onsdag 23 oktober 2013

From Time to Time - Not quite Downton for kids (but very nice)

When you see there's a film around starring Maggie Smith and Hugh Bonneville, scripted by Julian Fellowes and obviously taking place in historical times, you could be forgiven for thinking that its main market is meant to be the Downton crowd. And superficially, there are similarities between Downton and the time-travelling tale slash cosy ghost story From Time to Time. After all, it contains these elements:

  • A matriarch with a touch of steel and a heart of gold (Maggie Smith)
  • A benevolent but somewhat clueless patriarch (Hugh Bonneville)
  • An atmospheric country house that's belonged to the same family for centuries
  • A wise housekeeper
  • A romance between a morally upstanding servant (gardener, in this case) and a loyal maid who stands by him in times of distress
  • A handsome, unreliable manservant
Apart from Smith and Bonneville, there are other familiar Downton faces. Allen Leech (Branson) plays the righteous gardener, and I'm sure I glimpsed Mrs Bird in the kitchens. But what a Downton fan suffering from withdrawal symptoms must bear in mind when watching this film is that it's really in another genre entirely. From Time to Time is a classical children's story, and the adults above serve mostly as a backdrop for the adventures of the child protagonists. It is big on atmosphere, negligible on character development. It contains tales of fires, hidden passages and lost treasure and has more in common with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe than with any costume drama featuring grown-up concerns such as marriage, inheritance, thwarted desire, work rivalry and, er, cricket.

The central character, a boy called Tolly, is sent to stay a while at his paternal grandmother's house, a grand place called Green Knowe. It is the end of the second world war, and Tolly's mother is trying to trace his father, who is missing in action. Tolly refuses to admit that his father might be dead and is initially suspicious of his grandmother, who didn't think his mum was good enough for his dad (and still doesn't). However, grandmother and grandson bond over an exciting story from Green Knowe's history, especially after Tolly starts to see ghosts of the Regency folk that his grandmother's told him about. He is even catapulted back in time and witnesses key scenes of the drama. He befriends the then family's youngest child, a blind girl called Susan, and her companion, the plucky runaway slave boy Jacob, and is able to be of use to the goodies generally. Will he be able to find the lost jewels that could save his grandmother from selling the family home?

Yup, it's that kind of story - sweet, morally straightforward, and conveying the sense of magic when another world (this time, the past rather than a land containing witches and somewhat pompous lions) opens up before a weary child hero. It's adapted from the book The Chimneys of Green Knowe, apparently one in a series of well-loved children's books about the house in question. I love children's adventures like this, but sometimes the clear-cut Little-Lord-Fauntleroy morals of the piece riled me, rather. I mean, a blind girl and a plucky runaway slave boy? Get away - could the dice be more loaded? Needless to say, I felt some defiant sympathy for Susan's bad big brother Sefton because 1) his Hindley-like jealousy of Jacob is not entirely unfounded (and I think that spur-nicking was jolly mean) 2) he is played by Douglas Booth who really, truly, is a looker 3) the odds are so ludicrously stacked against him 4) he's called Sefton. Gettit? As in Uncle Sefton in A Family at War? Bonneville's character's shrewish wife has a case too, in my view: she is stuck in a country house with neighbours who despise her (she's a Dutch diamond merchant's daughter) while her husband is away most of the time. The moment hubby comes home, he undermines her authority and foists a nobly saved foundling on her. No wonder she feels like bitching - and she bitches a lot (do unhappily married couples really bicker as much as they do in films and on telly? It sounds exhausting).

For all my reflex-like defence of the baddies, though, I must admit that they are paper-thin characters, and this applies even more to the villainous butler Caxton. He doesn't have a character at all. The only unexpected thing about him is that he is played by Dominic West - not my type, but admittedly a far cry from the eye-patched, livid-scarred Bad Servants you otherwise come across in tales like this. But he has no inner life, no motivation - except primitive greed and, at the end, an even more primitive vindictive streak - and no sliver of a back story. How did he become a butler in such comparatively young years? Why does he pal up with bad boy Sefton? Is he really the lover of the lady of the house, or is that just gossip? This and many other questions remain unanswered. You could argue that this is supposed to make Caxton cooly mysterious, but my guess is we're just not meant to care. Here, the film's roots in a children's book become apparent. Caxton is the bad guy, and that's all we need to know. Still, better an empty husk of a sinister manservant than no sinister manservant at all.

I really enjoyed From Time to Time, as will those who like stories in the style of the above-mentioned Lion, Witch, A Little Princess and Little Lord Fauntleroy. But Downton it ain't.

torsdag 17 oktober 2013

Sweet and sour

'Tis the season when every pair of jeans you put on feels like a corset. It's quite simply not possible to stint on anything that makes life more comfortable when it's cold, wet and grey outside and the work inbox is continually full. Like food and chocolate. Merely the thought of cutting down on these delights instantly makes me hungry. Reading a book called The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris doesn't help.

