Category Archives: The Morgue

Baby Doll–McCarter Theatre’s Season Opener

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Baby Doll, Tennessee Williams, McCarter Theatre

Hoffman and McDermott in Baby Doll

Perhaps Tennessee Williams and comedy don’t usually share your same mind-space, but here is a comedy-drama rather neglected in the back of his vast repository of work. Princeton’s McCarter Theatre (link includes a behind the scenes video) has found it, resurrected it, and mounted it in an exciting production on view through October 11.

The play, Baby Doll, was always a mashup. It began with two one-acts (“27 Wagons Full of Cotton” and one with a title something like “The Dinner Nobody Wanted”). It was turned into a script for a 1956 Elia Kazan movie starring Caroll Baker, Karl Malden, an Elie Wallach in his first movie role. That version went through many Kazan-initiated revisions and excited much Church opposition for its racy content—tame today compared to prime time tv. Williams later wrote a full-length stage play based on the screenplay, Tiger Tail, that had a short Broadway run in 1999. But generally, the project lay neglected.

Recently, it was retranslated and revived in France by Pierre Laville, and when McCarter’s Emily Mann read Laville’s version, she saw great potential. She and Laville share “adapted for the stage” credits, as further work had to be done by Mann to reflect American perspectives, particularly regarding race relations in Mississippi in the early 1950s. Miraculously, two weeks before rehearsals began, Mann discovered in Princeton University’s Firestone Library the original movie script by Williams, as he wrote it before Kazan’s “help.” More revisions ensued.

“Baby Doll” is a 19-year-old beauty, married to a much older man, Archie Lee Meighan and living in a falling-apart plantation house (handsome stage set). Baby Doll thought she was not “ready for marriage” at age 18. Although the wedding took place then, it is yet to be consummated (she still sleeps in her crib), according to the deal she, Archie Lee, and her father made before his death. The waiting—which is to end in two more days when Baby Doll turns 20—is driving Archie crazy. He both loves and lusts after her, feelings she does not return.

Archie Lee is nearly destitute, having lost his cotton gin business to the nearby Syndicate plantation, and Baby Doll is furious that the house’s furniture is repossessed. When the Syndicate’s gin is destroyed in a not-so-mysterious fire, the young plant manager, handsome Silva Vacarro, pays the Meighans a visit, bringing with him 27 wagons full of cotton for Archie’s gin. When Archie leaves to take care of the cotton, Silva—an Italian and exotic in those parts—tries to trick Baby Doll into revealing her husband’s role in the fire, and, as New York Times reviewer Charles Isherwood says, “we can practically see her little mind clicking along a few beats behind her tongue.”

The comedy in the play comes not from Neil Simon-style one-liners, but out of the human absurdities of normal, everyday action and impulse. In a post-show discussion, the actors said Mann insists they play their lines straight; playing for laughs would cheapen the effect. That earnestness is what makes the four characters—Baby Doll (Susannah Hoffman), Archie Lee (Robert Joy), Silva (Dylan McDermott), and Baby Doll’s Aunt Rose Comfort (Patricia Conolly)—so believable. While you’re chuckling, your heart is twisting. The play ends on a bit of a Scarlett O’Hara moment, with Baby Doll’s resolution to let tomorrow take care of itself.

Veteran actor Patricia Conolly talked about some of the similarities between the elderly, half-deaf, semi-oblivious maiden aunt she plays here and other Williams characters she’s portrayed. Such women live on the edges of family and society, and they must make enormous effort to “get along,” even with the most demanding hosts (“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” Blanche DuBois says.) Otherwise, as Aunt Rose Comfort puts the problem, they “have no place to go.” (Aunt Rose is a secondary character who manages to put a monkey wrench in situations fairly often, being where she shouldn’t be or not being where she should be. And, if you’ve ever had an elderly relative who’s become hard-of-hearing, you’ll know Williams got it right: she hears what she wants to hear!)

