Season 47 - The Collection (2017)
Why was this on PBS!?! No really, I want to know, why was this on PBS!?! It was made by Amazon. It was released on Amazon. It was still on Amazon when PBS aired it eight months after it dropped and instead of having to wait seven weeks to realize this series was going nowhere you could have sat on your couch for almost seven hours and come to the same conclusion. This is actually worse than when Masterpiece randomly airs feature films because at least in some of those cases, especially in the early nineties, people didn't have access to those films. So while it felt like cheating just airing someone else's work, at least it was with the interest of their viewers in mind. Whereas here!?! Everyone has access to Amazon. Literally everyone. I could have forgiven them this weird decision if the show actually was something. But it isn't. This show is nothing. The Collection has an amazingly talented cast but the story, what was the story!?! Was it about the Sabine fashion house being Nazis collaborators? Was it about the family's complete ineptitude at covering up a murder? Which makes me think that they couldn't have been collaborators because they were just too damn stupid and they so would have been caught. You don't bury a body in the backyard of a house you own! And then, when it's discovered, you don't move it! Nothing here is straightforward. Everything is told in the most roundabout and confusing manner possible. For example, one of the girls in the seamstress shop secretly had a baby. Yet the father of the baby appears to be the closeted brother played by Tom Riley who's the genius behind the house's designs. How did he hook up with a woman? Especially when his current boy toy is fertilizing his mother's garden in the country? Well, your guess is as good as mine. Because, they don't tell us. Even if this show hadn't been rightly cancelled I don't think they would have ever given us answers. They were too interested in things looking pretty, the costumes just so, the photographs in the vein of Funny Face, just right. The irony of a show about fashion being all surface isn't lost on me. Though I honestly think it's lost on them. I really think they thought they were making something important, something of worth, something that made a statement. That statement was look how easy it is to waste Amazon's money. The only thing I am here for is that we are firmly in the era where Frances de la Tour is choosing her roles based on how much she gets to sit around and what delicious foods she gets to eat. She's doing a Maggie Smith, with just as barbed a tongue, but a lot more noms. Vanity Fair, Professor T, she's just living her best life. Sadly, this show wasn't up to her abilities, but at least I could take solace that at least someone enjoyed this series, because I sure as hell didn't.
Two series about the advent of department stories debuted within six months of each other and if I had to pick one I would not have picked Mr Selfridge, Jeremy Piven and Andrew Davies must accept my apologizes, because I would have picked The Paradise. Created by the team behind Lark Rise to Candleford with many of the same actors, this was another loose adaptation of a classic that captured my heart and swiftly became one of my most favorite series ever. There was just such heart and romance and, unlike Mr Selfridge, there was more than a little of the Upstairs, Downstairs dynamic. Here we really got stuck into the lives of those working at The Paradise as well as those running and funding the roadshow. We saw the haves versus the have nots and how a major department store economically impacted it's small business competitors, a concern that is even more relevant today. When Denise Lovett arrives on the scene she becomes the focal point of all that is happening. She straddles both worlds, he uncle having a business that is struggling because of The Paradise, while she herself takes a job at The Paradise, and is soon seen by the owner, John Moray, as a girl after his own heart. She's smart and a self-starter and soon steals his heart. Of course there's a love triangle and many complications. This wouldn't be a show worthy of Masterpiece if there wasn't. But what I really liked most about this series is it wasn't afraid to go dark. As in, there's a murder! Arthur Darvill of Doctor Who fame gets involved in The Paradise when his storefront is bought by the expanding store. His style doesn't mesh well with the glamour Moray sells and, well, one thing leads to another, and his body is found in the river. The culprit is of course revealed, which goes into the ties that bind us as a community and as a company and as a people together. Just writing this makes me sad all over again that such a lovely show was cancelled too soon. But I'd rather have it cancelled too soon than have it overstay it's welcome, which is sadly what happened to Lark Rise to Candleford.
