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TV prospects and an adapted novel
Jul. 14th, 2012 02:36 pmIn the far, far future, when theoretically I will have the time again to marathon through tv shows the whole day long, I plan to catch up with at least one of the recent fantasy newbies on the tv scene:
1.) Teen Wolf
Pro: several people on my flst seem to like it. Also, I miss Buffy.
Con: but fannish osmosis tells me said popularity is due to a slash pairing of sidekicks (which is fine) and nobody can stand the lead (which is not; I don't need to love the lead best - in two thirds of the tv shows I've loved, I didn't, and that was no problem for the enjoyment - but I have to at least like the woman/guy who by definition of being the lead gets the most screen time; shows where I couldn't stand said characters were shows I did not stick with for long)
Con: only one female character get occasionally mentioned in fannish osmosis, and that not often. I'd be a hypocrite to claim I didn't enjoy the male dominated tales as well (if Lawrence of Arabia, where there isn't a single woman in sight, is your favourite movie, you would be, too), but a promise of interesting women gets me faster to a fannish source these days.
2.) Grimm
Pro: fannish osmosis tells me that after a rocky start, it developed into something genuinenly interesting and layered with torn loyalties and shades of grey. I get get over slow rocky starts - TNG fan reporting for duty here - if there is a promise of goodness to come.
Con: everyone agrees that the German, of which there seems to be a lot, is hilariously bad, and the examples I've heard are indeed sidesplittingly awful. This would make serious scenes inadveretendly sound like Monty Python instead. (One post I've read mentions at one point someone says what's supposed an "old German blessing" and it turns out to be a carnival nonsense verse ("alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei" = "everything has an ending, just the sausage has two".)
Con: I haven't heard reports of interesting women in this one, either.
3.) Once Upon A Time
Pro: fannish osmosis tells me this one actually has interesting women in it and names three female regulars as examples
Con: Fannish osmosis also tells me it starts strong and gets weaker. Which is not the order I prefer.
Meanwhile, in the last two weeks I did get around to watching a BBC three parter based on a novel which I found captivating in parts and deeply frustrating in others. Seeing as it was an adaption of a novel by Andrew Davies (i.e. Davies was the adaptor, not the novelist), I wondered whether the frustrating parts might be Davies' fault rather than the source materials, especially since I googled the original novelist, Winifred Holtby, and she sounded fascinating (feminist, socialist, daughter of the first female alderman in Yorkshire, wrote the first academic treatise on Virginia Woolf in Britain, died young, unfortunately, in 1935). So I read the novel itself: South Riding. Which indeed proved many, though not all, of the problems I had were due to Davies' alterations, and in any event was a treat to read. It greatly appealed to the ensemble girl in me; inevitably, and this isn't something I blame Davies for, the tv version was more streamlined and focused on far fewer characters whereas the novel is more of a community story, but when I speak of the ensemble quality, I mean more than that. All the characters come across as three dimensional, and there are no caricatures around. There is a very humane quality to Winifred Holtby's writing: characters who in another novel might have served as boo-hiss villains for failing to live up to their claims of virtue, like the Reverend Huggins who cheats on his wife and becomes embroiled in a land scheme, instead are written with sympathy and allowed their strengths as well as weaknesses (Huggins is sincerely appalled by poverty and injustice and fights against it). Her novel, set in provincial Yorkshire in the early 30s, is also in many ways the anti Brideshead Revisited or the anti Downton Abbey, if you like. There is no nostalgia for the pre-WWI past there, most of the characters are middle class or working class, and the one main character who symbolizes the fading gentry, unable to cope with the present, let alone the future, doesn't have a "golden, idyllic past" since he's simultanously an update of Mr. Rochester of Jane Eyre fame, and a fascinatingly both similar and very different one from the simultanously written and more well known update, Maxim de Winter in Rebecca.
The character who comes closest to a leading role, radical headmistresss Sarah Burton, suffers the most in the last third of the tv version because Davies as opposed to Holtby in the novel inevitably privileges Sarah-the-lover over Sarah-the-headmistresss and fataly changes some of her background and motivations.
