A few things which didn't do it for me:

James Wilson: The Dark Clue. A decades old novel which got translated into German only now, hence my coming across is accidentally. I did like the premise; it's the execution that sucks. The idea: Marian Halcombe and Walter Hartright from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins start investigating the life of late legendary painter J.W.M. Turner (as he's referred to in the English speaking world, I was recently reminded, in Germany we refer to him as William Turner) when Walter (himself a painter, lest we forget that detail from TWIW) gets tasked with writing Turner's biography in competition to the guy who in real life did so. I was intrigued and charmed by the idea and suspected Wilson might have started out wanting to write a regular old biographical novel about Turner, then found it tricky because it's hard to get a traditional story arc out of his life, and decided on this charmingly 19th century framing device of two interlocking stories. Now I am a fan of (several of) Wilkie Collins' books and was both fascinated and disturbed by Mike Leigh's 2014 movie about Turner, so I was definitely in the market as the target audience for this book. Alas. The Turner parts of the book are sort of okay - our heroes get contradictory testimony about him reflecting various sides of his character, and there's even the sense of him as essentially a Georgian (time of his youth, when his character was formed) in the Victorian era. But the Wilkie Collins fanfic part of it is just plain terrible. Researching Turner works as an emotional catalyst of sorts for both Walter and Marian. ( Beware of bad fanfic spoilers. ) In conclusion, a depressing waste of what could have been a clever and intriguing premise.


Domina (TV Series, Season 1): The Julio-Claudian one where Livia is the heroine. I definitely was in the market for this one, and it did provide a lot of things I liked and/or had missed in earlier takes. So we do get very young Livia's life on the run in the post Caesar's death/ pre her (first) husband making his peace with Octavian part of her life, and indeed lots and lots of emphasis on her Claudian background and the fact her father was Team Conspirators. (Speaking of Octavian/Augustus, the show decides to deal with the various changes his name goes through in rl during those years by letting everyone refer to and address him by his first name of Gaius. Fair enough, and makes life easier for tv watchers.) This is also the first tv take that uses Scribonia (aka Octavian's wife before Livia and the mother of his sole surviving cihild, Julia). And while we don't get all of the children Octavia was the mother or in charge of, we do get far more than usual (one of the two Marcellas, both Antonias, Marcellus, and Julus, Antony's surviving (well, surviving into adulthood) son by Fulvia. Still missing in this version: Cleopatra's three kids with Antony.) And just when I was about to complain that Livia's bff/slave/freedwoman is depicted only in relationship to her, even when traumatic stuff happens, the character got her own scenes and responses. I was also amused by the take on Octavian/Augustus rise and consilidation of power as essentially a Mafia story, which, yes, can see that. Though it severely undersells quite how bloody and chaotic things had been with the Republic for the entire century before young O made his moves, which leads into my complaints re: Livia's motivations, more in a second, but what I want to say here is that the appeal of Augustus and the Principate to contemporaries and thereafter wasn't just that he emerged on top after a few bloody years and thus put an end to (civil) war, but that he managed to stabilize a state which simply had not been working anymore and had gone from bloody crisis/war to bloody crisis ever since the Senate decided murdering Tiberius Gracchus was a good way to deal with his call for direly needed reforms.

Why is this important as to why I'm not a fan of the show? Because Domina is yet another case of a sympathetic main character's secret key motivation being the wish to reintroduce the Republic. Because, see, the whole reason why Livia Drusilla (in this version) masterminds the invention of the Principate - makes her second husband from a gangster into a ruler/tyrant, as one character puts it in the show - is that her plan is that one of her sons inherits this complete power from him, and then restores the Republic for real.

