Lark Rise to Candleford a Lovely English Little House on the Prairie

Brendan Coyle and Claudie Blakely. Fabulous actors who play Robert and Emma Timmins so invitingly -- the kind of married couple that makes marriage look attractive :)

Lark Rise to Candleford, is a tv series based on the book trilogy penned about her growing up years by Flora Thompson. (A word about the title: 'Lark Rise' is the name of the small hamlet our narrator is from and 'Candleford' the larger and more refined market town up the road to which she moves to take on work at the post office).

Always one to see parallels -- I can't help it -- I am reminded of the American tv show based loosely on Laura Ingalls Wilder's coming of age. The differences in setting are of course profound; comparing the American prairie frontier with the Oxfordshire countryside is not something I mean to do, though the time period, as the world shifts into a new age and our characters are a bit subject to it and a bit insulated from it, are quite similar.

The fresh optimistic approach and the strong compelling solid central families (the Ingalls and Timmins) are another parallel. As is the past remembered through the eyes of a smart, good and driven daughter. Lark Rise to Candleford is more subtle and nuanced than LHOTP and written to a more grown up audience, but both have similar pattern of story development each episode. There are challenges and sometimes sensitive topics, but things are almost always gently resolved by the end of the show. Often with strong moral themes prevailing and good carrying the day.

I was taken with Coyle and Blakely in episode 5 of season 1 when I saw it recently. Robert is a good pillar of the community hard working man with deep skill and passionate ability to work on better things. In this episode Timmins, while doing a routine masonry job for pay, gets distracted by the blank keystone above the door and begins to spend all his spare time carving it.

His wife is in turmoil over lack of money, not knowing what he's been spending his time on but knowing it is not bringing in wages. She is stressed about feeding their large family and she spreads her torment to him.

"Why did you marry me? Why does a woman choose a man for what he is!? His passions and strengths?  - and then one by one take these things away from him." Coyle's performance here is beautiful.

By he's not an ordinary man and she's not an ordinary woman ... because he can verbalize this frustration and manage to do it with love as well as distress and she can hear him, understand and relent. Claudie and Brendan give so much sympathy to their characters you feel their pain and love and see both their positions. Wonderful. And because this is Lark Rise, good things happen for them :) The hard work and attention to artistic quality pay off financially as well as intrinsically when the lord of the manor house sees his talent and gives Timmins work repairing sculptures. Our couple endures and rejoices together and the moral of "following your bliss" is a strong happy message.

The Best British Period Drama of All Time

Because I am an idiot and was spending all my time thinking about what I was going to vote for, I missed my actual opportunity to vote in Anglophenia's poll of the Best British TV Drama of All Time.

It's just as well really, because I somehow failed to notice that the poll was for best TV Drama. My brain somehow read that as best "Period Drama". Wishful thinking I suppose. So, my ultimate choice, which I gave a lot of pointless thought to, was a period drama that is not a TV show but a movie!

However, since I stood ready to justify it to Anglophenia, I will justify it now to you. My thoroughly biased and unscientific decision about the best British period drama of all time: Gosford Park.

This will come as a surprise to anyone who knows how much I love Jane Austen. Why, when there are so many incredible Austen adaptations, would I not choose one of them? I think Gosford Park wins in large part for the reason that it is NOT an adaptation. Whereas Jane Austen adaptations (or any other literary adaptation) stands or falls in part on the merits of the book. Austen adaptations are brilliant because Austen was brilliant -- her work then molded and compressed and made to fit the modern audience and modern format that is either TV or film -- while Gosford Park is brilliant and whole entirely on its own strengths.

What I mean to say is that, written and produced as a period drama specifically for film, Gosford Park feels complete as the expression of an artistic vision brought perfectly to life as it was imagined.

When I think of something that is visually superb, evocative of a particular time period, impeccably acted, witty, fresh and beautifully directed and filmed, I cannot think of anything that, on the whole, outshines Gosford Park. Its social commentary, emotional pull and great character-driven plot provide layers of viewing interest. The juxtaposition of class structure on top of a clever murder mystery was a stroke of brilliance.

