Oh dear, Mr Davies.
Sep. 2nd, 2019 08:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessSanditon – episode 2
I admit I was looking forward to see what would happen next. Well, now, I know, Andrew Davies basically wrote Carry On Austening, and ITV might as well have commissioned him or whoever to adapt any old trashy Regency novel (if you wanted boxing, why not try to get the rights to a Heyer!?)
It was pretty bad. Pemberley’s fruits had been upgraded to a symbolic pineapple, and every character who laughed at it got a brownie point from the audience because it was so ridiculous.
Charlotte did her best to be an Austen heroine amid ‘Austen wouldn’t have written that’, anachronisms and single entendres, while also being our POV character. I smirked at her wish to be a toiler – she couldn’t even stick to sorely need secretarial work for five seconds, but then she needed to be out and about (without a maid, and yes, I know Davies is echoing Elizabeth Bennet tramping around, but where were the maids when they were really needed? Sydney Parker definitely needs to get better servants for Miss Lambe, given that she tried to run away and then thought about suicide. These young ladies need protecting from male nudity that Poldark did five years ago!)
We did learn that Charlotte is an excellent groveller (unappreciated by Sydney, although good on her for having the composure to call him out on being so busy Not Caring and for maintaining her high dudgeon at him). She also made a fan in the foreman by being intelligent and interested, but, again, this is not Poldark. She is a gentleman’s daughter! She got under Sydney’s skin a little (who smokes, boo) and got to see him skinny dipping, as if we weren’t clear who the heroine and hero were. (If it weren’t “Austen”, you could read into the Guardian/Ward tension. But if he is setting Georgiana/Arthur up, which surely not, she has had suicidal thoughts and he has poor impulse control, so that would be a hot mess.)
I was most exercised by the need for Charlotte to befriend Georgiana. For one thing, I do not think that Georgiana would say what Miss Brereton said (and even if she was a victim of abuse…Austen would never write that. Yo, Davies, I too have committed Austen fanfiction, and I did give some thought to consistency of voice, whethere I succeeded or not. So, I do not think Miss Clara Brereton is suitable friends for Our Heroine.) After all, when Sydney had insisted his ward (in her bedroom! Alone! Get me burnt feathers!) had to face Polite Society, it was Charlotte who picked up on the fact that Lady Denham was most impolite to Georgianna (and did a decent job of pointing out the power imbalance and rudeness involved). No wonder Georgianna was in a sulk, away from home, among strangers, facing Everyday Racism and the whole heiress is only the sum of her inheritance and therefore practically property waiting to be bought up/married. I will say I liked how her naivete was displayed as she attempted to get on the carriage. Obviously, for mondo dramatic effect, Charlotte befriended her as she pondered jumping to her demise, so the audience did not share the chaperone’s horror of seeing the two of them paddling and having a water fight.
But the business about the parasol was so broad. But then what had happened before was so broad too.
We learned that the Forehead and the Chin are only step-siblings (though how does that work if they share the same surname), but I’m not minded to say that’s all right then. He was useless at everything (his happy ending would be becoming a hairdresser if it would just pay enough to fix the roof), so The Chin threatened Clara vaguely, used basic reverse psychology on Babbling-Whatshisname and wore very dramatic clothes.
I love the costumes, mind. It’s a shame the characters as written don’t deserve the hours of thought lavished on what they wear.
The grand luncheon was preposterous. Most of what Lady D said would not have been uttered in front of gentlemen, and so vulgar, even in yet another place where the décor was grossly unsubtle.
Sydney does not seem to have realised that being a bit obvious about having a bear as a spirit animal is not going to endear him to anyone. But then his so-called friend was a chauvinistic moron, discussing debauching his ward in front of him!
The moment when Charlotte spoke for us all came when Mary Parker asked her what she thought of the ‘sermon’ by the vicar (What if Wickham had been granted his alleged dream of becoming ordained is not an AU I needed to see brought to life, DAVIES): “I did not much care for it.”
Indeed.
But let’s not pretend that I’ll be watching next week pondering hard how much I disapprove of Theo James’s character smoking, though I expect I will continue to disapprove of the crudity, the anachronisms and the not giving Anne Reid good dialogue.