Head. Desk. Now, Livia, being the daughter of an actual Republican, is actually at least a more plausible candidate for this than, say, the centuries later Emperor Marcus Aurelius in a way, and she's just a teenager when Caesar dies, so wasn't old enough to have memories of the actual Republic pre-first Triumvirate and could believe it would have been fine if not for Caesar's rise for power. But if this show wants to have its cake and eat it by providing Livia with this noble motivation justifying her increasingly ruthless strategems, while simultanously insisting on her intelligence and refusing to let her to anything to actually set up a transition of power back to the Senate. (Which "restoring the Republic" would have to mean.) On the contrary. Whenever Senators show up, they're scheming to kill Augustus and/or Livia and her kids and mean and temporary obstacles to be defeated, except for Livia's father's old bff who is noble, but doesn't anything mundane like trying to assemble a faction. So how does the show's Livia imagine things would go if all her plans succeed and one of her boys upon being handed complete power nobly hands it back to the Senate? Would the Senate, after decades of being either evil schemers or sycophantic yes-men to Augustus, then suddenly reveal they're really all virtuous statesmen inside? You'd think she'd cultivate at least a few Senators with the potential of being future administrators, especially since if there's no more Princeps inter Pares, that means Rome has to be governed by two different Consuls each other again, and where are they supposed to come from? But no. Meaning: you have a series which on the one hand aims for a "gritty Mafia drama in togas" vibe, a morally ambigous heroine who starts out well intentioned but has to be not just smarter but more ruthless to remain on top once she's there, but on the other you give her this illogical central motivation that only works in a fairy tale world.

There's another structual problem. For Livia to have impressive struggles to achieve, she needs opponents who challenge her. Now, until she marries Gaius, this works well enough, especially since the show presents her first husband (hitherto described as a conservative nice guy in what few fictions he made it into) as an opportunistic, incompetent and increasingly evil louse. But once she's Mrs. Princeps, she's in theory on top of her world. The show gains some tension from the fact that Gaius-as-Augustus has of course no intention of giving up power and that he's smart enough to figure out one day why Livia really married him, but most of the outward menace/scheming Livia has to contend with is brought by either the aforementioned evil senators.... or Scribonia. As in, Livia's predecessor, Julia's mother, carrying an immortal grudge against Livia for being the cause of Gaius divorcing her. (Supporting Scribonia, though not with evil schemes, is Octavia, who in the first two eps actually comes across as the smarter of the two, but after the show goes through a time jump and change of cast so the kids can be nearly grown up teenagers is suddenly naive and gullible as opposed to scheming Scribonia) Scribonia, character wise, is something of a blank slate - I think basically the only things we know about her from the sources is who she was married to (like many a Roman aristocrat, she was so repeatedly, and indeed remarried after being divorced by Octavian), the scandalous way Octavian divorced her, and that when her daughter Julia eventually gets exiled by her father, Scribonia chooses to go with her. (According to Seneca, she outlived her daughter, but it's also possible she died with her at the start of Tiberius' reign.) So sure, you can write her as benevolent or malvolent as you like. But either way - she has zero political power. She is NOT married to the first man of Rome. So the series by shoving her into the female villain position hitherto occupied by Livia in I, Claudius on the one hand wants us to believe in Scribonia as Livia's Enemy No.1, but otoh doesn't justify why Livia doesn't simply get rid of her one way or the other. And then there's the fact the show's Scribonia is none too bright in her scheming. And it's not like Gaius was in love with her and thus would have a reason to keep her around in Rome. (He divorces her as cold-bloodedly on the show as he did in rl, i.e. basically the moment Julia is born and isn't a boy.) So why the show' s Scribonia is in Rome in a position to make trouble instead of being exiled or dead in the last half of the first season makes no sense.

Making this show yet another example of one that learned all the wrong lessons from I, Claudius. I.e. adopt the "but he/she really wants to restore the Republic and is just faking harmlessness" gimmick, but ignore the fact that I, Claudius lets its villains be formidable - Livia herself first and foremost, of course; in that show, she's ruthless and a non-stop schemer, but she's smart and brilliant about it. That's what makes her so chilling. I somehow suspect the original pitch for Domina must have been along the lines of " I, Claudius, but Livia is the heroine, and also, they curse as much as in Rome" and then too late they realized if Livia is the heroine, you need another villain or villains, and landed on Scribonia because someone has to be the evil woman, clearly. Without bothering to think things through.

And then there's the minor irritation of Livia except for the last three episodes wearing her hair open instead of bothering with a Roman hairstyle (though all the other female characters have one). Why? But that's really just one minor detail.

In conclusion: oh producers of historical drama set in the many centuries of Roman Imperial history: you can actually do dramas where the main character does NOT want to restore the Republic.