And the cast has to be one of the best assembled ensembles I've ever seen.  Anything with Maggie Smith AND Helen Mirren in it gets big time points. Claudie Blakely (also of He Knew He Was Right, Lark Rise to Candleford and the 2005 Pride and Prejudice film) is fast becoming one of my all time favorite British actresses. Her performances are always heartfelt, deep, earnest and likeable. And don't even get me started on Michael Gambon, Jeremy Northam and Clive Owen.

So there it is: the answer to the question that nobody asked!


"The Best British Period Drama of All Time." LostinBritishTV

"He Knew He Was Right." Great Title for a Strange Dip into the Inner Workings of the Mind of an Otherwise Normal Man

"Some mysterious agent interferes with the affairs of a man and it drives him on and on and on until he doesn’t know where he’s going."

-Louis Trevelyan, He Knew He Was Right.

(SPOILER ALERT). He Knew He was Right is another very rich and beautiful BBC period drama, presenting what is truly a simple tale of Louis Trevelyan, a man so deeply entrenched in his point of view, that he is willing to follow it to its extreme despite the cost and without even trying to question whether it is worth it.

His wife, Emily, almost as stubborn, is single-mindedly insistant on her own course of action, eschewing her husband's worries and refusing to bend, though it ultimately means losing the custody of her beloved child and, ironically, living in disgrace.

Although this is, at its core, a study in psychology set within the real estate of the mind, neither of our lead characters is introspective at all; neither seems more than vaguely aware that they are trapped and being destroyed from within nor capable of changing course. They are willing to clash over the non-issue of her infidelity (was she/wasn't she getting it on with Colonel Osborne) despite the tremendous costs to them both. For him, in particular, those costs are staggering and include both his sanity and ultimately his life.

The central theme held my attention for a while, but eventually began to feel drawn out and ridiculous. These people's little problems just became stupid by the end of the story. And maybe that is the point Anthony Trollope was trying to make. (I don't know much about Trollope, who wrote and lived in the Victorian era, other than that he was a well-traveled, prolific writer who was popular in his own era.) Maybe he is a bit of a satirist? But this is an odd story to try and sell to a modern audience because it is just so implausible.

I am not saying that the theme of people adhering blindly to things that are destructive is implausible. Surely that flaw transcends time and place. And jealousy can be a great force driving people to extreme behavior. But I don't think this story is about Louis' jealousy so much as his sense of social order and propriety. I don't believe he got into this predicament by believing his wife was cheating, but rather, in worrying how her visits with the Colonel must look to outsiders. Social implications are still important today, but how many modern people would follow social propriety to the death? I would have more sympathy for him as a tragic hero if his pursuits were grander, or maybe just plain compelling. And maybe that is something that gets lost in translation between the Victorian mindset and that of my modern American individualism.

The machinations of people in their little lives are like the scurryings of ants. It is sometimes hard to get worked up over them. It might be good truth, but for me it did not make the best drama. The background stories of the victor and his silly attempts to court a variety of women including two sisters (played hilariously by Fenella Woolgar and Claudie Blakley), Anna Massey's touching bipolar performance as Miss Stanbury, and the story of Nora and her lovers were far more dramatically interesting to me than our stubborn lead characters.

Still, I enjoyed the distraction of this adaptation. I found the production beautiful, the costumes appropriate and gorgeous, and the acting fine. I don't fault the production for this main story's faltering; I think that my response is more rooted in the nature of what the author is trying to sell than in the adaptation not conveying that message well. Still, to be sure, I want to read the book and see whether the main storyline plays better on the page.

And I am very willing to own that my own life at the moment is coloring my response to HKHWR. People intentionally screwing up their lives and doing it with blinders on must feel so hollow in light of my own recent burdens of heavy humanity which remind me that even upstanding, strong, and well-lived lives are still just the scurryings of ants.

The Trevalans go an extra step by taking what is already small about humanity and making it absurd.


"He Knew He Was Right is Actually a Great Title for this Strange Dip into the Inner Workings of the Mind of an Otherwise Normal Man" LostinBritishTV.com