[Previous episodes of The Catherine Cookson Experience here.]

This week, the CCE delivers my biggest letdown so far: Ciaran Hinds and Amanda Root, stars of the Persuasion (best Austen adaptation ever), team up again!

And man, they suck.

Welcome to The Man Who Cried, which is about a good-looking dude (Ciaran Hinds: well cast, casting person) who keeps tripping and falling into ladies, which disgusts him, just disgusts him. Why won’t these women stop getting with him, damn? He spends four hours being emo about how he just wants to be Left Alone with some other woman than the one he’s with at the moment. (Doesn’t matter which woman he’s with; he wants a new one.)

Vital Stats:

Era: 1930s, just before WWII
Heroine: Ciaran Hinds.
Siblings that require looking-after: His ten-year-old kiddo.
Illegitimate (Self or sibling): He begets one! Nice job, Ciaran.
Asshole Father?: Yeah, Ciaran.
Romantic interest(s): Every woman on the planet.
Bairnsketballs: Yup…CIARAN.
Fistfights: Largely nonviolent, except for ladies lunging at Ciaran and attempting to climb him like a tree.
Assaults: See above. SIT DOWN, LADIES.

“Even the CREDITS are crying, you guys.”
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So, after last week’s happy-go-lucky tale of nice girls with the memory capacity of a goldfish, we get into the gritty reality of what life was like for the ladies of the 1850s. (Answer: sucky.) Behold, The Girl!

Note: There are Cooksons worse than this, but few Cooksons duller. We will be skipping over large portions of repetitive, depressing malarkey. The point Cookson is trying to make: sucks to be a lady in the 1850s who had to make a good marriage Or Else. Point we take away from it: sucks double to be a lady whose only options are your rapey husband or that dude down the street who gets drunk and insults you. (Also, you fall in love with the second guy, which means in this scenario you probably have a concussion. I’m sorry to hear that.)

Era: 1850
Heroine: Hannah Boyle, the young illegitimate daughter of gentleman Mr. Thornton. OR IS SHE?
Siblings that require looking-after: She has three half-siblings who mostly suck, but in case she’s the one that requires looking after, because oh my lord, girl gets beat on.
Illegitimate (Self or sibling): Hannah. Sort of. Whatever.
Asshole Father?: Uh, not to Hannah, but uh, wow.
Romantic interest(s): Ned. Fred, who marries Hannah, is not a romantic interest. It gets gross. *shudders*
Bairnsketballs: Hannah gets one, though technically it’s legitimate since she’s married. Even though it’s not her husband’s. It’s all very Jerry Springer.
Fistfights: Yep. And caning. And bear traps! And they burn someone’s finger off.
Assaults: Innumerable; we see one, and one other that’s interrupted by one of the best conversations the world has ever known.

“You’re trouble!”
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So, there are two or three more really dismal installments of The Catherine Cookson Experience coming up, and I thought that before I hit all the marital rape and spouse-slapping, everyone could use one that’s pleasantly absurd. Behold, The Tide of Life!

Here’s the thing about this miniseries; Gillian Kearney is a really good actress. She worked her ass off in The Forsyte Saga, and I really love the sort-of-documentary biopic she did on BBC, and – she’s not the poor soul who played Cissie Brodie, is what I’m saying. She has genuine charisma, and you root for her.

The problem with The Tide of Life is that while she seems perfectly sweet and capable of making normal-person decisions, she agrees to go steady with any dude who enters the frame, so you end up wondering if she has a concussion. Also a problem: the title sounds like a tampon ad. (Not Cookson’s fault; just saying.)

Era: early 1900s
Heroine: Emily Kennedy, housekeeper and concussion victim
Siblings that require looking-after: One sister, also a concussion victim
Illegitimate (Self or sibling): Shockingly, all the major characters are legit.
Asshole Father?: Nary a dad in sight.
Romantic interest(s): Sep, her first employer; Larry, her second employer; Nick, who wanders into frame in the last twenty minutes.
Bairnsketballs: One for our heroine, one from an extra, plus a tumor everyone thinks is a bairnsketball. (Nobody in this movie is very bright, come to think of it.)
Fistfights: Hell yes. Also, murder, pistol-whipping, chasing someone into the ocean, and lighting a houseful of stuff on fire.
Assaults: Two (attempted)

“That’s what you are – NOWT!”
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This week, I tackle the seemingly endless and screamingly worst of all the Cookson adaptations I have seen, The Dwelling Place.

Brief note about the Experience: I don’t think I’ll be recapping each one. Some of these are deadly dull stuff. However, I’m starting out with some of the really terrible ones to build appreciation for the ones that aren’t so bad. It’s like Stockholm Syndrome involving overwrought, cheaply-made period dramas of the 90s. By the time I hit The Wingless Bird, you’ll think I’m screencapping Citizen Kane.

So, The Dwelling Place is about the fiercely beautiful and clever Cissie Brodie, who marries her rapist.

I’d like to say this is an unusual screencap, but it’s not. We just sort of have to take the movie’s word for it that she’s smart and pretty, since she spends most of the movie staring blankly into space and marrying rapists.

Anyway, after her parents’ death, Cissie packs up her passel of brothers and sisters and moves them all into a cave to prevent them having to go into the workhouse. Life sucks, and then it sucks more when the lord’s son rapes her and she comes down with a case of bairnsketball. It’s a searing commentary about the plight of the poor! Also, Cissie marries her rapist.

Era: 1830s
Heroine: Cissie Brodie, hardscrabble young lady who marries her rapist.
Siblings that require looking-after: Innumerable downtrodden siblings played by varyingly-talented child actors.
Illegitimate (Self or sibling): Her bairnsketball.
Asshole Father?: Check!
Romantic interest(s): Matthew Turnbull, the local carpenter; Clive Fischel, rapist.
Bairnsketballs: Oh, is there ever.
Fistfights: Does it count as a fistfight if you shoot your own sister?
Assaults: One rape, by a man she MARRIES LATER. OH MY GOD.

“Maybe if our Joe hadn’t set a trap for the rabbit…”
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We begin The Catherine Cookson Experience with “The Glass Virgin.” This miniseries was the one that started it all – and stopped it all, since I didn’t go back to another one for over a decade. By the end of my re-watch, I knew why.

The Glass Virgin is about a young girl, raised as gentility, who finds out she’s actually the daughter of a whore and therefore socially untenable. Distraught, she leaves the house with estate groom (and total hottie) Manuel in tow. Will she make it in a cruel working world? Will he make it into a life as his own man? Will they, you know, Make It?

NOTE: These screencaps are awful. I can’t do better. Think of it as part of the joy, like that soundstage echo in the 1970s Masterpiece Theatres.

Era: 1870s
Heroine: Annabella LeGrange, gentlewoman, seventeen, dumb as a sack of hair
Siblings that require looking-after: None, unless you count Annabella.
Illegitimate (Self or sibling): Self.
Asshole Father?: Check!
Romantic interest(s): Manual Mendoza, the groom at her estate
Bairnsketballs: None
Fistfights: Four

“MANUEEEEEL!”
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