G
Guest
Guest
Eyup, peeps. This amused me as I am familiar with everything (and nearly each archaic word) the author writes of. Thought others might get a larf out of it.
Ah, for a phaeton of my own...
Perdita
------------------------------
San Francisco Chronicle - Jon Carroll, November 7, 2005
I was watching the "Masterpiece Theatre" version of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Kidnapped" the other night, and I realized that there must be a little England inside England, an England maintained by the BBC and in use for more than 30 years.
There is Jane Austen land, for instance, featuring one manor house, one vicar's cottage, one garden in which plights can be trothed and a sensible room with a window seat where the heroine can muse. If you don't have musing, you don't have Jane Austen.
With a little set redressing, the vicar's cottage can be turned into the generic hovel. Hovels change little down through the centuries, so the period doesn't matter much. "Kidnapped" has a very fine hovel in the opening sequence, and where would a Dickens adaptation be without a primo hovel? One hovel fits all -- it's the genius of television.
There's a Jane Austen stable too, a place where (a) lovers can secretly plight their troth (lots of plight-trothing in Austen) and (b) cruel squires can plot their revenge. I suspect there's also a cruel-squire costume somewhere, with a Velcro waistband to fit cruel squires of any size. They have to be portly, though, just as hypocritical vicars have to be thin. Also: Anyone named Ebenezer is up to no good. Has there ever been a virtuous Ebenezer?
OK, I take your point, but that was only after he was scared by three ghosts.
Another timeless set is the seedy tavern, which can work from George Eliot right up through Thackeray. (Jane Austen doesn't deal in seedy taverns, so no worries there.) Got your seedy tavern, got your surly rogues, got your slumming wastrels, got your buxom barmaid, got your inedible meat pies. Oh, and tankards! The BBC budget for tankards must be enormous.
Right near Jane Austen land is Bronteville, which features a charming array of heaths, moors, copses, swards, welds, tors, meres, weirs and vales. Sure, it was expensive to buy a heath back in 1970 (although not nearly as expensive as it would be now), but amortized over 30 years of brooding heroes, misty heroines, jovial (yet also melancholy) shooting parties, plus a virtual army of disinherited younger sons going off to seek their fortunes, it was a bargain. The BBC heath is also available for weddings.
Near the heath would be the Old Tree, a place where missing wills are often found, and letters plighting troth are often left. Hard by the Old Tree would be the rural graveyard, where picturesquely obscured gravestones can be rubbed and family secrets unearthed thereby. No need to unearth anything else; the real exhuming in BBC World doesn't get going until the police procedurals -- poor Jane Tennison had to stare into a grave every 20 minutes or so. And Dr. Tony Hill! It doesn't bear thinking about.
In another part of BBC World is Galsworthy's London (which is also Trollope's London and Thackeray's London and pretty much anybody's London unless they painted themselves blue). Galsworthy's London has as full a complement of carriages, phaetons, cabriolets, broughams and landaus as one could hope for. There is a genteel street, with a tow of houses along one side and a park along the other. The park is useful for heroes or villains who wish to stare (longingly, evilly) into the windows of the houses across the way.
There's also the requisite manor, which can be run-down or kept up according to need. In the manor will be an attic, dusty and spooky, where revelatory family documents can be found, sometimes hidden behind mirrors or under floorboards. The attic is a good place for the Flashback to Youth, in which happier times are recalled.
Near the manor is the Secret Room of Cheap Special Effects. The BBC needs to cut corners somewhere, and most often it does in scenes of bloodletting. Get a sword, a musket, a few horses' hooves (sans horses), perhaps a gas mask if we're up to World War I, and then you arrange these things, photograph them while shaking the camera vigorously, add sound effects involving metal twanging and lots of whinnying -- and, voila, Waterloo or the Crimea or wherever.
If you haven't visited all the attractions in BBC World, don't worry, you will, again and again and again.
