Bridgerton

I don’t know how they do it, but Netflix always seem to know just what we need.  It’s Christmas Day 2020.  Everyone is coming to terms with substantial compromises to their celebrations, potentially stranded far from home by following the whiplashing advice from the old boys’ club running our government.  The weather is crap, the year is being wished over, and little do we know, the next one is going to be getting off to the most underwhelming of starts.  And pow, Netflix drops the most optimised dollop of delicious escapism right in front of our eyeballs.  That’s right, this week we’re doing Bridgerton.

Regular readers won’t be surprised to know that I was very late to this party.  Spirited away to my parents’ just before London was turned into an inescapable fortress, their loyalty to live TV had driven me away into my Louis Theroux documentaries.  Returning to my home and work (which have now been the same place for nearly a year – I can’t confirm if I will ever wear underpants again), everyone was talking about one thing: Bridgerton.  I resisted its call.  I didn’t need to follow the herd.  I was deep in other series (wondering if The Sopranos would ever end).  Its mania would pass.  But then, instead, it snowballed.  Every other Guardian article (I ignore all other news – no surprises there) was about its music or its fashion.  It was revealed as the most watched Netflix production.  My interest was piqued.  Then everyone chuckled at the explicit sexual content and, lo and behold, I was sold.

The eight episodes are based on the first in a series of novels that follow the fictional Bridgerton family.  Named alphabetically, they’re an A to Z (well, an Anthony to Hyacinth) of upper-class London society in 1813.  We’re with them for a social season, from the young ladies’ debuts through weeks and weeks of balls balls balls until a final climax that sees all the lords and such retire back to their country piles.  Here’s the first reason Bridgerton’s timing are spot on: all these well-attended events are spectacles we can only dream of.  Right now, a good day out is a mask-clad whiz round the supermarket.  A lavish night of dancing and drinking, dressed up to the nines, is as alien to us as most of the social conventions of nineteenth-century Britain, but it is so richly and colourfully brought to life on screen that it has the power to fill that part of our lives that is so sorely lacking.  There’s even a nod to our present day, with the string quartets treating us to classical interpretations of modern pop songs.

While we’re at it, the costumes are a second well-tuned route for vicarious living.  Most of us are now set in our leisurewear (please see earlier comment about underpants), but the lords and ladies of Bridgerton are never out of excuses to push the sartorial boat out.  Even the discomfort of very tight breeches or having your cleavage shoved up beyond your clavicle offers a welcome break to shuffling about our homes in slippers and hoodies, with the exception of the Featheringtons’ sickly colour palette.

Thirdly, the show is on the pulse of our enthusiasm for diversity, putting black Georgians front and centre.  No need to explain, no indulgence of anyone feeling threatened; it’s just a great time.  Any protest with reference to historical accuracy is farcical, and probably from the same people who wanted The Crown accompanied by trigger warnings.  Some people simply don’t deserve content this entertaining.

But lastly, it is just the story for the moment.  In a foreign world of ladies’ reputations, archaic courtship and primogeniture, there is a welcome frivolity to the various love stories.  Bosoms heave, sideburns protrude, and eyes are made across the ballroom, and we’re unable to resist caring about girls making a good match and marrying for love.  Some jeopardy is clunkily contrived, with Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey – a key player from W1A and Crashing) going from key barrier to his sister’s happiness to someone without quite enough to do, and the endless speculation regarding the real identity of Lady Whistledown (Gossip Girl gone Georgian) lacking compelling consequence.  But once the love making starts, we’re miles away from the grit and realism of something like Normal People and drinking in every romantic thrust of some good old-fashioned shagging.  You don’t get that in Downton Abbey.  Yet the shenanigans don’t feel gratuitous – they’re just another layer of fun in all the stories.  More remarkable is the sheer size of the cast, with every peripheral player committing wholeheartedly from the start, gradually coming forward as fully formed characters as the episodes progress.

Sure, the script could have done with one more proof-read to tighten the lines beyond the point of simply aping how people probably spoke in the olden days, and maybe some of the cast are guilty of doing theatre acting with their shouting and enunciating, but there’s little to fault with Bridgerton if you’re looking for a hearty romp.  I would even go as far to prescribe this as self-care at a time when reasons to be cheerful may appear to be lacking.  Switch off the 5pm briefing when we get put into surprise tier 22 and take yourself off to the world created by Julia Quinn and realised by Shonda Rhimes (How To Get Away With Murder, among many other things).  It’s a treat we all deserve, and it’s come at just the right time.