Catherine, Called Birdy: Charming film based on a YA novel I have not read, starring a familiar supporting cast, including Billie Piper as our heroine's mother and Andrew Scott as her mostly-useless-but-redeems-himself-late-in-the-day father, and Lesley Sharpe as her nurse. It''s a "days in the life of a medieval girl" kind of story with cheerfully anachronoistic music but surprisingly well done clothing that lives from its teenage first person narrator's brash charm. Early on, my inner nitpicker quibbled that of Birdy's father is in financial trouble, wouldn't he want to marry his sons to rich brides instead of trying to marry his daughter whom he has to provide a dowry for, but hey, this is not a film pretending at historical realism anyway (which ironically might have allowed it NOT to go for the ultra brown Rembrandt look of medieval tv shows and movies that's so in fashion and instead go for actual colours, yay!), and so I shut that voice up anyway. (As it's not pretending at seriousness, I also was reasonably certain Birdy aka Catherine would not have to put up with the marriage to a gross middle aged man, which is not what you want from this kind of story.) It does the usual growing-up-story tropes ( rebelliousness against and tricking smug or overbearing adults, fallout and reconciliation with best friend(s), getting confronted with actions as seen by others at crucial point, falling of pedestals, reevaluating others, etc.) and does them very enjoyably.

Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar. This is one of those classics I've tried as a teenager, abandoned, and meant to try again years later but never did, until now. I think what threw me back in the day, and to a degree still throws me, is the comparison to I, Claudius, with both named not just as fictional memoirs of Roman Emperors but fiction that became so popular it still to a large degree influences how people think of the Emperor(s) in question, despite being fiction. On that basis, it's true, but the novels are completely different. I'm not talking about accuracy on either author's part. They both did their homework, to put it flippantly (ironically, Graves' book is mostly based on Suetonius, Hadrian's secretary who got fired), and they both still very much used the material they had to do their own thing with it. But Graves' novel - or novels, if you count "Claudius the God" as a separate one instead of as part II split for publication reasons - while certainly drawing a strong portrait of its narrator is more of a (wildly entertaining) multi generation family soap opera than concerned solely with the fictional memoirist who tells it. (The legendary tv adaption strengthens those traits and chucks out more literary bits like Claudius interviewing historians Asinius Pollio and Livy for their impressions of Julius Caesar, but those traits are there in the book already.) As a result, there are plenty of other memorable characters around: Livia and Caligula as athe main villains, of course, but also, say, Claudius' mother Antonia (with an iron clad integrity but no sympathy for her handicaped son), or Tiberius, or Claudius' friend Herod Agrippa.

The Memoirs of Hadrian, otoh, is strictly about Hadrian and no one else. The only other person whom you get an idea about as a character is his lover Antinous, and even there you have to put a question mark. (More about this later.) Everyone else, no matter whether our narrator likes them - lilke his patroness and Trajan's wife Plotina, whom he largely owes his throne to and basically sees as a twin soul - or dislikes them (his own wife, his brother-in-law) remain paper thin and never come alive. According to Yourcenar's appendix, this is a deliberate choice, as "Hadrian himself does not see them" as deeper than that. (At a different point in the appendix, she also says that writing a woman's memoirs, like, say, Plotina's, would be iimpossible, because a woman would not tell her story, lest she stops being a woman. Presumably she means a Roman woman, but you know, Agrippina the Younger (sister of Caligula, wife of Claudius, mother of Nero) actually did write her memoirs, though they are lost now.) Fine, but to this reader, it makes the book a lesser novel, its reputation as the ultimate masterpiece in historical fiction not withstanding. I want memorable characters in my fiction, historical or otherwise, more than one.

( More details about the Memoirs of Hadrian and history to follow )

First, I suppose I should specify what I mean with „redemption“, because fandom has a whole range of definitions going from „villain is written with sympathetic traits and tragic background explaing his/her actions“ via „villain confronts own misdeeds, does act in attempt to make up for them /acts to help others from this point onwards“ to „villain is proven to have been not a villain at all and accepted by other heroes as fellow hero after they apologize for ever having seen that person as a villain and/or are revealed as the true villains“ (this would be one favourite fanfic trope). Sometimes, in specific circumstances and for some people, it even seems to mean just „villain should have sex with hero(ine) and be declared their one true love to blast all other loves“. (At least some of the participants in the Spike Wars back in the day gave me the impression that this was what the meant when wanting redemption for Spike. Cough.)

As for the characters named below: my own definition of what I mean when I say that I don’t want this characters to be redeemed doesn’t include sympathetic writing, or the occasional non-hostile relationship with a heroic character. But what my definition of „redemption“ for the purpose of this list does include is for the villain in question to turn another leaf, realise their misdeeds and trying to atone for them, and it most definitely includes „villain revealed to have been right and misjudged all along“.

