More TV!

The Game

This six-part espionage miniseries began on Wednesday on BBC America. It's a moody, stylish production set in 1972 England, then in the midst of a lengthy miners' strike that caused power outages even at MI-5 headquarters. A KGB officer named Arkady Malinov gets himself arrested for public drunkenness and assault on a police officer so he can tell MI-5 that he wants to defect and act as a double agent. Malinov claims he wants to act as a double agent so he can reveal to the British what he learns about the Soviet-planned Operation Glass.

What's Operation Glass? Well, Malinov doesn't really know, but he knows it's huge and will change forever the status of the Cold War. It involves agents the USSR has in the UK, and Malinov says he'll let MI-5 know who they are whenever he finds out. Although they feel sure Malinov isn't telling all he knows, MI-5's counterespionage team, which calls itself the Fray, gets to work.

The team is headed by the MI-5 chief, code-named Daddy, and played by that craggy-faced lion, Brian Cox. Daddy's second is Bobby Waterhouse, a snakelike conniver who lives with his mother, a woman who could give Angela Lansbury's character in The Manchurian Candidate a run for her money. Waterhouse's deputy is Sarah Montag, a sharp and ambitious analyst. Her husband, Alan, is socially awkward, but a whiz at the electronic eavesdropping side of the business. Secretary Wendy Straw is a young thing who doesn't have much to say so far. Seconded to the team from Special Branch is Detective Constable Jim Fenchurch, who thinks these MI-5 guys are much too full of themselves.

Our protagonist is the seventh member of the Fray, the young and beautiful Joe Lambe. You might remember him from PBS shows like the Silk miniseries and the recent remake of The Lady Vanishes. Joe is tormented by a failed mission in Poland, one that only Daddy knows the facts about. One of the things that Daddy knows is that a Soviet agent involved in that mission is in the UK, he's part of Operation Glass, and Joe's personal desire to kill this agent will be both a spur and a hazard.

From what I've read, it appears that each week of the series will focus on a new target revealed to the Fray by Malinov, whom the team will then try to use to find out more about Operation Glass. After just one episode, it's hard to tell how this series will shape up, but I'll definitely keep watching. It's got that moody look and music appropriate to Cold War espionage drama, and the actors are fun to watch. (Though I do wish they'd enunciate! It's a sad state of affairs when even British-trained actors mumble so much these days.) Each member of the Fray has his or her own secrets, there are tensions and conflicts between them, and their office-politics intrigues may turn out to be as much a focus of the series as Operation Glass.

The Game is on BBC America on Wednesday nights at 10:00pm Eastern time.

Death Comes to Pemberley

Did you watch the two-part Death Comes to Pemberley on Masterpiece Mystery? I did, and even though it doesn't seem quite right to say this about a Jane Austen-ish adaptation, I thought it was a hoot.

Of course, this is based on P. D. James's novel of the same name. James imagined Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet six years after their marriage at the end of Pride and Prejudice. They are now living happily at Pemberley with their young son, and busily planning their annual dinner and dance for hundreds.

The festivities have to be cancelled when Lydia, Elizabeth's flibbertigibbet of a younger sister comes careening up the drive in a coach and then bursts out of its door, screaming that her husband, the ne'er-do-well Wickham, has been killed. Well, more's the pity, it quickly turns out that it's Captain Denny who's been killed. But Wickham is arrested for the crime, and that's even better than his being the murder victim if you're a Wickham hater––as all right-thinking people are, of course.

James's book was controversial. The most ardent fans of Jane Austen and P. D. James seemed to dislike it. A lot of Austen devotées dislike the whole genre of novels featuring later or re-imagined lives of Austen characters, and they disliked this book on principle; some especially because it was a crime novel. Many P. D. James fans thought the plot wasn't up to James's usual standards. But I liked the book. It wasn't a case of Mr. Darcy suddenly becoming a detective. Instead, there is a judicial investigation, and Darcy is stuck with having to try to clear a man he heartily detests, since having his brother-in-law hanged as a murderer will be a stain on the Darcy name. Meanwhile, Elizabeth learns a few things here and there that seem to provide some clues as to what really happened to Captain Denny.

