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The Catherine Cookson Experience: The Girl

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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… Read more »

The Catherine Cookson Experience: “The Tide of Life”

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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… Read more »

The Catherine Cookson Experience: “The Dwelling Place”

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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… Read more »

The Catherine Cookson Experience: “The Glass Virgin”

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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… Read more »

What to Expect When You’re Expecting Catherine Cookson

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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… Read more »

Golden Globes: Totally Random Red-Carpet Rundown

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So, the Golden Globes happened, and people declared undying love for their costars and their pets, but let’s face it, it’s all about the red carpet. I seriously hated 90% of the dresses this time, so I am not even doing a worst-of (well, with one exception, but she’s hateful and deserves it), so this is a random collection of looks I really liked. Best Color: Rumer Willis, which shows how bad this red carpet was; I mean, Rumer Willis is not really a bastion of good taste under normal circumstances, but you gotta give the girl credit for being the only one on the red carpet in this color, which could not be said of electric blue or runny-egg yellow, which were just EVERYWHERE, which – people, you pay your stylists to make you look GOOD. Don’t let them just mess with you! Ahem. Clearly this ranty dress collection is not for the bandwidth-thrifty.… Read more »
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