In no particular order, listed by fandom:

( Spoilers for Babylon 5, Blake's 7, Spartacus and I, Claudius ensue )

The Other Days

The Guardian lists memorable awful dinner parties in fiction and somehow misses out The Charioteer's example. Now as opposed to several friends of mine, I'm not that enamored with The Charioteer, but the party at Alec's and Sandy's is hands down one of Mary Renault's most memorable, best written set pieces and any such list that leaves it out is just not complete.

(BTW, switching mediums, Alias the tv show has not one but two great examples of dinner parties with lots of of squirming which are awful to attend but ever so entertaining to watch, and Arvin Sloane is the host in both cases, once in s1 and once in s4. The s4 party wins for me by a small margin because Emily in s1 has no idea what everyone else is up to but Nadia in s4 catches Sydney in the act and thus her final toast is designed to be extra-squirmy.)

(Of course, while we're talking tv, practically any family dinner among the Julian-Claudians in I, Claudius is both awful to attend to for the guests and entertaining to watch/read about, with Caligula's parties winning in sheer ghastliness and host sadism because Caligula.)

Meanwhile, I've finished Donna Tartt's The Gold Finch. Now I actually didn't like The Secret History and never even started The Little Friend, but novel No.3 managed to capture me. I've seen critics call it "Dickensian" and it's easy to see why, very self consciously so on the part of the author - at one point, a character even gets compared to the Artful Dodger in dialogue -, but actually the author it brought to mind to me, especially in the later sections, was Graham Greene even more than The Inimitable. Or maybe "Dickens meets Greene" puts it best. The novel's narrator (who might as well say, like David Copperfield, that whether he's also the hero of his life or whether another gets that title is up to the reader), Theo, loses his mother at age 13 in a ghastly bomb attack on a museum; Tartt captures the numbness, disorientation and depression of grief - which never does go away for Theo - perfectly and still manages to make the tale lively by semi-orphan Theo ending up with a series of caretakers (or not so care-takers) who are each entertaining set pieces: the rich and distant Barbours (who come complete with medication and overeager psychiatrists), Theo's no-good, bad tempered and eternally in debt father Larry and Larry's coke-dealing Las Vegas girl Xandra, nice and kind antique dealer Hobie (other than Theo's dead mother the only parent figure in this novel who does a good job of the parenting).

When whisked from New York to Las Vegas by his father, Theo also meets the character who struck me as a Graham G. import in this modern day Dickensian world, despite the fact he's the one who later gets compared to The Artful Dodger: Boris ("why is it always Boris with you people?", I can hear a certain character in The Wire ask), a mixture of Ukrainian, Polish and Russian boy whose father is in theory a mining expert (in practice something gangsterish, and Boris' professional future is decidedly of the illegal type as well). Boris is the type of charismatic, fast talking, moodswinging operator involved in myriads of shady dealings, whom several narrating Greene characters tend to get swept away with despite being aware they really shouldn't; the friendship between Theo and Boris, starting out as two intelligent, dysfunctional and neglected boys bonding, is arguably after the loss of his mother the most intense relationship of the book. Donna Tartt doesn't shy away from the homoerotic dimension, either; there is some adolescent fumbling, also some panic because of that on Theo's part who thinks he should maybe make it clear to Boris that that he's not interested THAT way, which he never gets around to because Boris aquires a girl friend and Theo is wildly, incredibly jealous (and aware of the irony). There's also a kiss which makes it clear to Theo he loves Boris, but it doesn't get further than that in terms of physical contact. Incidentally, Boris nicknames Theo "Potter" because of Theo's glasses and general resemblance to Harry P., which he keeps up throughout the novel, which caused the irreverent thought in me that if this novel hadn't been written by Critically Acclaimed (tm) Donna Tartt, surely someone would already have voiced the suspicion it started life as a No Magic AU piece of slash fiction. Larry and Xandra aren't Vernon and Petunia Dursley exactly, but the roles they play are similar, and Theo certainly with all his tragic losses has Harry's luck of getting out of dire situations alive despite the odds. At any rate, Tartt has read the Harry Potter novels, not just seen the movies or absorbed something via general pop culture osmosis; at one point Theo compares the sound of what he hears to Parseltongue.