The dramatization accentuates the soap-opera potential of the P. D. James plot. A love triangle involving Darcy's sister Georgiana is raised in importance, while the strain that this affair––and, of course, the murder––puts on Elizabeth and Darcy threatens their love. There are emotional scenes––well, as emotional as you can get in the Austen-esque environment. Elizabeth can't help but feel that Darcy is regretting his association with her family, especially since he goes into full Darcy remote mode as the pressure of events ratchets up.

Lydia stays at Pemberley during all this, and she's every bit as much of a drama queen as you'd anticipate. The Bennets come to stay as well, and Mrs. Bennet is just as you'd expect. It only takes a visit from Lady Catherine (played by Penelope Keith, who you'll remember from the Britcoms The Good Life a/k/a Good Neighbors, and To the Manor Born) to make the whole thing seem more like farce than a murder mystery. And I'm not complaining; as I said, I thought it was a hoot.

The acting is standard excellent British costume drama style. I do have a quibble, though. Anna Maxwell Martin plays Elizabeth and, while she's a wonderful actor and I loved her in The Bletchley Circle, she's not right for Elizabeth. Martin just isn't vibrant enough to play that character. She does it as well as she possibly could, but I was aware the whole time that she didn't fit the part. Matthew Rhys as Darcy is an excellent casting choice. I became familiar with him as Philip on FX network's Cold War espionage drama, The Americans, and he has more than enough handsome, brooding intensity for Mr. Darcy.

Books and Summertime

Our State Fair is a great State Fair. It's opening tomorrow and there is something for everyone to enjoy. From concerts to 4H exhibits and temptations of all kinds. The kids all like the rides, but adults prefer the attractions of the midway. Pick your favorite: Skee-Ball, Whack-a-Mole, the carousel, Ferris wheel or even cardboard horse races––and maybe sharp-shooting for suckers.

If you can't make it to your state fair, I found a selection of books that will amuse and entertain in a similar summer fun fashion.

A good place to start is with The White Magic Five and Dime by Steve Hockensmith, with Lisa Falco (Midnight Ink/Llewellyn, July 8, 2014). When Alanis McLachlan gets a phone call from her mother's lawyer, her first reaction is to choke on her Coke, because she knew her mother either wanted money or she was dead. The latter was the case and it appeared that Barbra Harper was killed in a botched burglary scenario. Alanis had shed all the tears she ever would for her mother, whom she had not seen or heard from in 20 years.

Almost from the time she could walk, Alanis was used as an accomplice in her mother's con games. When she got old enough she left that life forever, disgusted with the peripatetic lifestyle that was always fraught with danger. Now, she finds her mother has left her the most recent sting scheme, a shop in Berdache, Arizona. Apparently there are "vortexes" around Sedona, and there are some less powerful ones around Berdache, but still enough to support a half dozen occult bookstores and New Age crystal shops. One of these is the White Magic Five and Dime.

Alanis has no doubt that her mother was as slick and crooked as ever, but since, along with the bookstore, she has been given an apartment and a sum of ill-gotten gains, she decides to stay awhile, run the business and try to find out who killed her mother. Another surprise is that Barbra also left a somewhat mysterious young girl inhabiting the apartment.

This is a captivating story that really kept me engrossed, as I followed and laughed at Alanis's attempts to learn enough about Tarot cards so that she can fake her way into her client's confidences, hoping she can find out some of her mother's secrets.

Once I began this book I didn't put it down until I was finished. It was pure fun from beginning to end. You might be more familiar with Steve Hockensmith from his Holmes on the Range series and short stories that feature cowboys Old Red and Big Red Amlingmeyer who follow the steps of their literary hero Sherlock Holmes as they use his methods of observation and deduction to solve mysteries in the wild west. Hockensmith has a great sense of humor and a charismatic way of telling a story, so I wanted to read more of his work. This led me to the genre of monster mashups.

The great number of authors who have been monsterized flabbergasted me. The list goes from Dickens to Shakespeare to Mark Twain and Tolstoy. My first choice was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Quirk Books, 2009), by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains" is how the story begins. This is an edition of the classic in which the Bennet family of five sisters who live at Longbourn estate spend their days and nights practicing and using the deadly arts, as learned in the Orient, against an invasion of Zombies. Forget about looking for husbands, these girls are much admired zombie assassins.