Major Herbert Rowse Armstrong was a man convicted and hanged for the murder of his wife in 1921 and the attempted murder of his business rival, Oswald Martin, later the same year. He would probably have gotten away with the murder of his wife if not for his attack on his rival, whose father-in-law was the local chemist from whom Armstrong bought the poison used in both cases supposedly to deal with the dandelions in his yard. The practically nonexistent dandelions. The father-in-law put two and two together and the rest, as they say, is history. The case inspired both Dorothy L. Sayers and Frances Iles, AKA Anthony Berkeley Cox. But it was Michael Kitchen and his genius who brought this man so fully to life. First off, let it be known, I am a Michael Kitchen stan. I fell in love with his understated method of crime solving in Foyle's War and worked my way through his back catalog. If you haven't seen him as Branwell Brontë in The Brontes of Haworth I question your dedication to the actor, your love of British miniseries, and your interest in the Brontës themselves. Yes, the absolute fro of hair and mutton chops for days may at first distract you, but once you hear that voice, well, you are in for another classic Kitchen performance. And it's that ability to reel you in, to side with him that this drama uses so deviously. For the first quarter of this miniseries you identify so strongly with Kitchen as Armstrong that you can see why he'd kill his wife. She's portrayed as a demanding harridan. She's unmanageable and untenable and by being given just this glimpse into this couple's life we see that Armstrong really only had one way out. But that's the point, we are given just this slice of life. His views, his opinions, his struggles. Then, after she is dispatched, we see a different side of him. Maybe his wife wasn't how he portrayed her to us. Little hints of who he really is starts to seep in. The womanizing, the venereal diseases. All this comes as a shock and makes you think, how could I have gotten the wrong end of the stick so thoroughly. That is all down to the genius of Kitchen. Once we know the truth and he sets his eyes on Oswald Martin, brilliantly played by David Thewlis the series shifts once more into a dark comedy with Armstrong's ham-handed attempts to get ride of his rival. First he attempts to bump off Martin with poisoned chocolates. But not being able to witness the ingestion leads to a bit of a mix-up. Therefore the second attempt is done under his watchful eye at his home. In other words, his desire to destroy his rival makes him show his hand. This leads to much palaver. Did Armstrong just try to kill him? Wait, were those chocolates him? And then the father-in-law putting it all together. Brilliant. The timing leads to it being humorous without being overplayed. The trio arriving to report their findings to the police is comic gold but also, just three desperate people trying to save themselves. Needless to say, Armstrong doesn't get away with it. But, for a moment, Kitchen made you wish he did.
The Sisterhood by Tasha Alexander
The French Bookshop Murder by Greg Mosse
I just learned something about this show that makes me want to like it more. Jenna Lamia who plays Judy Cooper on Resident Alien developed, wrote, and executive produced The Perfect Couple. She is so talented and such a force of nature. I mean, have you seen how professionally she digs a grave? And yet, I can not bring myself to actually give a fuck about this show. I mean, if the best part about your show is the opening credits, I think you have a problem. The Perfect Couple hons in on what all trashy prestige television does, rich, pretty people getting put through the blender. Here they were just able to get bigger names and luck out by getting two actors from White Lotus. Nicole Kidman has kind of made this her niche, Big Little Lies, The Undoing, Nine Perfect Strangers, and The Perfect Couple. I think it's time for her to move on. Nancy Meyers Coastal Grandmother is over with and you need more than a pretty house to make a show. But damn, that house is pretty. The people though? They might be pretty on the outside, but are horrible on the inside. Though speaking of the outside, there's some serious WTF going on with plastic surgery. Isabelle Adjani is unrecognizable and as my brother perfectly phrased it, Nicole Kidman looks like she's had a Photoshop filter applied. Whereas Liev Schreiber just wandered onto set and they put hipster glasses on him and called it a day. Damn the double standards of Hollywood! The main problem here aside from the fact they don't believe in fair play and there are so many things that are dropped or unexplained is Amelia Sacks. Our protagonist played by Eve Hewson is about to marry into this privileged world and is to be the viewer's surrogate, and yet I have no idea why she's marrying Benji. She obviously doesn't love him. Yes, there's the, before her mother dies she gets to see her daughter married angle, but I felt like there was something deeper. Like she needed Benji's money or connections to help her mother out. Amelia obviously cares more for her murdered maid of honor than she does for her future spouse, and yet the whole cancelling of the wedding is just like a plot point that's not quite hit. It's an afterthought. And then throughout the show she becomes more and more irrelevant until the end when she and Benji just shrug and walk away from each other. Um, what now!?! All this production, all this fanfare, that ends on a whimper not a bang... I think that is a perfect metaphor for the whole show. It started strong, it started joyous, I mean, look to those opening credits, and then, by the end you literally didn't care. This was six episodes and it felt overly long. It lacked focus and didn't play fair. But then again, it was about foul play and at least it felt like Dakota Fanning was having fun.