Theo's also fixated on Pippa, a red-haired girl he spotted in the museum shortly before his mother died and who rarely shows up in person in the novel; she's a symbol more than anything, and for a while I was uncertain whether or not Donna Tartt wanted me to see a relationship there instead of Theo having an obsesssion with someone he hardly knows, but as it turns out, no. Mind you, grown-up Theo's other attempted relationships with women aren't coming across as romantic, either, but again, they're not supposed to. I'm not sure what they contribute to the narrative, though, other than Theo trying to be normal on a Watsonian level and the author telling the reader he sees himself as straight on a Doylist one. It's noticable that the three female characters who come across as memorable are the ones Theo isn't involved with romantically but who are in a maternal position to him (or refusing to be) - his mother, Xandra, and Mrs. Barbour. Whereas the girls lack the vividness with which Tartt writes her male characters (of any age).

The Gold Finch of the title is a Dutch painting by a student of Rembrandts - a painting which does exist, btw, -, and which Theo ends up with in the confusion of the museum bombing, after which it becomes both a symbol of beauty and guilt in his life (the more time passes and the older he gets, the less likely it is he can pass taking it off as anything but theft). It's a red thread throughout the novel, and another Greene type of plot device, especially in the way it ends up being used. Though Donna Tartt, as it turns out, is more of an optimist than Greene (and doesn't, as Orwell memorably quipped of Graham Greene, think of hell as a Catholics Only night club). I ended the novel satisfied with everyone's fates. It's not the type of book that calls to me for an immediate rereading, or that I would call a "must", but it certainly held my attention through more than a thousand pages, and never let it flagg.

The historical tv series all other historical tv series want to be when they grow up. Still. This includes fantasy tv series based on fantasy novels, for verily, you can tell G. R. R. Martin has read his Graves and watched his BBC series. (Tyrion Lannister wants to be Claudius when he grows up, too.)

There had been earlier attempts to film I, Claudius - notably by Josef von Sternberg, and in the dvds of the tv series, you can see the surviving fragments of Sternberg's uncompleteted attempt. (They're awesome. Charles Laughton as Claudius is as great as Charles Laughton tends to be, Sternberg sculps actors' faces like few other directors, and based on the surviving scenes, the script seems to have wrangled a successful distillation of Graves' novel into one cinematic epic.) But the tv show was the one which succeeded, and just at the right time, too. It's a BBC series of the 70s, meaning it's willing to take its time without being boring, and the actors are for the most part a later Who Is Who of the British acting scene. For Derek Jacobi, of course, Claudius would be his breakout role (and much like many a headline about Peter O'Toole's death were "'Lawrence of Arabia' dead" you can bet that when Jacobi dies, it will be some variation of "Claudius dead"). John Hurt is still the definite Caligula (all other actors who ever played insane sadistic emperors weep in envy). And Sian Phillips as Livia is the Evil Overlady to rule them all. Some of the actors are cast against the type most commonly associated with them, notably Brian Blessed as Augustus. (Anyone who believes Blessed can do nothing but SHOUT just has to watch Augustus' death scene, which Herbert Wise, who directed most episodes of the tv series, named as his favourite scene of them all. It's a jaw dropping amazing bit of acting because the camera is on Blessed's face all the time for what feels like five minutes, he doesn't say a word while the audience hears Livia talk out of sight, and not only does he facially respond to what Livia says early but you can feel the exact moment Augustus dies and the light goes out of his eyes. No special effects. The camera stays on his face (and Blessed doesn't blink) while Livia still monologues until she has finished what she had to say, and her hand moves in to close his eyes.) And of course, there is Patrick Stewart as one of the Little Bads, Sejanus, enjoying himself in a villain role. (And a wig.)