At only 90 minutes, Baby Doll is not as complex as Williams’s Big 3: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Streetcar Named Desire, and The Glass Menagerie, but it’s well worth adding to your Williams experience.

Cover-Ups and Freak-Outs

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quilt, stars

“Stars and Sparks” by Judy Tescher (photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

A terrific show is at the Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis through October 4. Titled “19 Stars: Quilts of Indiana’s Present and Past,” the show was conceived as a way to mark the upcoming 200th anniversary of Indiana statehood, the 19th state to join the Union. The quilts on display—19 historic ones and 19 contemporary designs—all have reference to star patterns and themes. The photo at right is a portion of one of the modern quilts, “Stars and Sparks,” by Judy Tescher (and now the screensaver on my iPhone).

The historic quilts were made from the 1830s to 1980s (historic? I remember the 80s!), while many of the contemporary quilts were created especially for this exhibition. All show both literal as well as creative interpretations of the star motif. The 2010 artists use a wide array of construction techniques and often work collaboratively. Modern sewing machines have expanded the types of actual quilting they can accomplish.

quilt, stars

“Stars” by Mary Kay Horn (photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

Some of the quilts are beautiful mostly because of the fabrics used, and some, old and new, because of the intricacy of the quilting, which is what holds the fancy top together with the (in historic days) cotton batting in the middle and the usually plain backing. At left, “Stars,” by Mary Kay Horn, and, below, “Bohemian Fireworks,” by Sandra Peterson, which uses the same color techniques the Impressionist painters did to make the colors pop.

I still have and use quilts my grandmother and great-grandmother made, and I have a dim memory of visiting my great-grandmother’s home when a neighborhood quilting bee was in progress. The tops of the patchwork type of quilts were made from material leftover from sewing. Adult family members could point to a patch and say, “I always loved that dress”—one they’d had when they were schoolgirls—or “That’s the dress I wore to cousin Louise’s wedding!” Other tops seemed to have been made from purpose-bought fabric because the whole project uses the same materials—too much material to be just leftovers. A “Lone Star” quilt—popular in my grandparents’ home state of Texas—and a detail from it are at the bottom of this post. It’s from the 1830’s, the oldest quilt in the show and the detail indicates they were no slouches when it came to intricate quilting in those days either!

quilts, stars

“Bohemian Fireworks” by Sandra Peterson (photo by Vicki Weisfeld)

A unique aspect of this museum visit that other patrons cannot count on experiencing was that the power went out shortly after we arrived. Thankfully, emergency generators kept the quilt exhibit well lit. Though parts of the museum were in darkness and had to be forgone, we became fascinated to watch catering staff soldiering on with the setup of a wedding dinner and reception for about 350 people (counting place-settings), and the band members snake their many cords across a stage. This space was well lit by windows in the middle of the day, but at party time, who’s going to take the chance to plug in that amp?

The reception was booked for a room on the top floor, so cocktail tables, plastic bins of glassware, and everything had to be carried up four flights. The wedding guests, I’m guessing, would miss those elevators, too! If you’ve ever organized an event of this size, you’ll see how it had all the makings of a major freak-out opportunity. I couldn’t help hoping no one had told the bride’s mother yet, that the power would kick back on, and she’d never have to know.

Your Travel Circles:

  • You’re only an hour from Indianapolis when you’re in Bloomington (51 mi)
  • About two hours away when you’re in Cincinnati (112), Louisville (115), or Dayton (117)
  • About three hours away when you’re in Columbus (175) or Chicago (182)
quilts, stars

“Lone Star” from the 1830s (photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

 

quilts, stars

“Lone Star” detail (photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

Classic Cruisers

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Packard Museum, Dayton

(photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

Think of Dayton, Ohio, and you probably think of the Wright Brothers and latter-day U.S. Air Force resources, but it also contains a unique tribute to the automobile. “America’s Packard Museum,” located a short distance from downtown, displays an impressive collection of more than 50 classic cars from the Packard Motor Car Company. The company began producing true luxury vehicles in the early 1900s, with models that cost more than the average price of a home in those days.

