Nostalgia Comes to Pemberley

So here's the recipe for the BBC's adaptation of P. D. James' Death Comes to Pemberley:

Mix the following ingredients:

2 cups The Antiques Roadshow
3 tbsp. The Great British Bake-Off
Zest from Pride and Prejudice
Juice from six medium-sized RADA actors
One whole plot from a cozy mystery (any author)

Cook slowly over three episodes and finish with a dusting of National Trust fairy dust. Serves millions.

My subject isn't the BBC's fresh-out-of-the-oven Death Comes to Pemberley, which is a pleasant scone of a mini-series if your taste runs to scones, but rather why "nostalgia" TV only seems to exist on one side of the Atlantic.

British broadcasters, especially the BBC, have been producing historical/period dramas for a very long time. It may well one of the terms of their broadcasting licences. In the last ten years or so the rate at which these programs have been produced seems to have increased. Since 2003 the UK has sat down to watch period programs such as Lark Rise to Candleford, The Indian Doctor, Downton Abbey, Parade's End, Call the Midwife, Ripper Street,  and South Riding. Add to this a host of period literary adaptations (Emma, Great Expectations) plus a small army of tweedy sleuths such as Miss Marple and Father Brown, and you have nostalgia being produced on an industrial scale.

The nostalgia business is neither a good or bad phenomenon. British history and literature is extravagantly rich in stories and characters that cry out for a dramatic adaptation, so it's no surprise that producers simply look through their bookcases in order to find their next project, and there's certainly something worthy in a nation celebrating it's history and art. I'd also theorize that the recent spike in the Brit taste in yesteryear is due to the perception that their uniqueness is eroding in the face of immigration, globalization and integration into the larger European community. The British tabloids are full of fear-mongering stories about immigrants stealing jobs, committing crimes, and scrounging social benefits. Even respectable publications and commentators are still leery of the EU. Britain is, after all, the only EU member not to adopt the euro. The dark side to this fear of change, at least as it applies to the TV business, hit the headlines in 2011 when Brian True-May, one of the creators of the hugely successful TV series Midsomer Murders, said that the program didn't show "ethnic minorities" because it "wouldn't be an English village with them...We're the last bastion of Englishness and I want to keep it that way." As for globalization, I got a close-up look at how that process has affected the UK when I visited London in 2008. My first trips to London took place in the late '70s, and the London I found then pretty much matched my imaginative vision of the city of Dickens and Wodehouse. In 2008 I found a bigger version of Toronto; the stores, the buildings, everything had a North American look and feel. It was rather disappointing. So if on one level period TV drama in Britain is a celebration of history and culture, on another level it's a barometer of unease with social and cultural change.

The situation in North America is almost the complete opposite. With a few exceptions, history doesn't exist for American TV. Back in the '50s and '60s the TV schedule had lots of period programming in the form of westerns, but from the '70s to the present day it's hard to name a half-dozen prominent shows that were set in the past. There was a short-lived boom in historical mini-series that kicked off in 1977 with Roots, which was then followed by a variety of pulpy and popular productions such as Shogun and The Winds of War. But since then? Nothing really, unless you count Happy Days as a period piece. Mad Men and HBO series such as Deadwood are beloved by critics but they're far from being popular successes. Mad Men's most highly-rated episode attracted only 3.5 million viewers; a crap reality show like Duck Dynasty can easily draw more than twice as many viewers.

The US has a history every bit as varied and colorful as Britain, but it's not a subject of much interest to American broadcasters. One reason for this is that politics has become such a charged and divisive subject in the US that there's probably a reluctance to tackle historical issues that could be controversial. There's no controversy in showing US troops fighting bravely in The Pacific and Band of Brothers, but dramatizing something from the Civil War or the Depression or the American Revolution? Just imagine how Tea Party Republicans and Fox News would react if they felt there was a whiff of "liberal bias" in any examination of America's past. The other reason for the shortage of period shows on American TV is that the citizenry sees the here and now and the near future as being of far more interest. Part of America's self-image is that there's a better and brighter future just over the horizon for every citizen. It's an aspirational ideal that's naive and unrealistic, but it can be argued that it's better than living in the past. It's hard, though, to explain why American TV, including HBO and other niche cable channels, so rarely take the opportunity to adapt American literary classics for the small screen. Why no productions of anything by William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, John Updike, Henry James, Saul Bellow, Ray Bradbury, and a score of other writers? The BBC seems to film novels by Dickens and Austen on a regular rotation, but American's literary giants can't get a sniff at home. The BBC even had the audacity to film James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans in 1971.

So perhaps in the spirit of the "special relationship" and in light of the inevitability of globalization, the BBC and ITV can be tasked with bringing America's literature and history to the world. How about Newport Mansion from the producers of Downton Abbey? Or Ray Winstone starring as Flem Snopes in Faulkner's The Hamlet? And I definitely want to see the lads from Top Gear starring in an adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh.

Book Review: Pride and Prejudice (1813) by Jane Austen

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Elizabeth Bennet.

Yes, it's taken me this long to get around to reading Austen. I tried once or twice many, many years ago, and I'm pretty sure I bailed on those attempts on the basis that nothing great or interesting could be written about a group of women obsessed with finding husbands. I don't think I've made such a rash literary misjudgment in my life. I'm not going to launch into a full-blown synopsis and analysis of Pride and Prejudice, because God knows there's more than enough of those to go around, but I will throw in my two cents worth on what struck me most forcefully about the novel.