The main plot of Austen's original remains intact, but there are a few tweaks, especially as regards certain characters in the book who come to different––but more satisfying––ends.

This book was hilarious at times, but my main complaint is that the mythology of zombies was vague. There were mentions of a strange plague, but it was never clear how the strange events began, nor how the condition was disseminated. The zombies were pulling themselves out of the ground in various stages of decay, from newly disgusting to ancient remains. Aside from the fact that these creatures were looking for brains, it was never clear just what behavior could be expected from the wanderers––and this was odd, because these events had been going on for decades.

Steve Hockensmith wrote a prequel, as well as a sequel, to PaPaZ. Both of these are based loosely on the Jane Austen novel. The first, Dawn of the Dreadfuls: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Quirk Books, 2010) takes place when Elizabeth Bennet is just 17 years old. Things had been quiet in Meryton for some time, and everyone was taken aback when a corpse began to rise at his own funeral. Mr. Oscar Bennet had been instrumental in quelling the first insurgence of the living dead, euphemistically referred to as "the troubles," and he began a rigorous training program to turn his daughters into fierce warriors.

One of the best ways to put a period to the existence of a Zombie was to whack it on the head so to sever the connection from brain to body. This reminded me of the summer arcade game of Whack-a-Mole.

Hockensmith's take on the mythology of Zombieism is more detailed and explicit, and we learn that the bite of a zombie causes the strange plague to spread. The only recourse to this is to hack off the offending body parts, which did result in some bizarre residual humans. In the end, the mechanics of who is called to the peculiar situation is still unclear, leaving it a mystery as to why entire cemeteries empty, as their inhabitants reclaim an existence above the grass.

In Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dreadfully Ever After (Quirk Books, 2011), Hockensmith picks up the story several years after the marriage of Elizabeth Bennet to Fitzwilliam Darcy. Elizabeth is in a race to discover a cure for the strange malady before she has to behead her husband. It is fortunate that the troubles remain restricted to England. Thank heaven for island nations.

If your idea of fun is testing your own mental agility, then grab Chris Grabenstein's Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library (Yearling, June 2014) and settle in for a good time. It has been 12 years since Ohio's Alexandriaville Public Library was torn down. At one time, Mr. Luigi Lemoncello, the son of immigrants, spent many happy hours in a library, wanting to learn about his new country. He is now a brilliant gazillionaire who earned his money by creating fantastical board games and electronic games loved by children and families everywhere.

So he is responsible for the creation of a wonderful new facility, filled to the brim with books, computers, holographic history lessons, and a magical ceiling made up of nine individual video screens that can operate together or individually, giving the impression of the brilliance of Times Square; a Wonder Dome, indeed.

To celebrate the opening of the new library, Mr. Lemoncello conceived of an event that would bring in lots of attention. Twelve 12-year-olds were going to be selected to enjoy an overnight lock-in, with food, prizes and games.

Kyle Keeley isn't big on books, but he is a whiz on board games as well computer games, so he was excited to be chosen, along with some of his friends. What they find after the doors have been closed and locked is that they are to be part of a great game, the object of which is to find a way out of the library without going out the front door. There are also rules debarring them from escaping from windows, what few there are, and fire doors.

The clues they have on hand are that everything they need to know is on their library cards, and that the library itself contains everything the players need to complete their plans. Kyle teams up with a few friends and the game is afoot.

This book was exciting and lots of fun because the readers have to put their own thinking caps on to solve the riddles, rebuses and value suggestions. Readers will find out if indeed they are smarter than an average seventh grader. The dénouement of this story leads to a mysterious surprise and a challenge. Go for it!

To warm you up, here's a rebus which is a clue to how one feels at the end of a day at the state fair.

And this may be what interests you tomorrow:

Downstairs at the Bennets': A Review of Longbourn by Jo Baker

"No man is a hero to his valet." In Regency Britain, the household of a gentleman, even one of modest fortune, was supported by a legion of mostly unseen servants. In Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, that exquisite plus grand roman of Regency chick lit, Mr. Bennet's modest needs and the rather more extensive ones of his wife and five daughters are met with a meager staff indeed.

