So, here’s the deal: Part of me always wanted to save the best Cookson for last. However, the moment comes in your life when you realize you are just never going to make it through A Dinner of Herbs, and if I waited for that to happen before I did The Moth, this entry would be dated sometime in 2017. So, let’s just end 2011 on a high note, with the very best Cookson of them all: The Moth!

The Moth is actually where all this rigmarole got started in the first place: my friend Eileen, who knows from period pieces, brought The Moth over on a visit on a lark, thinking we’d watch it a little and then hang out and actually do something in New York. That was foolish, obviously, because as soon as we finished that one I was looking for the next one. Also, it turns out we accidentally started with the best one, which made the rest of the Catherine Cookson Experience sort of a slide downhill? Not that I hold that against Eileen at all; I think the only way to handle Cookson is to start with a nice one, because if you open with The Tide of Life the entire thing sort of becomes a non-starter.

However, that does nothing to diminish the fun of this puppy, where things are good and/or good to make fun of, which is the ideal combination for a great time in a Cookson, I feel.

Vital Stats:

Era: 1913.
Heroine: Robert Bradley and Sarah Thorman, who deserve equal billing here, I think. He’s a ship-builder who loves to read and feels social injustice keenly! She’s a lady of the manor with budding feminist feelings! Together, they fight crime.
Siblings that require looking-after: Millie, Sarah’s younger sister, who has Peculiar Yet Winsome on speed dial.
Illegitimate (Self or sibling): Somebody sure is!
Asshole Father?: This thing is an Asshole Father-Off, and competition is fieeerce.
Romantic interest(s): Each other! Marvelously. In a way that makes you want to bang their dolls together almost as much as they do.
Bairnsketballs: Check.
Fistfights: Oh gosh. Definitely a few fights, including one instance of someone getting attacked by a carpentry implement to the face.
Assaults: None! It’s a Christmas miracle!

Under this cut, endless glee. Also, endless pictures, sorry.
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Welcome to another edition of the infrequent and grainy Catherine Cookson Experience, in which I try to explain why, in the mid-1990s, the BBC lost its marbles and decided to film as many of these low-budget potboilers as they possibly could before some enormous sky-clock ran out (which is as good an explanation as any for why these happened).

Because there is a thin line between hilariously terrible and normal-terrible, many of these Cooksons are not as fun as others. There are those whose cheese is appealing (The Rag Nymph), and those that are genuinely enjoyable (The Wingless Bird). Then there are those that are, say, The Round Tower.

Then there is The Fifteen Streets.

This dismal, awkward screenshot pretty much sums up The Fifteen Streets, which ostensibly follows a family of dockworkers from East Tynside and their class and religious issues, but really there’s just a Protestant mystic and a fair and a bunch of iffy child actors and a posse of idle neighbors that is always crowing the frame and two leads who do an indifferent job of things except when it comes to sucking face, which they are allllll over; of all the Cooksons, most of which seal the deal with a chaste peck, this is by far the sucking-face-est. Many of the plot points that end in tragedy (which is all of them, this whole thing is a tragedy) go sour as if to spite the two of them for having wandered onto a frigid beach to neck and not supervising anything else that’s going on.

Vital Stats:

Era: 1900-ish.
Heroine: John O’Brien, technically, though this whole thing is such a plot soup of terrible decisions that really, no one deserves to be considered heroic.
Siblings that require looking-after: Endless, confusing, nebulous siblings. Also Sean Bean.
Illegitimate (Self or sibling): Negative.
Asshole Father?: You know, technically yes, but that is the least of this Cookson’s problems.
Romantic interest(s): Anne of Avonlea.
Bairnsketballs: Two!
Fistfights: This entire effin’ thing is one big fistfight.
Assaults: Oh gosh. One offscreen, one bizarre piece of nonsense onscreen that we will get into when we get there.

Shall we?

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In between rewatches of Catherine Cookson this weekend, I got some lovely news: RT Book Reviews has put Mechanique on the ballot for Fantasy of the Year!

I’m in excellent company, and am flattered and thrilled by the nomination.

*

The Catherine Cookson was not as thrilling. I am really trying to wrap this puppy up, but some of these are surprisingly ponderous. Not Dwelling Place bad, because how could you be, but pretty dull in their own special ways, including one I have watched twice where I literally cannot keep track of anything after about the one-hour mark because my eyes just glaze over, so when someone drowns in the river I think it’s the hero’s sister, but also there are like a dozen neighbors? We’ll see. It’s a journey.

(At least the screencaps will be slightly better than the ones from The Dwelling Place, whose screencaps I would redo except it would mean watching it again and some things are just not going to happen.)

I fell off the wagon about these in a major way, didn’t I? And in the home stretch! Shame on me.

For those who are new since my last one (welcome!), a bit about the Catherine Cookson Experience. Catherine Cookson, author of historical potboilers, enjoyed a magnificent heyday between about 1995 and 1997, in which the BBC went NUTS for her and filmed approximately eight hundred of her books in an attempt to employ every actor from Great Britain, Scotland, and Ireland it could get its hands on, and also to use up a lot of sawed-off basketballs they needed to use to simulate pregnancy.

