Which ffutures wanted to know. There's one answer I can't give due to Darth Real Life, but my next answer is: Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January series of mystery novels, starting with A Free Man of Colour. And I want a tv series adaptation, with a good budget so we can have great costumes and a plausible mid 19th century New Orleans (and Paris for the flashbacks). Our leading man and two thirds of the regular cast are people of colour (the white regulars being Abishag Shaw, Hannibal, and in the later novels/seasons Henri and Chloe), and as this is a huge plot point in every single case, you can't change it, so the series would automatically provide excellent roles and regular income for poc actors.

Now I'm not sure whether it should be one or two books per season, I suppose that depends on the books. Most, though not all, have important character developments going on with the regular cast, though should the tv version decide to skip some of the novels in terms of the main case of the novel in question, I hope they'll remember to let the character stuff happen in the background of another case regardless. And it really needs to be a tv series, not a movie, because there's no way to do justice to the complicated web of relationships that unfold otherwise. Ben and his family alone! A movie would probably make caricatures out of Dominique and Livia, though for opposite reasons, if it wouldn't soften Livia altogether, and would introduce Rose right away, when I think it was a good thing Barbara Hambly waited until the second novel, when everyone else's introductions have already happened and Rose has more breathing space, so to speak.

Another danger would be that they'd cut Ben's backstory with Ayesha. Which I really hope they wouldn't, because I have a soft spot for stories in which someone who has lost a much loved partner gets to the point where they can live and love again, and neither the second nor the first love are treated as superior, both are valued by the narrative and the character, it's not a competition. So my ideal adaptation would, like the novels, include Ayesha as a post mortem character, so to speak, via flashbacks, not right from the get go, though there would be some hints and dialogue references, but unfolding with the seasons.

Since Ben is not just a doctor but a musician by trade (and the later is in fact how he makes his living in New Orleans when he returns from Paris), I would hope that either the actor playing him leans how to face it convincingly and we have a good musician filling in the performance parts, or we luck out with an actor who can play the piano. (Ditto with Hannibal and the violin.) In any case, this brings me to the soundtrack. Now I've seen enough shows and films where they do something interesting with modern music in a historical setting to know it's doable, but again, Ben, our leading character, is a musician as well as a doctor, and this is often very plot relevant, so I would love a soundtrack reflecting both the operas and symphonies of the era and the emerging black music. Come on, New Orleans is our main setting!

In conclusion: Apple+, since you've seduced me into paying for you by various of your shows, you should make this your next costly project!

The other days

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea:

The Vast Unknown: in which Professor Arronax decides to stay on board the Nautilus. Really does feel like a possible alternate ending of the original novel, witch both Arronax' and Nemo's voices spot-on.

Versailles:

I never got around to writing a review of the third season, which I didn't enjoy nearly as much as the first two, not even on a crack soap opera history level, but one of the hands down undiminished bright spots was the show creating a credible OT3 out of its versions of Philippe d'Orleans, the Chevalier de Lorraine and Liselotte of the Palatinate. Not surprisingly, I loved the immensely enjoyable takes this year's Yuletide delivered on the golden trio:

Letters from Liselotte: If Versailles had ever done a Christmas special, this would have been it.

I prefer a pleasant vice: another great take on the trio from Liselotte's pov, this one with Louis.

The Seven Swans (the fairy tale):

Swan Song: the younger brother with the swan wing, after.

The Favourite:

Lady of the Bedchamber: Sarah and Abigail, sparring. Gloriously in the spirit of the movie.

The Goldfinch (the book, I haven't seen the movie):

How do you celebrate:

Boris and Theo, as intense and as messed up as ever.

James Asher mystery series - Barbara Hambly:

Unfortunate son: delivers all one loves this book series for - the three main characters rescuing each other, intense emotions between all three, minor vampire murder mystery, political scheming - and writes Lydia, James and Don Simon very very well indeed.

19th Century RPF:

Cor Cordium: Mary Shelley pov, covering the time between the Haunted Summer and the aftermath of Shelley's death. Among other things, it delivers a credible threesome with Byron, which I'm not that easy to sell on to because the relationship between Mary and Byron was always somewhat prickly (though they respected each other a lot), but this works for me. Though it's actually just one part of a greater story, covering Mary's development during those years, and it presents a very convincing version of her that doesn't ignore the edges (or the way her marriage was falling apart near the end).

..in reverse order.

Call the Midwife: don't have much to say other than it was lovely as usual. I'm a bit torn on Avril ( doing something spoilery ) This was the first episode where we see old Jenny, whose voiceover was the narrative voice throughout and apparantly is here to stay, but I'm not sure whether the framing scenes with Vanessa Redgrave had any other point than to ressure us of this, given that young Jenny has left the show and it is now later seasons Blake's 7. :) Not that it wasn't nice to see her, of course. As to the rest of the gang, everyone was as endearing as always. Cynthia ( doing something spoilery ) This is still my comfort show, and the way it treats not just one but a myriad of choices women make as valid is a great part of why.

Now, as to Yuletide. I'm trying not to let the usual Yuletide angst get to me (i.e. repeating the "self, the recipient and a few others liked your stories on the first day, you can't expect more with small-even-for-Yuletide fandoms and no one having recced them elsewhere so far" mantra). Here are a few more stories I loved reading:

Euripides: Bacchae

Agave in Illyria: Half poetry, half prose, gorgeously creepy and cruel in its take on two sisters who went through some of the most gruesome fates Greek myths have in store.