Normal People

It’s alright guys; I’ve read the book.  Now we can talk about Normal People.  Fair enough, most normal people finished talking about Normal People a few weeks ago.  At one point, a greeting as common as “Hello” or “I think your mute button is on” became “Have you seen Normal People?”  It was, if anything, completely normal to discuss your response to this show and, in particular, its gratuitous sexual content, before proceeding with whichever Zoom call you had dialled into that day.  But no, I seemed to have been taken by the notion that, while my curiosity was of course triggered by all and sundry’s compulsion to signal that they had been watching along, I would rise above all this popularity and universal experience by pulling my smuggest face, adjusting my voice to be more patronising than normal, and declaring: “No I’ve not been watching Normal People.  I’m going to read the book first.”  I’m all for gratuity.  I only got into Big Brother twenty years ago as my teenage self read an outraged newspaper article about nudity on the television.  The constant threat of an unneeded shag helped to suspend disbelief each time a dragon is mentioned in Game Of Thrones.  I came to Elite for some foreign language swearing and high school high jinks, and stayed for the constant erotica.  But the sensible me felt a need to impose a literary barrier before joining in with everyone else in gawping at the body parts onscreen.

Once I finally got hold of the book, though, it was a great read.  A dear friend promised to lend me the book, but subsequently either forgot to bring the book to our lockdown park walks, or I would forget to take the book with me on leaving, or we wouldn’t think about the book for a few weeks while I was lost in reading something else (such as the book Unorthodox is based on), or we’d just lose all hope that I would ever get my hands on the book in order to read the book.  But then I got the book and I went ahead and read it (the book).  That task out the way, I was able to catch up and dive into iPlayer to see how everything came to life televisually.

On reflection, consuming a drama straight after devouring the book from which it sources its material probably isn’t a flawless approach.  There isn’t sufficient distance to be surprised and delighted by elements of the novel you had forgotten.  You’re only really checking off the adaptation against the pages you’ve just torn through.  If this were A-Level English, we’d have just finished taking it turns to read the book out loud in the classroom together (worryingly highlighting that a significant number of 18-year olds are not fluent readers) before the teacher gave up hope and wheeled in the big VCR so we could sit through the BBC production over and over until the end of term.

My own stupidity aside, Normal People is a beautiful series of filmmaking.  Every shot is a luxury.  Set in and around Sligo and Dublin in Ireland (plus some Italy and Sweden, reminding me constantly that Ireland gets to stay in Europe), the mundane looks cinematic.  Even drizzle takes on a sexiness.  But part of the reason our settings all crackle before our very eyes is the truly gripping tension of our central story.  Normal People is the tale of a relationship between Marianne and Connell.  Almost banal in its secondary school origins, we follow our protagonists as they navigate university and beyond, at once incredibly compatible and somehow prone to the no banana part of an idiom that starts with the words close and but.  As I read the book, I hadn’t seen any stills from the show, so Marianne and Connell remained faceless to me.  But, on starting episode one, I was able to conclude immediately that this was perfect casting.  As Marianne, Daisy Edgar-Jones perfectly captures what it feels like not to fit in at school but to find your niche at college.  Walking round Trinity in her velvet jackets, she is almost everyone I went to university with.  She’s utterly believable when navigating banal and awkward social moments, particularly when coming across Connell’s friends one New Year’s Eve in a pub in their hometown.  I felt I was literally in that moment.  As a character, Marianne is damaged by her family.  I obsessed over the exact situation here.  Her mother’s coldness, her brother’s fixations – where do these come from?  The fact we never seem to get the full picture (unless I was looking at my phone when this got explained) makes the circumstances all the less generic and all the more credible.

