Jane Austen, PBS

Death (dum, dum, dummmm) Comes to Pemberley

Death Comes to Pemberley is a murder mystery 3 episode mini-series that incorporates characters from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It was broadcast on BBC One in December 2013 and in the US on PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery in the fall of 2014. It is based on the 2011 novel by P.D. James of the same name.

Death Comes to Pemberley stars:

Anna Maxwell Martin (of Bletchley Circle which I wrote about here and here) as Elizabeth Bennet Darcy;
Jenna Coleman (Clara Oswald of Doctor Who) as Lydia Wickham;
Matthew Rhys as Fitzwilliam Darcy;
Matthew Goode (of The Imitation Game with Benedict Cumberbatch) as George Wickham;
Tom Ward (of “The Snowmen” episode of Doctor Who) as Colonel Fitzwilliam;
Eleanor Tomlinson (previously in The Sarah Jane Adventures and as Isabel Neville in The White Queen which I wrote about here) as Georgiana Darcy;
and James Norton (of the “Cold War” episode of Doctor Who) as Henry Alveston.

Rhys and Maxwell Martin as Mr. and Mrs. Darcy

Six years after the events of P&P, Death Comes to Pemberley begins with Mrs. Darcy (and to a lesser extent Mr.) planning for the annual “Lady Anne Ball”. Georgiana Darcy (Mr. Darcy’s younger sister) must choose between two suitors – Colonel Fitzwilliam and Henry Alveston. Alveston arrives along with Mr. and Mrs. Bennet for the upcoming ball. While Mrs. Darcy is visiting the kitchen checking on menu preparation, two female servants rush in, claiming to have seen “Mrs. Riley’s ghost” in the woods. We later learn this is a local superstition based on real people. Mrs. Riley’s son was hanged for poaching and it is said that her ghost appears in the woods whenever there is going to be a death or some misfortune.

Mariah Gale in Death Comes to Pemberley

The afternoon before the ball, Mrs. Darcy is visiting a sick neighbor and meets up with a “mad woman” in the woods, played by Mariah Gale. She portrayed Ophelia to David Tennant’s Hamlet which I wrote about here. That evening we see Mrs. Darcy’s sister Lydia, her ne’er do well husband George Wickham and their friend Colonel Denny in a carriage. We learn later that they are on their way to Pemberley to “crash” the party or, as Lydia describes it, “a jolly surprise”. When Denny leaves the carriage, Wickham follows. We next see Lydia arriving in a speeding carriage, hysterically crying and saying she heard gunshots.

Lydia and George Wickham with Colonel Denney

Darcy and company organize a search party and Mrs. Bennet attempts to “comfort” Lydia. Mrs. B is not so good at comforting as it takes the following form. “Lydia, we must try to remain positive, my dear, and hope at least that he died in a duel.” Over Lydia’s sobbing, she continues, “It’s such a noble way to die!” Lydia continues crying until she realizes her trunk is still in the carriage. She asks them to get it so her ball gown won’t be creased.

Even though Lydia and Mrs. B. are less than concerned about Wickham and Denny, Darcy and company search the woods for them. Alveston stays behind. Darcy & Co. eventually find a (recently) dead Denny and a (very) drunk Wickham. Wickham is ultimately arrested for the murder of his friend Denny and we spend the next couple hours figuring out “whodunit”.

Anna Maxwell Martin as Elizabeth Bennet Darcy

This movie was well done and quite entertaining. The actors, especially Maxwell Martin and Coleman, are very good. Doctor Who’s Jenna Coleman does a great job of making Lydia, who is usually a very unlikable character, into a sympathetic one. Maxwell Martin does a good job portraying what an adult Elizabeth Bennet might be like: in charge of Pemberley, fair to their employees yet still feisty and willing to tease Darcy.

Jenna Coleman

Death Comes to Pemberley was recently shown on PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery. It isn’t currently available on Netflix or any of the other streaming services. It is available to buy though. The book is available to purchase, both used or new, online as well as at libraries everywhere.

Sherlock

Brainy is the new sexy

“Dear God, what is it like in your funny little brains? It must be so boring!” – Sherlock Holmes, SHERLOCK

I’ve been putting off writing a blog post about the BBC’s SHERLOCK (based on the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan Doyle) not because I don’t like it. In fact, I probably like the show way too much. I fear that I won’t do a good enough job explaining just how amazingly, fabulously, wonderously great this show is! But I’ve decided it’s time to at least try. I will never be able to explain how glorious the show actually is but here goes…..

I stumbled upon SHERLOCK a few years back on PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery. I was immediately hooked. I was thrilled to find out that the “episodes” are longer than usual TV dramas (a full hour and a half versus the usual forty five minutes). Woo hoo! This elation was short lived however when I found that this means that each season has only three episodes. Three episodes! Boo.