Packard Museum, Dayton

(photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

The museum’s restored cars are beauties even now. I especially liked the yellow model pictured, which offered its passengers a literal “trunk.” James and William Packard weren’t fussy about body design. Customers could purchase their chassis and engine and add their own custom-designed body. One model in the museum had a French-designed body, for example.

During the Depression, the company began producing a more moderately priced line, as well as its luxury models, which in the long run diminished its reputation as an exclusive brand. During the early 1940s, the company gave over total production to the war effort, building aircraft and marine engines. When automobile production resumed, the luxury and lower-priced, lower-profit models were too difficult to distinguish, further diluting its reputation as a high-end manufacturer.

Packard Museum, Dayton

(photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

Two of the “Caribbean” luxury convertible models, produced from 1953 to 1956, are shown in the photo at left. The museum includes a gorgeous mid-century red convertible once owned by Perry Como. According to the docents, a recent visitor said, “Oh. He’s the governor of New York.” No, you’re probably thinking of his dad.

You can easily spend an hour examining the wide whitewall tires, the perfect paint jobs, the leather interiors, and real chrome details of these cars. The volunteer docents are full of information and affection for the collection. It’s easy to see why.

Appropriately enough, this award-winning museum is located in Dayton’s old Packard dealership, built in 1917. Emblazoned on the wall is the company motto—created when the company president was too harried to talk to reporters about his cars—“Ask the man who owns one.” Packard merged with the Studebaker company in the early 1950s, absorbing a boatload of Studebaker debt, and produced its last vehicle in 1959.

Your Travel Circles:

  • You’re only an hour from Dayton when you’re in Cincinnati (54 mi) or Columbus (71)
  • About two hours away when you’re in Indianapolis (117) or Louisville (155)
  • Just over three hours away when you’re in Detroit (209) or Cleveland (211)
Packard Museum, Dayton

(photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

Princeton’s Fall Literary Highlights

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soldiers, Iraq

(photo: U.S. Army, creative commons license)

Fall 2015 will be an exciting time for Princeton-area followers of the literary world. The Althea Ward Clark reading series of the Lewis Center for the Arts includes three top-notch entries. The monthly series features a poet and a prose writer, usually known for fiction, and they are held in the Berlind Theatre at the McCarter Theatre Center, at 4:30 p.m.

On September 30, the program presents Phil Klay, a National Book Award winner for his collection of short stories, Redeployment. Klay is a former Marine who served in Iraq. His stories show the profound dislocation of young Americans trying to cope with a seriously broken society completely foreign to their understanding—an experience that gradually transforms their views of America too. “In Klay’s hands, Iraq comes across not merely as a theater of war but as a laboratory for the human condition in extremis,” said Dexter Filkins’s New York Times review. Also reading will be Natalie Diaz, who has a poetry collection titled When My Brother Was an Aztec and has won the Nimrod/Hardin Pablo Neruda Prize.

Short story writer and novelist Jhumpa Lahiri will appear on October 14 with poet Mary Szybist. Lahiri’s collection of short stories, The Interpreter of Maladies, won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, but she may be best known for The Namesake and the movie made from it. Her most recent novel is The Lowland, shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker prize, and a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. Her first two books tell about the displacement and loss of context of experienced by Indian immigrants in America. The Lowland, “buoyantly ambitious in both its story and its form,” said NPR reviewer Maureen Corrigan, is set mostly in Calcutta. Szybist won the National Book Award for her poetry collection Incarnadine.

Finally, on November 18 novelist Adam Johnson and poet Dorianne Laux will read. Johnson wrote the masterful 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winner, The Orphan Master’s Son, and I can’t wait to hear him read—I hope from his new collection of stories. Laux’s most recent poetry collection is The Book of Men.

More Local Events

Starting in late September, the Lewis Center will present the Princeton French Theater Festival—a diverse array of plays and readings.

The regular literary programs at the Princeton Public Library continue—book groups for mysteries, fiction, black voices, poetry, and Spanish-language stories. October 24, the library hosts the annual “Local Author Day book fair.”