More than a year ago, in a fit of good judgment, I embarked on a quest to watch every Catherine Cookson movie ever filmed. As it turns out, that is very difficult, partly because there are so many of them, and partly because some of them are just the worst ever and involve a lot of asshole dads and/or men getting romantically interested in a girl he met when she was nine and/or a complete lack of anyone making sense. (…a cave? Really?)

It has been a long, long time since my last one (the delightfully cheeseball The Rag Nymph), and I’m not sure why. All I know is that I sat down this weekend and found myself reaching for one of my favorite Cooksons, and the next thing I knew, I had 50 screencaps, so I guess I’m back on the wagon! Let’s do this thing.

Note to all: these entries are inevitably huge and image-heavy. I didn’t use all fifty screencaps, but there are certainly 30something of them under this cut.

This is The Wingless Bird.

It’s different from many of the Cooksons because of its central family’s position in life (firmly middle-class, prosperous shopkeepers) and the frank (for Cookson) examination of class differences. That said, someone still gets beaten with a shovel and someone else dies of consumption, so, Cookson ahoy!

Vital Stats:

Era: 1913 and some years after.
Heroine: Agnes
Siblings that require looking-after: Jessie, her younger sister, who is dumb as a box of hair.
Illegitimate (Self or sibling): Check! Jessie’s as illegitimate as her judgment is questionable.
Asshole Father?: Possibly one of the jerkiest patriarchs in all of Cookson. He spends most of his time doing a Malcom McDowell impression.
Romantic interest(s): Charles Farrier, his brother Reginald. WHOOPS.
Bairnsketballs: Yup.
Fistfights: A shovel-beating and a shooting. Also, World War I, so there’s that.
Assaults: Not one! PROGRESS.

Under the cut: candy-store porn.
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So, it’s a new year! For optimists, it’s a time of new beginnings, of promises to themselves and others, of a whole year of fresh possibilities! For me: bad movies.

I’m just going to cut to the chase. Here are nine things I am looking forward to this year, in no particular order.

1. This adorable tango couple serves double-duty. First, it’s part of a project I’m working on that I’m really enjoying; second, it’s a reminder that I actually used to dance this thing, and while I’m not looking for a large-scale return, I should attempt to go out and make a night of it at least once this year. Otherwise I have a serious collection of shoes gathering dust in a corner.

2. Southland. I have been a sucker for cop shows since my parents and I watched the pilot of Homicide back in the day. And ten thousand cop shows later, Southland still manages to compel me. When it was canceled after one season on NBC, I was bummed. TNT picked it up for a second season (yay!), and though ratings were modest, they greenlit a third, premiering Jan. 4. I really appreciate a network that gives great shows a chance, and I have set a Season Pass for this guy.

3. Another double-duty! This is a still from this year’s Jane Eyre, with Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassenbender (I LIKE MICHAEL FASSBENDER), which I will be writing up this week, complete with personal essays and movie-trailer picspam. It is also standing in for every downtrodden, bairnsketball-ridden Catherine Cookson heroine whose stories have yet to be documented in The Catherine Cookson Experience, which I intend to finish soon. I won’t cover them all (some of them are just not worth the time it takes to cap them), but I’ll try, and the best is yet to come.

4. The Borgias! Fancy costumes, Ham-Off scenery chewing, and bizarre sibling relationships. It’s like they made it just for me. Enthusiasm subject to change if this turns out to be as underwhelming as The Tudors, which also had every ingredient to make me love it, and somehow cooked up into a lump of No Thanks Casserole.

5. Books! Specifically, all the books I will be reading / that will be coming out this year written by friends of mine (you all know who you are). My wallet does not thank you, but gosh, it makes me smile.

6. Red Riding Hood. Either it will be glorious or it will be shitmazing. Either way, I’m there at midnight. (Let’s also pretend this thematically stands for Winter’s Bone, for whom I will be rooting loudly come Oscar time.)

7. Mechanique. My first novel comes out this year! You will be hearing more about it later. (Boy, will you EVER.)

8. Priest. SURPRISE PAUL BETTANY. When I reviewed Legion, I realized with horror that Paul Bettany had signed up for another movie with the same director that might be EVEN WORSE. This year, I find out if that was true. YOUR MOVE, TERRIBLE DIRECTOR. (Though Paul staring soulfully at Nikita’s Maggie Q would still probably have gotten my butt in the seat, and the director probably knew that.)

Obviously, this also represents all the other movies I will see this year knowing full well they are absolutely terrible. (I tried to make a mosaic of just those, but it blanketed the earth, so.)

9. Technically this is relevant to this year’s writing interests, but I think we all know that I’ve made one promise again and again and never delivered, and it’s time to get serious about my goals: 2011 is the year I go back in time and hang out with foxes in a turn-of-the-century photo studio.

Obviously these are not the only things I am looking forward to this year, but they are some of the most fun, and should put a pretty nice dent in my sleep cycle throughout 2011!