( South Riding, novel vs tv adaption )
1.) Teen Wolf
Pro: several people on my flst seem to like it. Also, I miss Buffy.
Con: but fannish osmosis tells me said popularity is due to a slash pairing of sidekicks (which is fine) and nobody can stand the lead (which is not; I don't need to love the lead best - in two thirds of the tv shows I've loved, I didn't, and that was no problem for the enjoyment - but I have to at least like the woman/guy who by definition of being the lead gets the most screen time; shows where I couldn't stand said characters were shows I did not stick with for long)
Con: only one female character get occasionally mentioned in fannish osmosis, and that not often. I'd be a hypocrite to claim I didn't enjoy the male dominated tales as well (if Lawrence of Arabia, where there isn't a single woman in sight, is your favourite movie, you would be, too), but a promise of interesting women gets me faster to a fannish source these days.
2.) Grimm
Pro: fannish osmosis tells me that after a rocky start, it developed into something genuinenly interesting and layered with torn loyalties and shades of grey. I get get over slow rocky starts - TNG fan reporting for duty here - if there is a promise of goodness to come.
Con: everyone agrees that the German, of which there seems to be a lot, is hilariously bad, and the examples I've heard are indeed sidesplittingly awful. This would make serious scenes inadveretendly sound like Monty Python instead. (One post I've read mentions at one point someone says what's supposed an "old German blessing" and it turns out to be a carnival nonsense verse ("alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei" = "everything has an ending, just the sausage has two".)
Con: I haven't heard reports of interesting women in this one, either.
3.) Once Upon A Time
Pro: fannish osmosis tells me this one actually has interesting women in it and names three female regulars as examples
Con: Fannish osmosis also tells me it starts strong and gets weaker. Which is not the order I prefer.
Meanwhile, in the last two weeks I did get around to watching a BBC three parter based on a novel which I found captivating in parts and deeply frustrating in others. Seeing as it was an adaption of a novel by Andrew Davies (i.e. Davies was the adaptor, not the novelist), I wondered whether the frustrating parts might be Davies' fault rather than the source materials, especially since I googled the original novelist, Winifred Holtby, and she sounded fascinating (feminist, socialist, daughter of the first female alderman in Yorkshire, wrote the first academic treatise on Virginia Woolf in Britain, died young, unfortunately, in 1935). So I read the novel itself: South Riding. Which indeed proved many, though not all, of the problems I had were due to Davies' alterations, and in any event was a treat to read. It greatly appealed to the ensemble girl in me; inevitably, and this isn't something I blame Davies for, the tv version was more streamlined and focused on far fewer characters whereas the novel is more of a community story, but when I speak of the ensemble quality, I mean more than that. All the characters come across as three dimensional, and there are no caricatures around. There is a very humane quality to Winifred Holtby's writing: characters who in another novel might have served as boo-hiss villains for failing to live up to their claims of virtue, like the Reverend Huggins who cheats on his wife and becomes embroiled in a land scheme, instead are written with sympathy and allowed their strengths as well as weaknesses (Huggins is sincerely appalled by poverty and injustice and fights against it). Her novel, set in provincial Yorkshire in the early 30s, is also in many ways the anti Brideshead Revisited or the anti Downton Abbey, if you like. There is no nostalgia for the pre-WWI past there, most of the characters are middle class or working class, and the one main character who symbolizes the fading gentry, unable to cope with the present, let alone the future, doesn't have a "golden, idyllic past" since he's simultanously an update of Mr. Rochester of Jane Eyre fame, and a fascinatingly both similar and very different one from the simultanously written and more well known update, Maxim de Winter in Rebecca.
The character who comes closest to a leading role, radical headmistresss Sarah Burton, suffers the most in the last third of the tv version because Davies as opposed to Holtby in the novel inevitably privileges Sarah-the-lover over Sarah-the-headmistresss and fataly changes some of her background and motivations.
( South Riding, novel vs tv adaption )
