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More obscure British 1970s bio miniseries tv not produced by the BBC. Or not so obscure, since this one won its leading lady a BAFTA, but it was certainly new to me.
Reasons for watching: was scripted by Julian Mitchell (who due to "Another Country" and "Vincent and Theo" has a lot of good will on my part), stars a lot of classy actors in supporting parts (Jeremy Brett, THE Sherlock Holmes, as one of Jennie's lovers, Count Kinsky - really his name; Sian Philips, the Empress Livia herself, as Stella Patrick Campbell, the actress who makes off with Jennie's second husband; Patrick "The Second Doctor" Throughton as Benjamin Disraeli), and of course I was curious about a 70s take on the enterprising Jennie, the anti-Henry James heroine in that she was an American girl in Europe marrying into the aristocracy more often than not winning at sex and politics alike. Also, of course, she produced Winston Churchill who adored her ("'She shone for me like the evening star").
It's a seven parts miniseries covering Jennie's life from her meeting Randolph, younger son of the Duke of Marlborough, till her death. Jennie is played by Lee Remick, and remarkably for a female leading lady, she's actually allowed to age on screen, albeit only in the last two episodes, and the aging make-up, compared to ther 70s efforts, isn't bad, either. (Seriously: I'm still annoyed by the much more recent Queen of the Desert about Gertrude Bell, a film with which many things are wrong, and that Nicole Kidman, playing a woman travelling outdoors for years, looks the same - young - age for decades is but one.) The scripts are witty and Wildean, weaving the actual aphorisms (Jennie about husband No.3: "I have a past, he has a future, we should be fine") in effortlessly. Remarkakbly for a female main character who is the mother of a famous historical figure, Jennie, not unlikely for a woman in her class and age, isn't depicted as overflowing with motherhood during the childhood of her two sons but leaves much of the actual raising to servants and boarding schools, getting truly involved only once the boys are old enough to have challenging conversations with ("hm, Winnie, you're going to be interesting after all"), and that isn't something the narrative condems her for or presents as a disaster.
Mitchell, Google tells me, had access to the Churchills papers for this, including the Jennie-Randolph correspondence, but his depiction of Randolph dying of syphilis is nonetheless now outdated, the internet also tells me which says Randolph probably died of a brain tumor. Be that as it may, the Jennie-Randolph marriage of course takes up a great part of the first half of the show, with Jennie depicted as a "political wife" who thoroughly enjoys throwing herself into campaigning and who very much shares Randolph's ambitions to make it to the top, not just because she loves him (though she does), but because she wants to get to No.10 herself, and it's one of her life's frustrations she never does (and doesn't live long enough to see Winston there, either, she dies in 1921). The falling apart of the marriage is mostly blamed on the syphilis, with Jennie going from flirtation to actual affair with Count Kinsky only after Randolph has revealed it to her (which btw is a fantastic scene). (Jennie's non-Kinsky affairs are discreetly referenced in dialogue, leaving it open which are flirts and which are more, except those which end up in marriage. The only man other than Kinsky whom we see Jennie with and whom she doesn't end up marrying is the Prince of Wales, and there again the scene is ambigous enough to leave it open whether it's a friendship with benefits or not - they're having breakfast together - fully dressed - and chatting about her current younger lover whom she intends to marry, which he advises her against.)
The most enduring relatonship Jennie has with another woman is with her sister Leonie, which is a fun sibling relationship consisting equally of bickering and support; the family dynamics in general are fun with a touch of the dysfunctional that never gets really dark, with Jennie's two grown up sons, Winston and Jack, being less than thrilled about husband No.2, George, who is exactly as old as Winston (not least because Winston is afraid this will harm his election chances and cause public ridicule) but basically leaving it at eye rolling over George who is depicted as something of a brainless boytoy without malice. (Winston hides in his treehouse from having to interact with him at one point when George wants to go on a drive together, I kid you not. Bear in mind both men are in their late 20s. The treehouse keeps getting used.) They're also a family great at verbal sparring and general wit but Mitchell never lets them get truly hurtful against each other, except for Randolph when he's already deranged by syphilis. Oh, and there is this gem in the last episode in a post WWI party:
Supporting Character A: Everyone keeps saying "Freud says" or "according to Freud" - who IS Freud, do you know?
Supporting Character B: The chap who claims all men are really in love with their mothers.
Camera: pans to Winston, watching Jennie dance enchantedly
Supporting Character A: How ridiculous.
