shallowness (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shallowness) wrote2021-05-19 07:49 pm
shallowness) wrote2021-05-19 07:49 pm
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Gawping at the (fictional) rich and posh
I should admit that I’ve started taking advantage of the Beeb repeating ‘To The Manor Born’ (it first aired around the time I was born, but it still stands up.) It made me laugh a fair bit, though not as much as the recorded audience, and even though Audrey drips of entitlement and privilege, Penelope Keith is peerless as her. I wonder if she was an influence on Julian Fellowes vis a vis Lady Mary although this type is not uncommon. Maybe it’s her relationship with Marjory that makes me think that, although I liked that we saw so much of Marjory and she did get to say her piece. It’s not subtle about Devere being her foil (oi! ‘That’s trespass’ quoth I, as he talked the estate agent into showing him a house that wasn’t for sale, and later snickered at the now redundant technology he was going on about) and is trying too hard to make us think he’s devastatingly handsome. The clash between Audrey and Devere worked better in the second episode over the social secretary role.
I felt obliged to share that, because I’ve also started watching ‘The Pursuit of Love’ (both of these via iPlayer at my own pace, so I’m already behind,) I’ve never read Mitford, and I have some complicated feelings about my and TV’s fascination with the English upper class. But it is a good show, with a rock and roll attitde/non- naturalistic style that drags you right into the emotions of its two main characters, narrator Fanny (Emily Beecham, who sounds like Carey Mulligan to me, something about the tone of her voice) and her dazzling, all about the feels, uneducated cousin Linda (Lily James. Of course. Although this is tonally different, I thought of TGLAPPS in the Blitz scenes, Downton with all the coming out, and the awful balls they went to seemed even worse in comparison with War and Peace. I’m not saying that James is type-cast – no, okay, I am - and she was less affected than she can be, but when Andrew Scott’s Lord Merlin got his intro, I wasn’t thinking so much Byron meets Bowie as ‘Oh look, Moriarty’s gurning again.’)
Fanny and Linda are BFFs as well as cousins, and the Radletts, Linda’s family, are ruled over by Dominic West’s mad patriarch (West is great, but I suspect the character will boom in every single scene), who believes in corporal punishment, doesn’t believe in educating women is thoroughly racist (much like Audrey fforbes-Hamilton, he believes there are the English and everyone else) and sits in the House of Lords. Fanny’s line about how his children would be taken away from him if he weren’t rich is spot on.
Apart from the opening scenes, we follow the girls in their late teens during the 1920s, and adapting writer-director Mortimer conveys the universality of teenage girls longing for life, love and attention well. Linda is the pretty one who has got married young by the end of this first ep, probably unwisely, while Fanny observes, being more of a thinker, less pretty and with her own issued because her mother figures keep abandoning her for men: her mother is known as ‘the Bolter’ by everyone, and the aunt who brought her up has recently got married/engaged.
At the same time, it’s funny, I laughed out loud at various points. It reminds me a bit of I Capture the Castle, and its anachronism (the music) works well. I wish the lighting and sound had been a touch less naturalistic, but those are probably my issues. But we are left wondering if Linda and Fanny will find love while still managing to retain their relationship and how the flashforward to a Blitzed London fits in.
I felt obliged to share that, because I’ve also started watching ‘The Pursuit of Love’ (both of these via iPlayer at my own pace, so I’m already behind,) I’ve never read Mitford, and I have some complicated feelings about my and TV’s fascination with the English upper class. But it is a good show, with a rock and roll attitde/non- naturalistic style that drags you right into the emotions of its two main characters, narrator Fanny (Emily Beecham, who sounds like Carey Mulligan to me, something about the tone of her voice) and her dazzling, all about the feels, uneducated cousin Linda (Lily James. Of course. Although this is tonally different, I thought of TGLAPPS in the Blitz scenes, Downton with all the coming out, and the awful balls they went to seemed even worse in comparison with War and Peace. I’m not saying that James is type-cast – no, okay, I am - and she was less affected than she can be, but when Andrew Scott’s Lord Merlin got his intro, I wasn’t thinking so much Byron meets Bowie as ‘Oh look, Moriarty’s gurning again.’)
Fanny and Linda are BFFs as well as cousins, and the Radletts, Linda’s family, are ruled over by Dominic West’s mad patriarch (West is great, but I suspect the character will boom in every single scene), who believes in corporal punishment, doesn’t believe in educating women is thoroughly racist (much like Audrey fforbes-Hamilton, he believes there are the English and everyone else) and sits in the House of Lords. Fanny’s line about how his children would be taken away from him if he weren’t rich is spot on.
Apart from the opening scenes, we follow the girls in their late teens during the 1920s, and adapting writer-director Mortimer conveys the universality of teenage girls longing for life, love and attention well. Linda is the pretty one who has got married young by the end of this first ep, probably unwisely, while Fanny observes, being more of a thinker, less pretty and with her own issued because her mother figures keep abandoning her for men: her mother is known as ‘the Bolter’ by everyone, and the aunt who brought her up has recently got married/engaged.
At the same time, it’s funny, I laughed out loud at various points. It reminds me a bit of I Capture the Castle, and its anachronism (the music) works well. I wish the lighting and sound had been a touch less naturalistic, but those are probably my issues. But we are left wondering if Linda and Fanny will find love while still managing to retain their relationship and how the flashforward to a Blitzed London fits in.