TeeVee: the British period drama edition
Call the Midwife 2013 Christmas Special: as always, the series somehow manaes to be simultaneously heartbreaking and uplifting, though this year's Christmas Special was more tense and had less heartstomping than last year's. Like with a large part of the second season, Shelaugh's plotline was the most compelling.
Death Comes to Pemberley: 3-part miniseries that is a murder-mystery sequel to Pride and Prejudice. Wickham plans to crash Lizzy and Darcy's annual ball, but then his buddy runs off into the woods and gets shot, and everyone thinks he did it! And Lizzy and Georgiana are BFFs (their closeness was actually my favorite part of the series), and all the men are dark and brooding, and the cameramen really like Downton Abbey's cinematography. I actually really enjoyed this, in a thoroughly uncritical way, despite the fact that it has far too many dude-only scenes for something based on Austen to have. It's not wholly original and the characters aren't spot on, but it is very enjoyable, and while the cast may not have universally been the perfect choices for the characters, the cast is a very good cast (Anna Maxwell Martin as Lizzy, Eleanor Tomlinson as Georgiana, Matthew Goode as Wickham and Jenna Louise Coleman as Lydia were the standouts for me), and they have their period drama chops.
Though, I have to say, I've been very amused at seeing a lot of pearl clutching over the fact that Lizzy and Darcy don't have a 100% perfect and flawless marriage and the fact that their backgrounds and personalities lead to the occasional fight means that THEIR HAPPY ENDING HAS BEEN RUINED. RUINED.
I have been enjoying the complaints about Anna Maxwell Martin's looks considerably less. People have been complaining that she isn't pretty enough to play the lead in whatever drama she's in at the time everytime I've watched something that she's in, and it hasn't gotten any less annoying. (Though I suppose she's never played a character a fraction as popular as Lizzie Bennett before.)
Marple: Endless Night: Another non-Miss Marple book that got turned into a Miss Marple by ITV, I think more successfully than some others. I wish I hadn't remembered that I'd read the book shortly after I started it, as the twist is pulled off pretty well here, and I have no complaints about the slight sympathetic element the book gave the killer being taken away. Also, seeing Ton Hughes and Joanna Vonderham as lovers was a bit of a mental "Say what?" to me, as they played siblings in Dancing on the Edge which was the first thing I saw him in.
Moonfleet: 2-part miniseries about a young smuggler, John (Aneurin Barnard, who I understand is one of the current Hot Young Things. He has nice curly angst!hair?) searching for a diamond reputedly hidden away by Blackbeard. Along the way he falls for Blackbeard's aristocratic great-great-something granddaughter, Grace (Sophie Cookson) whose father is, of course, the new magistrate who's determined to wipe out the local smugglers. Ray Winstone is also there as one of the mains as John's grizzled father-figure, Elzevir, the head of the local smuggling ring, whose son is killed by Grace's father in the first 5 minutes. The characters and relationships are incredibly unsubtle and parts of it feel like at least half an hour or so of important scenes that move some plotlines along and explain how characters come to certain points were cut out at the last minute (particularly when it came to Grace), but it was a very fun adventure story with a hint of the supernatural that may or may not have only existed in John's imagination.