On October 30 at Labyrinth Books, cultural historian Thomas Laqueur will discuss his book, The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains. Right up my alley. It’s one of a dozen discussions of books on various topics (not much fiction) the bookstore has scheduled for September and October.

Booklovers’ Sand Sculptures

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Alice in Wonderland, Cheshire Cat, sand sculpture

Alice (photo: Andy Field, creative commons license)

As the last weekend of summer approaches, a fitting tribute to two combined passions—going to the beach and reading—has been assembled by Kelly Jensen in this photo-essay for BookRiot, showing how sand sculptors around the world have interpreted the scenes of literature—from Gulliver to Alice—in that doomed-to-destruction medium, sand.

One wonders what the writers who created the books that inspired these creations might think of them. As they labored over a page, did they worry that their words would be as ephemeral as these amazing creations? Or that the tide of public opinion would soon wash them away?

Enjoy summer’s last fling!

The End of the Tour

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End of the Tour, David Foster Wallace, Jesse Eisenberg, Jason Segel

Jesse Eisenberg & Jason Segel

In 1996 David Foster Wallace’s 1079-page novel Infinite Jest hit the literary scene like a rocket. The publisher’s marketing efforts meant the book was everywhere, but the man himself—shy, full of self-doubt, not wanting to be trapped into any literary poseur moments and seeing them as inevitable—was difficult to read. This movie (trailer) uses a tyro journalist’s eye to probe Wallace during an intense five days of interviewing toward the end of the Infinite Jest book tour.

As a tryout writer for Rolling Stone, reporter David Lipsky had begged for the assignment to write a profile of Wallace, which ultimately the magazine never published. But the tapes survived, and after Wallace’s suicide in 2008 they became the basis for Lipsky’s 2010 book, Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, which fed David Margulies screenplay. The plot of the movie is minimal; instead, it’s a deep exploration of character. It may just be two guys talking, but I found it tectonic.

Director James Ponsoldt has brought nuanced, intelligent performances from his two main actors—Jason Segel as Wallace and Jesse Eisenberg as reporter David Lipsky. Lipsky is a novelist himself, with a so-so book to his credit. Wallace has reached the heights, and what would it take for Lipsky to scramble up there too? Jealousy and admiration are at war within him and, confronted with Wallace’s occasional oddness, one manifestation of which is the attempt to be Super-Regular Guy—owning dogs, eating junk food, obsessively watching television—he isn’t sure what to feel. You see it on his face.

Is Lipsky friend or foe? He’s not above snooping around Wallace’s house or chatting up his friends to nail his story. Lipsky rightly makes Wallace nervous, the tape recorder makes him nervous; he amuses, he evades, he delivers a punch of a line, he feints. When the going gets too rough, Lipsky falls back on saying, “You agreed to the interview,” and Wallace climbs back in the saddle, as if saying to himself, just finish this awful ride, then back to the peace and solitude necessary actually to write. In the meantime, he is, as A. O. Scott said in his New York Times review, “playing the role of a writer in someone else’s fantasy.”

The movie’s opening scene delivers the fact of the suicide, which by design looms over all that follows, in the long flashback to a dozen years earlier and the failed interview. You can’t help but interpret every statement of Wallace’s through that lens. The depression is clear. He’s been treated for it and for alcoholism, from which he seems to have recovered. The two Davids walk on the snow-covered farm fields of Wallace’s Illinois home and talk about how beautiful it is, but it is bleak, and even in as jam-packed an environment as the Mall of America Wallace’s conversation focuses on the emptiness at the heart of life. Yet his gentle humor infuses almost every exchange, and Lipsky can be wickedly funny too.

