Whitehall from Serial Box
Still meditating some questions that came up in the writing openings discussion the other day, but today over lunch I read the last episode of Serial Box's Whitehall, which I hope will open into a second season.
SerialBox is another publishing experiment to which one can read the first episode of various series for free, then either purchase succeeding episodes one at a time, or subscribe to the whole. Each week a notice is sent when the next episode you paid for goes live. It's expensive if you tot up the price of the subscription and compare it to the price of an actual book, so at least for me, it's not something I'm going to do a lot of.
Also, I don't like cliff-hangers, and I hate waiting for resolution. But with Whitehall, the stories mostly were shaped in arcs that didn't drop you off a cliff at the end, and then I know the history of the time well enough that there are no large surprises waiting. Instead, I look forward each week to seeing what the writers do with the familiar history.
I don't know how popular it is; the subject is the Charles' court early in his reign, and though he is onstage a great deal of the time, the focus is his wife, Catherine of Braganza, who has largely been ignored by historians, and when she is mentioned, too often is reviled or dismissed for her foreign, Catholic ways.
The cast extends to the exuberant Barbara Villiers, Charles's longest-running of his many mistresses, the Earl of Rochester, and down to the servants, specifically Jenny, whose half-Spanish origins earns her kicks and spite from the kitchen staff, who don't like outsiders.
It could so easily have gone wrong for me. Of the six writers--Liz Duffy Adams, Delia Sherman, Barbara Samuel, Madeleine Robins, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Sarah Smith--the only one whose episodes veered a bit too much into a contemporary American voice were those by Mary Robinette Kowal, and that was only noticeable in comparison to the others. I found Sarah Smith's single episode incandescently brilliant, and those written by Madeleine Robins subtle with all kinds of period detail and outlook, but really, I enjoyed them all.
There is no spec fiction elements here--no supernatural or magical. It's historical fiction that gives the women of the time equal voice with the men, and without disdaining them for their seventeenth century paradigm, which was another pitfall I dreaded.
I'm really hoping that they do a second season.
SerialBox is another publishing experiment to which one can read the first episode of various series for free, then either purchase succeeding episodes one at a time, or subscribe to the whole. Each week a notice is sent when the next episode you paid for goes live. It's expensive if you tot up the price of the subscription and compare it to the price of an actual book, so at least for me, it's not something I'm going to do a lot of.
Also, I don't like cliff-hangers, and I hate waiting for resolution. But with Whitehall, the stories mostly were shaped in arcs that didn't drop you off a cliff at the end, and then I know the history of the time well enough that there are no large surprises waiting. Instead, I look forward each week to seeing what the writers do with the familiar history.
I don't know how popular it is; the subject is the Charles' court early in his reign, and though he is onstage a great deal of the time, the focus is his wife, Catherine of Braganza, who has largely been ignored by historians, and when she is mentioned, too often is reviled or dismissed for her foreign, Catholic ways.
The cast extends to the exuberant Barbara Villiers, Charles's longest-running of his many mistresses, the Earl of Rochester, and down to the servants, specifically Jenny, whose half-Spanish origins earns her kicks and spite from the kitchen staff, who don't like outsiders.
It could so easily have gone wrong for me. Of the six writers--Liz Duffy Adams, Delia Sherman, Barbara Samuel, Madeleine Robins, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Sarah Smith--the only one whose episodes veered a bit too much into a contemporary American voice were those by Mary Robinette Kowal, and that was only noticeable in comparison to the others. I found Sarah Smith's single episode incandescently brilliant, and those written by Madeleine Robins subtle with all kinds of period detail and outlook, but really, I enjoyed them all.
There is no spec fiction elements here--no supernatural or magical. It's historical fiction that gives the women of the time equal voice with the men, and without disdaining them for their seventeenth century paradigm, which was another pitfall I dreaded.
I'm really hoping that they do a second season.