I am aware that not every British costume drama is produced by the BBC. In this country, we're allowed to use "BBC" as a generic term, connoting bodices, vicars and lost wills.
Ah, for a phaeton of my own...
Perdita
------------------------------
San Francisco Chronicle - Jon Carroll, November 7, 2005
I was watching the "Masterpiece Theatre" version of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Kidnapped" the other night, and I realized that there must be a little England inside England, an England maintained by the BBC and in use for more than 30 years.
There is Jane Austen land, for instance, featuring one manor house, one vicar's cottage, one garden in which plights can be trothed and a sensible room with a window seat where the heroine can muse. If you don't have musing, you don't have Jane Austen.
With a little set redressing, the vicar's cottage can be turned into the generic hovel. Hovels change little down through the centuries, so the period doesn't matter much. "Kidnapped" has a very fine hovel in the opening sequence, and where would a Dickens adaptation be without a primo hovel? One hovel fits all -- it's the genius of television.
There's a Jane Austen stable too, a place where (a) lovers can secretly plight their troth (lots of plight-trothing in Austen) and (b) cruel squires can plot their revenge. I suspect there's also a cruel-squire costume somewhere, with a Velcro waistband to fit cruel squires of any size. They have to be portly, though, just as hypocritical vicars have to be thin. Also: Anyone named Ebenezer is up to no good. Has there ever been a virtuous Ebenezer?
OK, I take your point, but that was only after he was scared by three ghosts.
Another timeless set is the seedy tavern, which can work from George Eliot right up through Thackeray. (Jane Austen doesn't deal in seedy taverns, so no worries there.) Got your seedy tavern, got your surly rogues, got your slumming wastrels, got your buxom barmaid, got your inedible meat pies. Oh, and tankards! The BBC budget for tankards must be enormous.
Right near Jane Austen land is Bronteville, which features a charming array of heaths, moors, copses, swards, welds, tors, meres, weirs and vales. Sure, it was expensive to buy a heath back in 1970 (although not nearly as expensive as it would be now), but amortized over 30 years of brooding heroes, misty heroines, jovial (yet also melancholy) shooting parties, plus a virtual army of disinherited younger sons going off to seek their fortunes, it was a bargain. The BBC heath is also available for weddings.
Near the heath would be the Old Tree, a place where missing wills are often found, and letters plighting troth are often left. Hard by the Old Tree would be the rural graveyard, where picturesquely obscured gravestones can be rubbed and family secrets unearthed thereby. No need to unearth anything else; the real exhuming in BBC World doesn't get going until the police procedurals -- poor Jane Tennison had to stare into a grave every 20 minutes or so. And Dr. Tony Hill! It doesn't bear thinking about.
In another part of BBC World is Galsworthy's London (which is also Trollope's London and Thackeray's London and pretty much anybody's London unless they painted themselves blue). Galsworthy's London has as full a complement of carriages, phaetons, cabriolets, broughams and landaus as one could hope for. There is a genteel street, with a tow of houses along one side and a park along the other. The park is useful for heroes or villains who wish to stare (longingly, evilly) into the windows of the houses across the way.
There's also the requisite manor, which can be run-down or kept up according to need. In the manor will be an attic, dusty and spooky, where revelatory family documents can be found, sometimes hidden behind mirrors or under floorboards. The attic is a good place for the Flashback to Youth, in which happier times are recalled.
Near the manor is the Secret Room of Cheap Special Effects. The BBC needs to cut corners somewhere, and most often it does in scenes of bloodletting. Get a sword, a musket, a few horses' hooves (sans horses), perhaps a gas mask if we're up to World War I, and then you arrange these things, photograph them while shaking the camera vigorously, add sound effects involving metal twanging and lots of whinnying -- and, voila, Waterloo or the Crimea or wherever.
If you haven't visited all the attractions in BBC World, don't worry, you will, again and again and again.
I am aware that not every British costume drama is produced by the BBC. In this country, we're allowed to use "BBC" as a generic term, connoting bodices, vicars and lost wills.