Benjamin January Mysteries:

Escargots: casefic! With Rose as the leading detective, co-starring Olympe and Augustus Mayerling. Set while Ben is off in Washington, and immensely enjoyable to read.

Where there's a will: lovely missing scene about Chloe and Dominique making the transition to the friends we see them be in the last few novels.


The Musketeers:

Knife to a musket fight: in which Porthos gives Constance more self defense lessons. Fantastic friendship story, and the last line packs a punch.


Hilary Mantel: A place of greater safety:

Our wars will be our own: because if Camille, Lucille and Danton didn't have a threesome, they ought to have had.

Pride:

Step into Christmas (the admission is free): Steph spends Christmas with Gethin and Jonathan mid movie; the story has the great characterisation and warmth the film did, and is lovely to read.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:

Start with the first ten: in which John Henry becomes. John Henry, Savannah, Catherine Weaver and James Ellison were the other family in SCC, and I'm always thrilled to discover fic dealing with that. This one manages to come up with a John Henry perspective which feels plausibly A.I., and specifically an A.I. which developes as radically as John Henry does. I loved it.

Watership Down:

The Mercy of Frith: The story of Blackavar, one of the most intriguing minor characters in the novel. Intense and marvellously written.

The Wire:

Whereever you go, there you are: Randy and Carver, years post show. Heartbreaking, yet also hopeful.

I like Barbara Hambly's books, and trust her as an author, so when some years ago I saw one titled "Patriot Hearts" I browsed a bit despite the title, and emerged intrigued enough to want to read the entire novel. Due to circumstance, I couldn't do so until now.

Patriot Hearts deals with the Founding Mothers, so to speak: Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison and Sally Hemmings. It's not linear, with the framing narration being Dolley waiting for the British soldiers to sack the capital, and then flashbacks - but always not in chronological order - to the lives of the First Ladies (who weren't called that then) as well as the woman whose precise role in Jefferson's life has been hotly debated ever since, with, I hear, not even DNA testing on her descendants laying the debate at rest among the no-he-didn't die-hards.

What I admire most about the novel is indeed not just the choice of Sally as the fourth "Founding Mother" but that thematic importance, the fact of slavery and the treatment of the increasing black population in the former colonies as just as much a part of the new United States as its struggle with Britain, or the aftermath of the French Revolution. Barbara Hambly also avoids my pet peeve in historical novels, i.e. the prejudices and various isms are only displayed by the villains, while the sympathetic characters are all years ahead of their time. Her Martha Washington is completely on board with the system, sometimes afraid of slave uprisings and horrified when it turns out her husband set his slaves free in his will. Dolley Madison as a Quaker starts out being against slavery but compromises once she marries Madison and while sometimes uneasy about the fact she now owns people accepts it as part of her life. 

Presenting the Sally/Jefferson relationship, however, had to be the greatest narrative challenge (i.e. doing so in the historical context but without prettifying the circumstances). Here the fact we're solely in the women's pov throughout the book pays off best, because I can't imagine this would have been possible to do if we had been in Jefferson's pov instead of Sally's. The fact that she's his slave, that he owns her and her family never goes away from  her consciousness. By letting the relationship start in Paris Hambly manages to give Sally some degree of consent possibility (as she's not a slave in France, which is why her brother once Jefferson's tenure as ambassador ends announces he wants to stay there as a free man rather than to return to Virginia as a slave) while also showing its limits; her Sally unromantically but realistically despite actually loving Jefferson wants to stay in France as well once she gets pregnant but has the bad luck that this decision coincides with the storming of the Bastille, and under these conditions life with Jefferson is still safer for her and her child.  Later, back in Virginia, Sally is in an in between state of love and hate most of the time, and one of my complaints about the book is that I would have wished for an entire novel about Sally; not because the other ladies aren't interesting - they are, very much so! - but because I wanted more of her.

The other immediate observation I have is that this is a book primarily written for American readers who already know their Founding fathers. Now,  history education in Germany treats the American revolution and subsequent early years only briefly, as a sideshow/prelude to the main world changing event which is the French Revolution. Which means that basically you're only told it happened and the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence. What else I know about it I got from historical fiction, i.e. the musical 1776, the drama "The General from America"  and Lion Feuchtwanger's novel "Proud Destiny" which is mainly about Beaumarchais and Franklin in Paris. This means I was lacking some of the context that I guess would be self evident for American readers, plus the various men didn't nearly come alive for me as much as the women did. (Presumably because they already live as archetypes in the American consciousness?) This works somewhat for Jefferson because he's supposed to be enigmatic and frustrating, but I couldn't tell you much about Washington and Adams as people based on this book alone (so I'm doubly grateful for 1776), and only something about James Madison. 

Given, however, that the women come across vividly, this is a minor complaint. Again, Hambly avoids the mistake of giving them all a standard ahead of their time personality. Abigail is passionate about politics, while Martha sees them as shortening her husband's life and despises them yet is a natural at the art of diplomacy between hotheaded politicians in her salon. Dolley probably has the most sparkling personality between them while Sally has to adopt a quiet demeanor as a survival technique but comes across as very passionate about just about everything beneath it. 

If pressed, I'd say it's more an interlocked collection of fictional portraits than a novel,  which isn't a criticism. Definitely worth reading.