Choice Period Piece

As a follow on to my recent Telly Visions post on Romola Garai, my recommended viewing this weekend is the network television premiere of Glorious 39 on BBC Two this Sunday evening at 9pm. In 1939, gorgeous toff and aspiring actress Anne Keyes (Garai), the adopted daughter of a prominent politician (Bill Nighy), becomes suspicious when a family friend seemingly commits suicide. As she probes, she discovers her father is involved in an organisation sympathetic to Hitler’s regime… and prepared to murder to further its cause.

Writer-director Stephen Poliakoff’s well-executed dramas are often major television events, the finest example being, in my opinion, Shooting The Past. But Glorious 39, a big-screen release, received mixed reviews and vanished quite quickly from cinemas. Essentially, it’s a country house mystery but played against the backdrop of Europe teetering on the brink of World War II. This ripping yarn is part Gosford Park, part The 39 Steps, with the quality cast including Julie Christie, David Tennant, Christopher Lee and Jeremy Northam.

Telly Visions: Romola Garai

Romola Garai seems to be popping up/out all over the place on television just recently! She’s been acting professionally since 2000 when she made her debut in The Last Of The Blonde Bombshells. The actress is perhaps best known now for playing the title role in Jane Austen’s Emma, a four-part adaptation broadcast two years ago on BBC One, opposite Michael Gambon playing her father Mr. Woodhouse. The cast also included Jodhi May and Christina Cole.

But Romola has most recently been seen on BBC Two playing Sugar, a young and intelligent prostitute seeking revenge, through a novel she is writing, against all the men who have abused her and her colleagues, in The Crimson Petal And The White. She has commented on her racy part of Sugar, a 19th century mistress, that “standing around in knickers and suspenders, waiting for someone to call action, is pretty cringe-making... By the end everyone on the set was like, ‘Please just put it away.’”

This week Romola is back on our screens in the six-part television drama series The Hour. Set in the BBC newsrooms of the mid-Fifties, and again on BBC Two, she plays Bel Rowley, spirited and ambitious, and facing the most exciting and daunting challenge of her life – running The Hour. Can her passion for the truth survive the political pressure the job will bring – and will her friendship with Freddie survive her undeniable attraction to front man Hector?

Decency’s Jigsaw

If, like me, you found yourself falling for the innocent charms of the Charles Dickens heroine Ada Clare, in the BBC One adaptation of “Bleak House” six years ago, or thought that the Steven Moffat creation Sally Sparrow, in the “Doctor Who” story “Blink” some two years later, might make a more interesting companion than some of the other young ladies to occupy the TARDIS, then you could’ve done worse than tune into BBC Two last night at 8:30pm for the network television premier of the film that finally made a name for ascending actress Carey Mulligan.

“An Education”, made three years ago, is a quirky coming-of-age drama set in London in the early Sixties. Mulligan was Oscar-nominated for her breakthrough role as a gifted 16-year-old schoolgirl, Jenny, whose life is one of drab-suburban conformity. Her strict father, played by Alfred Molina, is determined she shouldn’t be distracted from her studies, and gain the place at Oxford University of which he dreams, by things like going out and having fun! But a chance meeting with a worldly 35-year-old playboy, David, played by Peter Sarsgaard, changes everything forever.

Oozing charm and sophistication, David wins over Jenny’s parents and is soon whisking the impressionable girl off on ‘educational’ weekends away. Well, they do say travel broadens the mind! The situation is perhaps rather dubious but, to a teenager, seems very glamorous and romantic, thanks to smooth-talking David and his good-time friends played by Dominic Cooper and Rosamund Pike. Inevitably, though, the unconventional arrangement can’t last… “An Education” also features the excellent Olivia Williams, recently seen on ITV1 solving intriguing police-procedural “Case Sensitive”, as Jenny’s enlightened English Literature teacher and “Sense and Sensibility” champion Emma Thompson as her hardened headmistress.

Warden’s Watch: Medium

During 2009 the programme that became a regular viewing fixture for me was “Medium”. BBC Two ran repeats of the first four series, mostly in double bills, during the early hours of Saturday mornings. Living has shown Series Five in the UK and now Freeview viewers have a chance to see it on Virgin1. Meanwhile, in the States, Series Six has just completed airing. There are a total of 117 episodes (16, 22, 22, 16, 19, 22). While both “Heroes” and “Ugly Betty” have fizzled out after just four seasons apiece, “Medium” is quietly stronger than ever. On paper “Medium” doesn’t look as though it should work. It’s a supernatural-cum-detective-cum-domestic drama about a housewife, Allison Dubois, whose dreams help solve crimes. Sounds ludicrous but it’s terrific.

As regular readers may know, I’m not keen on kitchen sink anecdotes in fantasy stories. It’s the main reason why Steven Spielberg films aren’t a favourite of mine. Spilling milk on the wood-panelled floor adds unnecessary clutter, getting in the way of a rollicking good adventure! In “Medium”, however, the family scenario is the programme’s most interesting feature. That’s not to say the show falls down elsewhere. Dream sequences are often imaginatively constructed while the information needed to solve the criminological puzzle can be disseminated non-chronologically. It seems ironic that I can relate more easily to the domestic arrangements and traumas of this fictional American family than I could those of the Tylers in “Doctor Who”!