I admit I was looking forward to see what would happen next. Well, now, I know, Andrew Davies basically wrote Carry On Austening, and ITV might as well have commissioned him or whoever to adapt any old trashy Regency novel (if you wanted boxing, why not try to get the rights to a Heyer!?)
It was pretty bad. Pemberley’s fruits had been upgraded to a symbolic pineapple, and every character who laughed at it got a brownie point from the audience because it was so ridiculous.
Charlotte did her best to be an Austen heroine amid ‘Austen wouldn’t have written that’, anachronisms and single entendres, while also being our POV character. I smirked at her wish to be a toiler – she couldn’t even stick to sorely need secretarial work for five seconds, but then she needed to be out and about (without a maid, and yes, I know Davies is echoing Elizabeth Bennet tramping around, but where were the maids when they were really needed? Sydney Parker definitely needs to get better servants for Miss Lambe, given that she tried to run away and then thought about suicide. These young ladies need protecting from male nudity that Poldark did five years ago!)
We did learn that Charlotte is an excellent groveller (unappreciated by Sydney, although good on her for having the composure to call him out on being so busy Not Caring and for maintaining her high dudgeon at him). She also made a fan in the foreman by being intelligent and interested, but, again, this is not Poldark. She is a gentleman’s daughter! She got under Sydney’s skin a little (who smokes, boo) and got to see him skinny dipping, as if we weren’t clear who the heroine and hero were. (If it weren’t “Austen”, you could read into the Guardian/Ward tension. But if he is setting Georgiana/Arthur up, which surely not, she has had suicidal thoughts and he has poor impulse control, so that would be a hot mess.)
I was most exercised by the need for Charlotte to befriend Georgiana. For one thing, I do not think that Georgiana would say what Miss Brereton said (and even if she was a victim of abuse…Austen would never write that. Yo, Davies, I too have committed Austen fanfiction, and I did give some thought to consistency of voice, whethere I succeeded or not. So, I do not think Miss Clara Brereton is suitable friends for Our Heroine.) After all, when Sydney had insisted his ward (in her bedroom! Alone! Get me burnt feathers!) had to face Polite Society, it was Charlotte who picked up on the fact that Lady Denham was most impolite to Georgianna (and did a decent job of pointing out the power imbalance and rudeness involved). No wonder Georgianna was in a sulk, away from home, among strangers, facing Everyday Racism and the whole heiress is only the sum of her inheritance and therefore practically property waiting to be bought up/married. I will say I liked how her naivete was displayed as she attempted to get on the carriage. Obviously, for mondo dramatic effect, Charlotte befriended her as she pondered jumping to her demise, so the audience did not share the chaperone’s horror of seeing the two of them paddling and having a water fight.
But the business about the parasol was so broad. But then what had happened before was so broad too.
We learned that the Forehead and the Chin are only step-siblings (though how does that work if they share the same surname), but I’m not minded to say that’s all right then. He was useless at everything (his happy ending would be becoming a hairdresser if it would just pay enough to fix the roof), so The Chin threatened Clara vaguely, used basic reverse psychology on Babbling-Whatshisname and wore very dramatic clothes.
I love the costumes, mind. It’s a shame the characters as written don’t deserve the hours of thought lavished on what they wear.
The grand luncheon was preposterous. Most of what Lady D said would not have been uttered in front of gentlemen, and so vulgar, even in yet another place where the décor was grossly unsubtle.
Sydney does not seem to have realised that being a bit obvious about having a bear as a spirit animal is not going to endear him to anyone. But then his so-called friend was a chauvinistic moron, discussing debauching his ward in front of him!
The moment when Charlotte spoke for us all came when Mary Parker asked her what she thought of the ‘sermon’ by the vicar (What if Wickham had been granted his alleged dream of becoming ordained is not an AU I needed to see brought to life, DAVIES): “I did not much care for it.”
Indeed.
But let’s not pretend that I’ll be watching next week pondering hard how much I disapprove of Theo James’s character smoking, though I expect I will continue to disapprove of the crudity, the anachronisms and the not giving Anne Reid good dialogue.
