the time he was Indy's dad. I vaguely remembered him in Coupling, but The Cinder Path looked interesting. Also Catherine Zeta-Jones from around the time of The Darling Buds of May! Interesting fact, she was also on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles if you were interested in other facts from that show. I have lots of facts from that show. LOTS. Anyway, this is pure Catherine Cookson, slightly over the top, I mean, love saves our hero from the shrapnel that could either move towards his heart and kill him or away from his heart and save him. It's so melodramatic it's kind of ridiculous but also hits the spot just right when you're in the mood. The only real complaint I had for this miniseries is that Catherine Zeta-Jones spent way too much time on horses and "the cinder path" which was a form of punishment didn't look that punishing. I wanted more, walking on hot coals, this was kind of, could they at least look like they're in pain?