First things first, though. I finished Gillespie and I last weekend and, though I was still very impressed by the author's story-telling, Harriet's personality doesn't become less of a problem as the stakes are raised and the reader starts to realise all she might - or might not - have done. On the contrary. She's a character who sticks in the mind, all right, but not in a pleasant way, and I'm not sure I found her altogether convincing. Because she faithfully produces damning testimonials against herself, then adds blustering and lame self-defences, you are inclined to believe that she has done most (if not all) the terrible things she's accused of. But if she has, that means she has at times been both clever and manipulative. The narrator of the "memoirs" and diary that make out the contents of Gillespie and I, though, appears both aggravating (so it's hard to imagine her successfully ingratiating herself left and right) and more than a little stupid. All right, you could argue that delusional people - and Harriet clearly is - can still be cunning in their own way. But I didn't quite buy it. Still, nothing wrong with the writing, and the climax of the story is pacy and gripping. I'll watch out for Jane Harris's next novel, but I hope it will be about something else than one-sided devotion bordering on - or striding across the border of - obsession. Both The Observations and Gillespie and I contain the neat twist that it's the object of devotion, rather than the smitten protagonist, who gets clobbered. It makes a change as fictional characters who are infatuated are mostly the ones who suffer most from their vain hopes, while the person who lets him/herself be loved remains pretty much unscathed. Nevertheless, another, less depressing theme would be nice.

And so on to Jenny Colgan's The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris, which isn't quite so carefree and frothy as it sounds (that would be hard), but still a satisfyingly feel-good read. There is romance in it, of course, but its main focus is on Having An Adventure and Broadening Your Horizons. Both the book's main character Anna and - forty years earlier - her French teacher Claire go to Paris for the mentioned adventure-having and horizon-broadening. What I like about Anna's storyline is that it doesn't make her exciting new life in Paris seem easy-peasy. It doesn't turn a blind eye to the fact that moving outside your comfort zone can be - well - uncomfortable. Anna's mostly work-related stresses, humorously told, are more engaging than Claire's traditional Paris love story in the Seventies. Learning to make great chocolate somehow seems more important than finding the perfect fella, which is rather unusual in a chick-lit novel. Another good book-soufflé maker, then, to be remembered when I look for light and airy travel fare - or just a pick-me-up after some overly serious Ambitious Book Project. But now I really must go and have some non-gourmet, industrially-made standard milk chocolate which would have the characters in Loveliest Chocolate Shop shake their heads in disgust.                           

onsdag 9 oktober 2013

Time to make peace with cosy Cranford

I have ambivalent feelings towards the BBC's acclaimed Cranford adaptation. As I remember, it was made at roughly the same time as the magnificent Little Dorrit adaptation by Andrew Davies. Little Dorrit was a disappointment to the BBC ratings-wise: Cranford, on the other hand, was a big hit. The powers at be at the Beeb supposedly thought "Aha, so this is what the costume-drama lovers want now", and started churning out similar stuff: From Lark Rise to Candleford - a poor man's Cranford - and of course Return to Cranford. At the same time, other kinds of costume drama seemed to go into a decline. Such adaptations of other 19th-century classics than Cranford as there were were only of the most well-known books, which had been adapted a zillion times before, and the new versions weren't that remarkable. There was a conscious move away from "bonnet dramas". With the exception of a woeful Oliver Twist, Dickens was avoided like box-office poison up until the bicentenary, when he couldn't be ignored any longer. Adaptations of Dickens and Trollope that Andrew Davies had been working on were axed (yes, we're back to the old Dombey trauma). But hey, we costume-drama lovers were served a lot of small-town shenanigans with quirky characters, so that should keep us happy, right? Wrong.

Somewhere, I've been carrying a grudge towards Cranford ever since it did better than Little Dorrit. I partly blame it for the direction BBC costume drama took during the years that followed. Now, I'm starting to realise I've been unfair. Judging by the "bonnet drama"-hostile comments at the time, the Beeb would probably have moved away from 19th-century epics in any case, and without Cranford we wouldn't even have had the consolation prize of gentle (bonnet-filled) comedy set in rural England.

Because it is quite watchable. I've been rewatching Cranford the past weeks and was at first disgusted by its tameness. Right now, UK viewers are enjoying new Downton episodes, and what do I get? Cats swallowing lace. Old biddies helping the doctor out with candles for a surgery. And all this in a hole somewhere where the railway is seen as a great threat! Really. Then the quiet drama started to grow on me. It is, after all, very comfortable autumn viewing, and not entirely devoid of dramatic incident - there are even a few more deaths than I care for (seriously, the kid - was that necessary?). The acting is universally superb. Judi Dench is great, of course, but well matched in the acting stakes by the likes of Eileen Atkins, Imelda Staunton (clearly having a ball as Miss Pole) and Julia MacKenzie. There is some romance, even if there's a decided lack of menfolk. The new doctor and the local carpenter seem to be the only bachelors around the place (no wonder the gossips manage to come up with three prospective fiancées for the doctor): otherwise, widowers provide the best hope for some suitably autumnal love scenarios. As for villains, though, there are absolutely none. I remember judging Return to Cranford more favourably than I otherwise would have done (I've not had time to rewatch it yet) because it included the at least marginally beastly Lord Septimus. In the original, though, everyone is pally in a close-knit, rural way. Wicked intrigues are for Londoners, and quite beneath the residents of Cranford.

