Study Leave: Occasional Posts on Research, Writing and Other Academic Matters: Convalescent TV Part 2

The Convalescent (ca. 1923-1924) is one of a series of ten similar portraits (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Elegant costume mysteries set in post-WW1 Australia. The first season is knit together by Miss Fisher's quest to keep her little sister's murderer in jail. The second season is less coherent, but still very entertaining, largely because of Miss Fisher, a wealthy, courageous, unconventional free spirit who is at all times gorgeously dressed (the series is all about the clothes, really). Miss Fisher's determination to avoid male domination, in the form of exclusive relationships, plays against the romance the series wants to develop between Fisher & Jack Robinson, a determinedly monogamous and conventional police inspector. We will see.

Very wonderful WWII and post-WWII British series staring Inspector Foyle as a police inspector who dearly wants to serve in combat but is just too good at what he does - and consequently too likely to offend those in a position of power - to be allowed to go to war; so instead he serves as chief of police in Hastings during the war, and is recruited into Intelligence thereafter. The seasons set during WWII are rather better, because Foyle's quiet but incandescent righteousness play better in a clearly black-and-white environment than in the morally gray Cold War. The series does a good job of showing what Britain was really like in the war, and that the united home front that we are now told existed is a polite fiction.

Inspector Gently

I liked this well enough to start reading the books, and it is better than the books - at least better than the early ones. Martin Shaw is phenomenal as the - again - incandescently righteous George Gently (I have a taste for uncompromisingly moral heroes), and his sidekick, Sergeant Bacchus, is unusual in this sort of series in that while not corrupt yet, he is weak and self-serving enough that one can see how he could go that way. The sub-plot of the whole series is Gently's re-parenting of Bacchus, to turn him into a good officer. And it's set in Durham. I love Durham. Would love to go back there.

The tone of this series, starring Matthew McFadyen as a police inspector and that guy that plays Bronn in Game of Thrones as his sergeant, is very much based on the Sherlock Holmes starring Robert Downey Jr - the same jangly soundtrack and penchant for unnecessary violence, particularly but not exclusively by the carefully labelled Americans (who also have a penchant for guns). Set in late-Victorian England, in Whitechapel. The acting and sets are excellent but it's too anachronistic and violent for me. Not every problem can be solved by shooting, punching or knifing someone; and the plots seem otherwise improbable, too. However, I have to say the acting is brilliant and I still watch the occasional episode.

Jack Taylor

This series is a waste of Iain Glen. I watched one episode and he did his best, but I have never seen a set of lazy writing clichés and character stereotypes shuffle so hastily to an uninteresting conclusion. Set in more or less modern Ireland. I gather it's based on a series of novels that I am grateful to be forewarned not to bother to read.

Grand Hotel

This was recommended to me, I don't remember by whom. It's in Spanish with subtitles for those (like me) who don't have any Spanish. It is essentially a well-produced Spanish tele-romance soap opera. I was expecting a well-produced Spanish murder mystery, so it didn't suit my tastes. It was interesting, though, how easily one can spot the conventions of a genre one doesn't like. Class warfare was very important, as was the ability of the extraordinarily handsome young male protagonist to move in both worlds (upper crust and servant class). And there was the inflexible upper-class matron forcing her daughter (obviously destined to be the male protagonist's love interest) into a loveless marriage with the sinister upper-crust hotel manager, and the largely virtuous servants, some of whom were comic relief, and one quisling servant who is in the pay of the privileged upper-class bad guy ... and so on. One episode was enough to tell me it wasn't my thing - actually, 10 minutes of one episode, but I watched the rest out of respect for the film makers. I liked Grand Budapest Hotel better but then, it was brilliant.

Brilliant Paul Gross series about (obviously) the Stratford Festival; hilarious. I've just started season 1 but so far it's wonderful. Why didn't anyone tell me?

Study Leave: Occasional Posts on Research, Writing and Other Academic Matters