Mrs. Hill functions as both housekeeper and cook. Housemaids Sarah and Polly––the latter still a child––clean the house, wash the extensive laundry, serve at table, and help in the kitchen. Mr. Hill, who is ailing, is responsible for the horses and the outside work with the help of only an occasional workman. This is a minimal staff for a household with five pretty, but poorly-dowered marriageable daughters, all of whom must look their best at all times.

Sarah was hanging laundry, trying not to stain it with her chilblains, which the day's scrubbing in lye had opened, when she first spotted the stranger coming up the old drovers' lane. The following morning, the servants are introduced to James Smith, hired to help Mr. Hill with the heavy work. Mrs. Bennet is thrilled; she will have a proper coachman and a young footman to serve her guests at table. Mrs. Hill seems oddly ambivalent; Mr. Bennet had hired him without even informing her. Later, Sarah hears raised voices from the study––could Mrs. Hill possibly be arguing with her master? From that moment, Sarah mistrusts James Smith, although she is oddly attracted to him.

When the neighboring estate of Netherfield is leased to Mr. Bingley, Sarah meets his footman, a mulatto named Ptolemy. "Tol" has ambitions; he is saving his wages and tips to open a tobacco shop in London. He seems very interested in Sarah, who is herself bored and restless with the endless drudgery and her narrow world. London sounds exotic to the country girl, who was born and orphaned within a few miles of Longbourn. But the experienced Mrs. Hill mistrusts Ptolemy, and warns him off. Sarah will eventually have to break with the only people she has known to chase her one chance at happiness and independence.

Longbourn fits itself nicely around Austen's book, never rewriting or reinterpreting her work, just observing the same events from the very different downstairs perspective. The chronology is the same, with a passage from Austen's book at the beginning of each chapter to set up the action downstairs. It also expands slightly on the characters and stories of the senior Bennets, both of whom had baffled me entirely. How in the world could the reclusive, fastidious Mr. Bennet have married such a vapid, vulgar woman? A passage between Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Hill after Lydia' s triumphant return from her scandalous elopement and virtual shotgun wedding to Wickham offers another perspective:

" 'I don't know which is worse,' Mr. Bennet said. 'My daughter's disgrace or my wife's blindness to it.'

'Mrs. Bennet is...' Mrs. Hill hesitated. 'Perhaps it is better that she is as she is.'

'It is hardly respectable. I fail to understand you, Mrs. Hill.'

'For someone to be quite respectable," she said, "I think they must be shown respect. We build ourselves like caddis flies, out of the bits and pieces that wash around us.'"

That astute and compassionate retort from the long-suffering housekeeper, whose many roles include spending countless hours dealing with Mrs. Bennet's hysteria and hypochondria, while her husband hides in his study, says quite a bit about both that marriage and the importance of the practical housekeeper in keeping the balance of the household. Mrs. Hill has become, perforce, the stand-in for her overwhelmed mistress; but Mrs. Bennet might not have become quite so silly and frivolous if she had been a little better cherished.

I am usually disappointed with Austen spin-offs, but Longbourn rings true. It is a remarkably creative adjunct to Austen's beloved masterpiece, among the best I have read, ranking alongside author Pamela Aidan's wonderful retelling of the story from Darcy's perspective in her Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman trilogy.

Note: I received a free review copy of this book. Longbourn will be released by Knopf on October 8, 2013.

Book Review of P. D. James's Death Comes to Pemberley

Death Comes to Pemberley by P. D. James

P. D. James

Jane Austen wrote only six novels; far too few for readers who love her work. An Austen story ends with a wedding (or two), and readers can't help but speculate about how the couples' married life might have played out. No surprise, then, that so many authors have written, and are still writing, sequels to and reworkings of Austen's novels. We even have "mash-ups" like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Now, famed mystery writer P. D. James has joined in with a sequel that is also a murder mystery.

Death Comes to Pemberley begins six years after the close of Pride and Prejudice. Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet are happily married and living at Pemberley, Mr. Darcy's Derbyshire estate, with their two young sons and Mr. Darcy's sister, Georgiana. The new book begins with a short prologue reviewing the action of Pride and Prejudice and the six years before this novel's story begins. We then enter the great house at Pemberley on the night before the Darcys are to host their annual autumn ball. Elizabeth's sister, Jane, and Jane's husband, Charles Bingley, are already in residence, along with Darcy's cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam. A new character, Mr. Alveston, is also a guest.