Wallace can’t help but feel great ambivalence toward Lipsky; he recognizes Lipsky’s envy and his hero-worship, and both are troubling. He felt a truth inside himself, but he finds it almost impossible to capture and isn’t sure he has, saying, “The more people think you’re really great, the bigger your fear of being a fraud is.” Infinite Jest was a widely praised literary success, but not to Wallace himself.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 92%, audiences, 89%.

farm, snow, winter

(photo: M Pincus, creative commons license)

Movies about Writers

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Dickens, writer

(photo: Alan Weir, creative commons license)

Writers in the throes of creating fiction might appear to be one of the duller conceits for a movie (gazes into distance, writes/types a few words, gazes into distance again, gets up for fifth cup of coffee, writes a few more words, tears hair out). Yet, writers’ lives apart from the actual writing often prove fertile ground for cinema–a combination perhaps of interesting friends and the life disarray that results when your focus is totally elsewhere. Stimulated by positive reactions to the new film about David Foster Wallace, The End of the Tour (trailer), starring Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg, Book Riot has produced a nice list of favorite films about authors.

Several films I’ve seen and would recommend are on the Book Riot list, which includes advice about the number of tissues needed to get through them:

  • American Splendor – about comic-writing genius Harvey Pekar (Paul Giamatti, Hope Davis)
  • Iris – Iris Murdoch (Judi Densch and Kate Winslet)
  • The Last Station – Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren)
  • Miss Potter – Beatrix Potter (Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor)

I’ve missed a number of notable author biopics in the list, including those about Lytton Strachey, Dorothy Parker (although after reading a lengthy biography of her last year, I’ve had enough), Sylvia Plath (three tissues), J.M. Barrie, and C. S. Lewis. Here are a few more enjoyable ones that did not make the Book Riot list:

  • Danny Kaye, Hans Christian Andersen

    Danny Kaye in Hans Christian Andersen

    Bright Star – a rather sweet costume drama about 19th c. poet John Keats

  • Julia – half biopic, half self-aggrandizement based on Pentimento, a memoir by playwright Lillian Hellman (Jane Fonda) that includes relationships with her lover, detective author Dashiell Hammett (Jason Robards, Jr.), and her enigmatic childhood friend “Julia” (Vanessa Redgrave), who IRL probably lived very near me in central New Jersey.
  • Hans Christian Andersen, the musical starring Danny Kaye (1952)—I’ve never forgotten it!
  • Cross Creek – Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s misadventures in 1930’s Florida that led to The Yearling (Mary Steenburgen, Peter Coyote)
  • Out of Africa – Danish author Karen von Blixen-Finecke (Isak Dinesen) and her days in Kenya (Meryl Streep, Robert Redford)

Enormous Charles Dickens fangirl that I am, ditto Ralph Fiennes, I have to admit that his The Invisible Woman, a 2013 film about Dickens’s relationship with actress Nelly Ternan is, sadly, ho-hum. But, to end on an upbeat, coming this fall is Trumbo about screenwriter and novelist Dalton Trumbo (trailer) who stonewalled the House Un-American Activities Committee and would not “name names.”

Home State Advantage

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Indian women, saris

(photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

For so many reasons, New Jersey is the home state to some great fiction. The stories of the immigrants who settled here, hard by New York and Philadelphia, and their descendants (Tony Soprano!) make an interesting stew of cultures, habits, and personalities. Early immigrants created distinctive Irish, Italian, Hungarian, and Polish communities, and immigration hasn’t stopped. The state’s new settlers come from Central America, from China and South Asia, from Russia and the Middle East. These different cultures rubbing up against each other create the spark for fiction and the promise of individual reinvention.

Food for storytelling can come from the scandal and corruption in high places and low, from city halls to the offices of New Jersey congressmen (the movie American Hustle). The huge contrasts in wealth between the urban core of predominantly black and poor cities, like Newark, Camden, and Trenton and the multi-ethnic, but whiter towns and suburbs create sharp fault lines and slippages that can crush the people caught between (The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, non-fiction).

