You’d think by this LJ that I am not watching any television right now! That is not true. I am, in fact, watching my normal amount of television, and even more so, since Camelot, The Borgias, and Game of Thrones all started up within a few weeks of each other, ensuring I would never leave the house again.

My opinion about the three fantasy and/or historical dramas that premiered this spring, summed up as succinctly as possible:

Graphics via rosewyck and fuckyeahoborgia, doing humanitarian work capturing this expression for posterity.

And the thing is this: neither Camelot, nor Game of Thrones, nor The Borgias, is terrible. (Well, maybe Camelot. We’ll get there.) Game of Thrones and The Borgias both have some excellent acting, which is 85% of what I look for in a show. David Oakes, seen above making a truly marvelous bitchface, is one of many other actors bringing amazing stuff to every episode of their respective shows.

Here’s where the trouble starts, though.

To talk about how great David Oakes is in the Borgias (and he really is), I have to talk about how great he was in Pillars of the Earth, which I have still not finished recapping. Also, it seems odd to talk about The Borgias when I haven’t yet talked about how I first saw Holliday Granger in Sparkhouse back in 2003 when she was OUTSTANDING in a part that could have been a disaster, and how pleased I am to see her on something that doesn’t require a PAL converter, or watching the later seasons of Robin Hood (where, I will never stop reminding people, Richard Armitage, who had played her stepfather in Sparkhouse like four years prior, played her love interest).

So, fine, speaking of under-appreciated actors coming into their own, we could talk about Camelot, where Philip Winchester and Eva Green are doing the heavy lifting in the middle of one of the oddest casts on television, including the prepubescent Jamie Campbell Bower and the always-off-putting Joseph Fiennes, who has thrown his hat in the Ham-Off ring (against, I am assuming, his more talented brother, Ham-Off veteran Ralph) to mixed results. However, that requires discussing a show that releases this image as a PRESS PHOTO:

And a show that thinks this photo represents it in the best possible light is not a show I am ready to recap right now, you know?*

So, I could recap A Game of Thrones instead, but I just can’t.

Also, did you know that the week before last, at least two of these three shows had graphically-depicted rape in them? I heard rumors that Camelot also had one, but by then I was a little tired of rape as a plot device, especially inserted into the Game of Thrones narrative in which I am told the whole initial point of the scene was Not-Rape, thank you very much for THAT, HBO, and so Camelot is still sitting on my TiVo, where I look at it from time to time and make Juan Borgia face at it and then just go to bed early.

Short version: Yes, I plan to review them all…as soon as I can pull it together. Also, expect a lot of concurrent reviews of things that came out between 3 and 8 years ago, because that’s how my mind works.

* I mean seriously, that is not a screencap. That is a Showtime-stamped OFFICIAL PRESS PHOTO, which means someone looked at this photo, and instead of saying, “This looks like rehearsal,” they said, “Such ACTION! Such DRAMA! Quick, get this to the Associated Press! Now let’s see that audience just ROLL IN!” And someone else stamped it, and sent it to the publicity department, and THEY signed off on it and sent it to the press, and the press, snickering, made it available, and now you have to wonder what on earth is going on with this show, seriously.

Reader, I saw it.

This was the eighth adaptation of Jane Eyre I’ve seen (not counting the George C. Scott version, which I bailed on like a day player in a skydiving movie). There have been at least twenty adaptations made. There have been abysmal versions and serviceable ones, hysterically off-the-mark ones, ones that are overpraised, and ones that are close to my heart even though they’re deeply flawed and sometimes really terrible (lookin’ at you, Samantha Morton and Ciaran Hinds).

But the thing is that even though it’s been filmed so often, there’s never been a version so good it can be claimed as the definitive version. (Pre-emptive: the 2006 version is often described this way, and it certainly looks good and hits some of the right notes, but there are so many characterization problems and Handsome Rochester issues that from a textual standpoint it’s not the case). Thus, Jane Eyre becomes a one-woman course in the difficulty of adaptation; it seems like a straightforward-enough book, but when you try to bring it to the screen it’s easy to let something crucial slip through the cracks.

This Jane Eyre is also not the definitive adaptation, though Cary Fukunaga managed a movie that does more than just stage scenes from the book, which is where many adaptations stop; this Jane Eyre focuses on Jane herself, in a way not many of the others have. As a character study, it’s a new enough take to have something to say, and though there are some missteps, what it does well it really does well.