Carriage in the woods

The hosts and guests are ready to retire for the night when a carriage comes careening up the drive during a windstorm, the door bursts open and out hurtles Lydia, Jane and Elizabeth's drama queen of a younger sister, screaming like a banshee that her husband, Wickham, has been shot and killed in Pemberley's woodland. (When you heard there was a Pride and Prejudice sequel with a murder, didn't you just know that Lydia would take center stage in the hubbub?) Because a murder has taken place on Darcy's estate and affects his family–no matter how distant the Darcys have always tried to keep from Wickham and Lydia–Darcy is necessarily involved in the resolution of the case. And, of course, the personal connections make the case an emotional trial for Darcy, Elizabeth and their extended families.

Lady Catherine

Author James hasn't merely dressed up a mystery in Austen style. Her book is very much an exploration of Elizabeth and Darcy's characters, emotional lives and their marriage. James presents a nuanced portrait of the two that is different from the pert Elizabeth and imperious Darcy seen in the popular screen presentations. Elizabeth's new position as chatelaine of the vast estate of Pemberley and her duty to her husband, his family, and the estate have matured her and made her more conciliatory to troublesome characters, even the likes of Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Darcy is presented as a sometimes brooding and self-doubting man, but one who is determined to learn from his past errors and make a happy life for his family.

Jane Austen

Unlike many authors of Austen sequels, James hasn't populated her story with a horde of new characters. Of course, there are some new characters, but James shows, through the course of the book, that she is well-acquainted with Pride and Prejudice and the other Austen novels, and she skillfully works events and characters from those books into this one. The way she does this is true to the characters and even throws new light on their behavior and circumstances in Pride and Prejudice. She does this so well that from now on I will always think of some of the Pride and Prejudice characters as having the back story that James gives them.

James's writing style captures the cadences of Austen, and there are several passages that recall Austen's tart and ironic observations. Here is James's commentary on attendance at the local church the Sunday following the murder:

"It is generally accepted that divine service affords a legitimate opportunity for the congregation to assess not only the appearance, deportment, elegance and possible wealth of new arrivals to the parish, but also the demeanor of any of their neighbors known to be in an interesting situation, from pregnancy to bankruptcy. A brutal murder on one's own property . . . will inevitably produce a large congregation, including some well-known invalids whose prolonged indisposition had prohibited them from the rigors of church attendance for many years."

Caroline Bingley

And for those of you curious to hear about what Charles Bingley's ill-humored sister Caroline is up to:

"Miss Bingley was particularly anxious at this time not to leave the capital. Her pursuit of a widowed peer of great wealth was entering a most hopeful phase. Admittedly, without his peerage and his money he would have been regarded as the most boring man in London, but one cannot expect to be called 'your grace' without some inconvenience."

As a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, Death Comes to Pemberley is a satisfying effort. As a mystery, it is not conventional and probably not what most of us expected when we first heard about the book. Mr. Darcy doesn't suddenly turn detective; in fact, nobody does. But the way the story plays out is more true to the time and place, and to Austen's style, than it would have been if James had tried to bolt a detective story onto an Austen sequel. I should note, though, that this Austenworld authenticity and lack of a detective story may mean that the book disappoints some mystery readers, including some P. D. James fans.

Elizabeth and Darcy (1995 miniseries)

Elizabeth and Darcy (2005 film)

As a lover of Jane Austen, if not a complete Austen fanatic, I was happy to spend this time at Pemberley, revisiting the characters from Pride and Prejudice and seeing their later lives depicted in a way that is faithful to the depth and complexity that Austen gave them. I was disappointed that there wasn't more time spent with Darcy and Elizabeth, but that's more of a quibble than a serious criticism.

If you can't get enough of Jane Austen sequels, there is some intriguing news. The UK publishing house HarperCollins plans to pair up modern authors with each of Austen's six novels and commission the authors to adapt Austen's stories to a modern setting. The first pairing will be Joanna Trollope with Sense and Sensibility. But don't get too excited about the project. That first book isn't projected to be published until two years from now. In the meantime, you could do a lot worse than read Death Comes to Pemberley.

Note: A version of this review appears on the Amazon product page for the UK edition, under my Amazon screen name.