I, Claudius didn't have a big budget, which is why every time the characters are off to watch some gladiator games, the camera stays on them (i.e. we never see the masses and certainly no fighting gladiators, though in one scene we see the gladiators prepare while Livia gives her idea of a pep speech which, err, is very her). There are no battle scenes, either, though there are of course several wars being conducted through the decades. At its heart, it's the story of the Julio-Claudians as a dysfunctional family destroying itself (Breaking Rome?), with a razor sharp script full of one liners and intermittent spots of hope. Not everything about I, Claudius works, or in its thousands of imitations left a good legacy. The central premise of Claudius, while genuinely disabled with his stutter and his club foot, only faking his foolishness in order to survive while everyone else gets themselves killed carries the show to the point where Claudius becomes Emperor, but the show has some problems selling the other part of Graves' twist on history, that Claudius, after a few years of being a good Emperor, realises he's making a mistake because it means the people are now content to be in an Empire, and he'd been hoping for the Republic to return all his life. (I entirely blame Robert Graves on every "good " Emperor who really wants the Republic to return, no matter how unlikely that is - looking at you, Marcus Aurelius in Gladiator, for example.) He therefore marries the "worst woman" he can find, his niece Agrippina the Younger (Agrippinilla in the novel & show) because he counts on her son Nero being so terrible that the Romans will have had enough of the Empire once and for all. This of course means the audience (knowing Claudius is wrong there) can't root for him as an underdog anymore (the fate of all underdogs who make it to the top) and can't hope for his plans to succeed, either, while Agrippinilla isn't given the flair of the saga's earlier villains, like her brother Caligula, let alone Livia, and thus the show ends on something of an anticlimax. (Though no, I don't think they should have ended it with Claudius becoming Emperor; that would have been cheating.) Also, Augustus - one of history's sharks if ever there was one - as a mostly good natured pater familias is a quibble I have as someone interested in history, though not one from the pov of an entertainment watcher. (Where Augustus as a mostly good guy is necessary because each successive emperor gets worse which is part of the drama.)

But still, nitpicks not withstanding - I, Claudius is glorious. No matter how outrageeous events gets, the characters never feel like caricatures. Not even Caligula, who is insane and sadistic but by no means stupid, which makes him more frightening. They're rarely just one thing or the other; take Claudius' mother Antonia, who is one of the few high-minded Julians, and of those few the only one who doesn't die young. As far as anyone can be on this show, she's a good guy. She also has no sympathy whatsoever for her youngest son who embarrasses her by his stutter, clumsiness and clubbed foot, and never through several decades of show time has a kind word for him. (If you think Catelyn Stark not liking her husband's supposed bastard is cause for the fandom to condemm her ever after, I wonder what they'd make of Antonia?) When she realises her daughter Livilla has poisoned her (i.e. Livilla's) husband and was about to committ another murder, she punishes her by locking her up in a room and letting her starve there while sitting outside, listening to Livilla's desperate cries ("this is my punishment"). (Much as Livilla is an unsympathetic character when alive, this is a gruesome sequence.) Antonia, possibly the most Roman character, commits suicide in disgust of what Rome has become (and doesn't trust her son Claudius to get the arrangements for her funeral right, one last humiliation).I can't see a modern show resisting the temptation to soften her by letting her be a bit nicer to her younger son (she's loving towards her other children, until the truth about Livilla comes out, obviously, and to Herod, Claudius' best friend, who grows up as a glorified hostage in Rome) or at least give her a deathbed reconciliation with Claudius - or else to present her as a villain. But not this show.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have Livia, who is the prime villain of the show until Caligula takes over that position (with a brief Sejanus interlude), and who is responsible for a lot of the tragedies in the first third of the show, which she at no point repents. At the same time, when Livia says, off camera in the aforementioned death scene of Augustus, "I did it all for Rome" ("all" includes poisoning Augustus, which she's just told him), neither performance or script leave doubt this is exactly what she believes. The scene between her, Claudius and Caligula in which Caligula is signalled as the next prime antagonist and in which Livia and Claudius have their first honest conversation with each other is breathtaking in its emotional dynamics, not least because Claudius has feared Livia (with reason) all his life and still exits the scene having (sincerely) promised her he will make her a goddess after her death so she can escape punishment in the afterlife - and the way it's written and played makes the audience want him to keep that promise. (He does.)

The only villain who gets punished the conventional way (i.e. without the audience feeling anything but relieved and all for it) is Caligula, but then again, he's also one of the show's most memorable characters. John Hurt as mentioned is brilliant in the role, no matter whether tightly controlled sadistic (as towards the dying Livia) or barking mad (when he's convinced he's Zeus later) , and gets to play one of the most frightening scenes on tv (or any type of screen, for that matter), full stop, without the show ever needing to be explicit. Today's tv would probably show the gory results. The BBC did it all by establishing the before (Caligula's sister and lover Drusilla is pregnant; he's convinced that the kid will surpass him, since he's Zeus, you know) and the after (Claudius knocks on a door, Caligula, now with blood on his mouth, opens; we never ever see what Claudius sees behind Caligula, it's all done via Derek Jacobi's expression and John Hurt saying "I wouldn't go in, Uncle, if I were you"). And it's a complete nightmare. You can keep today's massacres, they still pale by comparison.