Below the cut, more specifics, for those who don’t want to be spoiled about what’s in the attic (it’s a puppy mill).

“The shadows are as important as the light.”

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Late Wednesday night, John Joseph Adams and I appeared on Hour of the Wolf. (The curious can stream or download the entire episode here.)

Ostensibly, we were going to talk about writing, but as we had both quite recently seen Tron: Legacy, there was really nothing we wanted to talk about more than what an utter mess that movie ended up being.

For those who want a more concise review, here’s a list of things you should know before you go see Tron: Legacy. (Spoiler alert obviously in place.)

“I kept dreaming of a world I thought I’d never see. And then, one day… I got in…to the theatre and realized I’d made a huge mistake not seeing True Grit.”
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You know what story hasn’t really been told properly in the previous 20 times it’s been filmed? Jane Eyre!

Well, blackjack.

At first glance, this trailer seems to be mostly, “Oh, PLEASE, Lit Majors, PLEASE come see this movie twice so we can recoup some of our financial outlay! Look how accurate!”

And in some ways, trying to advertise a Jane Eyre adaptation by emphasizing “authentic” moments from the book seems like a waste of time – I mean, your favorite line might fall by the wayside, but you generally don’t worry that Mr. Rochester will open the attic door and reveal his illegal puppy mill.

On the other hand, the last feature-film adaptation of Jane Eyre had freaking William Hurt in it, and they must know they have a little groveling to do if they’re going to get butts in the seats for that. (Especially since there was a questionable-taste-licious A&E TV movie and a perfectly serviceable miniseries adaptation in the meantime. MY GOD, HOW MANY ADAPTATIONS OF THIS THING DO WE NEED?)

But, in defiance of my all-caps, there’s still plenty to chat about. Let’s!

“But sir, I heard a sound in the hall, as if a hundred adorable puppies were playing at once. It’s Grace Poole, sir, I’m sure of it!”
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Next year Showtime will be premiering its new series The Borgias, a spiritual successor to The Tudors, and source of endless joy for anyone who’s been thinking, “Well, NOW who will have a Ham-Off all over the place on my television?”

Jeremy Irons will!

Irons, suffering indigestion from overeating scenery.
Now, hopefully we all understand that the historical-accuracy quotient is subject to change at any moment. “Fast and loose” doesn’t begin to describe the sort of soapy havoc Showtime manages to wreak with its historical series. Yes, history is imperfect and living and inaccurate in itself blee blah; you still know what I’m talking about. *side-eyes The Tudors*.

In some ways this is bad, because Euro History students across the nation will be using this as the basis for papers in the coming years, so teachers can expect a lot of “Manipulation of Public Perception as a Source of Political Power for the Smoking-Hot Borgia Family” papers. In some ways, though, it’s sort of great, because there’s something sort of delightful in thinking they’ll screw up historical accounts so badly that you can end up with a spoiler alert for something that happened in 1491. (That delusional dude who keeps underestimating the world’s circumference is still totally going to get his funding from Isabella. PLOT POINT: RUINED.)

On the other hand, historical accounts of the Borgias are still pretty soapy, so there’s plenty to draw from, not least the incest scandal between Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia.

I don’t know if they’ll go full-incest with this, but based on the preview (and, uh, this picture), there’s plenty of subtext to hang your hat on.

Also worth hanging your hat on: a surprisingly interesting cast, which includes Joanne Whalley (escaped from Willow at last), David Oakes (fresh from playing William Intensse in Pillars of the Earth, and now playing Intensio Borgia), and Holliday Granger as Lucrezia.

(Side note about Holliday. I first saw her in Sparkhouse back in 2003, in which I thought she delivered a really amazing performance. She was 15. Also in Sparkhouse: Richard Armitage, who played a father figure to her. He would go on to play her love interest in Robin Hood, six years later. I bet THAT was fun and not at all awkward! Also, I am not kidding when I say there’s a British Actor Camp and everyone goes.)

Anyway, all this to say: this looks like it’s going to be a cheesy mess, and I will be tuning in pronto.

(ETA: I don’t know if we’ll get that far, or how much this show is compressing time, but if they get a few seasons in, I better see some Isabella d’Este, is all I’m saying.)