Cast in the lead role, in “Medium”, is Patricia Arquette, best known hitherto for her performance in Tony Scott’s “True Romance”. I suspect the original casting director, on the television series, may possibly have remembered her from “A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors”. Despite having wildly different iconography, the essential scenario of a “Medium” episode and an instalment in the “Elm Street” franchise is the same - criminal enters the dreams of the protagonist. When at home, Allison’s husband Joe is her moral compass, while, at work, District Attorney Devalos and Law Enforcement Officer Lee Scanlon perform the same function. However, it is Allison and Joe’s three daughters who invariably steal the limelight! Bridgette, the middle child, is just the right side of precocious in her curiosity over all things worldly. Maria Lark’s performance is the best I’ve ever seen by any child actor while Sofia Vassilieva, as eldest daughter Ariel, is thoughtful and stunningly beautiful. “Medium” is a marvellous mixture to mull over!

Telly Visions Special: Michelle Ryan

This is an extra post for fans of Michelle Ryan mainly to let you know she will be appearing on BBC Two this Sunday morning, at 10am, as a guest on “Something for the Weekend”. Not quite sure what she’s there to promote but I’ve heard she may be returning to “EastEnders”. You’ll probably have to put up with Tim Lovejoy’s endless waffle on football but you can always leave the programme on in the background until the lovely Michelle’s appearance!

You’ve probably realised by now - my new blog-header kinda gives it away - that I enjoyed last year’s “Doctor Who” Easter Special, “Planet of the Dead”. I expected to enjoy November’s “The Waters of Mars” more, being horror based and directed by Graeme Harper, but preferred the rapport between the two leads on the red bus to the comedy robot on the red planet! Due to the prominence of said bus, “Planet of the Dead” reminded me of the Sylvester McCoy adventure “Delta and the Bannermen”, for which I’ve always held a soft spot. Both stories are great fun. However, I suspect Michelle’s episode was probably more influenced by “The Mummy Returns”. I thought David Tennant and Michelle Ryan worked extraordinarily well together and, like the relationship between Peter Davison’s Fifth Doctor and Nicola Bryant’s Peri in “The Caves of Androzani”, they left me wanting more…

Michelle is building quite a reputation for herself in the fantasy genre altogether. What with a returning role, playing a villainess, in the first series of “Merlin”, an aborted attempt, after eight episodes, to revive the “Bionic Woman”, and as one of the protagonists in Steven Moffat’s “Jekyll” it would be good to see her continue in this vein rather than return to soap land. It may be a question of needs must but that would be a shame for this fine actress. Her turn in corset drama “Mansfield Park”, alongside Billie Piper, is also worth a mention. Support Miss Ryan on Sunday!

Dreamy Lady

The Second Season of “The Tudors” concluded recently on BBC Two and was promptly released on DVD on Monday, as was a set containing both last year’s run together with this latest offering. The total of twenty episodes reached a grisly culmination with the heartless execution of Henry VIII’s second wife Anne Boleyn. I think this was a shame! And, for all her stoicism, I expect she probably thought the same!!

Why do you think Anne’s death was a shame, Tim, I hear you all cry? Well, it means actress Natalie Dormer won’t be in the next series! History should’ve been rewritten in order to accommodate a lady with such gorgeous eyes. Some may think them narrow but that is part of her beauty. She positively smoulders.

Even when in danger of losing it, the girl kept her head! The doomed royal had Hans Matheson hear her last confession… that she hadn’t actually done anything wrong!!

Ironically, Hans, as the dastardly and corrupting Alec d’Urberville, in “Tess of the d’Urbervilles”, had donned preacher’s robes over on BBC One, whereupon one of our heroine’s milkmaid chums comments that he doesn’t look much like a man of the cloth…

Obviously, the producers of “The Tudors” thought otherwise. But, Hans could do nothing to save the lovely Natalie, despite the repeated postponement of her wanton slaying due to the late arrival of the axe man. And, I’m not talking guitar heroes here!

Warden’s Watch: Twins of Evil

It’s fifty years since the studio affectionately known as Hammer Horror began making movies to scare the panties off their busty heroines! As part of the celebrations, a few words devoted to one of the company’s finest vampire offerings, screened on BBC Two in the small hours of Saturday morning, seem appropriate. Unlike the “Dracula” series, with director John Hough’s “Twins of Evil”, released in 1971, the inspiration isn’t from the pen of Bram Stoker but J Sheridan Le Fanu, albeit interpreted rather loosely. It’s the last in a trilogy of films centring on the legend of the Countess Mircalla/Carmilla/Marcilla Karnstein, begun with “The Vampire Lovers”, continued through “Lust for a Vampire”, and my favourite movie to feature the much-missed Peter Cushing. Here, though, he isn’t playing Van Helsing but a witch hunter called Gustav Weil, rather in the mould of the “Witchfinder General”.

The beauty of “Twins of Evil” is in the blurring of lines between who is the hunter and who the hunted. Good and evil are Twins of the same coin when both lead to the deaths of innocent young women (if there is such a thing!). The title, taken more literally, stars real life twins and “Playboy” playmates Mary and Madeleine Collinson, as Maria and Frieda Gellhorn, who, while undeniably stunning to look at, aren’t exactly the world’s finest actresses. But, the young women more than visually compensate, for any minor verbal inadequacies, and contribute to making “Twins of Evil” a very stylish and sumptuous picture. Harry (credited as Robinson) Robertson’s incidental music strangely makes the film feel like a western at times and, amongst the many delights on offer, concludes with the gruesome decapitation of one of the sisters! But, which one? A gloriously gorgeous gallery and a tantalisingly titillating trailer can be found on my “Jukebox”!!