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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I have to admit that, after thinking about it a little, I was hard on Isabelle Fischel from The Dwelling Place. Sure, she was nuts, but let’s just review:

Wearing this dress meant slapping this thing on every day:

I KNOW, RIGHT?

First of all, this thing went on after you put on your shift (or chemise, in my tortured parlance), and beneath the waistband you can see the corset, which your internal organs probably just LOVED.

(ETA: I seriously cannot tell if this is a corded corset with the petticoat on top and some unholy undersleeves attached, or if this is a corded bodice with sleeves that went under the petticoat, and had a corset on top. I’m hoping it’s the corset with the busk and then the petticoat waistband going over, because heaven bless that woman if she had something laced up OVER this shit.)

Now then! The horizontal lines in the skirt are pieces of rope shoved through channels sewn into the petticoat. Later, these would turn into hoops, which is nice for ladies, since I can only imagine what it feels like to drag, oh, fifty yards of rope with you wherever you go? Maybe more; the circumference of the skirt is probably five to six feet, and there are how many channels in that thing? (Uh, P.S., how hilarious was it that people claimed women were the weaker sex? Just saying.)

Below left, a close up of the the UFO sleeves, which are wired for horizontal support, since you had another yard of fabric in each dress sleeve. (Seriously, the 1830s just could not have been uglier. I’m not fan of the 1860s superhoops or anything, but at least by then they had stopped sticking hot air balloons on their shoulders.)

Below right, the busk! At this point in history they were made of wood, bone, or ivory, and you basically shoved it into your corset as a front spine to keep you from collapsing under the weight of your own clothes. Have fun!

Heaven knows the clothing of the 1830s would drive me up the wall. If I had to wear it, I too would be riding around the countryside with my rifle shooting anyone who looked remotely comfortable in their clothes. So, you know, point to Isabelle.

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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So, before we begin dissecting individual episodes, there are some things we need to talk about. They are not spoilers, per se; that would imply that knowing about them spoils how the plot will go, which implies that there is any plot to begin with, which is very sweet of you to think but not really so much what Catherine Cookson was good at. So these aren’t so much spoilers as they are ingredients; combining them in different ways produces different kinds of cookies in an unsurprising but delicious process.

Please be warned; some of Catherine’s favorite tropes are totally skeevy. I’ll label the episodes that have nasty goings-on, so those who would rather not deal can just skip.

On to the tropes!

Class Issues: Universal theme that more or less singlehandedly pilots the plot of every single one of these suckers. I have not seen a Cookson miniseries with fewer than three social classes in the mix. If she had a primary obsession, it would be this.

Illegitimate Bairns: If she had a secondary obsession, it would be this. Cookson’s heroines are a spectacularly fertile bunch. If you’re in one of her books, be warned – you fall on a peen just once and you are probably going to turn up with a bairn*. If the heroine isn’t having an illegitimate bairn of her own, she probably is one, or her sister’s having one, or she’s going to end up marrying one. (Hopefully when he’s older.)

* Note: All bairns are portrayed by half a basketball strapped to the heroine’s waist. Poor little bairnsketballs.

Oh, that’s not all.
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