Meanwhile, Paul Mescal must wrestle (and win) with Connell’s complexity, ensuring we buy him not just as the sporty lads’ lad at school, but the keen reader, the keen writer and the struggling student.  Some of their dialogue is drawn out to the point of snapping, but you don’t wish for them to hurry up (unlike the constant pausing for effect in Skins) because every swallow, hesitation, eyeball swivel, neck tendon tightening, hair adjustment, all of this washes over you in a way that brings you into the heart and the heat of the emotion.  And yes sure, just as the book is frank about their sexual interaction simply because it forms a significant part of any relationship of this kind, we have a lot of opportunities to see their whole bodies emote and perform with a full-on and unblinking focus.  It’s not all vanilla, so this is certainly the element that got tongues wagging, but given how certain I am that my neighbours’ children can see my TV screen through the window, I could probably have sacrificed about 50% of the slapping and tickling and lost nothing of the sentiment.

I’ll spoil none of the plot beyond its premise, but I will comment on my inability to understand the motives of either lead at various points in their relationship’s journey.  They do things that will make your soul wail in frustration.  You yearn for a glimpse of resolution, which means that even a slither of potential happiness for them brings on floods of tears (if you’re the kind of person who only experiences emotion in relation to TV shows).

I’m off to find the soundtrack on Spotify, looking forward to the next time I can drop into conversation that I’ve read the book and watched the TV programme when it comes to Normal People.  Basically, I’ll win.  I’ll leave you with some quick mentions of the supporting cast, simply because they’ve left a similarly deep impression on me.  Sally Rooney’s book enhances its own reality with such believable friends for Connell and Marianne.  Joanna (Eliot Salt) charms with every line and doesn’t seem to be acting at all (a similar comment was made about I May Destroy You), whereas lovely Karen from the school days deserves far more backstory.  I’m still creeped out by Fionn O’Shea’s horribly recognisable turn as the terrible boyfriend, even though his behaviour is sadly commonplace in some of the dreadful people I have come across in my life.  And that’s the strength in this drama – it’s at once normal yet abnormal in its familiarity.  The everyday elements set up a level of recognition, but the specific and unusual details enhance that reality.  This isn’t the movies, where films end with co-stars kissing, leaving us to envision them not parting till death.  This is much realer life.

True Blood

I’m serving up second week of vampire goodness, following on from my last post about The Vampire Diaries, as I’ve decided that vampires are the opposite of Christmas.  Even though the big day might now be in the past, anything I can do to accelerate its rapid disappearance in the rear-view mirror is to be commended.  And while The Vampire Diaries’ PG-rated light snogging and minimal gore might have felt (deliberately) unseasonal, True Blood’s definitive shag-fest and graphic blood-splurging should be the nail in the coffin (as it were) of this festive period.

We’re all clear on the fact that anything supernatural is a trigger theme for me.  But True Blood laced its vampires in with so much more that it was by and large a foregone conclusion that I would work my way into this boxset and swiftly devour all seven seasons.  I’m not sure where it was broadcast in the UK (and I’m too lazy to check) but I made my way through the various DVD discs as and when they came from Lovefilm, back in the day when Netflix was just a thing you thought that wouldn’t take off because internet connections weren’t fast enough.

True Blood’s true charm comes from its Southern setting.  And not just the Deep South, but deepest Louisiana.  We’re talking down by the bayou here.  Strangely, it seems like a great place for vampires, with the voodoo and Cajun influences making hokey pokey all that more realistic.  Perhaps if you’re used to looking out for alligators in the dark, then checking around for one additional cold-blooded predator isn’t too much of a reach.  The first season even had a Cajun-accented character as its antagonist (spoiler alert) and as a languages geek I couldn’t get enough.  That said, I would cite accents as one of the show’s weaker points.  While all our visual cues vividly bring to life the swamp mist and superstition of rural Louisiana, the international cast have varying levels of success in wrapping their chops credibly around the dialect.  Leading lady, Anna Paquin, never quite convinces as Sookie Stackhouse’s southern belle, while Stephen Moyer, a native of Essex, chewed his way around Bill Compton’s confederate gent (an oxymoron of course).  Throw in an Australian as Sookie’s brother and you’ll be unable to do anything but cringe each time one of them mentions the name of the town at the heart of True Blood’s goings on: Bon Temps.  Thing is, you’re saying it wrong as well.  Probably.