But I'm not so shallow that I can't enjoy a drama without a villain in it. Am I? Roll along Return to Cranford. But don't think it will stop me longing for the second of November (when, at last, Downton season four starts here in Sweden) with, as the Earl would say, every fibre of my being.                                

torsdag 3 oktober 2013

Wanted - a likeable and reliable narrator

Autumn is a tough time. There's a lot of work to be done and little excuse not to get on with doing it. Therefore, you long to spend your free time as cosily as possible, curled up on a bed or sofa with oceans of tea and a book - or TV programme - that gives you a warm, glowing feeling. Easier said than done.

I was longing for a safe bet reading-wise after Tigers in Red Weather, which was accomplished but not my thing, and so I started on the second novel by Jane Harris, whose Observations I liked so much. Only, sadly, with her new book Gillespie and I she has decided to do Something Completely Different. All right, so not completely. We're still in 19th-century Scotland. One of the themes is still deep, largely unrequited affection. But whereas Bessy - though a self-confessed liar - was an engaging heroine and frank in her own way, the narrator of Gillespie and I, Harriet Baxter, is both unreliable and hard to like.

This is intentional, of course. For the last century or so, there has been a craze for The Unreliable Narrator. And like so many ideas, it sounds brilliant on paper. It is pleasant for the reader to have the rug pulled out from under his/her feet now and then. That's one of the enjoyable things about Christie whodunnits with their clever, surprising but seldom cheating solutions. And who should be in a better position to fool the reader than the narrator his- or herself?

Only, unreliable narrators aren't always such a treat. For one thing, we want to know what actually did happen, and that's hard to achieve when you can't believe in your one source of information. And then, for another, unreliable narrators tend to have one problem. Like Harriet Baxter, they are, quite often, not very nice.

It may be unsophisticated, but the prospect of spending 600 pages in the company of someone I'm not remotely fond of is not something to gladden my heart. Of course, I could do what I normally do - ignore the author's supposed intention and determinedly root for a character I'm supposed to despise. But with Harriet, it's plumb impossible. Even though I'm disposed to feel kindly towards spinsters in their mid-thirties who have strange crushes, women called Harriet (I like the name Harriet, mainly for Middlemarch- and Doctor Who-related reasons - remember Harriet Jones, Prime Minister?), and for that matter, people called Baxter (as in the Efficient Baxter in the Blandings books), I cannot appreciate her. She is officious, irritating, ponderously ironic instead of witty, and so unlike the forthright Bessy as it is possible to be. At most, I can feel sorry for her in her neediness - her childhood, if her horrid stepfather is anything to go by, was plainly a love-starved affair, and her (by herself unacknowledged) love for the oblivious and already happily married artist Ned Gillespie is going nowhere fast.

What makes matters worse is that the other characters are also hard to sympathise with. Ned's wife Annie is all right, but the rest of the Gillespie family is trying in the extreme, and Annie herself doesn't help matters by not being able to control her daughters (troublesome Sibyl and whiny Rose). It is quite a while before Harriet gets to know her admired Ned properly: his family tends to get in the way of both the conversations about art she longs to have with him and the production and promotion of his pictures. As for Ned Gillespie himself, he remains rather a shadowy figure. Good-humoured, yes, but not so remarkable that you can understand why anyone should be spending time with his hopeless family for his sake.

It's a frustrating read, and on top of it all, you know from the start that the whole thing is going to end badly. Harris can still spin a plot all right, but without a single truly attractive character, I'm not sure I want to know how it all unravels. As for the unreliableness, I get irritated rather than feel clever when I catch Harriet out with deceiving the reader (and herself). With a truly unashamed liar as narrator, we wouldn't know if he or she was lying through his/her teeth, and then the whole conceit would be no good. Instead we get scenes like the one where Harriet claims that she doesn't remember the first minutes of conversation she has with her stepfather when they see each other after a long while. There are two possibilites: either she truly doesn't remember, or she does but found the experience too unpleasant to relate for some reason. In both cases, you wonder why she mentions the forgotten minutes of conversation at all. It is merely a device to make the reader think "Aha, there's something going on here that we don't know about".

Maybe it's time for the honest, reliable narrator to have a renaissance? And maybe he or she could be likeable too, while we're about it?