Atlantic City, Boardwalk, hot dog stand

(photo: Chris Goldberg, creative commons license)

Then there’s our setting. New Jersey has the shore, with all the beauty and hucksterism thereunto—Atlantic City, the boardwalk, Asbury Park—and a big dose of beach nostalgia, like Burt Lancaster’s classic movie line, “The Atlantic Ocean was something then. You should have seen the Atlantic Ocean in those days” (Atlantic City). Out-of-staters familiar with the industrial concentration surrounding the New Jersey turnpike near Newark Airport snicker at the nickname “The Garden State,” but it is that, too—rural farms, horses, the lonely Pine Barrens, the Delaware Water Gap.

It’s a state packed full of contrasts. No wonder Tobias Carroll’s entertaining Literary Field Guide to New Jersey for Oysterbooks contains so many riches. Or, as the article’s subhead has it, “Sometimes the best way to understand New Jersey is to make stuff up.” Here are four Jersey tomatoes Carroll picked:

  • Richard Price’s books, especially Clockers, reportedly his best and in my to-read stack, about the fictional town of Dempsey (Newark and Jersey City) and the unending urban war on drugs: “Price pressure-cooks the city down to its dense, searing essentials” said The Village Voice.
  • Akhil Sharma’s Family Life, about a family that relocated from Delhi to central New Jersey—possibly right around the corner from me—“a note-perfect evocation of life in the middle of the state,” Carroll says. Born in Delhi, Sharma grew up in Edison, New Jersey.
  • The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Junot Díaz’s Pulitzer Prize-winner is a coming-of-age novel set in a small town in the northern part of the state. Born in the Dominican Republic, Díaz grew up in Parlin, New Jersey.
  • New Jersey Noir – a collection of short stories about crime set in New Jersey by various authors and edited by Joyce Carol Oates.

The state has nurtured fiction writers as diverse as Judy Blume (Elizabeth, N.J.), Philip Roth (Newark), Ntozake Shange (Trenton), Joyce Carol Oates (Princeton), William Carlos Williams (Rutherford), Janet Evanovich (South River), Chang-Rae Lee (Princeton), George R. R. Martin (Bayonne), and Lauren B. Davis (Princeton). They and hundreds of others grew up in, live and teach in, and have written about The Garden State in all its kaleidoscopic variety.

Misalliance

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Ames Adamson, Misalliance, George Bernard Shaw

Ames Adamson as John Tarleton in Misalliance

This George Bernard Shaw play at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey (through August 30) provides some timely commentary for a work first produced 105 years ago. The feminist characters and viewpoints typical of Shaw don’t shock viewers today, as they did in an England just emerging from the Victorian era. But unexpectedly apt was Shaw’s skeptical take on the role of law enforcement. The play’s character Lord Summerhays, reflecting on his time as governor of Jenghiskahn, says:

Justice was not my business. . . . Men are not governed by justice, but by law or persuasion . . . by force or fraud, or both. . . . It is as well that you should know this, my young friend; so that you may recognize in time that anarchism is a game at which the police can beat you.

In a talk-back after the show with STNJ artistic director Bonnie Monte and members of the cast, we learned the play was not well received in its 1910 debut and not produced again for several decades. One critic called it “a debating society of a lunatic asylum,” but it has proved more popular in recent years, perhaps because its structure seems less radical today. Audience members who’d seen other productions commented that this one is lighter and livelier. Farce isn’t the first word that comes to mind when thinking of Shaw, but this version of the play had a great many laugh lines, expertly delivered by the outstanding cast.

The story takes place over the course of a single afternoon in the country house conservatory of wealthy underwear magnate John Tarleton. His son Johnny is a bore, and his daughter Hypatia is engaged to a very unlikely fellow, son of dignified Lord Summerhays. Mrs. Tarleton seems a bit dim, but perhaps there are things she finds it more convenient not to see.

This loosely jelled assemblage is turned upside down by the sudden appearance of an airplane [!], flying low, that crashes into the family greenhouse. From the wreckage emerge the dashing pilot and his last-minute passenger, whom he assumes is another gentleman but who, when the leather cap and goggles come off, turns out to be a Polish woman, both dare-devil and fitness devotee. All relationships are up for grabs from that moment forward.