I see what you did there, Julian Mitchell. Seriously though, while both of Jennie's daughters-in-law are depicted as amiable ladies with whom she gets on much better than she did with her own mother-in-law, she's presented as THE woman in both her sons' lives, not just in the sense of being their confidant but also their political support.
Which brings me to one of the few frustrations I had with the show: the utter lack of actual political context. By which I mean: when Jennie is campaigning for Randolph or Randolph is making speeches in the House, there is no information given as to what the opposition thinks. When Winston changes parties from Tory to Liberal pre WWI, we find this out via a highly entertaining Winston and George passive aggressive taking pot shots at each other scene, which is all very well (and as I said highly entertaining) but gives absolutely no information as to why Winston did this, or what Jennie (a life long Tory) thinks of it. When Jennie is indignant about Winston losing his war time Lord of the Admiralty post and rails against PM Asquith's treachery and how Winston is made a scapegoat, it would have helped to get some information about just why Asquith had to sack Winston and why Churchill's performance in WWI was considered such a royal screw up, but no, we don't get any of this. The entire miniseries is so tunnel vision Tory-as-tied-to-Churchills pov that it's almost a miracle that during the Boer war, we get the closest thing it ever does to voicing what other people think. The scene: Jennie wants to organize a demonstration of US support for the British war effort. A friend, played by Zoe Wannamaker, points out that um, a lot of Americans are actually pro-Boer in this war, and "well, Jennie, I don't agree with what Britain is doing, either". Then Jennie who is excellent at winning people over does her Jennie thing and tells her friend that surely, supporting Jennie's effort to send a medical ship to the war which would also accept Boer patients is something her friend CAN do, the friend agrees, end of scene. Any information as to why "a lot of Americans" weren't Team Britain in the Boer war? Not given. The Boer war is important in this show because war correspondant Winston gets captured and escapes, not because, say, the concentration camp is invented, or patriotic hysteria prefigures the WWI climate; none of this is as much as hinted at.
(The contrast to the equally 70s miniseries about David Lloyd George I watched last year is especially starting in this regard, though of course Lloyd George taking an unpopular stand against the Boer war and nearly getting lynched as a result was a big event in his career so there had to be some depiction of context.)
All in all: entertaining, witty, also a feast for the eyes (Jennie being one of the heralded beauties of the age, Lee Remick gets to wear a lot of gorgeous dresses), but amazingly uncritical about the British Empire and its attitudes from the future author of Another Country.
Reasons for watching: was scripted by Julian Mitchell (who due to "Another Country" and "Vincent and Theo" has a lot of good will on my part), stars a lot of classy actors in supporting parts (Jeremy Brett, THE Sherlock Holmes, as one of Jennie's lovers, Count Kinsky - really his name; Sian Philips, the Empress Livia herself, as Stella Patrick Campbell, the actress who makes off with Jennie's second husband; Patrick "The Second Doctor" Throughton as Benjamin Disraeli), and of course I was curious about a 70s take on the enterprising Jennie, the anti-Henry James heroine in that she was an American girl in Europe marrying into the aristocracy more often than not winning at sex and politics alike. Also, of course, she produced Winston Churchill who adored her ("'She shone for me like the evening star").
It's a seven parts miniseries covering Jennie's life from her meeting Randolph, younger son of the Duke of Marlborough, till her death. Jennie is played by Lee Remick, and remarkably for a female leading lady, she's actually allowed to age on screen, albeit only in the last two episodes, and the aging make-up, compared to ther 70s efforts, isn't bad, either. (Seriously: I'm still annoyed by the much more recent Queen of the Desert about Gertrude Bell, a film with which many things are wrong, and that Nicole Kidman, playing a woman travelling outdoors for years, looks the same - young - age for decades is but one.) The scripts are witty and Wildean, weaving the actual aphorisms (Jennie about husband No.3: "I have a past, he has a future, we should be fine") in effortlessly. Remarkakbly for a female main character who is the mother of a famous historical figure, Jennie, not unlikely for a woman in her class and age, isn't depicted as overflowing with motherhood during the childhood of her two sons but leaves much of the actual raising to servants and boarding schools, getting truly involved only once the boys are old enough to have challenging conversations with ("hm, Winnie, you're going to be interesting after all"), and that isn't something the narrative condems her for or presents as a disaster.