So in an attempt to sufficiently explain this series, I decided to rewatch the very first episode, trying to see it as a new viewer. Not sure how this will work. I’ve seen every episode of this show many, many, many times. But here goes:

“A Study in Pink” was first broadcast on BBC One on 25 July 2010and is inspired by Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet. It opens with war flashbacks. A man wakes up from his nightmare about the war and cries. He is then shown sitting on a bed in a drab room. Everything is beige – the carpet, the walls, the bedding. It’s just so depressing. He walks with a cane; we see he has a pistol in his drawer; he gets out a laptop. We see his blog website, titled “The Personal Blog of Dr. John H. Watson”. Other than the title, there is nothing there. Nothing. Cut to him talking with a therapist. “John, you’re a soldier. And writing a blog about everything that happens to you will honestly help you.” “Nothing happens to me.” Cue the music. And btw the title sequence for SHERLOCK is one of my favorite ever – just amazing.

Interspersed with scenes of various individuals (apparently) killing themselves, we see a police press conference where the reporters and police all receive texts telling them that they’re wrong.

This is our first clue that this retelling of the Sherlock Holmes stories will truly be a modern one. Instead of just updating costumes and locations, this show changes specific things (use of text messages, tabloids, TV reports) within the Holmes stories to make it contemporary. Yet the show still manages to remain true to the original stories.

We next see John (played by Martin Freeman of The Hobbit, The End of the World) as he (fortuitously) meets up with a friend from school. The friend then introduces him to another man who, like John, is looking for a roommate. And thus we are introduced to Benedict Cumberbatch’s (The Hobbit, Star Trek, 12 Years a Slave), Sherlock Holmes, “21st century London’s go-to consulting detective”. Holmes looks downright psychotic as he beats a dead body with a riding crop. The meeting between Sherlock and John is classic Conan Doyle as, by way of a greeting, Sherlock asks John “Afghanistan or Iraq?” They meet to see the apartment and, after Mrs. Hudson describes John as “the sitting down type”, John joins Sherlock as he investigates four duplicate “suicides”.

Sherlock: “Seen a lot of injuries? Violent deaths?” John: “Of course. Yes. Enough for a lifetime, far too much.”
Sherlock: “Want to see some more?” John: “Oh, God, yes.”

Cue the music again. They’re off to solve the crimes (Spoiler alert: they solve it). John is a bit amazed about Sherlock’s skill at deductions and thus we get this brilliant exchange in the back of a taxi.

Sherlock: Okay, you’ve got questions…When I met you for the first time yesterday, I said “Afghanistan or Iraq?” You looked surprised. John: Yes. How did you know? Sherlock: I didn’t know, I saw. Your haircut, the way you hold yourself, says military. But your conversation as you entered the room said trained at Bart’s, so army doctor. Obvious. Your face is tanned, but no tan above the wrists: you’ve been abroad but not sunbathing. The limp’s really bad when you walk, but you don’t ask for a chair when you stand, like you’ve forgotten about it, so it’s at least partly psychosomatic. That says the original circumstances of the injury were probably traumatic: wounded in action, then. Wounded in action, suntan: Afghanistan or Iraq.

John: You said I had a therapist.Sherlock: You’ve got a psychosomatic limp. Of course you’ve got a therapist. Then there’s your brother. Your phone—it’s expensive, email enabled, MP3 player. But you’re looking for a flat-share, you wouldn’t waste money on this. It’s a gift, then. Scratches—not one, many over time. It’s been in the same pocket as keys and coins. The man sitting next to me wouldn’t treat his one luxury item like this, so it’s had a previous owner. The next bit’s easy, you know it already. [the back of the phone has been engraved “Harry Watson — from Clara xxx”]

John: The engraving? Sherlock: Harry Watson: clearly a family member who’s given you his old phone. Not your father, this is a young man’s gadget. Could be a cousin, but you’re a war hero who can’t find a place to live. Unlikely you’ve got an extended family, certainly not one you’re close to, so brother it is. Now, Clara: who’s Clara? Three kisses says a romantic attachment. Expensive phone says wife, not girlfriend. Must’ve given it to him recently; this model’s only six months old. Marriage in trouble, then—six months on, and already he’s giving it away? If she’d left him, he would’ve kept it. People do, sentiment. But no, he wanted rid of it—he left her. He gave the phone to you, that says he wants you to stay in touch. [beat] You’re looking for cheap accommodation and you’re not going to your brother for help? That says you’ve got problems with him. Maybe you liked his wife, maybe you don’t like his drinking.

John: How can you possibly know about the drinking? Sherlock: Shot in the dark. Good one, though. Power connection: tiny little scuff marks around the edge. Every night he goes to plug it in and charge but his hands are shaky. You never see those marks on a sober man’s phone, never see a drunk’s without them.