When I heard they were making a miniseries about the last woman executed in England I decided then and there that there would be no way I would watch this series. It would be too depressing. And then I decided to drop my BritBox subscription. I will never let a single day go to waste with a streaming subscription so I started to look for short shows to fill in this two week gap. After exhausting all the Agatha Christie I hadn't yet watched and hearing rave reviews about A Cruel Love, I caved. I blame Bessie Carter. I can do four episodes of about anything so I should have been able to handle this. Well, I should have stuck to my gut instincts. This was beyond depressing. A sort of fever dream of domestic abuse filmed with an almost Lynchian glamour of a woman battered and bloody and bruised. Yet there felt like there wasn't any grounding in reality. They just showed little vignettes of Ruth's life and her love affair with her "victim" David Blakely. Though I think "love" is a stretch. There was no love, cruel or otherwise here, it was people colliding into, using, and destroying each other in whatever way they could. The show seems to be wanting to say that it was the unspoken rules of society that Ruth dared to breach by aiming to better her life that lead to her death, which, while partially true, in that it lead to her being railroaded at trial, doesn't take into account her upbringing at all. She was raised to believe that all she deserved from life was abuse. She suffered at the hands of her father and then all her lovers, even the one "good guy" who basically turned this broken woman into a killer. And yet this is all told elliptically. In little flashes. The horrors of her childhood are mentioned in a throwaway line from her sister, who it should be noted was another victim of men having been raped and impregnated by their father. I just felt like this REAL LIFE STORY has something so important to say. It changed the law, as she was the last woman executed, and within a decade the death penalty was abolished. And yet the weight isn't there. It's more snippets of her degradation while still looking glamorous. There's no real history, what history I read about was thanks to the internet, and seriously, someone has to get onto how Ruth's mother was connected to the Cambridge Five. Now that's a true crime show I do want to watch. But this. This was a woman whose life was destroyed by men and her story is told and controlled by men. She doesn't really factor in until the end. She's about an eye for an eye and a stiff upper lip and not showing how her repeated abuse, her trauma, is what led her to this desperate act. She doesn't want to be seen as a victim and that is exactly how abusers get away with their crimes. They make their victims carry the blame and shame. Only at the end does she realize that she was sticking to a morality the others weren't playing by and by then it's too late to save herself. But maybe that's what makes this work, on some level, at least in the eyes of the reviewers who raved, because it was men who controlled, ruined, and then ended her life, and therefore, it's not really about her, it's about the patriarchy. Personally, I think it should have been about Ruth. But maybe I'm alone in this assessment.
The St. Ambrose School for Girls by Jessica Ward
This actually all started with me thinking I should reread Donna Tartt's The Secret History. You will soon find out that this didn't happen. I had every intention of doing so, but, well, maybe I should just trust my first impressions and not bow down to everyone telling me that I was wrong about The Secret History. Not every book is for everyone. And it just wasn't for me. But when I had plans to reread said book I started plotting out books to read that are set in academia. They didn't have to be dark academia, in the expected sense, they could have just a murder or two and no magic. That's dark right? But of course there would be dark academia as well. There's a reason it's so popular and I, for once, have fallen for a populist trend. Though I haven't gotten to the point where I'm redecorating to bring those vibes into my everyday life. I don't feel the need to have skulls on display. At least yet. Anything could happen. So I started gleefully composing reading lists of books that fit the loose and narrow definitions of dark academia and pretty soon I had such a long reading list I could do nothing but read this genre for years and not run out of books. Therefore I picked the ones I was most interested in, or in some cases, decided to read and belatedly realized that it was dark academia, and before I knew it I had three months plotted out. Or a summer.... And there's nothing more delicious then spending time when you don't have to be in school reading about school.... And thus Summer School was born. Get ready for some Leigh Bardugo, Olivie Blake, Lev Grossman, Maureen Johnson, Cari Thomas, Rebecca Yarros, and more! Because school is in session! 
Death at Morning House by Maureen Johnson
The Serpent Dance by Sofia Slater
The Great Deceiver by Elly Griffiths
The Mitford Scandal by Jessica Fellowes
The Mitford Murders by Jessica Fellowes
When The Talented Mr. Ripley came out in 1999 it was a national obsession. I don't know how best to put it but that it took over everyone like some weird Italian Jazz fever. Everyone had the soundtrack. It became the soundtrack of our lives, like Trainspotting in 1996 or Rushmore in 1998 or Garden State in 2004. There was no escape. You were going to listen to Jude Law and Matt Damon sing "Tu Vuo' Fa L'Americano" and you were going to like it! In my house the obsession obviously went the literary route with my mother asking for all the Patricia Highsmith Ripley books for Christmas, which was a tall order because bookstores couldn't keep them on the shelves. But this was something I could totally get behind. Because, for me, I just didn't like the film. It was too many big names trying to be edgy and independent and it just felt false. I didn't buy into the conceit that Matt Damon was a genius of deception and could get away with all this. Jason Bourne yes, Tom Ripley no. Which is why when they announced they were making a miniseries starring Andrew Scott I got