Fairly unique in its setting, then, (at least in my boxset experience), True Blood gained itself greater suspension of disbelief when it whipped out its key premise in episode one: vampires have always lived among us, but events have finally unfolded in a way that allows them to come out (of the coffin, arf arf) and live in the open.  A synthetic form of their fave tipple, Tru Blood, means they no longer have to prey on human arteries.  Therefore, the integration of this centuries-old myth into modern society comes along like just another tale of a minority group looking for the same rights as the majority.  And we all know that the Southern states of the US aren’t the best place for this.  Cue dramatic tension on all levels, from inter-family up to full societal.  True Blood seems to ape everything: rights activists, religious zealots, politicians, local law enforcement, pressure groups, lobbyists and anything else that’s been a bit shonky.

But, as we all know, the struggle between man and vampire isn’t enough (see previous posts on Buffy, Teen Wolf etc).  Before long, we’ve got werewolves, witches, shape-shifters and various other demons, giving many of the sprawling ensemble cast further reasons to get involved in the action and, more often than not, take their clothes off.  Funniest of all, there are faeries (whose clothes also get popped off).  And this is because, no matter what supernatural heritage a particular character may or may not have, True Blood hammers home the universal truth that people are horny bastards, drenching its camp action in oodles of sex.  It’s clear everyone has taken their role preparation seriously by smashing the gym hard in advance, so it’s not half bad to look at and also occasionally has things to do with the actual plot.  Sure, there’s body positivity in a range of shapes and sizes, but the sex positivity is mostly displayed by those who’ve been off the carbs.

It’s a show whose opening credits prepare you perfectly for what’s about to come: it’s a sexy mess that veers on being a danger wank, but you can’t stop looking.  Based on some books I’ve never read, True Blood is coming at you this Christmas with a firm recommendation.  It’s highly sexed, highly stylised, and highly entertaining.  If you like your humour dark and bloody, you characters feisty and spunky, and your vampires shackled down by politicking bureaucracy, True Blood will arouse your emotions in a fistful of different ways with every episode you subject your eyes to.  It’s going to do bad things to you.

Westworld

Sometimes you want a TV show to make you ponder the very essence of what it means to be a human.  And sometimes you just want something with plenty of sex and violence.  Maybe these two things aren’t that separate after all, as Westworld manages to deliver both, and all in a cheeky cowboy hat.  Let’s be honest, sex and violence are, after all, key parts of the human experience.  According to Westworld, they are definitely key parts of the cowboy experience too.

Billed, as with all big new shows, as something that would fill the Game Of Thrones hole in our lives, I let the first series of Westworld pass me by.  It was everywhere on my Sky EPG, posters followed me on my commute and trailers constantly rolled on every screen I went near.  It all made me lose interest, especially as nobody in the office seemed to be talking about it.  Could this big-budget western be a major dud?  But then, looking for a new show to start, and giving careful consideration to what should be covered on Just One More Episode, I consulted IMDB’s top rated TV shows: a list of 250 programmes that viewers have rewarded with up to ten stars.  Once I filtered out all the really old stuff and nature documentaries, Westworld (currently at #36) was the highest ranked entity I thought I could bear to watch.

My final barrier to overcome was that Westworld was also the name of a hip hop clothing shop at university and one particular friend used to dress in their attire from head to toe after watching You Got Served.  We all experiment with style when we’re young, but I should emphasise there is no age limit to enjoying a film produced as a streetdance vehicle for B2K.

From the cowboy chat so far, it should be clear that Westworld is a western, of sorts.  Not the kind of western made in the fifties that they repeat on TCM and your dad still watches during the daytime even though it’s sunny outside.  The western world of Westworld is actually a theme park.  Rather than queuing up at Thorpe Park to lose your lunch on a roller coaster though, the visitors to Westworld inhabit a near-future USA where technology has advanced enough to create artificial beings tasked with bringing history to life.  The wealthy book passage to this resurrected era, dressed for the period (a bit like those weird photo booths that actually are a part of normal theme parks), arriving by steam train at a frontier town.  Have they hired impoverished actors to flesh out the illusion?  No; these are, essentially, robots.