Mitchell, Google tells me, had access to the Churchills papers for this, including the Jennie-Randolph correspondence, but his depiction of Randolph dying of syphilis is nonetheless now outdated, the internet also tells me which says Randolph probably died of a brain tumor. Be that as it may, the Jennie-Randolph marriage of course takes up a great part of the first half of the show, with Jennie depicted as a "political wife" who thoroughly enjoys throwing herself into campaigning and who very much shares Randolph's ambitions to make it to the top, not just because she loves him (though she does), but because she wants to get to No.10 herself, and it's one of her life's frustrations she never does (and doesn't live long enough to see Winston there, either, she dies in 1921). The falling apart of the marriage is mostly blamed on the syphilis, with Jennie going from flirtation to actual affair with Count Kinsky only after Randolph has revealed it to her (which btw is a fantastic scene). (Jennie's non-Kinsky affairs are discreetly referenced in dialogue, leaving it open which are flirts and which are more, except those which end up in marriage. The only man other than Kinsky whom we see Jennie with and whom she doesn't end up marrying is the Prince of Wales, and there again the scene is ambigous enough to leave it open whether it's a friendship with benefits or not - they're having breakfast together - fully dressed - and chatting about her current younger lover whom she intends to marry, which he advises her against.)
The most enduring relatonship Jennie has with another woman is with her sister Leonie, which is a fun sibling relationship consisting equally of bickering and support; the family dynamics in general are fun with a touch of the dysfunctional that never gets really dark, with Jennie's two grown up sons, Winston and Jack, being less than thrilled about husband No.2, George, who is exactly as old as Winston (not least because Winston is afraid this will harm his election chances and cause public ridicule) but basically leaving it at eye rolling over George who is depicted as something of a brainless boytoy without malice. (Winston hides in his treehouse from having to interact with him at one point when George wants to go on a drive together, I kid you not. Bear in mind both men are in their late 20s. The treehouse keeps getting used.) They're also a family great at verbal sparring and general wit but Mitchell never lets them get truly hurtful against each other, except for Randolph when he's already deranged by syphilis. Oh, and there is this gem in the last episode in a post WWI party:
Supporting Character A: Everyone keeps saying "Freud says" or "according to Freud" - who IS Freud, do you know?
Supporting Character B: The chap who claims all men are really in love with their mothers.
Camera: pans to Winston, watching Jennie dance enchantedly
Supporting Character A: How ridiculous.
I see what you did there, Julian Mitchell. Seriously though, while both of Jennie's daughters-in-law are depicted as amiable ladies with whom she gets on much better than she did with her own mother-in-law, she's presented as THE woman in both her sons' lives, not just in the sense of being their confidant but also their political support.
Which brings me to one of the few frustrations I had with the show: the utter lack of actual political context. By which I mean: when Jennie is campaigning for Randolph or Randolph is making speeches in the House, there is no information given as to what the opposition thinks. When Winston changes parties from Tory to Liberal pre WWI, we find this out via a highly entertaining Winston and George passive aggressive taking pot shots at each other scene, which is all very well (and as I said highly entertaining) but gives absolutely no information as to why Winston did this, or what Jennie (a life long Tory) thinks of it. When Jennie is indignant about Winston losing his war time Lord of the Admiralty post and rails against PM Asquith's treachery and how Winston is made a scapegoat, it would have helped to get some information about just why Asquith had to sack Winston and why Churchill's performance in WWI was considered such a royal screw up, but no, we don't get any of this. The entire miniseries is so tunnel vision Tory-as-tied-to-Churchills pov that it's almost a miracle that during the Boer war, we get the closest thing it ever does to voicing what other people think. The scene: Jennie wants to organize a demonstration of US support for the British war effort. A friend, played by Zoe Wannamaker, points out that um, a lot of Americans are actually pro-Boer in this war, and "well, Jennie, I don't agree with what Britain is doing, either". Then Jennie who is excellent at winning people over does her Jennie thing and tells her friend that surely, supporting Jennie's effort to send a medical ship to the war which would also accept Boer patients is something her friend CAN do, the friend agrees, end of scene. Any information as to why "a lot of Americans" weren't Team Britain in the Boer war? Not given. The Boer war is important in this show because war correspondant Winston gets captured and escapes, not because, say, the concentration camp is invented, or patriotic hysteria prefigures the WWI climate; none of this is as much as hinted at.
(The contrast to the equally 70s miniseries about David Lloyd George I watched last year is especially starting in this regard, though of course Lloyd George taking an unpopular stand against the Boer war and nearly getting lynched as a result was a big event in his career so there had to be some depiction of context.)
All in all: entertaining, witty, also a feast for the eyes (Jennie being one of the heralded beauties of the age, Lee Remick gets to wear a lot of gorgeous dresses), but amazingly uncritical about the British Empire and its attitudes from the future author of Another Country.