beyond excited. Kermit flailing his little froggy arms and running around the house to tell everyone excited. Because if there's one actor I love out there who is magnificent in everything it's Andrew Scott. What's more, his portrayal of Jim Moriarty on Sherlock showed just how menacing he can be with just a look. How his emotions can turn on a dime. How he can go from loveable goof to imminent threat in the span of a heartbeat. Andrew Scott is a chameleon, as is Tom Ripley. He was born to play this role. So I had no doubt Andrew Scott could deliver. I just didn't expect it to be as magnificent as it is. This is as far from the 1999 film as it is possible to be. Going back to the noir roots of the novel and filming the entire miniseries in black and white except for one very deliberate and perfect splash of red, I love you Lucio! The choice to film it in black and white might have been what made Showtime balk but just to Netflix's gain. This show, not even taking into account the magnificent pacing and acting, might be the most beautiful show I have ever watched. The crystalline detail of Italy. The pores in each hewn rock step. The amazing depth of field. I couldn't believe this kind of mastery of detail and light and dark could exist and immediately looked up the director and the cinematographer. Well, they're both Oscar winners if you were wondering, Steven Zaillian having written Schindler's List, and therefore making that pop of red make so much sense. I've often looked at old books of Italian masterpieces and the black and white reproductions of pictures and been confused, because I never thought they did the work justice. But it was the fault of the book not the art, because not only is every frame of this a work of art, but the art itself is masterful. You get a different appreciation for it without the color to distract from form. If you don't believe me look to the third episode, "III Sommerso." This episode details Tom and Dickie's trip to Sanremo where out on the water Tom kills Dickie. This entire episode is almost completely shot in the boat and has virtually no dialogue. Yet even second is tight. It's so taut that you feel yourself holding your breath. For forty-nine minutes you are on the edge of your seat and yet it feels like it's no time at all. Or possibly forever. And that's how long this show will stay with me. Forever. Though I wouldn't be adverse to another season or four... They did a bit of setup for the next book in the most meta of fashions...
Celebrating All Creatures Great and Small: For the Love of the Yorkshire Dales by All Creatures Great and Small 
Invisible Helix by Keigo Higashino
Newlywed Brits move to New York for husband's job. Husband cheats with coworker. Husband lies and says it was a one time thing. Wife finds out it wasn't. They go on vacation. The trip of a lifetime. Wife doesn't want to repeat the patterns she saw with her parents so decides her husband needs to have an accident. But fate intervenes. They run into the mistress and her boyfriend and the mistress is killed. Things get even messier. The police get involved. Mistress's boyfriend is arrested. Mistress's boyfriend is released. Wife kills mistress's boyfriend. Husband has another mistress. Husband doesn't have a clue. Wife frames him for the murder she herself committed. Wife presumably gets the divorce she wanted all along. Wife writes book. Hopefully it's a bestseller. There's nothing that complicated about this series. It's a simple tale of revenge. But it's the class of acting and the way that Jenna Coleman makes you root for Liv the entire time that make it worth watching. You feel how she has reached her last straw and so want her to kill her husband. As the six episodes unfold you keep having delayed satisfaction. The husband didn't die, but the mistress did. The husband didn't die, but the mistress's boyfriend did. Finally tying it all up by the husband going to prison for the crime the wife committed was such poetic justice. Now some people might say, it was kind of cruel to kill the mistress, as it was really the husband at fault. Well, not in my book. First, it takes two to cheat. Second, yes, I know he was emotionally manipulating her and giving her false hope but again, it takes two to cheat. Third, and most important, when the mistress meets the wife they have a moment of catharsis, a moment where they bond, and after that, like almost right after that, she tries to convince the husband to run away with her. She befriended Liv and then betrayed her, death is her sentence. As for the boyfriend? He deserved to die because he's Eric Balfour. I have hated him since the moment I set eyes on him. I actually would have been fine with him being imprisoned, he could have rotted in jail with his friend Danny Masterson, but he died, and that brings me joy. So much joy. I should maybe make Liv caving in his skull a screensaver... As for framing her husband for the mistress's murder? Well, that's just the cherry on top of the cake. And personally, I'm kind of surprised she got away with it. No one on this show has the bare minimum of knowledge about digital forensics and the omnipresence of cameras. I mean, seriously, what century do you live in? Plus you're from England, which has one of the most monitored cities in the world. But I take solace in the knowledge that if the cops actually were able to access deleted emails on the company's servers they would just implicate the husband more. But it's the final message that is the most important. Liv built her life around a man, she put her life in his hands, and his actions made her a desperate creature. He did make her do this, to an extent. But what is under that is this world women live in, a world where we are constantly in danger, where we have to think about our safety at all times, and enough is enough. Her husband thought she'd wait for him, her husband is one of the many faces of the problem women live with daily. We aren't going to take shit anymore. No more dishonesty, no more danger, we all, like Liv, have no more fucks to give.
Tony and Susan by Austin Wright
A Cold Highland Wind by Tasha Alexander
What Waits in the Woods by Terri Parlato
Public Anchovy #1 by Mindy Quigley
Coconut Drop Dead by Olivia Matthews