It occurs to me that I've made the series sound like an unreleting doom and gloom fest, and the amazing thing is, it isn't at all. As mentioned, the dialogue is very witty, even in the anticlimactic final episodes. (Take the show's version of that Juvenal anecdote about Messalina challenging one of the most successful prostitutes of Rome about who will satisfy more men in one night. The prostitute agrees, but the audience doesn't get a single sex scene. Instead it gets pointed dialogue. The men around Messalina make jokes when the prostitute wants to be paid beforehand. Says the unimpressed professional in question that Messalina might do this for fun but she's making a living that way. "My hobby happens to be gardening, for which I don't expect to be paid." With that line, a one shot character is established and real in a way prostitutes in historical or fantasy tv shows rarely get to be.

In conclusion: I, Claudius. If you haven't already, watch it. If you know it already, watch it again. There is nothing like it, though many try.

Day 18 - Favorite title sequence

Impossible to narrow it down to one, but I shall try. Before I discuss the various top candidates under a cut because I shall use the vids to demonstrate, let me explain about one candidate which isn't there: the Dexter title sequence, which is witty and clever (making what turns out to be Dexter simply going through his morning routine of breakfeast, cleaning his teeth, getting dressed, leaving his apartment look incredibly sinister). However due to my increasing disaffection for the show I can no longer enjoy it as I used to. It's not the title sequence, it's me! Now on to the others.

( Share the wonders that I've seen )


Trying to decide between these is really hard, you guys. With a pistol pressed at my head, I shall say that artistically I admire the Carnivale intro most, am most mushy about the B5 season 5 intro, and in its mixture between the stylistic and the emotional appeal love the Farscape s3 intro best.




( The rest of the days )

Day 04 - Your favorite show ever

Great Maker, as Londo Mollari would say. How could I possibly narrow it down like that? I don't have just a single favourite show ever, I honestly don't. I suppose I could say one per genre. Yes, let's try that.

Science Fiction: Star Trek in its various permutations is my oldest fandom, and I love it with undiminished passion, but my loyalties for the top spot are split between DS9 and TNG, and thus it simply has to be the arc show to end all arc shows, the space opera to end all space operas. It was the dawn of the third age of mankind, you know. Why, Babylon 5 of course.

History: I, Claudius, no question about it, based on Robert Graves' novel. I mean, I have loved several shows since, but this masterpiece of 1970s British tv had it all: brilliant dialogue, the best British actors of the day in major and minor roles, and not type cast, either (if you've only ever seen Brian Blessed in shouty roles, check out Augustus' death scene, in which he doesn't utter a word the entire time and does it all with his eyes during Livia's monologue; you'll know exactly the moment he dies, and no, the eyes stay open, it's not that), Derek Jacobi delivering the performance that makes me still forgive much of his Oxfordian nonsense as the title character, Sian Phillips being the overlady to rule them all, and so forth. Also they were on a budget (as most British tv used to be) and thus there are no crowd scenes or spectacles at all (whenever someone watches, say, gladiator games, we stay with three or four spectators the entire time), and you don't miss it at all. The übergory Spartacus doesn't have anything so frightful as the short scene where Caligula opens the door to Claudius, where technically you don't see anything but John Hurt and Derek Jacobi in close up, but because of the information the audience has as to what Claudius sees over Caligula's shoulders, it haunts me to this day. And did I mention the dialogue is brilliant?

Tiberius: Did it ever occur to you, mother, that it might be you they hate, more than me?
Livia: Nothing ever occurs to you that doesn't occur to me first. This is the affliction with which I live.

Fantasy: Here my loyalties are split between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off Angel. It really depends on the day I'm having. Angel inspired more fanfiction, Buffymore meta from yours truly. Buffy is the greater achievement, no question, but the category isn't about a critical pov but one's own emotions on the subject, and I really love them both fervently.