First off, I don't think I've ever read a novel that manages to be equally superb in terms of  plotting, prose and characterization. Pride and Prejudice has many moving parts, changes of direction, and plots and counter-plots. Purely on the basis of storytelling this is an amazing achievement, but to then add in so many beautifully realized, iconic characters described in witty, playful prose is nothing short of miraculous. I can think of a variety of novelists who've mastered two out of three of these qualities, but all three? It's a very short list.

The other thing that struck me was that Pride and Prejudice has some of the characteristics of espionage fiction. Let me explain. A great deal of the story revolves around what could be called intelligence work or spycraft. Elizabeth Bennet is constantly trying to ascertain the motives, actions and goals of, well, just about everyone, including people in her own family. And to accomplish this she debriefs and interrogates people, analyzes intelligence reports (letters), tries to see through disinformation campaigns, and works to uncover double agents like Caroline Bingley. Elizabeth's role as a Regency Geroge Smiley gives the novel the same narrative drive as a spy thriller. It's as though Darcy is a Great Power and a variety of individuals are working feverishly to make him an ally or turn him into an enemy of another individual. Here's a couple of passages that give a taste of Elizabeth's role as a spymaster:

"After wandering along the lane for two hours, giving way to every variety of thought; re-considering events, determining probabilities..."

"...and my dear aunt, if you do not tell me in an honourable manner, I shall certainly be reduced to tricks and strategems to find out."

And indeed she does strategize and determine probabilities, so much so at times that part of the pleasure of the novel is watching, as it were, the wheels turning in Elizabeth's head as she plans her next move or tries the to see through the "fog of war" and gauge what the opposition is up to. Now if only the novel had ended with this postscript: Elizabeth Bennet Will Return In...

Book Review: The Sweet and Simple Kind (2006) by Yasmine Gooneratne

Yasmine Gooneratne is Sri Lankan born and bred, and her native country is the setting for this ambitious novel that details the changes that gripped Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) from independence in 1948 to the race riots in 1958 that foreshadowed the civil war that began in 1983.

Gooneratne centres her story around two female cousins, Latha and the rather portentously named Tsunami. The latter is from the rich side of the Wijesinha family, while Latha's family is decidedly middle-class. The two girls become fast friends as young girls at Lucas Falls, a large house and tea plantation owned by Tsunami's father, Rowland. Latha visits Lucas Falls on her vacations and is a witness to what amounts to the moral decline and fall of Tsunami's family over the course of the next dozen or so years.

When we first meet Rowland he's married to Helen, a skilled amateur artist originally from India, and their lifestyle is in most respects that of an upper-class English family. Their taste in literature is Anglocentric, Helen's art is Western, their peers are often Oxbridge educated, cricket is an obsession, and their children attend elite local schools modeled on institutions like Eton and Harrow. In sum, they're almost more English than the English.

Gooneratne depicts Latha and Tsunami's early years at Lucas Falls as a kind of Eden in which the two girls discover a shared love of books and learning. Helen is the muse of this paradise, encouraging the girl's curiosity, discussing art and literature with them, and generally encouraging a liberal way of thinking. The dark cloud in paradise is Rowland, who acts the part of the English gentleman, but soon becomes influenced by the rising tide of Sinhala nationalism that will eventually tear the country apart. Rowland is from an ancient Sinhala family and becomes caught up in politics after Independence in 1948. In what almost seems a symbolic act, he disparages Helen's art, and not long after that Helen leaves Rowland for Mr Goldman, a German rep of tea wholesalers.

The rest of the novel follows Latha and Tsunami as they navigate the difficulties of love and courtship in Ceylon's deeply conservative society, and struggle with life at university. Meanwhile, in the background, Ceylon's post-colonial political life becomes more vicious, culminating in deadly race riots aimed at the Tamil minority. Rowland moves further along the path of Sinhala nationalism and his family becomes as fractured as the country itself, with his two eldest children, Ranil and Tara, becoming as morally vicious as the political conflict.

Gooneratne is a professor of 19th century English literature, with a special interest in Jane Austen, and it shows in her writing, for good and not quite so good. On the plus side, she knows how to spin out a family saga and juggle multiple storylines and characters. This makes the novel very readable, almost addictively so, and her characterization is usually very sharp. The political elements are skillfully interwoven, and even non-Sri Lankans, such as myself, should have no problem understanding the political and cultural makeup of the county.

The only problem I had with the novel (and it's a minor complaint) is its gentility, its cosiness. Gooneratne can be brutally realistic at times, but on a few too many occasions characters and events are bathed in a warm glow of sentimentality and nostalgia. And this also applies to the plot. The middle section of the novel is mostly taken up with Latha and Tsunami's life at university, and too much of it reads like an affectionate, but static, memoir of university life.

The Sweet and Simple Kind is well worth reading, if only for the elegance of Gooteratne's prose. For example, here's a short passage describing the Lucas Falls estate:

When the wreaths of mist lift, leaving the grass wet with dew, mornings on the estate clink and ring with birdsong, sounding very much as if a crowd of children were jingling thin silver coins in their pockets, considering the possibilities.

That sentence could stand on its own as a poem, and writing of that calibre is rare enough that it should be praised at every opportunity.