Numerous proposals of marriage (or less permanent liaisons) ensue, and some of them would rank high in misalliance potential. The pilot quotes one of his three stepfathers, an Anglican priest, with perhaps the play’s most famous line: “If marriages were made by putting all the men’s names into one sack and the women’s names into another, and having them taken out by a blind-folded child like lottery numbers, there would be just as high a percentage of happy marriages as we have now.”

Other misalliances emerge between parents and children, and about that relationship, Shaw says elsewhere, “If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson (which is not at all necessary), hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.” This is advice amply illustrated by poor Mr. Tarleton and his daughter. “Depend on it,” he tells Lord Summerhays, “in a thousand years it’ll be considered bad form to know who your father and mother are.”

As always, the cast and production values are terrific, with special mention of Ames Adamson as John Tarleton and Erika Rolfsrud as his wife. At some point, a portable Turkish bath proves it’s more than an ornament.

Kick Back TV Mysteries

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tv, television, relaxing

(photo: Caitlin Regan, creative commons license)

We may spend the week grappling with the critical affairs of the world and leaky plumbing, but come the weekend, we hope Netflix offers us something entertaining—and nothing’s better than a little crime! You know, something about people with real problems!

These five U.K. and Australian series take you out of the United States altogether, for an armchair vacation to boot. Here they are, from light to dark:

  • Mr. & Mrs. Murder – found CDs of this 13-part Australian series at the local library. It’s about a husband and wife team (Shaun Micallef and Kat Stewart) who clean up after a murder and, of course, end up solving it. The real police detective (Jonny Pasvolsky), is sweet on the Mrs. and never misses a chance to put the husband down. Not one bit serious, just fun.
  • Midsomer Murders – Based on books by Caroline Graham, this veeeeery long-running British series—it began in the late 1990s—has outlasted its original cast. More lately, John Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon), the “cousin” of the long-running Tom Barnaby (John Nettles), is the lead detective. Tom should never have let wife Joyce out of the house. Whether she was at choir practice or off plein air painting, a murder inevitably ensued in these deceptively charming country villages. Lots of suspects. And, over the years, lots of entertaining sergeant side-kicks. Ever-amazed that the CME always arrives and the scene and already has some conclusions before Barnaby even gets there.
  • The Last Detective – great recommendation from a friend (thanks, B.T.!), based on novels by Leslie Thomas. In this London-base series, sweet, but hapless “Dangerous” Davies (Peter Davison) must deal with the breakup of his marriage, the couple’s shared custody of a very large dog, and the constant badgering of his doltish colleagues but always—yes!—solves the case. His boss, the self-medicating alcoholic DI Aspinwall (Rob Spendlove) is perfect. Friend and perpetual loser Mod (Irish comedian Sean Hughes) is the chief comic foil.
  • Case Histories – Several of Kate Atkinson’s excellent Edinburgh-based mysteries about protagonist Jackson Brodie (Jason Isaacs) have been made into television programs (three two-hour ones and three 90-minute ones), including One Good Turn and When Will There be Good News? Jackson is a defrocked policeman working as a P.I, who’s still called in to advise the Department’s DI Louise Munroe (Amanda Abbington) when he stumbles on a dead body or a juicy case. A little too much flashback about “why he cares,” when the fate of dead young women is involved. Why wouldn’t he? His secretary (Zawe Ashton) is priceless. Cute daughter, too.
  • Jack Irish – Three television movies (Bad Debts, Black Tide, and Dead Point)have been made from the Jack Irish mysteries by Australian writer Peter Temple, with more to come. Guy Pearce plays the eponymous character, and these are the grittiest in this list. I’ve not read Temple’s originals so don’t know whether the excessive plot complications come from the original, but the shows would be better if they were a half hour shorter and without one of two of the endless twists. Between that and the heavy accents, I’ve gone a bit past caring a time or two. Girlfriend journalist Linda Hillier (Marta Dusseldorp) is a charmer. Like the touts and horses.