Contemporary Drama: Six Feet Under. It had it all: messed up families (as Alan Ball once said, the Fishers were Scandivian drama, the Chenovitchs were Greek drama), black humour, fine actors, the two big canon romances - Nate/Brenda and David/Keith - being treated with equal screentime, and the various sibling and child-parent relationships getting just as much screen time - satire and emotional depth. Oh, and it taught me all about the benefits of clear instructions for my future funeral director. ( I promise not to demand favourite rare comics to be buried with me, too.) I'm a bit more uncertain about the other big SFU message, which is that either pot or LSD are great for enlightenment or family bonding, but there you go. :)


( The rest of the days )

Name five characters who would hate attending a family reunion.

Ah, dysfunctional families. One of my favourite things to read, listen and watch.

1) Tiberius, as portrayed in I, Claudius. Not that Tiberius in any version and as described by any historians doesn't strike me as hating family reunions, but I assume the meme goes after fictional characters, so Gravesian Tiberius it is. Doesn't matter which era we're talking about, young Tiberius with his extremely awkward relationship to stepfather Augustus and mother Livia or very old Tiberius (at this point responsible for various family deaths himself) in Capri - family reunions, he loathed them.

2) John Locke of Lost. Not for nothing did he win in the evil daddy stakes in the poll I posted a few months ago, in a show with an overabundance of bad fathers. Meeting his mother didn't turn out too great, either. Let's just say that canonically, family reunions for John Locke went from bad to worse and I can't imagine him respond other than going macro and yelling DO NOT WANT at the prospect of more.

3) Aeryn Sun (Farscape). Aeryn's canonical family reunion party is called The Choice. Otherwise known as the angstiest Aeryn episode ever. Fun times, these were not, even if she hadn't been grieving for other reasons in that episode already. I don't think Aeryn would want a repetition of that experience any time soon.

4) Kara "Starbuck" Thrace (Battlestar Galactica). And then there is Kara. As many a viewer has said, she could talk with Aeryn about Mommy issues. With the mothers in question far, far away. There's also a psychologically torturous family situation she would not want to repeat from early s3. No, can't see Kara signing up for family reunions any time soon.

5) Heidi Petrelli (Heroes). I checked out of the Heroes canon during s3, but however it went down afterwards (no, don't tell me), I can't imagine Heidi really enjoying a Petrelli family reunion, between her mother-in-law indulging either in put-downs or come ons, Arthur being a creep, and Nathan and Peter doing their co-dependent arguments/hugs act.

I, Claudius:

Mater Familias: to put it as unspoilery as possible for people not familiar with either the book, tv series or the detailed history of the Julio-Claudian dynasty: Antonia deals with her children. It's a brilliant and emotionally devastating look at one decision Antonia makes, and manages to get the core of her.

Sarah Jane Adventures:

The boy who touched time: Clyde Langer dreams, and these are not his dreams. Lovely Clyde portrait in the wake of the most recent episode. I hoped the crossover would inspire fanfic, and this is a splendid example.

More rare fandom recs:

I, Claudius:

Mater Patriae: because Livia remains one of the best villains ever, and this look at her as presented in I, Claudius captures so very well why. Poison is queen, indeed.

History without novels to interpret it:

The Seventh Circle: Sandro Botticelli and Lorenzo de' Medici in the aftermath of the Pazzi conspiracy. Great take on both.

The Arrow: there are several stories about Anne Boleyn in this Yuletide, using Wyatt's poem about her as a prompt, but only one, this one, responds to it with a poem of its own, and to my mind is also the one which really captures Anne, who in historical fiction tends to get either demonized into evil other woman or softened into dull romantic heroine.

Sandman:

Pieces of Time: an excellent Delirium point of view, set during Brief Lives.


Sherlock Holmes:

Common Places: great portrait of Irene Adler, and one that pulls off Irene/Holmes in a credible fashion, no mean feat. The woman in post-Doyle versions often suffers by being transformed into a damsel in distress - when Holmes' fascination was awakened by her cleverness and resourcefulness in A Scandal in Bohemia -, and the fact she ends the story she shows up in happily married gets ignored (or poor Geoffrey killed off). Not so here. As for Holmes, he doesn't suddenly end up a romantic hero, either (and Holmes/Watson fans can be reassured his complete attachment to Watson isn't forgotten); they are truly themselves, and I love it.

Deadwood:

The Enemy of my Enemy: Al Swearangen in the late first season, along with Bullock, Cy Tolliver, Jewel and Trixie. Captures Al fantastically well.