John: [slowly] That was amazing. Sherlock: [deadpan] You think so? John: Of course it was. It was extraordinary. It was quite… extraordinary. Sherlock: That’s not what people normally say. John: What do people normally say? Sherlock: “Piss off!“

So who are the brilliant minds behind SHERLOCK? The same ones currently responsible for Doctor Who. While working on Doctor Who, Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat would ride the train to work together. They would discuss how much they enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes books and would love to see a modern retelling of them. Eventually they decided that they would be the tellers and thus SHERLOCK was born.

Steven and I were on many, many trains to Cardiff for Doctor Who and we always seemed to end up talking about how much we love Sherlock Holmes. We eventually danced around the shameful admission that our favorite versions are still the Basil Rathbone movies, particularly the ones in the forties when they brought it up to date and battled the Nazis and stuff like that. They seemed to have more of the flavor of the original stories than a lot of more careful recreations. That’s not to say those ones aren’t brilliant, because they are and everyone has a different favorite Sherlock Holmes, just like they have a favorite Doctor. We thought ‘Why don’t we just do it now?’ That immediately means it doesn’t become about the trappings – the hansom cabs and the fog and Jack the Ripper and the clothes – it becomes about the characters.

Bletchley Circle – Season One

PBS’s The Bletchley Circle Season 1 takes place in 1952, when four women who worked at the wartime code-breaking center, Bletchley Park, reunite to track down a serial killer.

With an extraordinary flair for code breaking and razor-sharp intelligence skills, four seemingly ordinary women become the unlikely investigators of a string of grisly murders in this original thriller, set against the backdrop of post-war London.

The four main characters are:

Susan (played by Anna Maxwell Martin who was Jane Austen’s sister Cassandra in “Becoming Jane” and Elizabeth Darcy in “Death Comes to Pemberley”) is the mathematical genius who is a whiz at patterns, statistics and puzzles. She is also a married woman with two young children.

Anna Maxwell Martin in The Bletchley Circle

Millie (portrayed by Rachael Stirling who played Ada in the Doctor Who episode “The Crimson Horror” with her mother Diana Rigg) is bohemian, streetwise and adventurous – and Susan’s best friend.

Rachael Stirling as Millie in The Bletchley Circle

Rachael Stirling in The Bletchley Circle

Dame Diana Rigg and daughter Rachael Stirling in the Doctor Who episode “The Crimson Horror”

Lucy (played by Sophie Rundle from Call the Midwife and Episodes, where she played Matt Le Blanc’s stalker) has an idetic memory with photographic memory and recall. She is also the youngest and most naïve of the four women.

Sophie Rundle

Jean (portrayed by Julie Graham who played a villainous alien on an episode of the Sarah Jane Adventures) is organizer who has access to everyone and everything. She is described as “the moral center” of the four women.

Julie Gardner in The Bletchley Circle

The first episode opens during WWII. It’s 1943 and we meet four women (Susan, Millie, Lucy, and Jean) who are working at the top secret Bletchley Park. As Susan is working on a message, she notices a strange pattern. After discussing it with Millie, Lucy and Jean, they work out what seems to be an important aspect of a code. After taking it to their supervisors, Susan learns that they were correct. Their breakthrough changes troop movements and saves Allied lives. The process they use to solve this problem shows us just how intelligent these women are and how important the workers at Bletchley Park were.

The show then jumps to nine years later. Susan, now a married housewife with two children, is following the news of a string of murdered women. She thinks she sees a pattern but when she offers help to the police, she is rebuffed. Eventually they take some of her advice but when the police fail to find any physical evidence, they give up. Susan is sure she can help solve the murders and looks up her old friend Millie. They enlist their former co-workers Lucy and Jean. Although reluctant at first, all four realize that they can help save the lives of women. So when another girl goes missing, they get organized and start working to solve this whodunit.

The show is a combination murder mystery and social drama with strong women leads. It does a great job of portraying the gender roles of the time and how these intelligent women, who helped win the war, were displaced afterwards. It is clear that the male officials find it impossible that these women would be able to help them, let alone solve the crimes. With the exception of Steven Robertson (who plays a super creepy bad guy), the male actors are relegated to the types of roles women often get, i.e., “the husband”, “the co-worker” etc.

I’m really looking forward to getting Season 2 as it adds two actresses I really enjoy: Hattie Morahan who played Elinor Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility (which I wrote about here) and Faye Marsay who was Anne Neville in The White Queen (which I wrote about here). I’ll be sure to review Season 2 as soon as I watch it.

For more info about Bletchley park, go here: Bletchley Park Research

My English Obsession

Living the Anglophile dream…..in northern Indiana

Tag Archives: PBS

Death (dum, dum, dummmm) Comes to Pemberley

Brainy is the new sexy

Bletchley Circle – Season One