Right then, so it’s robots and cowboys – together at last.  Of all the historic periods you could create using animatronics, I’m still not sure I would go for cowboys.  What about all the courtly intrigue of Tudor England, or the licentious lifestyles of the Romans?  That might just be me.  Either way, the cowboy theme allows the paying visitors to shoot guns and whore about (literally) with little concern for the consequences.  Only the hosts can be killed, as they are programmed not to hurt humans.  Their purpose of existence is solely to fulfil their storylines in order to entertain.  But, such is their sophistication as pieces of tech, the ultimate tension comes from the slowly revealed truth that the hardware is starting to get emotional.  Cue a glacially paced and artfully crafted build up through series one to the inevitable pay off of the lunatics taking over the asylum.

With sinister grandpa Anthony Hopkins as the park’s founder and the hosts’ co-inventor, Dr Robert Ford, it’s all a bit Jurassic Park.  But that’s a huge part of the fun.  Let’s just say the future doesn’t look great for theme parks.  However, it does look good for A-list actors, as the cast is a roll call of household names, or at least names where you recognise the faces and can get distracted agonising over trying to remember where you saw them last.  They’re all enjoying themselves immensely, from James Marsden providing the cheekbones and jawline of the handsome cowboy hero, to Thandie Newton having the time of her life running the whorehouse as a tart with not just a heart, but a very complicated backstory.

And that’s the beauty of it.  The hosts play out storylines where they die, but then they are picked up by staff, tidied up, wiped and rebooted and sent out to play again in an endless cycle of suffering.  What if the memories start to come back?  Saying more isn’t possible without reeling off spoilers, so let’s instead focus on some questions that I always ask myself while watching.

Why do they have to be naked when they are getting serviced?

When a host is in for repair, they sit in glass rooms in the nude, while human technicians re-programme them using fancy tablets.  Not only is it unrealistic that the tech hooks up every time (the wifi never disconnects temperamentally) and nobody suggests turning it off and then turning it on again, but you’d think someone could afford the poor hosts something for their modesty.  Instead, their exposure further emphasises their abuse by the humans that run them.  Luckily, Newton’s character Maeve does finally get her own back in the second series, almost recognising the show’s surplus of wrinkly willies with one more wrinkly willy.

What’s up with the way the hosts die?

They’re robots, but they seem to have circulatory systems.  When shot with guns, blood spurts forth.  It’s not enough that they mimic humans in every way, they have this further facet of realism to provide.  Is the hardware designed so that injuries are categorised into fatal and non-fatal so the tech knows exactly when to shut down in order to maintain the storyline?  It’s kind of philosophical really.  Nevertheless, they’re back in the park the next day to do it all again.  They also never run out of battery, whereas my iPhone needs two charges a day just to keep up with Whatsapp.

Where is this place?

For the concept to be believed, we need to accept that somewhere there is a massive expanse of land that can be given over to leisure.  Our view of the outside world is, at first, limited, so we are as blinkered as the hosts to life beyond Westworld.  By the second season, characters suddenly start referring to an island, which curiously has never come up before, so I am wondering if they are now writing themselves out of a hole.

All of these niggles are just part and parcel of creating something so ambitious.  The scope of the show is as enormous as the park needs to be.  The first series takes it time letting you into Westworld and then works through twists that shatter your understanding.  Don’t get impatient, as repetition is used to show the farcical nature of the hosts’ lives.  I do admit that I have fallen asleep in almost every single episode, but don’t let that put you off.  It’s something that I have been watching late at night when I invariably start to reason that I can watch the last part with my eyes closed and then wake up to find it’s all over.  I’ve therefore had to re-watch some sequences a few times.  It’s better when you’re awake, or you won’t understand what’s going on.  The one time I didn’t fall asleep, I was ironing shirts at the same time as watching, so that kept me up luckily.

The complete first series is available on Sky Boxsets, while the second season is in the middle of premiering as I type.  This means I have gone from being able to hit up an episode each evening of series one to having to wait for my weekly instalment like some historical artefact.  Maybe this is how cowboys had to view boxsets before on-demand platforms existed.  I hope I remember what’s going on, but this enforced rationing should ensure more time to contemplate Westworld’s inner philosophical debate.  After all, what does define human consciousness?  I shall give it a good think while my eyes are glued mindlessly to the screen, trying to stay awake, watching naked people shoot each other on the telly.